By: Daiyu Tang ((With much thanks to Caisen’s typist for all the input, photos and all and without whom this wouldn’t exist))
I followed a trail that smelled like wet pennies and thunder. Blood was in the air and I, familiar as I was with my own blood from jagged windows, or even my own failings, found it oppressive and all around. Rougarou was holding its breath… crickets provided the backing soundtrack for a time, but then it seemed as all, insects, birds and beasts pressed the mute button. The cypress trees seemed to lean in as if they wanted a better view of the living as I made my way through dark paths and then from my hide in the brush I saw it: a stepped stone shrine alone on a hillock, a red sheet darkening at its foot like the bayou had grown a tongue and was ready to drag an unwary reporter to her demise under the soil.
But, I was not entirely unwary. How so? Read on dear reader but to be clear, I had been invited…
The Rougarou Shrine Where the Mizuki Bind Love to Skin and Ash
Earlier, Caisen Mizuki had come to the Observer to give me a tip: a burned-out house near the ocean edge, a monument, and one hard line that wasn’t negotiable, “Don’t touch the box.” he said. I said I don’t do desecrations of the dead and it was, at least in my office, clear that of blood and death he spoke. Yet, unlike many a killer he didn’t come across, then, as unbalanced or scary, so perhaps I thought to myself there was far more to this story than a body buried in the woods. He said Halloween would be for family and that I might want to find out more, so I brought a camera, a spine (my own), and the good sense to keep my hands to myself, this time.
Seeing and Smelling
Blood had been poured recently; I didn’t need Daria’s chemistry lab when my nose was reporting live to my brain. A small crowd stood in a loose ring: faces shadowed, postures firm, the kind of quiet you keep in hospitals and courtrooms, but it was the case, at least for this article that only two names mattered for this part of the article and they were the couple at the centre.
Caisen stripped off his top like a man aiming to be in the next Mission Impossible. Nuku stood opposite with a bone tool that looked halfway between ritual and an ER mistake; a scalpel as if a deer made it. They didn’t posture; they looked at each other the way people do when they’ve already chosen the ending and I only hoped that this ending wasn’t going to be some kind of ritual suicide. I needn’t have worried of course dear reader, the truth is always a bit worse and bloody in Hathian.
“Caisen, these are my vows to you…” she said, voice steady enough to carry across the clearing. She promised truth, acceptance, and a forever that wouldn’t blink at death. Then the bone met skin. She carved his left hip in a rising curve that resolved, once wiped, into a tribal phoenix. Bleeding lines wiped clean to show the work. Caisen endured it. Appreciated it. Responded in kind to it. Kissed the woman who had marked him.
I didn’t shoot the bloody moment, but I had images, provided to me. Power, was it equal? It seemed it in the ritual I saw, but…
His turn. He took her hands first, mixed their red in his grip, and kissed her like I wasn’t watching. “I chose you to be mine… I’ll ground you when everything feels it is falling apart,” he told her, before he lifted her shirt just enough for decency and etched the same bird into her. Two wounds, one emblem, a matched set that says: we cut, we burn, we come back from the ash.
When they were finished, Caisen gave me the guided tour of the family’s language of scars: a lightning-vein brand on his cheek matched another woman there, Raven. He showed me a belladonna tattoo at the nape of her neck, marking Lovie, “Beautiful, but deadly.”
And reader? The box stayed closed. I kept my promise.
“Though many people do not understand our ways, it doesn’t matter. We love each other, an undying faith that will persevere beyond life… and we will always be there for each other. I don’t care if everyone else in the world hated us… I am blessed to be a Mizuki.”
Caisen
Family Bindings
All of the Mizuki family had gathered around Caisen and Nuku, who were standing a few feet away from the box and shrine. The others, who I had not mentioned before were Lovie (who I had encountered before) and Raven (who was I think mostly new to me). They were petite women, no taller than 5’3 or 4 , one with blonde hair and freckles, the other with black hair and crimson accents in her locks. Both women had blue eyes, but Lovie’s were a light blue, like a cloudless, summer sky at noon, while Raven’s were an electrifying sapphire when you looked at her. They were Caisen’s and he was theirs and theirs was family, blood and a bond.
There are a dozen ways to bind a family in this town: rings, paperwork, graffiti, matching bookings at the HPD jail. The Mizuki do it with voltage, poison ink, and knives that remember the woods and the past and the rituals. It’s love performed as proof-of-life, and yes, it’s beautiful in the way lightning is beautiful when it strikes too close.
So as I was allowed to leave, a part of the deal I was very glad that they upheld, I was thinking to myself that the stories are not done, no. They are just started and this family will be back in these pages before long. As for the bloody ground and box? I reported it with my voice. But it wasn’t my place to burst into bravery, rather to report with my words, which you are now reading… And as you see Lovie, or Caisen, Nuke or Raven, now you know. There’s a family there. And one (or more) very sharp knives… What you do with this information, is entirely, as always my dear readers, up to you!
P.S. To the inevitable copycats: if you carve a phoenix because it looks pretty and end up in HGH ER triage, that’s on you. Ink is permanent enough; leave the special tools for people who can tell vein from vanity.
