Disclaimer: Princess Mononoke belongs to Studio Ghibli. Not mine.
Love is warm white fur on a cold night, amber eyes so bright and wise they don't need human words to talk, sharp teeth pulled back in an always maybe-smile, maybe-growl, maybe-grimace. Love is racing together beneath the new moon against the hair tangling wind, two as one as three as four as one as two. One. Howling together, something like joy and something like pain and something that cannot be broken, not by iron or by fire or by flesh.
Love is not in smooth skin, worn brown beneath the sun, not in dark eyes, too small, too close-set, not in arms and hands and teeth that rely on things stolen from the earth, not on their own strength. Love is not in legs too heavy and sluggish to keep pace beneath the moonlight, not in voices that chatter, rather than sing of joy and pain and love. Love is not in something like him, who can be broken so easily, who leaves my side as effortlessly as falling to the ground after leaping off a tree branch.
Love is not in this boy who is as ugly as I am.
But he looks with eyes unclouded as the pool of the Forest Spirit, eyes that speak of endless tomorrows, possibilities that stretch as far as this forest of mine once used to. His voice, audible to my ears, rings clear like truth in my heart. In my dreams too, no longer wild dreams of blood and flames and fur and fang. Dreams of his voice and his hands and his name drifting on the wind like so many flower petals.
But he is one of them. But he is not one of them. He fought with me, but for them, and lives with them, but for me.
I clutch the crystal dagger at the hollow of my throat, watch the dappled sunlight play brokenly on its edge. It has replaced the chain of claws my mother gave me, my own set of proper teeth and claws, she called them.
Oh, Mother, help me. I am so confused.
I do not love him. I do not love this boy who smells of smoke and steel and human things. Who is stupid enough to forgive, stupid enough to forget, stupid enough to believe in human-dreams, human-words, human-lies like compromise and harmony. Who kills and kills with his cursed arm, yet mouths declarations against fighting and violence, then kills again. Who can ride an animal tethered and bound like a slave. Who dares to stop a sacred quest for vengeance. I do not love this boy. I cannot love this boy.
But he is the first being who has ever called me beautiful. Not even my Mother or Brothers would lie to me that way.
But he was not lying. He does not have eyes that can lie. He meant every word he said.
No. This is ridiculous. I cannot love him. He is human, and I can never forgive a human, much less love one. I know he too sees me as a human- they all do. They see smooth skin, worn brown beneath the sun, too small, close-set dark eyes,weak arms and hands and teeth that rely on strength stolen from the earth. They see a human, and a traitor.
But my heart howls rather than chatters, races rather than walks. I am a wolf, and betrayal is not in my blood.
He is a human-dreamer. A fool. He rebuilds their town, their fires, their tree-maiming, forest-killing, animal-slaughtering town. He leads their men, nurses them back to health, teaches them to fight "in case the samurai come back." He lets their women shadow him, too loud too brash too giggly to be shadows, as he works alongside them to bring fire and smoke and steel to my forest.
He lets that woman live.
So why does he occupy my every thought? I wonder, as I stare up at the full moon- alone, for now, my brothers off hunting, all of us mourning too much to howl together, to race together, for the pack would be lopsided and empty without Mother- if he is looking at it too.
I cannot love him. And yet I do.
I'm a fool. A silly, stupid, idiotic, loving fool.
Just like him.
Falling in love with this human boy is a betrayal of all the things I have ever held dear, of my home and hearth and the wolf that I am. But refusing to fall... that would be a betrayal of something older and deeper and truer than even my forest. A betrayal of joy and pain and love and all the things that cannot be broken, not by iron or by fire or by flesh or even by death. The things that make a wolf howl.
I throw my head back and howl at the moon, and somehow, I know that wherever he is, in that iron wood steam smoke fortress of his, he hears me, and that he will fall asleep with the sound of my howl echoing in his dreams.
That hearing and that knowing... that is love.
And it is enough.