*Revised*
======================================================
A story based on the characters of Sailor Moon.
The Painted Soul (PG)
by Christina Anton (daylin@sailorsenshi.i-p.com)
aka Hydrophobic
http://angelfire.com/anime2/dayanjell/antons/home.html
*Note: This takes place during the S season, before
the senshi find out the identities of Sailors Uranus
and Neptune.
This story is on of a father's love for his child.
Though they are mentioned, there are no monsters or
senshi appearances. This is meant to be a little
sappy, not just a little sad, and hopefully uplifting.
So if you're looking for violence and blood and the
sailor senshi kicking the butts of evil villains,
you're not gonna get it here.
I had started writing this a week or so after my
grandfather on my mother's side passed away. I
eventually lost track of it with bunches of other
things going on in my life, and only started on it
again after my grandfather on my father's side passed
away nearly a year later. And, once again, the
storyline got pushed into the back of my mind by the
goings on in my life. It has taken me a long while
to get this story done, but I think the time spent on
it has made it all the better. That said, I'd like to
dedicate this to both of my late grandfathers. God
bless you, Popop and Popop Duke.
If anyone finds a few inaccuracies in this story,
don't get on me too much about it unless you really
think it needs to be fixed. It was a little hard
writing this story, and I will admit to taking some
creative license when I was struggling to get through
a few scenes.
======================================================
The Painted Soul
Prologue: Wake Up Call
It was eight o'clock on a Saturday morning when Ami's
bedroom door opened, her mother walking softly to her
bedside.
Ami was laying on her side, her back to the door. She
awakened when she felt a hand on her shoulder, her eyes
blurry from sleep. She turned her head, looking into her
mother's face and seeing her red eyes and cheeks that looked
recently scrubbed of moisture.
She looked at her mother in surprise, and at the look,
her mother sniffled a little. "Ami-chan," she said in a
soft, controlled voice. "Your father passed away this
morning." The elder Mizuno swallowed convulsively, trying
to keep back her tears.
Ami just looked at her mother in shock for a moment
that seemed to last for an eternity. Then, tears starting
to form in her eyes, she whispered in a choked voice,
"H-how?"
Her mother closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed
again. "He was hit by a car. H-he didn't even see it
coming." She brushed away a few tears from her own cheeks,
hand still on her daughter's shoulder.
Ami just turned her head back to face the far wall,
tears running down her cheeks and falling to absorb into her
white pillow. Her mother just rubbed her back as she
started to shake with sobs, hugging her pillow to her chest.
When her sobs died down, her mother was still rubbing
her back in a comforting manner. "I have to go to the
hospital and fill some things out. I'll leave you alone if
you want, or I'll stay if you want me to." The whole time,
Ms. Mizuno kept rubbing her daughter's back.
Ami turned her head back to her mother, her face red
and cheeks still wet, and shook her head gently. "No, I-I'm
fine. G-go do what you have to do." She gave a small sob
then, and then continued. "I'll still be here when you get
back," she whispered hoarsely.
And then Ami's mother's face scrunched up in a sob, the
torrent of tears that she had been holding back flooding
out. Ami put her arms around her and they cried together on
her bed, one for a lost father, and the other for a lost
friend and once-husband.
Part One: Reflections of a Soul
Tears. Salty, wet tears, clear as miniature crystals.
They run down the faces of the mourners in tiny streams,
absorbed by a white tissue or handkerchief before they can
ruin a nice dress or good silk tie. All these tears for
just one man, and an undeserving one at that. They are only
mourning the loss of an artist, and the worse loss of an
investment. Though now that I'm dead, my art will no doubt
skyrocket in price.
There is a group of people, all female except for one
young man, that seem genuinely grief-stricken at my passing.
One of them is my ex-wife, Emiko. I knew that my death would be
hard on her, her and my daughter both. Images of those two
had been my last living thoughts, thinking about how sad
they both would be when they heard of my death as I laid in
the street, seeing my crimson blood furthermore darkened by
the black of the asphalt beneath it.
There was so much I wanted to do for them! So much I
wanted to tell them! But isn't that why I am still here?
Or is this all there is to death? Walking about the earth
as a ghost, unable to do anything but watch and be unseen by
those around me? Or perhaps this is my punishment for
getting divorced and not being with my daughter, my little
Sunfish, as she grew up?
The priest is saying the last words of the funeral
ritual, and they are now lowering the casket which contains
the cosmeticized corpse that once contained my soul down
into the manmade rent in the earth. When the casket sinks
below the level of the ground, I can see the white marble
tombstone that marks my grave. Engraved in black, the
inscription reads:
Mizuno Koji
Beloved father, friend, and artist
January 28, 1958
~
November 18, 1993
Those in attendance at my funeral are preparing to
leave, coming up to Emiko and my child, and giving a
few words that are meant to give comfort. They accept the
words politely, tears still drying on their cheeks and a few
more leaking from their eyes, but I can see that the small
group of five girls and one young man behind them are the
ones giving them the most comfort. They must be Ami's
friends.
I look upon my daughter with pride. Even though the
last time I saw her in the flesh while I was alive had been
when she was eight, I'm proud of her. Once in a while I
have seen her in the newspaper, getting an award for winning
a science fair or for just being the incredibly smart person
that she is, and I would always cut it out and keep it in a
small scrapbook. That scrapbook has every photo and
newspaper clip that I have of her in it. At the moment,
it's on the coffee table in my small apartment in Kyoto.
That is, if my apartment hasn't been cleaned out yet.
Everyone but Emiko, my daughter, and her friends
have left now. Ami is being hugged by one of her friends.
It's a blonde with an odd hairstyle, almost as if she has
dumplings on her head. Okay, my little Sunfish has friends
with odd hair. I can deal with that as long as she's happy.
I move closer so I can hear what they're saying. It's
a little strange moving as I am. I'm walking, but it's like
I have no weight at all. Like a strong breeze could blow me
away like a wisp of smoke. But, the breeze that riffles
through the ladies' dresses goes right through me without
any affect at all. I stand next to the group, careful not
to touch any of them; I don't know what, if anything, will
happen if I do.
"What do you want to do now, Ami-chan?" the blonde with
strange hair asks my daughter.
Another blonde, this one with a red bow in her hair,
puts her hand on Ami's shoulder. "We could all come over
and keep you two company for a little while if you want."
She includes Emiko with a smile. "Right, everyone?"
The others nod their heads in agreement.
Ami looks at her mother, then at my grave. Looking
back at her friends with a sadness that I have never _ever_
wanted to see in my child's eyes, she says, "Thank you,
everyone, but I think I'd rather be alone for a little
while, if you don't mind."
Seeing her so sad tears me up inside. A pair of tears
leave damp tracks down my cheeks. All I want right now is
to let her know I'm there for her! I wasted what could have
been time with her by filling up that time with painting and
traveling, and now I can't even hug my own daughter to let
her know that I finally AM here for her.
I'd like to let Emiko know that I'm here for her
too (what I wouldn't do to be able to do so!), but we had
already said our goodbyes to each other seven years ago. We
divorced because our lifestyles clashed too much. She, the
dedicated doctor, and I, the free spirited artist, just
couldn't get along after a while. There were no hard
feelings, just a goodbye that we knew would be for a long
time. Little did we know what a long time that would be.
With the help of her mother, Ami has gotten her friends
to head off to their homes, telling them that she will talk
to them later. Somehow, the five girls pile into the
dark-haired young man's car, and they drive away, Ami and my
ex-wife looking on.
They stand there for a moment, and then look back over
at my grave, Ami turning a little more hesitantly than
Emiko. Neither says a word; they just look at my grave,
which hasn't even been filled in with dirt yet. Apparently,
the people that are supposed to do it are giving Emiko
and my daughter some time to mourn. I move so that I am
standing next to them, unseen by either woman. I hope
fervently that they can sense my presence and know that I'm
there for them.
So softly that I almost don't hear it, my daughter
whispers, "He'll never send me another painting."
Emiko puts her arm around her and pulls her close
to her side, neither woman's eyes leaving the grave. Ami
puts her hand around her mother's waist, holding her just as
close. I long to be able to put my arms around them, but I
know that it just isn't possible now.
"Oh Ami-chan, my lovely daughter, I miss him too, even
if I never had the relationship that you had with him." She
leans her head over to kiss the top of our daughter's head.
Emiko is about an inch taller than her, but Ami is only
fifteen, and she might grow a little bit more. "He may
never be able to send you his paintings anymore, but you'll
always have the ones he gave you. You'll have the
memories." She sighs. "I just hope that where ever he is,
he appreciates that we've buried him instead of cremating
him. This has cost an arm and a leg, but it's the only thing
I can do for him." She smiled.
Despite the sadness of the situation, I can't help but
laugh. I really do appreciate Emiko's last gift to me.
Ever since my mother died in a house fire when I was ten, I
had had an intense fear of fire. I had told her about it
even before we had gotten married, and I'm glad that she
hasn't forgotten. On a late night a year after we had
gotten married, just six months before she had announced
herself pregnant with Ami, I had told her that when I died,
I didn't want to be cremated. She's spent all this money on
burying me just because of a silly fear of mine. It touches
my heart that she would do this for me. If I could kiss her
at the moment, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.
"Hai, I think father appreciates it," Ami says softly.
At this moment, I really do try to touch them. I step
forward and stretch my arm out towards Ami, only to have the
hand that would have landed on her shoulder go right through
her.
It is a strange thing. Even though I can't feel what
must be a chilly breeze out here, or smell anything in the
air, or physically touch anyone, I can feel them. It isn't
like a physical touch or feeling, but more like the heat you
feel from putting your hand near a heated stove. Ami has no
reaction that I can see to my hand going through her, so I
do the same thing to Emiko. It's almost the same feeling
that I got from Ami, but slightly different. It is hard to
explain, but it's different as all people are different.
Maybe I'm touching the warmth of their souls?
I spend so much time thinking on this thought, that I
don't realize that my daughter and Emiko are getting into
their car until I hear the car's doors slam shut. That has
always been one of my problems, one which played a part in
my divorce and distancing myself from my daughter, my little
Sunfish. I've always been able to lose myself in one
subject that has decided to interest my mind, to the point
where sometimes I just sit for hours doing nothing but think
about that one thing. However, I'm also known for my
impulsive behavior. But enough about that.
My family's car has just driven off.
Part Two: Odd Phenomena
The fruit juice tasted bitter. Ami sat the half-empty
glass on the kitchen counter and stared at it. Wasn't fruit
juice supposed to taste sweet? She picked the glass up
again and sniffed the liquid. It smelled sweet. Why didn't
it taste sweet? Resigned to her distasteful fate, she
downed the rest of the bitter liquid that was supposed to be
sweet and put the empty glass in the sink.
Taste had been like that ever since her father had died
three days ago. Everything that passed her lips tasted
bitter, but her sense of smell worked just as it should.
Normally, this phenomena would pique her curiosity, but she
just couldn't dredge up the energy to really care. So what
if only water tasted right? All she wanted to do was sleep
for a week.
The house was dark. After she and her mother had
gotten home, the elder Mizuno had kissed her forehead and
announced that she was going to bed, even though it was only
five-thirty. Ami thought her mother had the right idea, and
chose to go to bed early herself shortly afterward. She was
so tired.
But she didn't get any sleep.
She had tossed and turned until the shadows lengthened
in her room and night painted her bedroom walls with
swirling darkness. There was no moon. After rolling onto
her stomach for the thousandth time, she had decided to get
up and get something to drink. Which was now why she was
standing in her kitchen, surrounded by white cupboards and
cream-colored tile, with an empty glass that had once
contained bitter tasting fruit juice (that should have
tasted sweet) resting in a stainless steel sink.
She walked out of the kitchen and into the living room,
her only light being the bulb over the kitchen stove. It
spilled out to provide just enough light to see the outline
of the living room furniture.
She just stood there, at the entrance to the hallway
that would lead her back to her room if she chose to walk
down it, with the light above the kitchen stove at her back
and her eyes studying the dark shadows of her living room
furniture. What else was there for her to do? She couldn't
sleep; laying down made her feel oddly vulnerable, so just
laying in her bed until she might eventually fall asleep
wasn't a very appealing option, and she didn't feel like
reading or doing anything on her computer.
Maybe a monster would attack and occupy her time. If
she exhausted herself enough, she might be able to fall
asleep afterward.
Still standing in the living room, she looked at the
communicator on her wrist and waited for that telltale
beeping that would announce an attack of the monstrosity
kind.
And she waited.
And waited some more.
A sigh. So much for that idea. The blue-haired girl's
head drooped forward until her chin hit her chest. She
would just have to find something else to occupy herself
with. Just plain thinking was out of the question. Grief
almost always reared it's fanged head whenever she allowed
her thoughts to wander aimlessly. It was like the feeling
were just waiting to pounce, eager to sink it's claws into
her.
She walked over to her mother's living room desk and
turned on the desk lamp. The light was the sort one would
see on an accountant's desk, right down to the green plastic
light shade over the fluorescent bulb. It provided enough
light to see the details of the living room clearly, and was
pleasantly dim. Ami didn't want any bright lights at the
moment.
She wandered over to the entertainment center, enjoying
the soft carpeting beneath her bare feet. There were
several pictures strategically placed on the shelves and on
top of the entertainment center, and she took her time
looking at them, remembering every moment captured in the
flash of a camera. She and her mother at her mother's
cousin's baby shower. That had been interesting. Her mother
at her break in the hospital, wearing her scrubs and the
white coat that signified one to be of the medical
profession. She was sitting down at a table with a
dark-haired woman and had a smile of amusement on her face.
It was nice to see her mother happy. A picture of herself
reading on the old sofa they'd had until two years ago, her
baby picture . . . she stopped dead at one image.
It was of her and her father. She was seven years old
and his chin was resting on the top of her head with his
arms around her middle. Ami could remember everything from
the day that picture was taken ("Smile for the camera
Ami-chan!"). Her mother and her father had decided to spend
a Sunday at the park near where they used to live. They'd
had a picnic. Watching her father make a smiley-face out of
the food on her plate and handing it to her with a flourish
was one of her fondest memories. He'd been so creative with
everything. Faces out of food, dragons out of clouds, even
sound given form; along with the breathtaking landscapes
that he was more known for, he had also loved to paint
fantastical, sometimes even silly images. He had sent those
paintings to her the most often. Each painting had come
with a small envelope containing a note that told of how
he'd gotten the idea for the painting, always starting with
"My dear little Sunfish."
Sunfish had been his pet name for her. "You are as
bright as the sun and are like a fish in the water, so
you're my little Sunfish," he had said to her once when she
had asked why he called her the name. Her father always
made her feel like the best person in the whole world.
And now he was gone.
She let out a shaky breath and realized she was crying.
Again. Tears had come in fits and spurts since he had died.
Hit by a car in Kyoto on his way to breakfast. Now that she
thought about it, Ami realized that that was an incredibly
stupid way for him to die. He could've taken the bus there
instead of walking across the hazardous streets, couldn't he
have? That would have been the sensible thing, wouldn't it
have been? How could he have just LEFT! Her fingers
tightened around the picture of her and her father, almost to
the point of breaking the plastic frame. She didn't know
when she had picked it up. He left her all alone in a world
where no one truly understood her! He had been her constant,
her solid rock in the raging river of life, and--
The back of Ami's neck prickled. Her eyes slowly
scanned the room, sure that there was someone else in the
dim room with her. She could swear it on her father's
grave, in fact.
"Father?" she whispered. The room was silent.
It was nothing, Ami, she thought to herself. Just
wishful thinking. There was no one in the room with her.
It wasn't possible, was it? Putting the picture back on the
shelf, she decided to try going to sleep again.
But, after she had turned off the desk lamp and started
down the hall to her room, she couldn't get the thought out
of her mind that she had felt a feather light touch on her
shoulder while in the living room.
* * * * *
She felt me, I know she did.
I've been watching Emiko and my daughter ever since they
got home. I honestly don't know how I got here from the
cemetery, just that one second I was wishing to be with them
when they got to their apartment, and the next I'm standing in
their living room watching them come through the door of their
home in Tokyo. I guess it's just a useful perk of the
afterlife.
I went back and forth between watching Emiko sleep
fitfully and my daughter lay in her bed and not sleep at
all. I had watched Ami get up and get a glass of juice and
then watched her look at the pictures in the living room.
When she had gotten to the picture of her and me, and I had
seen the tears run down her cheeks and the grief apparent on
her face, I was overcome with a need to comfort my little girl.
Always my little girl. My little Sunfish.
I tried to touch her shoulder, and the second my
ghostly hand brushed the warmth of her physical body, her
back had stiffened and she had looked around the room
warily. And then she whispered my name.
My name! She knew, somehow, that it was me in the
room! She'd felt it! "It's me, Ami, I'm here!" I'd called.
But, of course, she hadn't heard me. It was, and still
is, incredibly frustrating.
As she walks down the hallway towards her bedroom, I
see her crack open Emiko's door and check on her mother.
Apparently finding nothing wrong, she eases the door shut
without a sound. Oh, what a good doctor she will make with
her kind of care! That warm feeling of pride for my little
Sunfish flares up again.
Ami turns back around in the hallway suddenly. She has
this little frown of concentration on her face, an
expression that I've found so wonderfully cute ever since
she was a toddler. I'm standing only a few feet in front of
her, and she looks right through me while obviously trying
to find something in the hallway with her. "Ami, can you
feel me?" I whisper. I reach out a hand towards her, having
a silly urge to wave my hands in front of her face and jump
up and down like a little boy in order to catch her
attention.
She shakes her head. "You're cracking up, Ami.
There's nothing there," she murmurs.
"But there IS!" I scream. But it's no use. She just
turns her back on me and pads down the hallway to her room.
She shuts the door behind her.
I'm a depressed ghost. How cliché. How many movies
have been made and stories written about ghosts and spirits
who despair over not being able to let loved ones know they
are there? I've read plenty of stories about the subject,
and seen quite a few websites dedicated to the subject of
ghosts and why they exist. Paranormal stuff is just a
little fascination of mine.
That brings me to think that maybe this isn't really
even happening at all. What if my mind has somehow
incorporated my fascination with ghosts and spirits into a
dream? An extremely vivid dream, but it might be.
But I don't believe it.
Though, if this actually _is_ a dream or hallucination
I'm having while in a coma or something, it's nice to know
that my active imagination will follow me everywhere. Or
maybe I'm imagining all this while I'm dying? I'm reminded
of an American story written by a man named Ambrose Bierce.
I remember coming across it in a library while finding
information for a paper in college. It is an odd, but
creative short story, by the name of "An Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge."
Set during the American Civil War, it is about a man
named Peyton Farquhar being hanged by Federal soldiers.
Just as he is about to be hanged, he imagines his escape and
return to his wife and home in vivid detail. Anyone reading
the story for the first time would think he really _has_
escaped the noose and gotten home safely. But, as he
finally reaches his goal of seeing his wife, the reader is
struck with the sudden reality that Farquhar's neck has just
been snapped by the cruel rope. His whole escape has only
been a last second thought before death.
Is that what this truly is, this life after death? I
quite possibly could only be imagining all of this while
dying in the middle of the street in Kyoto.
But, even if I am, I'm still not going to stop being
here for my family.
Part Three: A Walk In the Park
Ami stared at the ceiling. It was off-white. How
blank. It was what she desperately wanted her mind to be
for just a little while.
She had been awake for the past half hour, having been
woken by the sharp beams of sunlight cutting through her
window, and she had been staring up at the ceiling ever
since. Four hours of sleep. Even so little time in
oblivion was welcome to her, since she had expected to get
much less.
Turning her head to the side, she saw that the glowing
green numbers read 6:50. On a normal day she would have
been getting ready for school by this time. But, today
wasn't a normal day, and neither had the trio of days before
been. It didn't matter if she went to school today; she was
far enough ahead in her classes that missing some days
wouldn't harm her grades. Besides, her not going to school
for a while was expected.
She got up. Maybe she would go for a walk. See the
multi-colored leaves in the park before they all turned
brown with decay. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she
slipped out of her pajamas and took out a pair of jeans and
a warm sweater. She buttoned up her jeans and shrugged on
the sweater, slid some thick socks onto her feet, and grabbed
a light jacket. She didn't want a cold to add to her
troubles.
She wondered if her mother was up yet. Looking in her
mirror, she noticed that her hair was a mess. She didn't
particularly care that it looked like a bird's nest, but she
supposed that she should at least make an attempt at making
it decent. After running a brush through her hair until it
had some semblance of normalcy, she left her room with her
jacket over one shoulder.
Her mother woke up when Ami cracked the door open.
They just looked at each other for a few long moments.
"Are you going out?" her mother asked from the bed.
Ami opened the door fully and entered the room. She
sat on the edge of the bed next to her mother. "Hai, just
to the park," she answered. Mother looks worse than I do,
she thought.
They didn't ask one another if they were all right;
they already knew the answer. Ami and her mother were not
all right, and wouldn't be for quite some time.
Instead, Ms. Mizuno only asked her daughter to be
careful.
Ami nodded and kissed her mother on the cheek before
she left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
* * * * *
Ami walked along a nearly deserted pathway in the park
with her head down, looking at the gray concrete rolling
along beneath her feet. Her hands were in her jacket
pockets. She felt a little chilly.
Being only a little past seven in the morning, there
were not a whole lot of people in the park. Those she did
see were morning joggers or just plain morning people. Or
maybe some, like herself, just couldn't sleep the morning
away no matter how hard they tried.
A bright blue sky looked down upon her, with a few
white clouds stacked upon each other like piles of
comfortable pillows dotting the blue expanse. A dark
thought snaked its way into her mind through a doorway of
sleep deprivation, whispering that the sky itself was
mocking her. The blue-haired girl was inclined to agree
with it.
Feeling the urge to have the springy feel of grass
beneath her feet, she edged around a trash can to her right
and stepped off the gray pathway. She was disappointed to
feel a flat jolt as her sneaker-clad feet connected with the
ground. The grass may have still been green, but it was
dying in accordance to the approaching winter, it's springy
feeling gone.
Letting out an aggrieved sigh, she stepped back around
the trash can and let herself collapse onto the wood and
iron bench sitting next to it. She let her head fall back
on the top of the backrest and got a glimpse of the
sickeningly cheerful blue sky (with pillowy white clouds)
above her, before her eyes slid shut.
Ami was an intelligent person. She had read numerous
passages out of equally numerous books on psychology. She
knew the stages of grief and the exact order those stages
went in. But reading about such things in a book and
knowing those stages hadn't helped her at all. Her
knowledge was little use and poor comfort in the face of
actually feeling what she had read about.
And right now, she had almost achieved a state of
blissful blankness within her mind. The morning sun was
shining right on her, making her feel warm all over despite
the slightly nippy air. After the restless nights and
constant emotional stress, her mind seemed to be giving up
the ghost (Father?) and shutting down for a nice nap right
on the bench. Sleep . . .
Part Four: A Helping Hand
A sound intruded upon her little bubble of peace. Ami
put a little effort into forcing her mind into awareness,
instead of sinking back into a dream of white pillows and
night darkened waters with hundreds of stars twinkling
overhead. As she gradually rose from the depths of sleep,
the sound stopped being one noise and became what she
realized to be voices coming from two different sets of
vocal cords. One was husky and sounded very male to her,
and the other was higher pitched and almost musical, and
sounded very female.
Her curiosity overrode her want of sleep, and her eyes
fluttered open to see the cheerfully blue sky above her.
That sickeningly cheerful blue sky.
Sometimes she wished that she hadn't been raised not to
curse and make rude gestures whenever she was this
irritated.
Shoving the feeling aside, more because she didn't much
feel like depressing herself much anymore than because she
remembered that she had heard voices, she looked to her
right.
Kaioh Michiru smiled back at her.
Well, she thought, where there's one . . . . She looked
to her left.
Tenoh Haruka raised a slightly amused eyebrow.
There's the other.
"Good morning, Ami-san," Haruka greeted her.
"What are you two doing here?" Ami rasped. "I thought
there were classes today."
"There are," Michiru replied.
"Just not for Mugen Gakuen today," Haruka continued.
Seeing that Ami was having trouble wrapping her mind
around her partner's words, Michiru added, "It's a 'staff
development' day."
Haruka snorted. Michiru aimed a sharp look at her.
Ami was oblivious to the exchange. "Oh." The girl
looked at one, then at the other. "That still doesn't
explain why you're _here_." She indicated the bench the
three of them were sitting on.
The blonde girl reared her head back in indignation.
"Well if you don't want us here . . . ."
"Haruka, hush," Michiru chided. The violinist looked
back to Ami. "We saw you sleeping here and didn't think it
a wise idea to leave you sleeping alone in a park. So, we
decided to keep you company."
Normally, Ami would have been a little nervous and
off-balance around the aloof pair. They had always seemed
so inaccessible, like they were on a pedestal far above her.
But, even though the famous pair was much higher than her
socially, they didn't seem that bad in person. Also, she
wasn't feeling much of anything but disappointment and grief
anymore, and this strangely comfortable feeling was making
her feel a little better. At least it was taking her mind
off of her father.
Haruka decided to start the conversation up again. "We
heard about your father."
Ami came very close to growling, but then gave up on
the reaction. Too much energy would be expended in the
effort. At least they seemed to know about it so she
wouldn't have to explain it. She nodded.
"Does your falling asleep here have anything to do with
that? Taking naps in public parks isn't a very smart thing
to do, you know," the tall blonde commented.
Ami winced. Falling asleep there _was_ an incredibly
stupid thing of her to have done. But she was just so tired
lately . . . . It was then that she realized what an
opportunity she had at that moment. She hadn't been willing
to talk to anyone about her father's death, mainly because
the only people she had to talk to were much too close to
her. It was a struggle for her to talk to close friends
such as Usagi, Rei, Makoto, and Minako, about such personal
things. Sometimes she just needed to be listened to by an
impersonal ear.
And here were two of them sitting next to her,
seemingly willing to listen.
"Yes, my falling asleep here does have to do with . . .
that."
"Mmhmm." Michiru waited patiently.
Ami's cheeks reddened completely without her consent.
She hated trying to find words in emotional situations.
Life had been so much simpler when she had an almost
constant clinical detachment. "I . . . umm . . . would you
mind," she shoved a few wind-blown locks of hair out of her
eyes, "if I talked to you about it?" There. She'd said it.
Now what were they going to say?
"You want to talk? Then we're here to listen," was,
surprisingly, Haruka's answer. Surprising, at least, to
Ami.
Oh great, Ami thought. Now what do I say? I can't
just tell them _everything_, can I?
But why not? What did she have to lose? She didn't
have much to lose in telling them, and shouldn't she, for
once in her life, get a whole issue out into the open? What
was the worst thing that could happen?
Well, there was totally embarrassing herself in front
of Haruka and Michiru, for one.
Oh, hell, Ami. Just spit it out and get it over with.
If you're lucky, you might feel better afterward. Take a
freaking risk for once!
And so she did.
She told them everything. From how she felt when her
mother told her about her father's death Saturday morning,
to how she couldn't shut her mind down enough to sleep at
night.
"I think the worst part about it all, is that I never
got to say goodbye to him," she sniffled. "I know, I know,
I couldn't have known that he was going to get hit by a
stupid car on his way to breakfast, but it's still hard."
A comfortable quiet enveloped the three girls on the
bench after Ami's tear choked statement, broken only by
distant city sounds and the closer chirpings of birds.
Michiru made a small humming sound. "Shall I give you
a little advice, Ami-san?"
"Please, do." Maybe the violinist would be able to
solve her problems with a few well-placed words. Yeah,
right, Ami's pessimistic side retorted. A few "well-placed
words," and presto! All of your problems are magically
solved! Ami could have sworn that someone "tsked" like an
exasperated mother into her ear. Since when have you
reverted to the age of inanimate plastic toys? Things don't
work like that.
Michiru brushed an errant leaf the color of spilled
blood off of her skirt. "I think I might know a way for you
to take a big step in accepting your father's death,
Ami-san. Your father was a very talented painter. Haruka
and I went to one of his exhibitions once." Ami blinked in
surprise. "Has his talent for the brush passed on to you?"
A faint blush colored Ami's cheeks. She nodded
tentatively. "I paint once in a while, yes." She wasn't
the best, and she certainly wasn't as good as Michiru, but
Ami had a slightly above average artistic ability.
"When I feel strongly about something, or agitated, it
often helps if I paint the issue," Michiru continued. "Many
of my best paintings were spurred by the strongest of
feelings. Maybe if you paint your father as you remember
him, with all of your feeling for him, you might be able to
deal with his passing better."
"You should listen to her about this stuff. I do,"
Haruka murmured. Her indigo eyes held Ami's navy blue for a
moment before the racer broke contact to look at her
partner. A smile twitched the blonde's lips.
"Paint him," Ami sighed. Painting therapy. She
thought she remembered reading an article about that once.
"I think I'll try that." Ami stood on newly strengthened
legs, born from a spark of hope for a not so bleak tomorrow.
It was like seeing the proverbial light at the end of the
tunnel.
"Thank you, Haruka-san, Michiru-san. I truly
appreciate your impersonal ears." Ami was rolling along on
a painted pathway towards a better tomorrow, and the words
coming from her mouth were sincere and straight from the
brain. As such, Haruka and Michiru didn't really understand
the "impersonal ear" part as the blue-haired girl strode
quickly down the park's cement pathway with canvas and
oil-based paints on her mind.
Haruka and Michiru shared a content, but quizzical
look.
"Geniuses. Who knows what goes on up there."
* * * * *
When Ami came home, her mother was sitting at her desk
in the living room, dressed for the day in a pair of
comfortable tan slacks and a Tokyo University sweatshirt.
Ami's mother hadn't been a student at the university, but
had been in charge of a volunteer blood drive there; the
university gave her and the other volunteers the sweatshirts
as a reward. As Ami entered the apartment, the older woman,
with hair just a shade blue lighter than her own, looked up
from a sheet of paper she was reading.
"Hi, mother" Ami greeted, studying the maternal side of
her parentage. Her face seemed to have a few more lines
than she remembered there being, and her pallor was just
short of being as white as the walls of the living room.
But, there wasn't that completely lost and defeated look in
her eyes anymore. There was sadness and a bone-deep
weariness in them, but no sign of the defeat that Ami had
dreaded the permanent occupancy of in her mother's cerulean
eyes. The look that was now in her eyes was one that was
very familiar to the fifteen-year-old genius. She saw it
every time her mother came home after one of her patients
died.
With infinite relief, Ami realized that her mother was
on her way to accepting her ex-husband's death.
Now, Ami needed to do the same for herself.
"What're you reading?" she asked her mother.
The elder Mizuno blinked down at the paper she had been
looking at. "Oh, just an old letter from your father."
Ami walked up to her mother, giving her a hug from
behind. She rested her chin on her mother's shoulder and
looked down at the letter. There were several other letters
on the desk, all with a slanted handwriting that she
recognized immediately. Her father's handwriting.
Her mother sighed and smoothed down a folded corner of
the letter. "This one was when he went on that trip to the
States."
Ami remembered that trip. She had been six years old
when her father had gone on that three week trip. She had
missed her giant playmate terribly, but he had made it up to
her by coming back with a set of watercolor paints and a
child-sized easel for her.
Her mother told her little things about each letter for
a time, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying, Ami right
along with her.
After a little while, Ami decided it was time. "I need
to do something. It might take me a long time to do it, but
a . . . friend of mine says it should be done."
Ms. Mizuno looked at her daughter. "Okay. I'll leave
you to it." She gave her daughter's back a little rub.
"Just tell me if you need me, all right?"
A smile curved Ami's lips and she kissed her mother on
the cheek. "Sure thing."
Ami left her mother to her letters and walked down the
hallway to her room. If she remembered correctly, she still
had a blank canvas in her closet and her paints and brushes
were in her desk drawer.
* * * * *
Ami paid no attention to the time as she painted. The
canvas was her world, the wooden easel was the mythical
Atlas holding it up, and the paints and brushes at her side
were her tools of creation. Newspaper crinkled on the floor
as she dropped a paint-stained rag in favor of adding a new
color to her brush.
As she painted, she barely noticed her mother's brief,
concerned looks into her room, and the setting sun coloring
her room's light-blue walls a soothing lavender shade.
It was a long time before her new-found artistic
inspiration began to lose steam. She began to notice her
over-stressed body's complaints, grumpily communicated to
her through a parched throat, a fiercely growling stomach,
and the all around pains of exhaustion. Her breathing was
heavy and her hands were starting to shake.
But that was all right. She looked at the image
replacing the previously empty canvas. It wasn't yet
complete . . . but she had the strong feeling that it was as
complete as she was going to get it.
The picture was, of course, of her father, as per
Michiru's suggestion. Ami had put everything she had into
this picture; every bit of grief, every ounce of happiness,
every feeling she had ever had for her father. The image
itself was created with soft, feathery brushstrokes, and
realistic uses of both dark and light colors. Her father
was sitting on a plain wooden chair, his pose one of relaxed
contentment, dressed in the same grey t-shirt and jean
shorts that she remembered him wearing the day of her
favorite picnic. His left arm was resting on a wooden table
as plain as the chair, his hand holding a pair of his
ever-present sunglasses. His black hair was pleasantly
mussed as it had always seemed to be, and his chocolate
brown eyes held a mirth that was reflected by the warm smile
on his lips. The room around him was painted in slightly
darker colors than her father, and only two decorations
adorned the two visible yellow walls. One was a poster of
her father's favorite baseball team, an American team
called the Mariners.
"Here's the thing you most need to know about baseball,
my little Sunfish," he had said to her once. "We Japanese
may be a little better at the sport than the Americans, but
they know how to have fun. _That's_ why I like an American
team, and always will."
The other decoration, directly over the table on the
second of the two walls, was a window.
There wasn't anything really special about the window.
It looked to be made of the same color wood as the chair and
table, except the windowsill had carvings of distinctly
Japanese fish on both sides. She didn't know why she had
painted them in, just that it seemed so _right_ to do so.
However, there was one more thing that made the window stand
out.
Empty canvas shown through what would have been glass
had it not been a painting.
And that was why it was still unfinished. Ami knew
_something_ had to go there, she just wasn't sure _what_.
But, she was also sure that she was done with it. She was
filled with the comforting assurance that all would be well
in the end. Who knew? Maybe someone was supposed to come
along and finish it.
Yeah, right, Ami. Get a grip, will you?
Ami chuckled to herself, tickled with the prospect of
someone filling in the blank spot in her painting. Who
would ever do that? She stretched her sore muscles and
looked back at her clock. She was very surprised to see
that the glowing numbers read three o'clock in the morning.
"Wow, no wonder I feel like I've been hit by a bus."
Unable to ignore her need for food and drink anymore,
Ami got up on shaky legs and headed for the kitchen. The
apartment was dark, and her mother was obviously in bed. In
an exhausted haze, she hastily ate some leftover pork and
rice right out of the carton without even pausing to taste
it, and drank two tall glasses of water. Absently throwing
the carton away, she headed back to her bedroom, exchanged
her clothes for some comfortable flannel pajamas, slid under
the covers, and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
For the first time in days, Mizuno Ami slept with a
smile on her face.
* * * * *
I have to admit, that Michiru woman knew what she was
talking about. Watching my daughter paint, not just with
her brushes, but with her soul, was one of the most
beautiful things I've ever seen. But, even as the artist in
me appreciated the painting, the father in me wanted to
firmly take the brush out of her hand and gently tuck her
into bed. I mean, she was wearing herself out to the point
of collapse! What kind of father would I be, if I didn't
want to take care of my own daughter?
I would be the same kind of father I had been since she
was eight.
Yes, yes, I sent her my paintings and letters, but what
did they really mean in the long run? They were a shallow
attempt to stay in contact with my daughter and to show her
that I cared, when if I really _had_ cared, I would have
visited her at least once. But did I ever visit her? _NO_.
I was too busy painting and sightseeing, and trying to
forget that it was partly my fault that Emiko and I
divorced and left Ami without a father. And here Ami has
gone and painted me as she remembers me, in an attempt to
show her gratitude and grief for a man who practically
ignored her after he left when she was eight damn years old.
EIGHT! How could I have done that!
I don't deserve her grief! Not my daughter's, and not
my ex-wife's! It's not as if I had ever done anything for
them, is it? I don't think so.
Ami is shivering. Did I do that? I instinctively go
over and pull the covers closer around her.
And did I just do _that_?
I touch the covers again . . . and I actually TOUCH
them. I don't mean my incorporeal hand touched them in the
way of passing through the covers, I mean I've actually
TOUCHED them! I can't believe this! Maybe it's _feeling_
that's enabling me to do this? I look at the painting
resting on its easel across the bed from me, the blank
window beckoning me. Well, Koji, you may not deserve your
daughter's care for you, but you're sure as hell gonna
reciprocate it while you've got the chance.
I walk around the bed to the unfinished painting. Ah,
my little Sunfish, it's got your style, but where's _you_?
This painting is empty with just me. And is this truly how
you see--no, saw me? Was I ever that young? I laugh.
Well, now . . . I see the problem. It's all to realistic.
And it needs just a little of my touch . . . . You've put
your all of your feelings for me into this, and so will I
for you.
I finish filling in the empty window some time later.
Shortly after I put the brush down, a golden light appears
in the room. What is this? I turn to see . . . oh. Oooh.
It's . . . it's so beautiful. Is that . . . yes, yes it is.
Mother . . . . She offers a hand to me, and then gestures
to Ami with the other. A choice . . . .
* * * * *
Ami awoke with an urgent need to visit the bathroom.
Stumbling to the door that adjoined her room and her own
bathroom, she did her business with much relief. As she
washed her hands, she looked at herself in the mirror of her
medicine cabinet. She looked better than she had the day
before. She wasn't quite as pale and drawn looking, and the
bags under her eyes were definitely lighter. She breathed
in, and smelled the slightly acrid smell of paint. She
yawned and left the bathroom to take another look at her
painting, amusedly wondering if someone finished her
painting for her.
She looked at the painting.
Well what do you know. Someone did.
Ami rubbed her eyes, thinking that her eyes were
playing tricks on her. It took three determined rubs (that
just caused her eyes to water) for her to be convinced that
her eyes _weren't_ playing tricks on her.
Someone had finished her painting.
She didn't know how long she stood there gaping. She
shook her head and took a closer look at the window that had
been blank before she went to bed. Maybe her mother . . . ?
No, her mother didn't paint this, she was never into
painting. Could she have done this in her sleep? This was
. . . no, it couldn't be. Ami studied the finished window,
noting how the bolder, more assured strokes contrasted with
her feathery, somewhat hesitant ones. It reminded her very
much of her father's style, but that wasn't possible, was
it?
Why not, Ami? You've been dead before, and _you_ did
something for someone you cared about. Usagi, the world,
doesn't matter except that the dead _can_ do things.
The image filling the window was of a clear blue sea
that was a very odd sight to look at considering that it was
a window from what seemed to be a normal house that the
observer was looking at it through.
And, there was a sunfish swimming in that sea. Her
logical side briefly took over while she was foundering in
her own sea of disbelief. It's not a sea, because a sea is
saltwater and a sunfish is a freshwater fish-- Ami batted
her logical persona away. It was a sea, she was sure of it.
The whole picture now smacked of the illogical. Her father,
in a normal room with a pair of sunglasses, with a sunfish
looking through the window at him. It was just the sort of
image that her father would have painted, because he had
loved painting this sort of thing. Fantasy. Things that
couldn't, under normal circumstances, possibly be real.
Ami was now almost completely convinced that her father,
or rather, the ghost of her father, had finished her
painting.
But, it was the signature that cemented the fact that
her father actually _had_ finished it.
His small, familiar-like-the-back-of-her-hand, stylized
initials were etched into the corner of the painting's
window, right below the bottom tip of the sunfish's waving
tail.
She sat on the edge of her bed and cried. Not tears of
grief, like she had been for the past several days, but
tears of pure joy and relief. He was _there_. He had
acknowledged her goodbye and her love for him.
After a few more minutes of crying, Ami kissed her
fingertips and pressed them to her painted father's
forehead, extending her love to him wordlessly. She went to
the kitchen and poured herself a glass of juice.
It had never tasted sweeter.
END
Wow, it's finally done. Yay for me!
Comments and criticism can be sent to
daylin@sailorsenshi.i-p.com
Revised: 7/24/02
======================================================
A story based on the characters of Sailor Moon.
The Painted Soul (PG)
by Christina Anton (daylin@sailorsenshi.i-p.com)
aka Hydrophobic
http://angelfire.com/anime2/dayanjell/antons/home.html
*Note: This takes place during the S season, before
the senshi find out the identities of Sailors Uranus
and Neptune.
This story is on of a father's love for his child.
Though they are mentioned, there are no monsters or
senshi appearances. This is meant to be a little
sappy, not just a little sad, and hopefully uplifting.
So if you're looking for violence and blood and the
sailor senshi kicking the butts of evil villains,
you're not gonna get it here.
I had started writing this a week or so after my
grandfather on my mother's side passed away. I
eventually lost track of it with bunches of other
things going on in my life, and only started on it
again after my grandfather on my father's side passed
away nearly a year later. And, once again, the
storyline got pushed into the back of my mind by the
goings on in my life. It has taken me a long while
to get this story done, but I think the time spent on
it has made it all the better. That said, I'd like to
dedicate this to both of my late grandfathers. God
bless you, Popop and Popop Duke.
If anyone finds a few inaccuracies in this story,
don't get on me too much about it unless you really
think it needs to be fixed. It was a little hard
writing this story, and I will admit to taking some
creative license when I was struggling to get through
a few scenes.
======================================================
The Painted Soul
Prologue: Wake Up Call
It was eight o'clock on a Saturday morning when Ami's
bedroom door opened, her mother walking softly to her
bedside.
Ami was laying on her side, her back to the door. She
awakened when she felt a hand on her shoulder, her eyes
blurry from sleep. She turned her head, looking into her
mother's face and seeing her red eyes and cheeks that looked
recently scrubbed of moisture.
She looked at her mother in surprise, and at the look,
her mother sniffled a little. "Ami-chan," she said in a
soft, controlled voice. "Your father passed away this
morning." The elder Mizuno swallowed convulsively, trying
to keep back her tears.
Ami just looked at her mother in shock for a moment
that seemed to last for an eternity. Then, tears starting
to form in her eyes, she whispered in a choked voice,
"H-how?"
Her mother closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed
again. "He was hit by a car. H-he didn't even see it
coming." She brushed away a few tears from her own cheeks,
hand still on her daughter's shoulder.
Ami just turned her head back to face the far wall,
tears running down her cheeks and falling to absorb into her
white pillow. Her mother just rubbed her back as she
started to shake with sobs, hugging her pillow to her chest.
When her sobs died down, her mother was still rubbing
her back in a comforting manner. "I have to go to the
hospital and fill some things out. I'll leave you alone if
you want, or I'll stay if you want me to." The whole time,
Ms. Mizuno kept rubbing her daughter's back.
Ami turned her head back to her mother, her face red
and cheeks still wet, and shook her head gently. "No, I-I'm
fine. G-go do what you have to do." She gave a small sob
then, and then continued. "I'll still be here when you get
back," she whispered hoarsely.
And then Ami's mother's face scrunched up in a sob, the
torrent of tears that she had been holding back flooding
out. Ami put her arms around her and they cried together on
her bed, one for a lost father, and the other for a lost
friend and once-husband.
Part One: Reflections of a Soul
Tears. Salty, wet tears, clear as miniature crystals.
They run down the faces of the mourners in tiny streams,
absorbed by a white tissue or handkerchief before they can
ruin a nice dress or good silk tie. All these tears for
just one man, and an undeserving one at that. They are only
mourning the loss of an artist, and the worse loss of an
investment. Though now that I'm dead, my art will no doubt
skyrocket in price.
There is a group of people, all female except for one
young man, that seem genuinely grief-stricken at my passing.
One of them is my ex-wife, Emiko. I knew that my death would be
hard on her, her and my daughter both. Images of those two
had been my last living thoughts, thinking about how sad
they both would be when they heard of my death as I laid in
the street, seeing my crimson blood furthermore darkened by
the black of the asphalt beneath it.
There was so much I wanted to do for them! So much I
wanted to tell them! But isn't that why I am still here?
Or is this all there is to death? Walking about the earth
as a ghost, unable to do anything but watch and be unseen by
those around me? Or perhaps this is my punishment for
getting divorced and not being with my daughter, my little
Sunfish, as she grew up?
The priest is saying the last words of the funeral
ritual, and they are now lowering the casket which contains
the cosmeticized corpse that once contained my soul down
into the manmade rent in the earth. When the casket sinks
below the level of the ground, I can see the white marble
tombstone that marks my grave. Engraved in black, the
inscription reads:
Mizuno Koji
Beloved father, friend, and artist
January 28, 1958
~
November 18, 1993
Those in attendance at my funeral are preparing to
leave, coming up to Emiko and my child, and giving a
few words that are meant to give comfort. They accept the
words politely, tears still drying on their cheeks and a few
more leaking from their eyes, but I can see that the small
group of five girls and one young man behind them are the
ones giving them the most comfort. They must be Ami's
friends.
I look upon my daughter with pride. Even though the
last time I saw her in the flesh while I was alive had been
when she was eight, I'm proud of her. Once in a while I
have seen her in the newspaper, getting an award for winning
a science fair or for just being the incredibly smart person
that she is, and I would always cut it out and keep it in a
small scrapbook. That scrapbook has every photo and
newspaper clip that I have of her in it. At the moment,
it's on the coffee table in my small apartment in Kyoto.
That is, if my apartment hasn't been cleaned out yet.
Everyone but Emiko, my daughter, and her friends
have left now. Ami is being hugged by one of her friends.
It's a blonde with an odd hairstyle, almost as if she has
dumplings on her head. Okay, my little Sunfish has friends
with odd hair. I can deal with that as long as she's happy.
I move closer so I can hear what they're saying. It's
a little strange moving as I am. I'm walking, but it's like
I have no weight at all. Like a strong breeze could blow me
away like a wisp of smoke. But, the breeze that riffles
through the ladies' dresses goes right through me without
any affect at all. I stand next to the group, careful not
to touch any of them; I don't know what, if anything, will
happen if I do.
"What do you want to do now, Ami-chan?" the blonde with
strange hair asks my daughter.
Another blonde, this one with a red bow in her hair,
puts her hand on Ami's shoulder. "We could all come over
and keep you two company for a little while if you want."
She includes Emiko with a smile. "Right, everyone?"
The others nod their heads in agreement.
Ami looks at her mother, then at my grave. Looking
back at her friends with a sadness that I have never _ever_
wanted to see in my child's eyes, she says, "Thank you,
everyone, but I think I'd rather be alone for a little
while, if you don't mind."
Seeing her so sad tears me up inside. A pair of tears
leave damp tracks down my cheeks. All I want right now is
to let her know I'm there for her! I wasted what could have
been time with her by filling up that time with painting and
traveling, and now I can't even hug my own daughter to let
her know that I finally AM here for her.
I'd like to let Emiko know that I'm here for her
too (what I wouldn't do to be able to do so!), but we had
already said our goodbyes to each other seven years ago. We
divorced because our lifestyles clashed too much. She, the
dedicated doctor, and I, the free spirited artist, just
couldn't get along after a while. There were no hard
feelings, just a goodbye that we knew would be for a long
time. Little did we know what a long time that would be.
With the help of her mother, Ami has gotten her friends
to head off to their homes, telling them that she will talk
to them later. Somehow, the five girls pile into the
dark-haired young man's car, and they drive away, Ami and my
ex-wife looking on.
They stand there for a moment, and then look back over
at my grave, Ami turning a little more hesitantly than
Emiko. Neither says a word; they just look at my grave,
which hasn't even been filled in with dirt yet. Apparently,
the people that are supposed to do it are giving Emiko
and my daughter some time to mourn. I move so that I am
standing next to them, unseen by either woman. I hope
fervently that they can sense my presence and know that I'm
there for them.
So softly that I almost don't hear it, my daughter
whispers, "He'll never send me another painting."
Emiko puts her arm around her and pulls her close
to her side, neither woman's eyes leaving the grave. Ami
puts her hand around her mother's waist, holding her just as
close. I long to be able to put my arms around them, but I
know that it just isn't possible now.
"Oh Ami-chan, my lovely daughter, I miss him too, even
if I never had the relationship that you had with him." She
leans her head over to kiss the top of our daughter's head.
Emiko is about an inch taller than her, but Ami is only
fifteen, and she might grow a little bit more. "He may
never be able to send you his paintings anymore, but you'll
always have the ones he gave you. You'll have the
memories." She sighs. "I just hope that where ever he is,
he appreciates that we've buried him instead of cremating
him. This has cost an arm and a leg, but it's the only thing
I can do for him." She smiled.
Despite the sadness of the situation, I can't help but
laugh. I really do appreciate Emiko's last gift to me.
Ever since my mother died in a house fire when I was ten, I
had had an intense fear of fire. I had told her about it
even before we had gotten married, and I'm glad that she
hasn't forgotten. On a late night a year after we had
gotten married, just six months before she had announced
herself pregnant with Ami, I had told her that when I died,
I didn't want to be cremated. She's spent all this money on
burying me just because of a silly fear of mine. It touches
my heart that she would do this for me. If I could kiss her
at the moment, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.
"Hai, I think father appreciates it," Ami says softly.
At this moment, I really do try to touch them. I step
forward and stretch my arm out towards Ami, only to have the
hand that would have landed on her shoulder go right through
her.
It is a strange thing. Even though I can't feel what
must be a chilly breeze out here, or smell anything in the
air, or physically touch anyone, I can feel them. It isn't
like a physical touch or feeling, but more like the heat you
feel from putting your hand near a heated stove. Ami has no
reaction that I can see to my hand going through her, so I
do the same thing to Emiko. It's almost the same feeling
that I got from Ami, but slightly different. It is hard to
explain, but it's different as all people are different.
Maybe I'm touching the warmth of their souls?
I spend so much time thinking on this thought, that I
don't realize that my daughter and Emiko are getting into
their car until I hear the car's doors slam shut. That has
always been one of my problems, one which played a part in
my divorce and distancing myself from my daughter, my little
Sunfish. I've always been able to lose myself in one
subject that has decided to interest my mind, to the point
where sometimes I just sit for hours doing nothing but think
about that one thing. However, I'm also known for my
impulsive behavior. But enough about that.
My family's car has just driven off.
Part Two: Odd Phenomena
The fruit juice tasted bitter. Ami sat the half-empty
glass on the kitchen counter and stared at it. Wasn't fruit
juice supposed to taste sweet? She picked the glass up
again and sniffed the liquid. It smelled sweet. Why didn't
it taste sweet? Resigned to her distasteful fate, she
downed the rest of the bitter liquid that was supposed to be
sweet and put the empty glass in the sink.
Taste had been like that ever since her father had died
three days ago. Everything that passed her lips tasted
bitter, but her sense of smell worked just as it should.
Normally, this phenomena would pique her curiosity, but she
just couldn't dredge up the energy to really care. So what
if only water tasted right? All she wanted to do was sleep
for a week.
The house was dark. After she and her mother had
gotten home, the elder Mizuno had kissed her forehead and
announced that she was going to bed, even though it was only
five-thirty. Ami thought her mother had the right idea, and
chose to go to bed early herself shortly afterward. She was
so tired.
But she didn't get any sleep.
She had tossed and turned until the shadows lengthened
in her room and night painted her bedroom walls with
swirling darkness. There was no moon. After rolling onto
her stomach for the thousandth time, she had decided to get
up and get something to drink. Which was now why she was
standing in her kitchen, surrounded by white cupboards and
cream-colored tile, with an empty glass that had once
contained bitter tasting fruit juice (that should have
tasted sweet) resting in a stainless steel sink.
She walked out of the kitchen and into the living room,
her only light being the bulb over the kitchen stove. It
spilled out to provide just enough light to see the outline
of the living room furniture.
She just stood there, at the entrance to the hallway
that would lead her back to her room if she chose to walk
down it, with the light above the kitchen stove at her back
and her eyes studying the dark shadows of her living room
furniture. What else was there for her to do? She couldn't
sleep; laying down made her feel oddly vulnerable, so just
laying in her bed until she might eventually fall asleep
wasn't a very appealing option, and she didn't feel like
reading or doing anything on her computer.
Maybe a monster would attack and occupy her time. If
she exhausted herself enough, she might be able to fall
asleep afterward.
Still standing in the living room, she looked at the
communicator on her wrist and waited for that telltale
beeping that would announce an attack of the monstrosity
kind.
And she waited.
And waited some more.
A sigh. So much for that idea. The blue-haired girl's
head drooped forward until her chin hit her chest. She
would just have to find something else to occupy herself
with. Just plain thinking was out of the question. Grief
almost always reared it's fanged head whenever she allowed
her thoughts to wander aimlessly. It was like the feeling
were just waiting to pounce, eager to sink it's claws into
her.
She walked over to her mother's living room desk and
turned on the desk lamp. The light was the sort one would
see on an accountant's desk, right down to the green plastic
light shade over the fluorescent bulb. It provided enough
light to see the details of the living room clearly, and was
pleasantly dim. Ami didn't want any bright lights at the
moment.
She wandered over to the entertainment center, enjoying
the soft carpeting beneath her bare feet. There were
several pictures strategically placed on the shelves and on
top of the entertainment center, and she took her time
looking at them, remembering every moment captured in the
flash of a camera. She and her mother at her mother's
cousin's baby shower. That had been interesting. Her mother
at her break in the hospital, wearing her scrubs and the
white coat that signified one to be of the medical
profession. She was sitting down at a table with a
dark-haired woman and had a smile of amusement on her face.
It was nice to see her mother happy. A picture of herself
reading on the old sofa they'd had until two years ago, her
baby picture . . . she stopped dead at one image.
It was of her and her father. She was seven years old
and his chin was resting on the top of her head with his
arms around her middle. Ami could remember everything from
the day that picture was taken ("Smile for the camera
Ami-chan!"). Her mother and her father had decided to spend
a Sunday at the park near where they used to live. They'd
had a picnic. Watching her father make a smiley-face out of
the food on her plate and handing it to her with a flourish
was one of her fondest memories. He'd been so creative with
everything. Faces out of food, dragons out of clouds, even
sound given form; along with the breathtaking landscapes
that he was more known for, he had also loved to paint
fantastical, sometimes even silly images. He had sent those
paintings to her the most often. Each painting had come
with a small envelope containing a note that told of how
he'd gotten the idea for the painting, always starting with
"My dear little Sunfish."
Sunfish had been his pet name for her. "You are as
bright as the sun and are like a fish in the water, so
you're my little Sunfish," he had said to her once when she
had asked why he called her the name. Her father always
made her feel like the best person in the whole world.
And now he was gone.
She let out a shaky breath and realized she was crying.
Again. Tears had come in fits and spurts since he had died.
Hit by a car in Kyoto on his way to breakfast. Now that she
thought about it, Ami realized that that was an incredibly
stupid way for him to die. He could've taken the bus there
instead of walking across the hazardous streets, couldn't he
have? That would have been the sensible thing, wouldn't it
have been? How could he have just LEFT! Her fingers
tightened around the picture of her and her father, almost to
the point of breaking the plastic frame. She didn't know
when she had picked it up. He left her all alone in a world
where no one truly understood her! He had been her constant,
her solid rock in the raging river of life, and--
The back of Ami's neck prickled. Her eyes slowly
scanned the room, sure that there was someone else in the
dim room with her. She could swear it on her father's
grave, in fact.
"Father?" she whispered. The room was silent.
It was nothing, Ami, she thought to herself. Just
wishful thinking. There was no one in the room with her.
It wasn't possible, was it? Putting the picture back on the
shelf, she decided to try going to sleep again.
But, after she had turned off the desk lamp and started
down the hall to her room, she couldn't get the thought out
of her mind that she had felt a feather light touch on her
shoulder while in the living room.
* * * * *
She felt me, I know she did.
I've been watching Emiko and my daughter ever since they
got home. I honestly don't know how I got here from the
cemetery, just that one second I was wishing to be with them
when they got to their apartment, and the next I'm standing in
their living room watching them come through the door of their
home in Tokyo. I guess it's just a useful perk of the
afterlife.
I went back and forth between watching Emiko sleep
fitfully and my daughter lay in her bed and not sleep at
all. I had watched Ami get up and get a glass of juice and
then watched her look at the pictures in the living room.
When she had gotten to the picture of her and me, and I had
seen the tears run down her cheeks and the grief apparent on
her face, I was overcome with a need to comfort my little girl.
Always my little girl. My little Sunfish.
I tried to touch her shoulder, and the second my
ghostly hand brushed the warmth of her physical body, her
back had stiffened and she had looked around the room
warily. And then she whispered my name.
My name! She knew, somehow, that it was me in the
room! She'd felt it! "It's me, Ami, I'm here!" I'd called.
But, of course, she hadn't heard me. It was, and still
is, incredibly frustrating.
As she walks down the hallway towards her bedroom, I
see her crack open Emiko's door and check on her mother.
Apparently finding nothing wrong, she eases the door shut
without a sound. Oh, what a good doctor she will make with
her kind of care! That warm feeling of pride for my little
Sunfish flares up again.
Ami turns back around in the hallway suddenly. She has
this little frown of concentration on her face, an
expression that I've found so wonderfully cute ever since
she was a toddler. I'm standing only a few feet in front of
her, and she looks right through me while obviously trying
to find something in the hallway with her. "Ami, can you
feel me?" I whisper. I reach out a hand towards her, having
a silly urge to wave my hands in front of her face and jump
up and down like a little boy in order to catch her
attention.
She shakes her head. "You're cracking up, Ami.
There's nothing there," she murmurs.
"But there IS!" I scream. But it's no use. She just
turns her back on me and pads down the hallway to her room.
She shuts the door behind her.
I'm a depressed ghost. How cliché. How many movies
have been made and stories written about ghosts and spirits
who despair over not being able to let loved ones know they
are there? I've read plenty of stories about the subject,
and seen quite a few websites dedicated to the subject of
ghosts and why they exist. Paranormal stuff is just a
little fascination of mine.
That brings me to think that maybe this isn't really
even happening at all. What if my mind has somehow
incorporated my fascination with ghosts and spirits into a
dream? An extremely vivid dream, but it might be.
But I don't believe it.
Though, if this actually _is_ a dream or hallucination
I'm having while in a coma or something, it's nice to know
that my active imagination will follow me everywhere. Or
maybe I'm imagining all this while I'm dying? I'm reminded
of an American story written by a man named Ambrose Bierce.
I remember coming across it in a library while finding
information for a paper in college. It is an odd, but
creative short story, by the name of "An Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge."
Set during the American Civil War, it is about a man
named Peyton Farquhar being hanged by Federal soldiers.
Just as he is about to be hanged, he imagines his escape and
return to his wife and home in vivid detail. Anyone reading
the story for the first time would think he really _has_
escaped the noose and gotten home safely. But, as he
finally reaches his goal of seeing his wife, the reader is
struck with the sudden reality that Farquhar's neck has just
been snapped by the cruel rope. His whole escape has only
been a last second thought before death.
Is that what this truly is, this life after death? I
quite possibly could only be imagining all of this while
dying in the middle of the street in Kyoto.
But, even if I am, I'm still not going to stop being
here for my family.
Part Three: A Walk In the Park
Ami stared at the ceiling. It was off-white. How
blank. It was what she desperately wanted her mind to be
for just a little while.
She had been awake for the past half hour, having been
woken by the sharp beams of sunlight cutting through her
window, and she had been staring up at the ceiling ever
since. Four hours of sleep. Even so little time in
oblivion was welcome to her, since she had expected to get
much less.
Turning her head to the side, she saw that the glowing
green numbers read 6:50. On a normal day she would have
been getting ready for school by this time. But, today
wasn't a normal day, and neither had the trio of days before
been. It didn't matter if she went to school today; she was
far enough ahead in her classes that missing some days
wouldn't harm her grades. Besides, her not going to school
for a while was expected.
She got up. Maybe she would go for a walk. See the
multi-colored leaves in the park before they all turned
brown with decay. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she
slipped out of her pajamas and took out a pair of jeans and
a warm sweater. She buttoned up her jeans and shrugged on
the sweater, slid some thick socks onto her feet, and grabbed
a light jacket. She didn't want a cold to add to her
troubles.
She wondered if her mother was up yet. Looking in her
mirror, she noticed that her hair was a mess. She didn't
particularly care that it looked like a bird's nest, but she
supposed that she should at least make an attempt at making
it decent. After running a brush through her hair until it
had some semblance of normalcy, she left her room with her
jacket over one shoulder.
Her mother woke up when Ami cracked the door open.
They just looked at each other for a few long moments.
"Are you going out?" her mother asked from the bed.
Ami opened the door fully and entered the room. She
sat on the edge of the bed next to her mother. "Hai, just
to the park," she answered. Mother looks worse than I do,
she thought.
They didn't ask one another if they were all right;
they already knew the answer. Ami and her mother were not
all right, and wouldn't be for quite some time.
Instead, Ms. Mizuno only asked her daughter to be
careful.
Ami nodded and kissed her mother on the cheek before
she left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
* * * * *
Ami walked along a nearly deserted pathway in the park
with her head down, looking at the gray concrete rolling
along beneath her feet. Her hands were in her jacket
pockets. She felt a little chilly.
Being only a little past seven in the morning, there
were not a whole lot of people in the park. Those she did
see were morning joggers or just plain morning people. Or
maybe some, like herself, just couldn't sleep the morning
away no matter how hard they tried.
A bright blue sky looked down upon her, with a few
white clouds stacked upon each other like piles of
comfortable pillows dotting the blue expanse. A dark
thought snaked its way into her mind through a doorway of
sleep deprivation, whispering that the sky itself was
mocking her. The blue-haired girl was inclined to agree
with it.
Feeling the urge to have the springy feel of grass
beneath her feet, she edged around a trash can to her right
and stepped off the gray pathway. She was disappointed to
feel a flat jolt as her sneaker-clad feet connected with the
ground. The grass may have still been green, but it was
dying in accordance to the approaching winter, it's springy
feeling gone.
Letting out an aggrieved sigh, she stepped back around
the trash can and let herself collapse onto the wood and
iron bench sitting next to it. She let her head fall back
on the top of the backrest and got a glimpse of the
sickeningly cheerful blue sky (with pillowy white clouds)
above her, before her eyes slid shut.
Ami was an intelligent person. She had read numerous
passages out of equally numerous books on psychology. She
knew the stages of grief and the exact order those stages
went in. But reading about such things in a book and
knowing those stages hadn't helped her at all. Her
knowledge was little use and poor comfort in the face of
actually feeling what she had read about.
And right now, she had almost achieved a state of
blissful blankness within her mind. The morning sun was
shining right on her, making her feel warm all over despite
the slightly nippy air. After the restless nights and
constant emotional stress, her mind seemed to be giving up
the ghost (Father?) and shutting down for a nice nap right
on the bench. Sleep . . .
Part Four: A Helping Hand
A sound intruded upon her little bubble of peace. Ami
put a little effort into forcing her mind into awareness,
instead of sinking back into a dream of white pillows and
night darkened waters with hundreds of stars twinkling
overhead. As she gradually rose from the depths of sleep,
the sound stopped being one noise and became what she
realized to be voices coming from two different sets of
vocal cords. One was husky and sounded very male to her,
and the other was higher pitched and almost musical, and
sounded very female.
Her curiosity overrode her want of sleep, and her eyes
fluttered open to see the cheerfully blue sky above her.
That sickeningly cheerful blue sky.
Sometimes she wished that she hadn't been raised not to
curse and make rude gestures whenever she was this
irritated.
Shoving the feeling aside, more because she didn't much
feel like depressing herself much anymore than because she
remembered that she had heard voices, she looked to her
right.
Kaioh Michiru smiled back at her.
Well, she thought, where there's one . . . . She looked
to her left.
Tenoh Haruka raised a slightly amused eyebrow.
There's the other.
"Good morning, Ami-san," Haruka greeted her.
"What are you two doing here?" Ami rasped. "I thought
there were classes today."
"There are," Michiru replied.
"Just not for Mugen Gakuen today," Haruka continued.
Seeing that Ami was having trouble wrapping her mind
around her partner's words, Michiru added, "It's a 'staff
development' day."
Haruka snorted. Michiru aimed a sharp look at her.
Ami was oblivious to the exchange. "Oh." The girl
looked at one, then at the other. "That still doesn't
explain why you're _here_." She indicated the bench the
three of them were sitting on.
The blonde girl reared her head back in indignation.
"Well if you don't want us here . . . ."
"Haruka, hush," Michiru chided. The violinist looked
back to Ami. "We saw you sleeping here and didn't think it
a wise idea to leave you sleeping alone in a park. So, we
decided to keep you company."
Normally, Ami would have been a little nervous and
off-balance around the aloof pair. They had always seemed
so inaccessible, like they were on a pedestal far above her.
But, even though the famous pair was much higher than her
socially, they didn't seem that bad in person. Also, she
wasn't feeling much of anything but disappointment and grief
anymore, and this strangely comfortable feeling was making
her feel a little better. At least it was taking her mind
off of her father.
Haruka decided to start the conversation up again. "We
heard about your father."
Ami came very close to growling, but then gave up on
the reaction. Too much energy would be expended in the
effort. At least they seemed to know about it so she
wouldn't have to explain it. She nodded.
"Does your falling asleep here have anything to do with
that? Taking naps in public parks isn't a very smart thing
to do, you know," the tall blonde commented.
Ami winced. Falling asleep there _was_ an incredibly
stupid thing of her to have done. But she was just so tired
lately . . . . It was then that she realized what an
opportunity she had at that moment. She hadn't been willing
to talk to anyone about her father's death, mainly because
the only people she had to talk to were much too close to
her. It was a struggle for her to talk to close friends
such as Usagi, Rei, Makoto, and Minako, about such personal
things. Sometimes she just needed to be listened to by an
impersonal ear.
And here were two of them sitting next to her,
seemingly willing to listen.
"Yes, my falling asleep here does have to do with . . .
that."
"Mmhmm." Michiru waited patiently.
Ami's cheeks reddened completely without her consent.
She hated trying to find words in emotional situations.
Life had been so much simpler when she had an almost
constant clinical detachment. "I . . . umm . . . would you
mind," she shoved a few wind-blown locks of hair out of her
eyes, "if I talked to you about it?" There. She'd said it.
Now what were they going to say?
"You want to talk? Then we're here to listen," was,
surprisingly, Haruka's answer. Surprising, at least, to
Ami.
Oh great, Ami thought. Now what do I say? I can't
just tell them _everything_, can I?
But why not? What did she have to lose? She didn't
have much to lose in telling them, and shouldn't she, for
once in her life, get a whole issue out into the open? What
was the worst thing that could happen?
Well, there was totally embarrassing herself in front
of Haruka and Michiru, for one.
Oh, hell, Ami. Just spit it out and get it over with.
If you're lucky, you might feel better afterward. Take a
freaking risk for once!
And so she did.
She told them everything. From how she felt when her
mother told her about her father's death Saturday morning,
to how she couldn't shut her mind down enough to sleep at
night.
"I think the worst part about it all, is that I never
got to say goodbye to him," she sniffled. "I know, I know,
I couldn't have known that he was going to get hit by a
stupid car on his way to breakfast, but it's still hard."
A comfortable quiet enveloped the three girls on the
bench after Ami's tear choked statement, broken only by
distant city sounds and the closer chirpings of birds.
Michiru made a small humming sound. "Shall I give you
a little advice, Ami-san?"
"Please, do." Maybe the violinist would be able to
solve her problems with a few well-placed words. Yeah,
right, Ami's pessimistic side retorted. A few "well-placed
words," and presto! All of your problems are magically
solved! Ami could have sworn that someone "tsked" like an
exasperated mother into her ear. Since when have you
reverted to the age of inanimate plastic toys? Things don't
work like that.
Michiru brushed an errant leaf the color of spilled
blood off of her skirt. "I think I might know a way for you
to take a big step in accepting your father's death,
Ami-san. Your father was a very talented painter. Haruka
and I went to one of his exhibitions once." Ami blinked in
surprise. "Has his talent for the brush passed on to you?"
A faint blush colored Ami's cheeks. She nodded
tentatively. "I paint once in a while, yes." She wasn't
the best, and she certainly wasn't as good as Michiru, but
Ami had a slightly above average artistic ability.
"When I feel strongly about something, or agitated, it
often helps if I paint the issue," Michiru continued. "Many
of my best paintings were spurred by the strongest of
feelings. Maybe if you paint your father as you remember
him, with all of your feeling for him, you might be able to
deal with his passing better."
"You should listen to her about this stuff. I do,"
Haruka murmured. Her indigo eyes held Ami's navy blue for a
moment before the racer broke contact to look at her
partner. A smile twitched the blonde's lips.
"Paint him," Ami sighed. Painting therapy. She
thought she remembered reading an article about that once.
"I think I'll try that." Ami stood on newly strengthened
legs, born from a spark of hope for a not so bleak tomorrow.
It was like seeing the proverbial light at the end of the
tunnel.
"Thank you, Haruka-san, Michiru-san. I truly
appreciate your impersonal ears." Ami was rolling along on
a painted pathway towards a better tomorrow, and the words
coming from her mouth were sincere and straight from the
brain. As such, Haruka and Michiru didn't really understand
the "impersonal ear" part as the blue-haired girl strode
quickly down the park's cement pathway with canvas and
oil-based paints on her mind.
Haruka and Michiru shared a content, but quizzical
look.
"Geniuses. Who knows what goes on up there."
* * * * *
When Ami came home, her mother was sitting at her desk
in the living room, dressed for the day in a pair of
comfortable tan slacks and a Tokyo University sweatshirt.
Ami's mother hadn't been a student at the university, but
had been in charge of a volunteer blood drive there; the
university gave her and the other volunteers the sweatshirts
as a reward. As Ami entered the apartment, the older woman,
with hair just a shade blue lighter than her own, looked up
from a sheet of paper she was reading.
"Hi, mother" Ami greeted, studying the maternal side of
her parentage. Her face seemed to have a few more lines
than she remembered there being, and her pallor was just
short of being as white as the walls of the living room.
But, there wasn't that completely lost and defeated look in
her eyes anymore. There was sadness and a bone-deep
weariness in them, but no sign of the defeat that Ami had
dreaded the permanent occupancy of in her mother's cerulean
eyes. The look that was now in her eyes was one that was
very familiar to the fifteen-year-old genius. She saw it
every time her mother came home after one of her patients
died.
With infinite relief, Ami realized that her mother was
on her way to accepting her ex-husband's death.
Now, Ami needed to do the same for herself.
"What're you reading?" she asked her mother.
The elder Mizuno blinked down at the paper she had been
looking at. "Oh, just an old letter from your father."
Ami walked up to her mother, giving her a hug from
behind. She rested her chin on her mother's shoulder and
looked down at the letter. There were several other letters
on the desk, all with a slanted handwriting that she
recognized immediately. Her father's handwriting.
Her mother sighed and smoothed down a folded corner of
the letter. "This one was when he went on that trip to the
States."
Ami remembered that trip. She had been six years old
when her father had gone on that three week trip. She had
missed her giant playmate terribly, but he had made it up to
her by coming back with a set of watercolor paints and a
child-sized easel for her.
Her mother told her little things about each letter for
a time, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying, Ami right
along with her.
After a little while, Ami decided it was time. "I need
to do something. It might take me a long time to do it, but
a . . . friend of mine says it should be done."
Ms. Mizuno looked at her daughter. "Okay. I'll leave
you to it." She gave her daughter's back a little rub.
"Just tell me if you need me, all right?"
A smile curved Ami's lips and she kissed her mother on
the cheek. "Sure thing."
Ami left her mother to her letters and walked down the
hallway to her room. If she remembered correctly, she still
had a blank canvas in her closet and her paints and brushes
were in her desk drawer.
* * * * *
Ami paid no attention to the time as she painted. The
canvas was her world, the wooden easel was the mythical
Atlas holding it up, and the paints and brushes at her side
were her tools of creation. Newspaper crinkled on the floor
as she dropped a paint-stained rag in favor of adding a new
color to her brush.
As she painted, she barely noticed her mother's brief,
concerned looks into her room, and the setting sun coloring
her room's light-blue walls a soothing lavender shade.
It was a long time before her new-found artistic
inspiration began to lose steam. She began to notice her
over-stressed body's complaints, grumpily communicated to
her through a parched throat, a fiercely growling stomach,
and the all around pains of exhaustion. Her breathing was
heavy and her hands were starting to shake.
But that was all right. She looked at the image
replacing the previously empty canvas. It wasn't yet
complete . . . but she had the strong feeling that it was as
complete as she was going to get it.
The picture was, of course, of her father, as per
Michiru's suggestion. Ami had put everything she had into
this picture; every bit of grief, every ounce of happiness,
every feeling she had ever had for her father. The image
itself was created with soft, feathery brushstrokes, and
realistic uses of both dark and light colors. Her father
was sitting on a plain wooden chair, his pose one of relaxed
contentment, dressed in the same grey t-shirt and jean
shorts that she remembered him wearing the day of her
favorite picnic. His left arm was resting on a wooden table
as plain as the chair, his hand holding a pair of his
ever-present sunglasses. His black hair was pleasantly
mussed as it had always seemed to be, and his chocolate
brown eyes held a mirth that was reflected by the warm smile
on his lips. The room around him was painted in slightly
darker colors than her father, and only two decorations
adorned the two visible yellow walls. One was a poster of
her father's favorite baseball team, an American team
called the Mariners.
"Here's the thing you most need to know about baseball,
my little Sunfish," he had said to her once. "We Japanese
may be a little better at the sport than the Americans, but
they know how to have fun. _That's_ why I like an American
team, and always will."
The other decoration, directly over the table on the
second of the two walls, was a window.
There wasn't anything really special about the window.
It looked to be made of the same color wood as the chair and
table, except the windowsill had carvings of distinctly
Japanese fish on both sides. She didn't know why she had
painted them in, just that it seemed so _right_ to do so.
However, there was one more thing that made the window stand
out.
Empty canvas shown through what would have been glass
had it not been a painting.
And that was why it was still unfinished. Ami knew
_something_ had to go there, she just wasn't sure _what_.
But, she was also sure that she was done with it. She was
filled with the comforting assurance that all would be well
in the end. Who knew? Maybe someone was supposed to come
along and finish it.
Yeah, right, Ami. Get a grip, will you?
Ami chuckled to herself, tickled with the prospect of
someone filling in the blank spot in her painting. Who
would ever do that? She stretched her sore muscles and
looked back at her clock. She was very surprised to see
that the glowing numbers read three o'clock in the morning.
"Wow, no wonder I feel like I've been hit by a bus."
Unable to ignore her need for food and drink anymore,
Ami got up on shaky legs and headed for the kitchen. The
apartment was dark, and her mother was obviously in bed. In
an exhausted haze, she hastily ate some leftover pork and
rice right out of the carton without even pausing to taste
it, and drank two tall glasses of water. Absently throwing
the carton away, she headed back to her bedroom, exchanged
her clothes for some comfortable flannel pajamas, slid under
the covers, and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
For the first time in days, Mizuno Ami slept with a
smile on her face.
* * * * *
I have to admit, that Michiru woman knew what she was
talking about. Watching my daughter paint, not just with
her brushes, but with her soul, was one of the most
beautiful things I've ever seen. But, even as the artist in
me appreciated the painting, the father in me wanted to
firmly take the brush out of her hand and gently tuck her
into bed. I mean, she was wearing herself out to the point
of collapse! What kind of father would I be, if I didn't
want to take care of my own daughter?
I would be the same kind of father I had been since she
was eight.
Yes, yes, I sent her my paintings and letters, but what
did they really mean in the long run? They were a shallow
attempt to stay in contact with my daughter and to show her
that I cared, when if I really _had_ cared, I would have
visited her at least once. But did I ever visit her? _NO_.
I was too busy painting and sightseeing, and trying to
forget that it was partly my fault that Emiko and I
divorced and left Ami without a father. And here Ami has
gone and painted me as she remembers me, in an attempt to
show her gratitude and grief for a man who practically
ignored her after he left when she was eight damn years old.
EIGHT! How could I have done that!
I don't deserve her grief! Not my daughter's, and not
my ex-wife's! It's not as if I had ever done anything for
them, is it? I don't think so.
Ami is shivering. Did I do that? I instinctively go
over and pull the covers closer around her.
And did I just do _that_?
I touch the covers again . . . and I actually TOUCH
them. I don't mean my incorporeal hand touched them in the
way of passing through the covers, I mean I've actually
TOUCHED them! I can't believe this! Maybe it's _feeling_
that's enabling me to do this? I look at the painting
resting on its easel across the bed from me, the blank
window beckoning me. Well, Koji, you may not deserve your
daughter's care for you, but you're sure as hell gonna
reciprocate it while you've got the chance.
I walk around the bed to the unfinished painting. Ah,
my little Sunfish, it's got your style, but where's _you_?
This painting is empty with just me. And is this truly how
you see--no, saw me? Was I ever that young? I laugh.
Well, now . . . I see the problem. It's all to realistic.
And it needs just a little of my touch . . . . You've put
your all of your feelings for me into this, and so will I
for you.
I finish filling in the empty window some time later.
Shortly after I put the brush down, a golden light appears
in the room. What is this? I turn to see . . . oh. Oooh.
It's . . . it's so beautiful. Is that . . . yes, yes it is.
Mother . . . . She offers a hand to me, and then gestures
to Ami with the other. A choice . . . .
* * * * *
Ami awoke with an urgent need to visit the bathroom.
Stumbling to the door that adjoined her room and her own
bathroom, she did her business with much relief. As she
washed her hands, she looked at herself in the mirror of her
medicine cabinet. She looked better than she had the day
before. She wasn't quite as pale and drawn looking, and the
bags under her eyes were definitely lighter. She breathed
in, and smelled the slightly acrid smell of paint. She
yawned and left the bathroom to take another look at her
painting, amusedly wondering if someone finished her
painting for her.
She looked at the painting.
Well what do you know. Someone did.
Ami rubbed her eyes, thinking that her eyes were
playing tricks on her. It took three determined rubs (that
just caused her eyes to water) for her to be convinced that
her eyes _weren't_ playing tricks on her.
Someone had finished her painting.
She didn't know how long she stood there gaping. She
shook her head and took a closer look at the window that had
been blank before she went to bed. Maybe her mother . . . ?
No, her mother didn't paint this, she was never into
painting. Could she have done this in her sleep? This was
. . . no, it couldn't be. Ami studied the finished window,
noting how the bolder, more assured strokes contrasted with
her feathery, somewhat hesitant ones. It reminded her very
much of her father's style, but that wasn't possible, was
it?
Why not, Ami? You've been dead before, and _you_ did
something for someone you cared about. Usagi, the world,
doesn't matter except that the dead _can_ do things.
The image filling the window was of a clear blue sea
that was a very odd sight to look at considering that it was
a window from what seemed to be a normal house that the
observer was looking at it through.
And, there was a sunfish swimming in that sea. Her
logical side briefly took over while she was foundering in
her own sea of disbelief. It's not a sea, because a sea is
saltwater and a sunfish is a freshwater fish-- Ami batted
her logical persona away. It was a sea, she was sure of it.
The whole picture now smacked of the illogical. Her father,
in a normal room with a pair of sunglasses, with a sunfish
looking through the window at him. It was just the sort of
image that her father would have painted, because he had
loved painting this sort of thing. Fantasy. Things that
couldn't, under normal circumstances, possibly be real.
Ami was now almost completely convinced that her father,
or rather, the ghost of her father, had finished her
painting.
But, it was the signature that cemented the fact that
her father actually _had_ finished it.
His small, familiar-like-the-back-of-her-hand, stylized
initials were etched into the corner of the painting's
window, right below the bottom tip of the sunfish's waving
tail.
She sat on the edge of her bed and cried. Not tears of
grief, like she had been for the past several days, but
tears of pure joy and relief. He was _there_. He had
acknowledged her goodbye and her love for him.
After a few more minutes of crying, Ami kissed her
fingertips and pressed them to her painted father's
forehead, extending her love to him wordlessly. She went to
the kitchen and poured herself a glass of juice.
It had never tasted sweeter.
END
Wow, it's finally done. Yay for me!
Comments and criticism can be sent to
daylin@sailorsenshi.i-p.com
Revised: 7/24/02