The cave is dusty and ill-kept, and the floor needs sweeping. He gets the broom out of the back and sweeps for several minutes before noticing Grandfather still standing amicably at the entrance, sharp against the setting sun.
Oh.
"Um," he says, scrambling to pull out a straw mat and, after some hesitation, laying it down on the least messy part of the floor. "Please sit, Grandfather."
The old man folds his legs under him like a child, and sits facing the entrance, staring out at the sunset. Kubo thinks he sees a tear, clear and jewel-like, in the single eye.
"Okay," Kubo says, more to himself than anyone else, "okay," and busies himself with making dinner.
There're a few handfuls of rice left in the bottom of the pot, so he cooks one, scooping the grains out into the bowls that used to belong to him and Mother. He lays out the chopsticks, each shoulder to shoulder with its partner. He calls Grandfather over to eat.
He takes Mother's place and lets Grandfather sit where he used to. Some things he can't share, at least not yet.
Grandfather may sit like a child, all tiny and curled over, but he doesn't eat like one; he takes the rice in small and dignified bites, almost grain by grain. He's quiet, waiting for his grandson to speak first, but Kubo stays silent. And he keeps turning his head to look at the sky. Kubo watches him and thinks about everything he doesn't understand.
When night falls, soft as a blanket, Kubo has no choice but to give Grandfather Mother's sleeping mat. His own is much too small and making the old man use it would be disrespectful. So he rolls it out and tries not to think about the scent of Mother's hair being swallowed by the steel that seems to cling to his grandfather's skin. Grandfather turns over so his back is to Kubo, gives one long, heavy sigh that shudders through his entire body, and then is still.
Kubo's fingers steal towards his eyepatch. The skin there has started to itch, and he can't seem to reconcile this doddering old man with the vengeful spirit of the Moon King. He recalls how much Grandfather's fingers crabbed around the chopsticks resembled claws, and tries not to think about them, bent, grasping, snatching his other eye out--
He gasps and ducks under his blanket. If he could sleep with his one eye open, he would.
Kubo is woken in the middle of the night by the rasped whisper of his name from near the entrance of the cave.
His first thought is Mother, because of course night is when Mother is most alive, singing her songs, telling her stories, staving off the daybreak, but then Mother would never say his name like that, as if he is something distant and unknowable. When he realizes who it is everything seems to tumble down around him once again.
Carrying some kind of strange and barbed longing in his heart, he creeps toward the hunched figure, who has thrown off his blankets, and is still staring, vacantly, out into the night. "What is it, Grandfather?"
Something seems wrong, at this moment, in this darkness, but he can't tell precisely what it is--night for him has always only been firelight, and Mother, and the small and complete world of home. (He realizes, with a start, that he can go out there now, that the night is safe for him, and that Mother isn't there to show him what it is. Perhaps that is what is wrong.)
Grandfather stretches out a finger, cracked like a talon, towards the sky. "It's gone," he says, stunned, quiet. "Where has it gone?"
Kubo follows his gaze, and at first he doesn't quite realize, because he doesn't know the night sky--it's more unfamiliar to him than the deep forest, or the terrible intricacies of the human heart.
"Gone," Grandfather says again, and then--
Oh. Oh.
"Of course," Kubo says, under his breath, understanding, "the Moon King." The night is very dark.
"What?"
Kubo wishes Grandfather would stop speaking to him like that, so afraid to touch him, so afraid to exist.
"Nothing," he says, and settles next to his grandfather, beneath a cold and empty sky.
