5:NECROTIC_KISS

Jisako had once told her about dreams of rivers of pure gold. Rivers which flowed through the sky, falling down from the clouds, and covering the earth. She had spoken of them with such a great reverence, insisting on their beauty. And that day, Adelaide had heard nothing from Jisako except the fervent scratching of her pen as she wrote out the notes to a melody and the calculations for some impossible thing or other.

Adelaide had rarely heard any of Jisako's music performed. Jisako was generally too nervous to approach most venues and ask them to play her pieces. Jisako had no fame, and no money to work as any secondary influence. She was simply a housewife, with an interest in the world of the sonic. She had told Adelaide that the song she wrote about those rivers of gold was her best piece- but that one had never been performed.

The maths work was even more ignored. Universities were not interested in looking at the manuscripts of a woman who had no education, informal or otherwise. They would simply turn down any requests to look at the works. Adelaide could not offer the condolence of understanding, either.

Jisako's music was something which could be listened to and processed. Her maths were sheets upon sheets of things which could only exist in the abstract.

Adelaide had at one point considered requesting a performance by some orchestra or other for Jisako posthumously, but she'd never had the bravery, nor the knowledge of how to even request something of that nature. Part of Adelaide wondered if Jisako would have been particularly successful if she did have a name to call back on. She didn't doubt for a moment that Jisako could have changed the world.

If only she'd lived longer. If only she'd been born just a little luckier. If only.

She could have been one of the greats. One of the names used to hammer down upstarts that got too cocky. A name like Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart. The type of great composer so great that their greatness was unquestionable. The type whose words would be etched in history. Words with violent influence. The sort of influence where, had Jisako said she disliked a certain genre, all those who enjoyed said genre would feel a great deal of embarrassment.

Forrest had agreed to listen to her music once or twice, when Adelaide played it. He had spent quite some time with Adelaide in the days after Jisako had first been reported as 'missing'. He didn't really like music, but he'd sat with her anyway, listening for the sake of Adelaide. She hadn't played them very well, but he'd sat there and listened without complaint. Adelaied had assumed he'd have rather done anything else. Except, after that, he'd begun calling himself Jisako's second ever fan.

It had made her smile for the first time in months.

That night, Adelaide dreamed of a cup overflowing with rivers of gold. They filled the clouds and changed the colour of the sky, before flowing further down, and filling the oceans with only themselves. However, now, the earth was not what it had been when Jisako was dreaming. Instead of flowing over scenic landscapes, the golden rivers flowed through ruins, and fed only demons.

Jisako's mind had always been prone to visions of a darker nature. Images of carnage had seemed to be routine, from what she'd told of her dreams to Adelaide. Themes of mutilation and death had become a routine within the gated realm of her mind.

Jisako never cried after a nightmare, but she always sat with a quiet stiffness, eyes focused on nothing, as though something had taken away the ability. Jisako had moved in with Adelaide rather quickly out of necessity- after all, she'd been a runaway from her home, so she had needed somewhere- and her habit of staring at absolutely nothing at all had been rather unnerving to Adelaide at first.

Jisako could sit that way for hours, lost watching something only she herself could see. They'd had a cat for a little while, and sometimes they'd both be staring at the same corner for hours at a time. Enough so that Adelaide would wave her cross around in the area, trying to take out any creature which might have infested itself within the walls.

There was never anything in the walls, though, and Adelaide's frantic checking usually incited laughter that distracted Jisako from whatever it was she had been so focused on. Adelaide had absolutely no clue what it was they could possibly have sensed. There was not a single ghost or ghoul Adelaide had found wandering around in their home, for all of Adelaide's time spent attempting to figure out what it was that must have been calling out to them.

When that cat had grown old and passed, Jisako had stood in the kitchen, hands halfway in the sink. The faucet wasn't on, and there was nothing in the sink. She stood frozen as though she had been mid action and someone had stolen a photo behind her back, trapping her in the moment forever.

She hadn't responded when Adelaide called out her name at first when she was in that state. It took three tries before Jisako managed to process that she was being called for. Even then, she'd been distracted. Jisako was not an animal lover, and in fact wasn't even usually the one who tended for the cat, but she had some connection to it. One which had been severed by its death, and left her standing, unresponsive.

The cat's ghost wasn't in the walls either. Adelaide had most certainly checked. She'd spent days waving her cross around like a lunatic, tossing it down, only for no pattern to emerge. Jisako had watched her over tea, occasionally making a sarcastic joke about some sport or other that involved throwing. Adelaide never understood those jokes, since she'd never been the type to pay attention to athletes.

Adelaide had even once left a tray of cat food out, in order to see if she could lure out the feline ghost Jisako must have been staring at. Instead, Jisako had eaten it, because she didn't want the food sitting out to go to waste, and had assumed Adelaide had left it out by force of habit.

That was certainly a sight to behold.

Jisako had been strongly opposed to getting another cat after their first, though she hadn't said much about why. Adelaide had certainly been frustrated by that particular situation, for at the time, Adelaide didn't want to spend too much time speaking with Jisako. Giving her a cat companion meant that she could at least have something else to yammer to, and get it out of her system before Adelaide got home.

Adelaide would've broken off her fingers one by one to hear Jisako speak again now. Jisako had actually broken Adelaide's finger once- not on purpose, of course, but Adelaide had never let her hear the end of it. Jisako had walked through a door while Adelaide was trying to oil the hinges. The break wasn't that bad, but Jisako was tearfully apologizing the moment it had happened. She was crying worse when Adelaide wouldn't stop screaming at her. Even when she stopped screaming, there were always jabs about it. Adelaide refused to let Jisako forget that one incident.

As though she were some saint about that herself.

Adelaide was not that accident prone, but decades of marriage meant decades of opportunity for something to go wrong. A hung up pan that fell from its rack and landed on Jisako's unfortunate foot because of Adelaide bumping it, type of wrong. Jisako's scream as her toe was broken was perhaps the loudest sound that had ever escaped her. Adelaide had refused to take any responsibility for causing the pan to fall, and Jisako hadn't been loud enough to protest her.

Jisako was forgiving at heart. She had spent at least two hours just curled up against Adelaide's arm in the doctor's office waiting room, and hadn't made much more fuss about Adelaide bumping the shelf either. Though she did replace that rack at the first opportunity, and never let pans hang again. They were always kept on a shelf after that- as strange as that had looked.

Jisako had spent about a month off her feet, and even after that time, she'd never quite walked the same again. She'd never walked entirely right in the first place- with a pair of legs covered in deep set scars, there was never any way she could have walked completely normally, but Adelaide still felt a sharp sting in her chest when she thought about it.

Jisako hadn't been angry about it. There was no shouting. She certainly had a sour expression and spoke a little shortly, but it was much better than what Adelaide would've put her through. Had put her through.

Jisako wasn't very argumentative. In fact, it was in her nature to sit and take just about any accusation in silence. From anyone. She had been that way when they started dating. When she and Adelaide were told to leave a restaurant, Jisako hadn't been willing to make a scene. Instead, she'd shook her head and told Adelaide that they'd find somewhere else. Not somewhere nicer. Just somewhere else.

Adelaide of course had fought it off back then. There was something between dating and marriage. In marriage, it seemed everyone got a little uglier. Part of it was just that there was more energy to the youthful, and of course, it was easier to fight just about everyone when the totality of life was only about two decades, but it was something else, too. At least that Adelaide had noticed.

When they were dating, Adelaide still defended her girlfriend. When they were married, Adelaide was the one who made snide jokes at her wife's expense. Either way, they'd still gotten kicked out of that restaurant, but Jisako had simply said they'd find somewhere else. Though she had leaned close and whispered a few curses in Adelaide's ear about how much of a pain the whole fiasco was.

Jisako had been an angel, in just about every way on the outside. And on the inside, it was unmistakable she was someone special. She was so remarkably patient. With just about everything and everyone, she was so very patient. And she was never the type of woman who kicked up a fuss about just about anything. Hell, after a while, she stopped even swearing about much to Adelaide in private. Though sometimes, Adelaide wondered if that was simply because of the distance which had formed between the both of them, rather than a growing maturity.

Jisako's voice was so quiet, and so sweet, that cussing sounded odd from her regardless. Perhaps she'd stopped because even she herself couldn't handle the incongruity of it. Perhaps it really had just been a product of aging out of the behaviour. Either way, Adelaide found herself cherishing the memory of it because it was simply so bizarre. So human, in a way, too. Jisako- a goddess among mankind, swearing in an awkward cadence about something that had been bothering her. It hadn't pulled her off her pedestal, but it made her seem just a little closer.

Adelaide hadn't realized how obsessed she'd been with pulling Jisako off that pedestal when she was younger. Forrest had commented once or twice that she was an obsessive woman, and that she was obsessing over the wrong things in her marriage. In fact, he'd spoken to her an hour before the wedding, asking if she was certain the marriage was happening for the right reasons. At the time, she'd chalked it up to jealousy. Jealousy that he couldn't get married first. Jealousy that he was losing his friend to "the old ball and chain."

When she thought back on it, it occurred to her how painfully right he was.

He had been wearing a grim expression that day, but he'd later put on a smile, going along with the wedding. She wondered now how much he'd suspected something to be amiss. She wondered how much he actually knew, and how much was just mild concern.

He'd spoken to Jisako only a handful of times throughout the night. She was rather skittish around him and didn't tend to like his presence, no matter what he was actually doing. He was keenly aware, and had no intention to make himself a nuisance on the wedding day, especially as one of only a handful of guests.

Adelaide had to wonder how much he could have seen was wrong between them. How much he might have gleaned through deduction. Whether he'd even actually been watching that closely, she could never know. The thought would not leave her mind, though. Had he seen the pillars of marble and gold which Jisako stood upon? Had he seen Adelaide clawing to try and bring those pillars down? Had he warned her that their marriage would not work out because he saw some fundamental incompatibility with the two of them? Why hadn't he said anything further than that single, still rather blasé question about whether she was marrying for the right reasons?

She had never thought about those things before. Hell, Adelaide hadn't even realized how much she'd tried to pull Jisako down to her level, mainly because she'd failed completely to do so. Most of the time, it seemed Jisako and that pedestal were one in the same. And now, after she was dead, the pedestal had grown so high that Jisako must have been able to touch the moon.

To wave at the men who had landed on it, in her usual shy manner, and then watch as they jumped around. Gazing at them as they familiarized themselves with her domain among the heavens. Perhaps if they asked nicely, she'd offer them advice about how to deal with the specific demands of being in her place amongst the moon and stars. Suggestions on how to move around easier, what to see, and instructions on how to get back to Earth.

Perhaps if they were in trouble, she'd have extended a hand.

Adelaide hadn't watched the moon landing when it was airing live for the first time. She had considered the event nothing of note and had taken a job at the same time it was happening. If Jisako had been alive, the two of them would probably have been seated firmly in front of the TV- Jisako holding Adelaide's arm in a tight embrace so she couldn't escape.

To her, the whole thing seemed a bit baloney. To be sentimental about some metal thing landing on a rock. Jisako however would've been enamoured. Adelaide could guarantee it. She would've stared at the television, cheering and asking a million questions about how it would feel to go to space. Jisako had her head full of questions for just about everything.

Adelaide couldn't quite imagine everything Jisako would've asked. Her questions were never simple or regular. In fact, every last one was always some novel way of looking at the world which left Adelaide dumbfounded. She was a stranger to the Earth itself. Some alien being attempting to parse the intricacies of the human world through its only available conduit.

Adelaide awoke with a sense of loss so deep it threatened to sweep her into its waves, trapped within the shell of her car.