Disclaimer : I don't own Blood+ or any of its characters. This story is non-profit.

A/N: A little vignette I thought up that takes a brief look at the Miyagusuku shrine before Saya's awakening, and after her second hibernation that occurred at the end of Episode-50.

SILENT SOUNDS

If such a place exists that never changes with the shift of seasons, this is it.

Here, the leaves are ever-green, new soft, tender young shoots driving away red, brown, shriveled ones, dead branches and foliage dropping away at the end of their lives, making way for the new. The late winds lift them away across the evensky, either to bear witness to the soar of the scurrying birds or the flapping bats, or to carpet the gravelly soil of the forest floor for decay and return to the bowels of the earth.

At first glance, it looks but a deserted monolith, old, crumbling, beaten by decades of rain and wind, weathered down by the strain of the ages. The concrete that binds the tall flight of stairs that climb up to its summit is also black, dry and sharp against grazing flesh of feet, tattered with dry, peeling moss. The only sounds it hears occasionally are the singing of the winds upon the green boughs all around. Lesser still are the signs of outside life, visitors, passers by, save for a wayward hiker or two who have lost their way, or even rarer, an adventurous stout-hearted trekker or researcher stumbling upon the Okinawan landscape out of sheer curiosity, who had fled the main road in search of spectacle.

For the past generation, no such sounds could be heard here, of which I am about to tell. Birds avoided it, as if shutting up their songs, or halting mid-screech as they scurried across the sky above. But ever since the tragedy of war fled the rice-fields of the far, unknown southern lands and when America recalled her troops with the strain and grief of stories best left untold, the crypt is breathing.

A strange breath follows, joining the ebb of eternity's soundless flow, confined in here. Within its dark, sleepy walls, it is true that the crypt shelters generations of the Miyagusuku bloodline who have also slumbered in silence, never to awaken again. But the war brings more new things besides grief and pain of death and devastation. Night after night, with the rise and fall of the silver moon upon the ink-black sky, it breathes. Sometimes it is erratic, as if haunted by visions of unremembered memories. Sometimes, as the cold, thin slant of rain patters upon the leaves, and as puddles cascade down the wet steps of slippery, peeling black moss, it sighs.

But the days pass, years follow offspring to offspring in a chain-like continuation, and then comes the day the crypt ceases its breath, as the breath leaves its resting place to look upon the great, green world outside, as if for its first time.

**

A lot has happened since then. Deaths, births in succession, one Miyagusuku after another joins the sleeping ones. New ones added unto the world. Then comes the time, once again, when late evening approaches as it has always done since days long past. Two sad figures ascend the flight all the way up to its summit, one carrying the other upon its back as if allowing and offering to carry all its burdens away, if it could. They sometimes halt, sometimes they talk in whispers, and there is only one who came back from its summit. After that, the crypt continues its breath.

But now, a strange new sound adds to the sounds of the grove. Late in the night, a driver passing quietly by, or even a scurrying squirrel, could it talk, chances to hear the sound of string against baton with such melody, that the night itself seems to join its song. Two young boys and their father exploring the countryside as they leave their car on the road also hear it: a song of a string, sometimes erratic, sometimes sad and mournful, always soulful.

I think I have heard the song before, the man fondly tells his friends at the sleepy pub in the village. "Que sera sera". I learn that in school when I was a boy. Whatever will be, will be. The older American soldiers often sing it.

Nan-kuru nai sah. Whatever will be, will be.

But the songs often change, along with the passion and the soul. There was only one binding soul that stitches them together as it continues to haunt the crypt, that of dedication.

One day, as the music continues around the grove, it suddenly halts with the approaching laughter of two merry children and talking. The music-maker lowers his instrument as he stands up from the spot he has been sitting and discards his gift to the quietness at the crypt's stony entrance.

Where are we going, Kai?

This place is beautiful, Kai.

I think it is time you girls address me as "dad," a man's voice says.

At its summit, the new visitors stop and look around them. The man looks intently at a spot towards its entrance, and he smiles.

Better not touch that, it belongs to your aunty, he tells the girls. He's been here, he adds to himself, before looking around. A white rose and a blue ribbon tied around its stem is the gift.

Not far away, covered by the trees and the green of the forest, the music-maker quietly withdraws.

His music too, follows.

***