The Day of Thunder

[Hiruma Naraku]

Sleep came easily today. The feeling of tossing and turning of the first night or the anxiety and dread that came the following days felt like a distant memory. Tonight felt peaceful, the calm before the storm that gathered in the horizon.

Again, as previous nights, Naraku was in the primeval forest that had seen his two births. He looked at his hand, flexing it, as the memory of yesterday rushed through his sleeping mind.

"Kanna"

His twin would always be in his heart. Her soul would always be with him. And just maybe, he could also shine brightly as she once did.

[Hiruma Naraku]

A dream came to him.

It was him and Kanna, walking together through a forest, only it wasn't.

It was him and Kanna moving sinuously through a heavily forested city. Only it wasn't.

It was them, a single being, slithering calmly through Vyakarana. They could feel their long, powerful body moving among the others. They were a Constrictor, yes. They moved among their smaller Greensnake cousins, among the power Asps, the secretive Cobra, all giving respect as they traveled to the Temple of the Bright Eye.

They knew all of them, because they were all connected. Not just the two of them - no, not just their one self - but all of them.

Yes... a sudden flash of insight came. What he and Kanna experienced, their two halves separate, was just a suggestion of the Akasha. You remember it now, the Akasha. The knowing, the connection, the kinship with all of your people.

You can feel it now, just out of your grasp. It's so real, like you could reach it. But you need something more...

[Hiruma Naraku]

Naraku is surprised and then he wasn't. He walked towards the edge of the lake, his reflection Kanna, but then it rippled and faces flashed by, a collection of past memories that now rushed into his head.

Akasha

The word echoed in every fiber of his being. It felt good, a warm feeling like a mothers hug. He was in Kannas arms when he was a baby. He was five and half awake, when his feverish eyes spotted his father sitting by his bed, his warm caressing his forehead before applying a wet cloth. He was in the garden, just a few hours ago, when Ai agreed to marry him.

He reached into the void. He wanted to grasp it.

He finally knew it

He wanted to be an hero

[Hiruma Naraku]

A hand caught his arm, and... it really was like a mother's hug. More than that, even. It was everyone. It was him and everyone.

The hand was brownish gold, with fine, smooth scales. It was his own hand on his arm, and the other looked the same, tipped in fine claws.

The Kanarak must not seek that which was always theirs in the Foul.

It felt like both his thought and others.

We are not here. We are home. Find us.

The dream ends.