It takes three point five seconds for pain to register in the brain.

If one were to put their hand on the surface of a stove, the sensation of burning would not quite reach the brain fast enough to be processed upon impact; thus, in a sense, it is very easy for one to feel nothing even if they were to stick their entire arm in hot embers.

It is quite easy, if one was distracted enough, angry enough, scared enough, to ignore the sensation of flames licking at skin.

Pain, after all, is just the brain's attempt at warning the body of danger. It is technically a mode of self-defense, the mind’s attempt at self-preservation, and can be overridden.

It is the smell of her hair that provides the strongest sensation, in this reality, to the world of pain. That, and the thought of it spilling down her neck when she falls to the ground, makes one able to feel.

Desensitization occurs when she looks up.

Love hurts, her eyes say. Life hurts.

She does not mean that she is sorry, even when you scream her name.

When the loss of feeling in nerves occurs, the body runs on autopilot. Limbs move of their own accord. An arm lashes out, cuts through something solid and warm.

The laughter is, for the most part, one’s own. It is solid and reassuring. Since one can no longer feel the scorching of another’s hands cutting right through one’s self, it is difficult to do little else but open one’s mouth and laugh into the face of Death.

Here is a soul lost, this laughter says. This is one who has fallen off the path.

The dying man asks questions just when he is about to pass. Does it hurt? Is there a Heaven? Is there a Hell?

Corpses, one knows, are unable to answer. If they could, they would just laugh.

After all... fight like a dog and die like a dog on the road, as the old proverb goes.

The sensation of bile is the first thing that distracts the attention.

It burns up and down the esophagus, rises to the back of the throat, and sends flames licking at the back of one's tongue.

Bile usually flows peacefully in the small intestine. One has to admit that when one's small intestine is hanging half-out of their body, it is very hard not to bring all that bile up and out.

The stomach can also be a vessel for bile if one were to swallow wrong, which is fortunate. However, it is too bad that the stomach has already been slashed up, for without a place to recede back, the bile spills forth on the ground.

Dignity would not allow for one to lie in their vomit. Dignity must be dead, too, then.

Hands, stuck clutching a gaping wound, are remarkably clean because crawling against new grass and the rain wipes the worst of the mess away.

If anything soils them, these hands that tremble and shake, it is one’s own blood gushing out of severed flesh like a dam let loose.

Death leaves one so disjointed; how odd, one would think, that so many thoughts could be processed while Death, ageless and graceless, falls forward and tumbles.

And tumbles away.

Grace is slow to rise when the fire burns, hot and terrible, the breath of something fierce blowing over your face.

If fire is burning now, it is a fever, or just the rain hitting one’s face in dull spring drops.

In reality, water has no colors.

Water, to one's knowledge, has always been a liquid and thus has a decided boiling and freezing state. How odd, and really it is, how the water seems to seer skin as it rolls down one's face. It must be acid, then, raining on one's eyelids and causing this scorching sensation.

Rain doesn’t quite wash one’s own blood away from one’s hands, a fact noted and stored for future — if there is to be a future — reference.

To a man with blood in his eyes, water appears opaque.

Warmth is a pleasant sensation at the edge of reason.

It is, perhaps, the last thing that one will feel.

If one were to hold out their hand to the dark, would the fire come up and engulf that arm? If a hand were to reach towards warmth, would it be plunging into the flame?

It takes three point five secondsmonthsyearscenturies for the pain to be registered, but the burn lasts a lifetime.

Disclaimer: As someone once put it: it's Minekura's sandbox, I just like to play in it.

Author's Note: I know crap-all about bile. It shows.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at http://split-infinity.org/saiyuki/viewstory.php?sid=503