“That’s it…That’s it, easy does it now,” Marius’ soothing tones which guided her became a comforting backdrop to a day that Jahnya would never forget. Hands deep within the guts of some Aquilonian solider, Marius’ patient baritone was an anchoring litany in a drone of wounded moans that blurred in and out within a jury rigged canvas tent. The tent itself had been scavenged together in order to serve as a temporary place of healing, a place of worship to Mitra in battle. Now, however, the tent had become a place of blood; home to the wounded, dying or dead, the ground beneath her sandal covered feet churned dark black with new and old blood.

“There, see? That’s the arrow head. Be—no, no, don’t pull—this sort of arrow head is made to go in cleanly, but pull the guts out. Twist it a –yes, good, Jahnya, good.” Encouraged, Jahnya’s long fingers twisted around through flesh until she could worm the arrow head carefully out without cutting the woman’s innards any further.

Marius’ hands were battle scarred and appeared to the young acolyte as if they were almost the paws of a bear. Sun browned, no doubt, from countless days of campaigns; his touch was steady as a rock as his red soaked palm reached out and cupped the pale of Jahnya’s. He steadied her hand at the last moment to make sure the removal of the arrow was as clean as possible.

The moment the wicked arrow head was removed, several other hands belonging to acolytes and priests alike whose faces had long since blurred within her tired head, moved in to begin to cleanse the wound. The process was not so harrowing for the young priest now; you get used to the screaming, Marius had quipped. She did not think she could ever learn to. But she had.

And oh the other things she had learned in such a short time. One learned fast when their hands were wrist deep inside someone. Marius’ was never one for the easy route, he wanted his acolytes to understand and know intimately the human body. What better way than on the battle ground itself, he told them during one afternoon of lessons. I want you to know how the body works before you start twiddling those smooth little fingers of yours.

“Good. Just drop it aside on the ground for now; you and I have no time, child, for cleaning anything more than surfaces and wounds. The others will see to it.” Marius grunted, as he jerked his chin toward those already pouring around the woman to do exactly that.

Marius was a man that did not seem to fit the city-softened ideal of a priest of Mitra. Where one grew accustomed to seeing them grow round from the life of quiet prayer and, perhaps, well maintained offering plates, Marius was harsh. Broad of shoulder, short, squat and bull-necked, one look often brought to mind a man better suited to swinging broadswords than blessings. His brown eyes perched atop a nose broken several times were shrewd as a fishmonger’s wife on market day; they missed little and read much. They were settled now on Jahnya and she did not need to look up to know they were—she could feel them.

Jahnya dropped the arrowhead as told, while doing her best to look anywhere but at the writhing young woman upon the table or up at her tutor. She focused instead on the blurs of acolytes reeling through the line of her sights. Their white robes were awash with the lives of many, and she thought that, perhaps, it would take years to wash the stickiness away. Her tutor’s continued gaze upon her made already unsteady hands quiver more. She hid them behind her back, then darted a glance aside to Marius’ from the corners of her eyes.

“This isn’t—“ she began, then stopped entirely. She could hear the exhaustion and weariness make her own voice crack and it startled her into silence.

“This isn’t what you had in mind, is it?” Marius quietly asked her, as several of the Acolytes struggled to hold the woman now thrashing as another Priest put needle and horse hair through skin to sew the wound shut. “You thought it might be something different? Something worthy of the dignity of Mitra?”

“No,” she admitted after a long pent up breath, shoulders rounding downward in a tired slump. Not seconds after, she jerked her head upward, wide eyed. “Yes. I mean—what I mean is.. I thought perhaps…I imagine that most of the stories and songs about war are a bit—“

“Skewed, my dear. Very skewed.” The hems of Marius’ robes were soaked with red, so too were the sleeves pushed and rolled up past his elbows. He gestured for her to come away from the table and to follow him, where he lead her toward basins of water and soap. “War and the history of it is often written by those who live through it, Jahnya. Never by those mewling for their mothers whilst dying in their own sh**.”

Jahnya tipped her head toward the older Priest as she listened, following him and stepping within his great wide shadow. She decided, wisely, not to point out his generally colorful use of language. Despite what he was now and how hard several members of the clergy of Mitra attempted to urge him out of such things, he would always be a soldier first, priest second. His habits, his way of speech, his movements were as ingrained upon him as his training on the battlefield so long ago.

“You’ll lose acolytes after this,” she quietly dared at his back as she sidled next to him and bent to the task of trying to remove the stickiness from fingers. Her hands had finally stopped shaking enough for her remove them from behind her back, then drop them into a basin already stained pink (they could never change the water fast enough). Tendrils of pallid blond hair became a mask that kept her unawares of how close a scrutiny Marius’ turned toward her for such a statement.

“But not you," replied to her in a manner that suggested unmovable faith.

She blamed the stress of the day on the sudden mix of emotions upon hearing those three simple words, swallowing the sudden lump within throat. It was with no hesitation that she answered, “No. Not m—“

The ground beneath her feet heaved with no warning, throwing the basin of tainted water upward as well as pitching Jahnya to the side. Clay jars shattered, sprayed the scents of strong medicine, tinctures and shards about the ground. The tent itself exploded into chaos suddenly as shouts erupted from every which way about her. Cots which had held the wounded collapsed as sticks, throwing the sick onto the blackened ground to look like broken rag dolls. Acolytes tumbled with soldiers once on tables now overturned and the ground continued heaving.

“By Mitra, what was—“ Interrupted again, a second time by the gigantic hand of Marius clamping onto the top of her blond head.

“GET DOWN !” Marius’ baritone rang out like the bells of the church before worship. She had time to register that the old soldier put all his weight into shoving her downward when her knees buckled her toward the blood soaked dirt.

As far back as she could remember; there were bells.

Crawling about in dirt or blood, forming little men in the gore soaked ground while she waited for him to finish then knocking them over again or pretending she was a giant and smashing them with her fists—there were bells.

The sound was not at all as jarring as the sound of a full grown man screaming or perhaps flesh being torn in two (but she got used to it). No, the bells were like little toes dancing over moonlight soaked grass. Soft, magic, soothing. They were a reminder of things that would forever and always be there.

So when he stood by the window with one long hand splayed against the sill, endlessly long stick-thin fingers sprawled between glinting spheres, she worried. Little girls worried in little girl ways that were often hard to see at first, like a little shadow from the corner of eye. They could fidget or whine or cry and scream, or, they could stand stock still by the boney lines of sentinel still legs and wait in unusual grown-up silence. He stared out over the sill and into a world plunged deep within the velveteen of night; a sky above sleeping buildings scattered with silver-star paint drops.

As she waited, crickets chirped, the stars slowly danced until the moon began her pregnant and full rise.

He turned then, sharply, and narrowed amber eyes down toward the little girl trying to look like him but failing. It was hard to stand guard for so long and not get sleepy.

“You should go to bed,” he said. Yachiru liked to think that in his throat slept mountains so that every time he spoke, he made little landslides of rocks in the air.

“You should go to bed,” she retorted just as she lifted her fists to start jamming them into her eye.

“Yeah,” grunted, as if she were an idiot for not knowing this obvious question. But the man seemed pulled to the array of bells no longer in his hair, resting in moonlight. One finger that seemed jointed far too many times to be human uncurled akin to awakening, lazy spider, tipping a single bell over from the rest. It rolled in wooden as well as metal music across whorls and rings of sill, then rested further away from the pack. Some sort of offering to a ghost or a memory long gone, perhaps? Yachiru stopped rubbing one eye long enough to frown studiously at the single bell.

“Time for bed, y’idiot.”

Zaraki, framed by moonlight and already as large as space or time to Yachiru, appeared to loom that much larger. Hands made for killing or cradling collapsed around her and hauled her upward toward safety.

“Don’t forget your—“
“I know,” he interrupted her. He was glad for little things, like her being too tired to scream and yell. Like her being small enough to fit into the crook of his arm still.

On his way past the window he stopped to pick up the bells on the window sill, a handful of gold in his palm to chime memories.

Only one was left behind to whisper its secrets to the stars and the moon.

The cat was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. As that thought crossed his mind he realized he hadn’t seen too many sad things to compare, except for wet little girls that had fallen into giant mud puddles. Those were pretty sad, yeah.

One ear was missing completely, chopped clean near the skull, its fur was matted or gone completely in some places and any god damned time he tried to get near it? It ran away. Today was no different, either, as he'd lifted a foot to shoo it away from the little girl that beckoned it, then leaned down and scooped her up with endlessly long arms. He watched it run off, a bell at its neck jangling almost in indignant tones.

Now, he wasn’t the sort to be afraid of anything—especially not a cat, but he could be lazy. So he never chased after the cat when it ran...usually.

She monkey-climbed around to the front of his chest, cherubic little baby hands fisted tightly in his jacket. Then, she scowled something fierce up at him. She scowled like she’d seen him scowl down the knock-kneed weakling too scared to move their swords as he approached—-the kinda scowl he liked to use to make ‘em piss their pants.

On her? It…missed the mark just a little bit. Just a tad. It was cute, sorta like watching kittens bristle and try to look big when they were really just itty bitty balls of floof.

“You ain’t havin’ no fuckin’ cat,” He finally rumbled with a voice like the rasps’ edge of metal, or maybe landslides. “So get that outta your pink cotton-candy head right now, got it?”

Wordlessly, she whipped a fat little hand out from its twist in the cloth at his chest and pointed adamantly in the direction the ugly feline had gone. She hadn’t quite mastered the use of words yet; he managed to understand her well enough without them anyway, but he figured now was a good time to practice parental discretion to pretend he was clueless.

Worked for five seconds as he pushed through crowds as boulders break seas, until someone’s chubby hand smacked into the side of his face with a loud crack and enough force to tilt his head sideways. Che, who’s been teaching this kid this shit?

“Buh! Buh!”

Zaraki Kenpachi halted in the middle of the street at the behest of several people and stared down at the pink-growth permanently attached to his chest. “What?” He blinked at her.

“Buh! Buhhhhh!,” Yachiru forcefully insisted, pointing down an alleyway again. It was her first word. Secretly, he’d been hoping that it would have been maim, or slaughter, or murder—but damn, beggars couldn’t be choosers. If she decided to stumble all over some sort of…way of saying cat? Shit! He was all for getting her whatever she wanted at that moment in reward. Even disgusting old cats.

“Fine, get that knot outta your face. I’ll find the ca—“ he checked himself, lips twisting in a sour expression. ‘…I’ll find the Buh.”

God he hated life right now.

Yachiru, of course, squealed in several octaves high pitched enough to set several of the nearby dogs to barking, letting a round cheeked face simply glow with delight at getting her way. She burbled nonsense happy noises into his neck, Kenpachi found it difficult to keep glaring at everything that moved as he thundered down the alleyway the cat was last seen going down, but he managed.



Night had snatched away the endless blue skies, replacing it with the velveteen of endless black white-speckled with stars. He watched them with her nightly because that’s what she liked to do. And it kept her mouth shut. And she didn’t cry. Or scream. Or babble. Or fuss or all the other things she did that he didn’t understand—they all stopped when the stars came out.

‘Cept now, she was slumped in the half-lotus of his legs, snoring lightly in sleep. If he had been a more emotional man, the bewilderment on the stone-carved planes of his face might have been bemusement instead. He lifted one of his massive, long fingered hands now covered in suspiciously cat-like scratches from knuckle to knuckle and brought the object trapped between forefinger and thumb up to the light.

“Buh,” he snorted…albeit quietly so as not to wake Yachiru up. “Not Buh, it’s bells.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously to thoughtful little slits on the little round bit of brass that jingled.