Current mood:	lethargic
Entry tags:	pairing: ame-warashi/zashiki-warashi, series: xxxholic

Blind
Title: Blind
Rating: G
Series: xxxHOLiC
Characters/Pairing: Ame-Warashi, Neko-Musume, Zashiki-Warashi
Summary: Neko-Musume talks with Ame-Warashi, much to the latter's dismay. (Implied Ame-Warashi/Zashiki-Warashi)
Notes: This is gen, but if you squint I suppose you could see it as AW/ZW, and maybe ZW/Watanuki, if you want to look at it that way. I just wanted to write Neko-Musume, because I think she's cool. I hope I did her justice.



“Well, well, well,” cooed a voice behind her, voice soft and slick like honey.

She paused, umbrella perched peacefully on her shoulder. Her blue hair wavered in the wind, before she turned, glancing over her shoulder at the speaker. One blue eyebrow arched upwards.

“And what do you want?”

“Now that’s not a nice way to great someone,” the speaker purred, curling around the lamppost she leaned against, her eyes yellow and cat-like. She stalked over to the blue-haired spirit, her footsteps leaving no sound as she approached.

“I don’t have time to deal with you, Neko-Musume.”

“How rude,” meowed the cat-spirit as she slunk up to the other spirit, “Ame-Warashi must be in a bad mood.”

“Go sniff around somewhere else, you ungrateful cat,” Ame-Warashi snapped, walking again, her walk far more brisk this time around. “I have places to be.”

“Going to see Zashiki-Warashi, are we?” purred the cat-spirit. Ame-Warashi froze. Neko-Musume laughed, her voice breathy and intrigued. “Oh, I thought as much.”

“Assumptions don’t fit you well,” Ame-Warashi said crisply, walking away again, her feet dancing along the puddles as the rain started to fall.

Neko-Musume didn’t appreciate the rain very much, and her amused face rippled away into a somewhat put-upon, annoyed expression. She chased the child of rain before ducking beneath her large umbrella. Ame-Warashi glared at her and side-stepped, intending to leave the cat out in the rain. But the cat-spirit was far too quick for her, and slunk up beside her, her head brushing over her arm as she grinned her cat-grin.

“Is it true that Zashiki-Warashi attempted to retrieve that human’s eye?” Neko-Musume purred, her voice piquing with her curiosity. “Jorougumo is not someone who should be taken on alone, especially one as pure as a Zashiki-Warashi.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Ame-Warashi hissed, her eyes glaring down at the cat. The cat danced away, before slinking back to Ame-Warashi’s side, not too eager to walk outside in the rain.

“Seems she’s returned to her home, unharmed,” Neko-Musume continued, as if Ame-Warashi had not interrupted her. “That human boy saved her.”

“I know,” Ame-Warashi snapped, grinding to a halt and jutting her hip out, looking more than miffed and incredibly petulant. “What do you expect to get from telling all this information? You expect me to pay for it?”

“There are rumors,” the cat continued, finally arriving at her point. “Have you heard them?”

Ame-Warashi bit back a nasty retort and jerked her head upwards, looking down at the hunched-over cat with a look of utter disdain. Her clear blue eyes glowed angrily, resembling twin storms. If the cat was aware of the impending danger, she made no attempt to save herself or relieve the rain child’s anger.

“I care not for something like rumors,” Ame-Warashi finally managed to say, “Only people with no class at all would listen to such tripe.”

“Someone really is grumpy,” the cat purred, punctuating her statement with the tiniest of meows. “And rumors are very important to listen to, dear Ame-Warashi. It’s how you collect information.”

“Not everybody can be a hopeless gossip like you.” And with that, the rain child continued down the road. Much to her dismay, the cat-spirit followed after her, moving steadily, dodging the raindrops haphazardly and making small, annoyed cat-noises whenever a particularly large drop landed on the top of her head.

“You’re not the least bit interested in hearing the rumors about you… and Zashiki-Warashi?”

Ame-Warashi whipped around so fast that the cat-spirit was almost unprepared for the bitter look of anger surging over the rain child’s face. She glowered and her eyes swirled like the gathering clouds above their heads. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance.

“What?”

“You heard me,” Neko-Musume continued, as if she were not treading on thin-ice and one inch away from getting a particularly ugly rainstorm pouring down on her. She arched up towards the rain child, looking incredibly curious now and somehow Ame-Warashi knew that she would not be able to stop the cat’s insistent pestering for some time now. She purred, “Some spirits say that you’ve taken a particular interest to the little Zashiki-Warashi, taken her under your wing, as it were. I wonder what could motivate a higher class spirit like yourself to do something like that?”

“It’s hardly any of your business what I do with my time,” Ame-Warashi said curtly, glaring down at the cat.

Neko-Musume shrugged and stretched, her back arching until there was a distinct snap. Ame-Warashi regarded her with thinly veiled contempt, but the cat paid her no mind, simply purring happily and looking up at the rain child with a curious and needy look.

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

“Hmm,” purred the cat-girl. “So where are you going, then?”

“That’s not your business, either.”

“How rude!” Neko-Musume lamented, pouting.

“Stop listening to the rumors about us,” Ame-Warashi said, and started to disappear, dissolving into the atmosphere, clutching her umbrella tightly. She had somewhere she needed to be, after all. “And don’t you dare mention anything to her. She doesn’t need such drivel worrying her and embarrassing her.”

“Concerned for her, are we?”

“I just don’t want her to think needlessly over your silly insistence on listening to things that don’t concern you at all. If I hear you spreading and encouraging the rumors about us, I will hunt you down and I will make you regret it.”

Neko-Musume, for once, seemed to heed her words. She shifted uneasily and gave the rain child a mildly offended look.

“I am an informant.”

“Then act like one and not a gossip.”

“Rumors always have a grain of truth to them.”

“If I heard you’ve been talking about us, I will make you regret it,” Ame-Warashi warned.

Neko-Musume pouted some more and crossed her arms. “You’re really no fun.”

Ame-Warashi was almost completely dissolved at this point and her umbrella began to float upward. She watched Neko-Musume’s image shimmer and slide away, like water down a window. Her view was hazy and watery for the longest times before she condensed into a new place, standing in a shallow, warmed pool. The air was crisp and clear—not damaged and polluted by mindless humans.

She heard a shifting behind her and looked over her shoulder.

“Ame-Warashi,” Zashiki-Warashi greeted warmly, looking a pit paler than before and a bit more remorse, but nothing too damaging. She took a step towards the rain child and paused, smiling at her.

“Zashiki-Warashi,” Ame-Warashi returned, and her lips quirked into the tiniest shadow of a smile. She closed her umbrella and strolled over to her, the water rippling away from her in benign waves.

The two walked together on Zashiki-Warashi’s mountain.