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Celebration
by afrai

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At the end of the day Soi Fong is aching in every limb, and her temples are pounding with the repressed impulse to kill her vice-captain. They have staffed her division with every fool in Soul Society. It will be morning again before she finishes the paperwork piled on her desk.

She has just picked up her pen when it flutters down on the heaped papers: a scrap of bright red paper.

"Happy New Year," says Yoruichi.

Soi Fong picks it up between her thumb and forefinger.

There are so many things she could say. All of them are stupid.

"You're not married," she says.

"It's money, Soi Fong," says Yoruichi. "Take it. It's auspicious!"

Yoruichi is a warm dark velvety presence behind her. If she turned, Yoruichi would dissolve like the reflection of the moon on shook water, perhaps: and Soi Fong thinks, one should not be so sad on the first day of the New Year, so terribly sad.

"You should drink and eat and be happy," says Yoruichi. Hair brushes Soi Fong's cheek, then lips. Sweet, chaste kiss from this sweet, wild creature. Soi Fong trembles; she does not speak.

"Little bee," says Yoruichi, half-laughing. "Come by and have some sake with me when you are tired of work."

When she is gone, Soi Fong shakes out of the red packet folded gilt paper: money for the dead. She has to smile, a twist of lips that hurts.

"Luck," she says -- but her headache is gone, so maybe it is.

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