Strays: A Romantic Fantasy Adventure

Three days.

Ren was allotted three days to get his affairs in order before he was to be formally escorted to the Kingdom of Heaven to serve for his sins.

The sins that had been bestowed upon him by parents he had never known.

He accepted the scroll obediently, understanding that there was no refusing the order.

Sakura had to be restrained by Raz after his overly harsh warnings and scowls did nothing to stop the girl from attempting a rampage against the Guardsmen. He had wrapped his arms around her, trapping her arms at her sides. The girl’s legs kicked out violently and she tore at the angel’s flesh with her nails. She screamed, and cursed, and vowed to kill the men, spit flying from her mouth, emeralds burning with contempt. The demon was beyond feral, a savage creature thoroughly unhinged.

Ren stood there, motionless, as Raz slammed the girl to the ground, attempting to subdue her with his much larger body but still barely managing to contain the wild girl. Every ounce of the boy’s attention was focused on the Guardsmen, refusing to acknowledge the chaos around him. Ocean eyes lifeless as his soul was being ripped to shreds, his body crushed, his future ending. What a cruel joke the world was playing on him, destroying his life in a matter of minutes. How had he gone from watching the girl skip around in front of him to having everything torn away and shattered? He hadn’t even finished the wash.

If he was going to make it through, he was going to have to cast away his every weakness. Abandon himself. And he had to do it now.

“I’ll be ready when you return,” he told the men, his voice flat and expression empty, resigning himself to this new fate. “You can go now.”

The Guardsmen made no haste in leaving, repulsed at having to waste their precious time on those unworthy. Their wings beat down, launching them from the ground, and they were gone.

Raz raised his body and the girl squirmed out, scrambling to her feet. She stormed over to Ren like a blaze of fury, her fist smashing him across the face with the full force of her body behind it.

“I hate you!” Sakura screamed; a phrase that had never been directed towards him. “I fucking hate you!”

The words stung more than the hit.

“You should,” he told her, feeling the same about himself.

Tears welled in the demon’s eyes. “You promised.” An unsteady whisper as she pushed past the boy and ran to the trees.

He didn’t chase after her. What was there to say?

“It’s my fault.” The boy turned to his uncle. Raz sat cross legged on the ground, his sorrowful gaze staring up at his nephew. “I fucked up. I didn’t make your freedom apart of my prayer.” The man shook his head, unable to believe this was happening. “I didn’t think of it then. I was just trying to keep you alive. I should have known those bastards would do this. I fucked up. I’m so sorry.”

Panic flooded over Ren, drowning him in their depths. Never had he seen his uncle look so hopeless. So lost. So weak. The boy wanted to break down, wail and cling to his uncle like he'd done when he was small and be told that everything was going to be okay.

But it wasn’t.

Nothing was okay.

And he couldn’t be a little boy anymore.

He fell to his knees in front of Raz and wrapped his arms around the man. “Thank you, Raz,” his voice steady and kind, grateful for the life he had been given. “You’ve kept me alive and have done everything for me when you didn’t have to do anything. I couldn’t have asked for a better man to raise me. I love you, Uncle.” Ren held his uncle as he clung to him and wept, repaying the man for all the times he’d done the same for him. The boy stared ahead, the gears beginning to turn in his head.

It wasn’t time for feelings that would only get in the way.

It was time for a new plan.

This was his life, and he would take it back.

When Raz had exhausted all tears, Ren stood, unwilling to waste anymore time. “I need you to tell me everything about The Guard.”

The man nodded and got to his feet, standing before the boy and having to tilt his head up to look him in the eyes. “When did you get taller than me, boy?” the man asked, putting his hand atop his nephew’s head. “You look like your mother, but you got your father’s body. That man was like a tree, tall and sturdy. You’ll be the same in a few years once you start filling out. Come on then. There’s a lot to go through, and I’m going to need to drink my way through it all.”

Sakura didn’t return until well after sundown, her knuckles bloodied and raw, the bright white of her dress filthy and mangled. She stomped past the two men at the kitchen table without so much as a sideways glance and threw herself into bed, hiding under the covers. Not a single twitch came from her until well after Raz had gone to sleep and Ren lay in his own bed staring into the darkness. The blankets rustled, her feet padded across the floor, and she slipped in next to him. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them could. They could only cling to each other as the girl sobbed herself to sleep and the boy planned out his new future to the lullaby of her tears.

The next two days Ren spent listening to Raz describe his time in The Guard as the older angel drank himself to numbness.

“Get stronger. Control yourself,” he’d slur, the mantra becoming a running theme. “And kill yourself a devil. They’ll have to answer your prayer. They’ll have no choice. Fallen or not. Word is word.”

Sakura mostly puttered around in a daze, but her rages were unpredictable and destructive. The two angels paid her no mind, continuing their talks, as she tore through the house and yard like a lethal tornado, tearing up everything in her path. The outbursts were violent and sudden but would end as quickly as they began. She always came back to crawl into Ren’s lap like a sullen child, soaking his shirt with her sorrow. The boy sat there holding her, listening intently to the man’s every word.

The last night of Ren’s freedom ended with Raz drinking himself past oblivion and having to be dragged to his room by the younger angel. He was out before his head hit the pillow and the boy tucked him in before heading to his own bed.

Sakura was already there, and he climbed in next to her.

That night she didn’t shed a single tear.

“Let’s run away,” she urged the moment the boy was next to her. “Right now. We’ll go to the mountains and they’ll never find us. There’s plenty of places we can hide, and we’ll just keep moving.”

“No,” he said simply.

“Ren, please…” the girl started but was stifled by the boy’s dark glare.

“No,” he repeated, cutting off any room for argument. “It’s impossible, so just stop.” He wasn’t going to spend his last night going back and forth with her. He wasn’t going to let her convince him. He couldn’t.

“So you’re just going to give up and go with those assholes tomorrow?” she spat.

“I am.”

The frustration and despair swelled in every crevice of the girl’s being, and she rolled away from him, knowing the conversation was over and he had made up his mind. There would be no getting her way this time. They laid there in silence, the darkness growing heavier as every second ticked by. Each one a vestige of time they would never get back.

The boy stared at the ceiling, knowing it was now or never. “When angels find their One,” he began softly. “They mark each other. The mark symbolizes their love and dedication to one another. It’s a bond that’s unbreakable, even after death. They can never give themselves to anyone else.” Ren pulled Sakura to her back and hovered above her, his eyes washing over hers. “Let me mark you.”

Her heart missed several beats, and she gawked up at him, lost for words. She had to look away, his gaze hungry and all consuming, the clouds rolling in once again. “How?” she managed to whisper.

“Let me mark you,” he pleaded, his need slipping through.

Sakura breathed deeply and looked back at him, his eyes as desperate as hers. “Okay.”

Ren pulled his bracelet off, his wings spilling over the two of them. “Take one.”

Her fingers ran attentively through the ebony feathers, plucking the softest one from the skin as he slipped the bracelet back on and took the feather from her.

“Is it going to hurt?” the demon asked, swallowing her nerves.

“Excruciatingly,” the angel replied with a smirk, pulling down her nightshirt at the right shoulder. The shirt had once been Ren’s, but Sakura had claimed it as her own. She loved the softness of the off-white fabric and how it fell loosely above her knees and past her hands. The boy certainly didn’t mind seeing her in it.

Emeralds nearly bulged out of their sockets. “Seriously?!”

Ren placed the feather across her collarbone and shoulder. “No,” he teased as he closed his eyes and pushed his lips to the feather. It flattened and sunk into her skin, becoming a part of her. A piece of him that could never belong to anyone else.

He slid away from her and she sat up, running her finger along the black mark.

“It’s like a tattoo,” Sakura remarked, amazed. “How do I mark you?”

He blinked at her, not having thought that far ahead.

“I doubt I can use one of your feathers, right?” she reasoned. “And I’m not exactly full of them myself.” Her fox ears twitching.

The boy thought on it before rolling over and pulling a wooden box out from under the bed. He opened the lid revealing the various daggers within, their handles and blades all different sizes, shapes, and colors.

“The daggers?” Sakura asked, not catching on.

The two had spent years saving up every coin they could get their hands on. Every so often, Raz would need to travel to the closest town, and they would gather their coins and pick their favorite daggers at the sword smith. They had built a decent collection of the tiny weapons over time.

“Pick one.”

After careful consideration, she chose one with a ruby handle and he set the box on the floor.

Ren pulled off his shirt and laid down. “Right shoulder. Carve something.”

The girl thought about it. “Why the right shoulder?”

“Because you keep your heart on the left and theirs on the right.”

She nodded and kissed the handle before making the first meticulous slice into his flesh. Sakura worked in silence, the entirety of her concentration on the mark she was creating. It had to scar, a feat that was not easily accomplished in regard to an angel’s pristine exterior, so she dug deep into the tissue, wiping the blood with a strip of sheet she’d torn off to make the cleanup smoother. It was late into the night before she finished. The girl sat back and admired her work.

“A cherry blossom?” Ren asked, looking down at the flower.

“So you don’t forget me,” the girl mumbled softly, finding it difficult to look at the boy.

He smiled at the unprecedented shyness and took her hand, kissing the soft skin. “I could never.” He pulled, leading her to his chest, and wrapped his arms around her thin body.

With her ear pressed against him, she listened to the beating of his heart, the one on the left, while fixated on the mark, her own heart on his right. “Is that it? There’s nothing else?” The way the boy’s body went rigid took her by surprise as she heard him swallow uncomfortably.

“Uh… no. There’s more... but we should probably wait on that. Raz already warned me not to leave behind another mouth to feed as a parting gift.”

“Another mouth?” The realization dawned on the demon as she quickly sat up and slapped the boy’s chest. “That’s awful! What is wrong with you?” she furiously whispered.

The boy raised an incredulous brow at the girl’s appalled glare. “Oh, don’t act like that. You’ve heard the way all those boys talk. The only difference between me and them is I know how to keep my mouth shut. I already said I wasn’t going to do anything, so get back here.”

Sakura grumbled but complied, returning to the spot she had just been. All was quiet for a bit as she chewed her cheek. “How long will you be gone?”

“They want fifteen years.” Ren nestled his face into her wild, cherry hair, breathing her in while he still could. “I’ll be back in five.”

“How are you going to find and kill a devil?” There was fear in her voice, something the boy was unfamiliar with.

“I’ll do what I need to,” he determined. “Are you gonna wait for me?”

“I always do. Please just come back, Ren.”

“I will. I promise.”

They slipped into slumber together for the last time, clinging to the final remnants of the only life they ever really knew.

Raz and Sakura stood watching the sky long after Ren had vanished into the blue. His departure was quick with zero fuss. The wheels had been set in motion and there was no stopping what was to come.

She hadn’t bothered to change, choosing to stay in the boy’s old shirt with her shoulder still exposed from the night before. She didn’t care anymore. What was the point? He was gone.

Raz glanced at the mark, the black feather blaring against the girl’s pale skin. “I thought I told you I wasn’t raising a child bride,” he sighed, the will to fight stunted. The damage had already been done. There would be no going back on it for the two of them now.

Sakura turned away, not bothering to look at the man, and walked back towards the cottage. “When have I ever listened?”