A/N:

After years of reading my at-times wicked and twisted porn, my husband has had the habit of looking uncomfortable and sad each time he subjects himself to a newly-minted tale. "Do you really like it like that?", he invariably asks in a small voice. So, after too long, I write this bittersweet little episode for my husband, who loves the Mushi-master Ginko because he thinks Ginko must be smoking the ganja to be seeing all those crazy primordial wisps of Mushi... and because, for years, his kind, placid soul has loved me too gently than I deserve, even back when we could only be together for a few nights every winter.

To those who have or haven't seen it, this little departure from the script takes place between the end and the beginning of scenes in the 15th episode of the anime "Mushi-Shi" (The Mushi Master), 'Pretense of Spring' – where mushi, or primeval beings neither animal, plant or microbe cause a false Spring to bloom, only to feed on the awakened creatures' life-force and force them back into a lengthy hibernation-like state until the real Spring arrives. A boy who lives alone with his sister is fascinated by this mushi and accidentally falls under their spell... and our protagonist, Ginko, a kind one-eyed man half in and out of the mushi world who makes his living traveling around, studying the spectral and the strange, gets tangled up in this strange event...

Winter mountains sap our souls of warmth and all creatures long then for the coming of Spring...

"I'm sure he'll wake up in the Spring. I'd like to stay with you until then - but I've got to start moving..." One brilliant green eye, filled with regret, stared unblinking into the orange glow of the hearth-embers. The darkness outside, filled with a quiet storm of snow filtered past the unnaturally silver hair covering the other eye that was not there and wafted in through the cracks in his heart.

"But... you can't! Miharu... will miss you - when he wakes up!", a small strident voice, filled with loneliness echoed quickly back across the same flickering ashes. Small flecks of soot trembled in nimble empathies in the sand between the man and woman, who both huddled against the winter cold and the unknown force holding the boy at their sides in silent, deathlike sleep...

...for who knew how long?

When the real world awakens, the phantom world goes to sleep...

Ginko lay on his side, one long pale arm under his silvered head. Sleep had drawn the incongruently aged mass of his thick silver hair down away from his closed eyes, and as Suzo lay watching the sleeping Mushi-shi, she thought of what might happen tomorrow when he left her alone – alone again in the chill and silence of winter with only her ensorcelled little brother for company. Her dark brown eyes were always just too moist these days! Why could nothing good ever happen to Miharu and Suzo? And now that she had decided that she might really need... might really love the strange man who had stumbled, snow-blind and half-frozen onto her doorstep so many days ago at the Mid-Winter night, he was going to leave and disappear. Just like everything else good in her miserable life, Suzo thought and tried to will the frustrated, frightened tears back into her heart. Even her old blankets felt strange and unfriendly in the uncertain darkness of her soon-to-be-silent home.

He looked young and strong despite his strange star-light coloration and who had ever seen someone with green eyes like deep, clear pond water? The Mushi-Master was beautiful to her. He was kind to her for no reason and was cracking the whip under Miharu perfectly; supernatural studies or not, the kid had definitely gotten better at listening and using his head... until yesterday, when Ginko had found him unconscious in the snow!

Every thought brought Suzo back to Miharu and to the fact that starting tomorrow, she'd again have to deal with it all – alone.

Embers popped in the hearth between them all, the only warmth to be had between them all: Suzo's loneliness clouding around them all, Miharu's hibernation separating him from everything - even the Tokoyami's darkness that boiled unseen within the sleeping Mushi-shi like slow tar.

Suzo held her anxious breath when the man across from her in the meager heat and light scratched his nose and shifted in his own deep but natural slumber. She let it out in a rush when he turned onto his back with a light snore. The silver hair found its way back across his face, rudely cutting off her impromptu midnight vigil.

One more night and he would be gone... no more help, no more hope, no more warmth – until Spring.

She needed that warmth and it was sleeping close enough to touch...

The Mushi-Master Ginko was having a familiar but unpleasant dream. Black tendrils of absolute darkness boiled out from his face and began to devour everything around him. tokoyami mushi had once entwined its being with his and the constant dance between the devouring blackness and the trans-formative silver light of his namesake made for many less-than-restful nights. He had given one eye to that strange dance and had no urge to lose all that made him human to the primordial maelstrom that was mushi existence.

He could feel coldness dripping down his face, dropping out his empty left eye socket to conquer the world, bit by bit, digesting it all into formless void. Clawing at his dead eye in roaring denial, Ginko came fast out of sleep and finding himself tangled in Suzo's dangling hair over his pale heaving face, nearly rolling them both into the quiescent fireplace in his shock.`

"What were you doing, Suzo?", Ginko panted as he rolled her away from the embers, patting out a few strands of unfortunately singed hair.

Of course, being half-asleep and drug screaming out of a nightmare left Ginko unprepared to have the woman beneath him wrap her cold arms around his neck and refuse to let go. Considering his mostly hermetic wandering, he thought he was holding up rather well – until he felt Suzo's cold nose on his neck. Her lips there next at least were warm, the sleepy Mushi-master couldn't stop himself from thinking.

"Suzo...", he murmured into her slightly burnt-smelling hair. It sounded like pleading to both of them so he didn't say anything else.

"You're so warm, not like cold metal at all, Ginko. Please leave some of it here for me, I'm begging you." Suzo whispered into the smoke-scented man above her.

She was cold under the kimonos, he was warm under the sweater and the pants and together after a clumsy and nervous beginning, they both drew down together under the covers of Ginko's borrowed futon. Suzo felt crushed, melted, closed-in, new and terrifyingly ancient within the arms of the man above her, within her and when she cried out in fear and terror, her silver partner took her darkness into himself with his kind lips and fed the hungry tokoyami her dispairings. The ginko light within the Mushi-shi shone forth as he took one last stroke within her and dissolved in transcendent, gentle bliss. Far from feeling poisonous, Suzo felt warm, truly warmed, for the first time in unknown aeons as she lay panting and languidly crushed under the tremendous and gorgeous weight of Ginko as he swam slowly back through his multitudes, though not quite so far as the painfully-near present.

Suzo could feel him stroking her hair, accidentally pulling too hard on the loose black strands because of their bodies' soft formlessness together, and when she looked to see where the problem was, Ginko turned her flushed face into his chest and spoke to her – only she couldn't hear what he was saying, his hand on one ear and his deep booming voice echoing through the cavern of his bare chest in her other one. She heard it a second time, that strange dull, deep boom like the sound of water and distant avalanches – echoing within her lover's body as he spoke and drew her hard into his heat and light and deep beating heart.

She smiled a little when she realized she hoped he'd told her covered ears that he loved her. Somehow, even if the Mushi-shi left her tomorrow, Suzo knew, he still stayed.

Miharu's soft glacial breathing anchored them together, down the short, warm road towards sleep and when he finally closed his human eye, Ginko knew he'd healed damage he hadn't even known had been done. The silver being within him and its companion darkness curled up in their ageless spiral and sang him to a warm, contented sleep and he dreamed of white butterflies that turned into flowers, full-blown into Spring...

… For Rhys, my husband, who also came into my life and heart one winter's evening and stayed.