About this story - This is a compilation of extras/interludes/vignettes from my story "Hoppípolla". Ratings, genres, and warnings will vary. If you aren't reading "Hoppípolla", the following stories probably won't make much sense, I'm afraid.

Title: Sensation

Rating: G

Placement: Set shortly after chapter 1x02.

Characters: Sai, Harria, mentions of Hikaru

Summary: In which Harria gives Sai something invaluable, and Sai tries to give something back.

Author's Note: This came into being because Always-the-Blood made an inquiry regarding Harria's ability to touch Sai. I have no recollection of Hikaru ever touching Sai in the series, so do pardon any canonical inconsistencies.

SENSATION

Words are inadequate to describe the stretches of time he's trapped in the wood confines of his goban, the same way a painting can never hope to encompass the same brilliance and vastness of a starlit sky, or a poem can only dream to capture the terribleness of death.

In his hundreds of years of not-life, Sai can only compare it to the vague recollections he has of dreaming. Of watching oneself maneuver in a realm of nightmares, trapped by the barriers of one's subconscious and plagued by monsters conjured by one's own imaginings.

As a human, Sai would scream until the Dream Gods released him from his mental prison and he could rejoin the waking world—a world so vibrant and rich that the nightmare, a pale mimicry in comparison, fades away, forgotten.

As a ghost, he is no longer within the Dream Gods' jurisdiction, and Sai's screams fall on deaf ears. The waking world is lost to him, and all that remains is the world of dreams, with its muted colors and absent scents and muffled sounds, and he, an imposter looking in.

When a boy happens upon his goban—once his most treasured possession, now his reviled cage—and hears him, and sees him, and acknowledges that Sai exists, his relief is so immense that it spills from his eyes, nearly drowns him.

Life with Hikaru is wonderful. The world he rediscovers is so different from what he remembers, in some ways intriguing and other ways disquieting, and even though his human host has zero interest in Go (to Sai's dismay) and only slightly more interest in letting him play, it's fine. Because he's free.

For whatever reason, God saw fit to wake him, and even though he's little more than a sliver of a dream deposited in the waking world, a shadow made to trail behind real flesh, it's so much more than he's had since his beloved Torajirou died.

And if, at times, he mourns the loss of three of his five senses, all he has to do is remember what it's like to be asleep-but-not, a caged nonentity, all alone, and the gratitude is enough to dispel the bitterness.

For all his age and experience with the uncanny, Sai could never have predicted Potter Harria—the strange, foreign girl whose speech predates the era, and whose eyes are incongruent with her age, and who has a presence so large it exceeds the constrains of her small stature, like a genie in a lamp.

She's a pleasant addition to their duo (however much Hikaru likes to complain) and Sai is happy enough that there is someone else who can hear him, and speak with him, and validate his existence. That she also plays Go and is perfectly willing to indulge his obsession is just another stroke of good fortune.

It isn't until Harria pinches his cheek one day and her hand doesn't go through him that Sai realizes just how fortunate he actually is.

She touches him, and he can feel it. Not the phantom touch he experiences when his human host swipes at him, or the jarring, icy sensation of being stepped through, but real, startlingly real, touch.

After so long of being without, the warmth of her fingertips feels like the glowing point of a heated blade set against his skin, branding him, still hot even after she pulls away. Her fingers were punishing and the pinch had hurt, and yet he can't remember feeling anything more amazing in his life.

He weeps, and the embrace she envelops him in afterward feels even better.

Further investigation into the phenomenon reveals that she is the anomaly; the rift in the fabric separating him from the world. Sai cannot feel the clothes she wears or the items she holds—to his hands they are like everything else, incapable of being touched—but he can feel her; her skin and nails when she holds his hand, and her hair when he combs his fingers through it, twists it into intricate knots and braids. And perhaps it isn't the smoothness of stones, or the ridged lines on a goban, or the rustle of a brimming go-ke, but it's still wonderful. So, so wonderful.

Harria becomes his new obsession. Or rather—touching her, which he does as often as possible, sometimes without being conscious of it. He worries, at first, that he might be overstepping his bounds and making her uncomfortable—dead or not, he is still a man; and otherworldly or not, she is still a woman—but she never seems to mind, entwining their fingers when he captures her hand, and leaning into him when he tangles his fingers into her hair, and kissing his forehead when he's deep in a sulk.

It isn't until she tells him about her past that he comprehends why she's so very indulgent of his considerably inappropriate whims. Harria understands. Perhaps not what it feels like to be bodiless, but to lose an important aspect of what makes one human, and the marvel of it being regained. That realization, that kinship, snaps the shackles on his restraint, emboldens him, and Harria adapts to his increased tactility with characteristic aplomb.

It's takes him a little while longer to figure out that she's not accommodating him for his sake alone; she's just as desperate for touch, just as starved for affection, and yearns just as strongly for communion, as he. And that's another barrier that falls away—the last, kept in place so that he wouldn't take more than she's willing to give. Because suddenly he's not just taking anymore; he's giving, too, and that makes all the difference.

While Sai's hope is heart-deep, he isn't naïve enough to believe he has forever. He's on borrowed time. He can't stay, no matter how many bonds he establishes and lives he affects, or how deeply his prayers seep into the earth and tightens around its center.

One day—hopefully far into the future—he'll be ripped away, forced to leave behind the things he finds most precious, old and new, to a fate unknown. But until that dreaded time comes, Sai will indulge in his rejuvenated sense of touch as often as he can.

For himself, and for her.

owari

A/N: I'm sure some of you have cottoned onto the awkward issue of Sai being able to touch Harria but not, for example, her clothing. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. I guess they'd just have to be really careful about touching in certain ways. As for the reverse, Harria can feel his clothing because they're a part of him. So while frontal hugs are on the table because of the excessively thick layers of Sai's robes, he'd have to be careful with, for example, placing his hand near her chest (not that he ever would!).

Anyway, thanks for reading. Feedback is welcome, as always. Ciao!