Title: Seas and Souls of Sunken Ships
Summary: In which a younger Shikamaru ponders his way with words and clouds.
Fandom: Naruto - Featuring Nara Shikamaru
Words: 1201
Shikamaru loved words.
He loved the way the every stroke and every character danced across the crisp white of paper, how they leapt around stiff lines and bent them to their will. How they mixed and mingled into one blurry picture of distortions, of swirls in dented mirrors and warped art, how, after a while, he could no longer discern one inked word from another.
It was hard to write, like controlling charging bulls seeing red under the base of a single thumb, to struggle with shepherding a flustered sheep, squirming and kicking like petulant toddlers and whining infants.Yet it was satisfying, to take up the art of writing blindly, to be able to allow his hand to act independently of his betraying eyes, for he knew that words did not move like that.
Sometimes though, he just felt like giving up, when he just wanted to lay his head down on the cool surface of the table, and trace the smooth contours of the edges with his fingers. Sometimes it took too much out of him to concentrate (way too much), to focus and focus (and focus) until he could feel a migraine building up in the knots of his brain, to extort all of his effort into deciphering the traitorous strokes until he had none left to spare.
Sometimes he knew what he wanted to say, what he wanted to write, it was all so clear in his head yet when he tried, they just would not come out and he was so frustrated and why won't they just listen to me and let me write?
Sometimes he watched the other children effortlessly scrawl out their chicken-scratches in response to the words on the pristine white of the sheets, and he wondered if their words twirled around as much as his did, if they found it as hard to keep up with their waltzes and tangos as he did. He wondered if they were just better at it than himself, and he was just being lazy and not trying hard enough.
He loved tuning out the voice of his teacher at the front of the class, spouting words that reached his ears as a jumbled mess of instructions, lectures and advice, too blended up for him to pick out the individual phrases and string them into coherent sentences, for he knew that even as he tried, along the way he would lose track and everything will fade back into the array of confusing noises and sounds of people talking and the birds were chirping outside, people were laughing not far off and the leaves on the trees were rustling to the rhythm of the wind whispering their secrets and just concentrate damnit!
Sometimes he pretended he could read the marks on the chalkboard. Sometimes he watched with unseeing eyes at the black board, staring into its swirling void, like the edges of a building tornado whipping its lashes, capturing bodies of diagrams and the limbs of characters, flippantly flinging them carelessly towards the corners of the classroom, where they picked themselves up and started their own little performance, and he would let his gaze linger on their svelte figures, watched their tilting bodies as they brushed the air with their merry gaits, until he could hear one loud booming sentence with sudden clarity, his attention snapped back at the front of the class and he would be angry with himself, he would resist the urge to fist his hair and yell at himself to concentrate damnit - why was it so hard?
But what he loved most of all, were his own words.
He loved how every visible effort of his own part gives birth to a new stroke, a new character, its lopsided figure and mirrored features just another way of proving that every single character is precious, that there is no wrong ones or right ones, nice ones or ugly ones because they are like his own children, born from his fingers gripping the pen tightly, almost painfully, struggling and frowning and gnawing on his lower lip as he gives his very best to every one of these beautiful, animate beings.
He loved how they would come to life before his eyes, and his eyes only, how they seemed to celebrate just being there, with him, celebrate their living and living to dance and prance and cheer. He could almost hear the cacophony of chortles and the feather weight of happiness and contentment from his own little community, he could follow them with his own two eyes -and his only- as they gracefully slid off the page in a trance, a spell, as they marched across the table in unruly columns like a child's first steps, and, with some imagination on his part, they would gain speed and take off onto the ledge of the window, a leap and they would spread their invisible wings and soar into the air, against the wind, climbing higher and higher.
Like dots of black birds they would fly into the sky, dark against the clear blue backdrop, and they would ultimately come to a rest upon the white fog, torn and tattered with rounded tears, like a veil shielding the blue sky from human eyes and only through those tears could Shikamaru see, amongst his own black characters, a sea of lighter blue, and the clouds are the souls of happy ships, sunken long ago, and the black characters have taken residence on the whitewashed decks, waiting for him to come home to them.
Sometimes, when he himself lay in the field, soft grass tickling the nape of his neck, fingers laced and wedged under his head like a makeshift pillow, he would glance up towards the clouds. And he would pretend that all the little words that he had brought to existence, all his little children, are somewhere up there, hiding amongst the folds of the cotton silk, waiting, waiting for him to soar right up there and pluck them from the tangles of the white yarn; scoop them from the icy cold of the sea of sky; and sweep them up from the whitewashed decks of the souls of sunken ships. Bring them back down to the ground, pressing them into the pages where they belong, where his eyes would - he hoped - someday be able to watch as the characters stay still and silent, and he would be able to read them and know them as they are individuals, for every word has a story and he wants, he needs to know the stories of his own children.
He knew that, he hoped that, if he just concentrated hard enough (damnit just focus), one day his wish may come true.
But for now, he will watch the clouds where they reside, watching, waiting, conserving his energy to one day (just one day) be able to sprout invisible wings as his children have done, to soar into the clouds, shrouded by the cotton white of the silk veil, like the pristine white of the crisp paper, for the sky is the sea and the clouds are the souls of happy ships, sunken long ago.