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Being dead was no longer a surprise. He had said his goodbyes and expected that to be the end of it. But they hadn't
faded away, they were still here, mostly, in a way, conscious but unfeeling, only minds and air. At first it was strange,
unusual and wrong, but in time, not that it passed here in this limbo, he had become used to it.
That this was unlikely,
if not impossible, as proved by their presence, bothered some of the others more than it bothered him. Chiriko padded up and
down trying to reason it through. Or rather he should have padded, and the sound Hotohori heard was the mere expectation of
the sound of socks on bamboo.
So how they could talk was beyond him but they could. So they did. Because what else
could they do. And it was better now than before, because Konan was safe and his beloved Suzaku no Miko had finally got to
go home safely. Before it had been Hell, watching and unable to do anything about it. But now all is quiet and they talk.
Nuriko
still calls him by his honourifics despite all his requests for him not to. For any man who died for his Suzaku no Miko was
his equal and the man who with his dying breath sent him the mother of his child was so far above him that he didn't have
enough honourifics to give him.
The similarities between Nuriko and Houki were still surprising, even if his wife's
jaw curved a little less sharply and her nose was just a little straighter, and five hundred tiny differences besides.
And,
after all, he had no more duties to fulfil, and who would it hurt now...
Ghosts, incorporeal, non-existent as they
are, cannot kiss. But they can try.
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