A/N: For anyone who stumbled here and hasn't watched Mononoke, you should. The animation is really beautiful, but not in the whole 'Hey I am anime for girls and there is nothing ugly in the world' with 'my God it is getting annoying with all these beautiful men falling in love with me' storylines. It's really intriguing. It's too hard to explain...at least that's how I find it. It's probably not everyones cup of tea but I am going have to say this is my favouritest anime in the history of everest (a bold statement because I change my mind like no tomorrow). I think it is one that all anime fans should check out at one point or another (if me saying 'favouritest in the history of everest' doesn't convince you, I don't know what will). I think the best time to watch it is after several nights of no sleep. Ok. Enough with the gushing.
What partly makes this anime so compelling is that you never really find out anything much about the Medicine Seller himself, even though he's the protagonist. It makes him hard for me to put into words. I've wanted to write a Mononoke fanfic for quite some time now but couldn't bring myself quite to do it. A description I read on one of the videos uploaded on youtube about the transformation scenes is probably what kick started this. There was also a lovely comment about the mirror being passed from one conciousness to the other as a really sweet moment. I think so too.
(I love reading the comments on youtube. Some of them are pretty funny).
This is by no means perfect, but I hope I've captured some vague sense of the wonder that is the Medicine Seller. That and that it isn't a boring read :S Anyway this authors' note has gone way too long. Particularly as there is a high chance that no one will read this. To the disclaimer!
Disclaimer: I do not own the idea of Mononoke nor the Medicine Seller. I just wish I did.
xxx
It was the drift of tobacco smoke that awoke him.
A scent he found rare and unusual and particular. He opened his eyes to a world made of white. There was no floor beneath the soft soles of his dark animal skin shoes, no sky above his silver locks, no apparent distance in between. He stretched out a long, muscled arm wrapped in the tanned velvet of skin, sheathed in golden silk. Watched as one strong hand created space, a distance amid the tips of the fingers and the body.
How curious. How easy.
The strong fingers parted. Colour; in soft greens and purples but bold and sharp in their suddenness, where moments before there had only been white, flooded the gaps. His brown fingers slowly curled themselves into the roughness of his palm and he lowered his arm to his side once more.
Before him, in a newer distance, a figure had carefully knelt; dressed in strange, colourful garb smoking. He watched the knot of the purple cotton handkerchief, wrapping the head of the figure with another careful gesture; tilt backwards before slowly, slightly to the left. As though the kneeling figures pointed ears caught hold of a peculiar sound or - like the scent of tobacco, so alien to this white world - an unusual fragrance. The decorative pipe the figure balanced between precise fingers had paused and now hovered an inch from the purple curve of his upper lip. A painted smile to hide the genuine smiles.
'Oh? So you are here as well? My, my I had merely intended to sit on the soft grass and enjoy the perfume of the falling blossom. But...I must have... drifted...off.'
The tone was light and humorous. His gentle, deep voice occasionally pausing, so the sentences did not completely flow between the paint on his lips; but came in halting starts. The mannerism belonging to one who thought of too many things at once, who was perhaps unsure of how to phrase his sentences.
The spirit of the white world felt compelled to take a step towards this man. A form made corporeal with flesh, blood and bone. One which he knew he so well: the easy sloped shoulders, the wisps of grey hair, the twist of a wrist. These were all deeply embedded within his own being because, in truth, they were all his own. But the pipe that hovered, resting in those delicate fingertips, was not. For it was not he who had bought it for a small sum from a shop of curios, deftly packing its hollowed mouth with a sweet smelling tobacco. And just as the pipe did not belong to spirit, nor did the love for such a habit – the smoke reminded him too much of the wisped souls, lost, tangled on an aimless breeze. The ash upon the tongue tasting too much of war, the disease and the neglect that followed. No, smoking was a foreign habit to him. One of many that belonged solely to his human self, the medicine peddler.
'It has been...a long...long time.'
The spirit took another step towards the kneeling peddler and distance closed a little more between them. There was a memory. So vague it was almost forgotten.
The peddler turned his head slightly so the spirit caught glimpses of the markings, the painted seals that bound one to the other, and the curl of that inquisitive smile
'You are not fond of human smoke are you?' the peddlers sharp teeth flashed with amusement.
In days ancient and gone, spirits and gods existed in the spaces between the physical world. Spaces such as they now both occupied.
'How curious that I should be.'
Then humans tumbled into life onto the soft earth of the physical realm. Bringing along their selfish hearts with them. Their desperation for life, their fear for death, their grudges and their overwhelming love which turned in betrayal and sorrow. These were a feast for the spirits with an appetite for the tragic, the ayakashi, who gorged themselves on petty, human emotions. And ayakashi who attached themselves to such passions spawned mononoke.
The peddler turned back to his pipe and the spirit stepped closer.
'I wonder...now which of us is truly awake and...which is truly asleep?'
But mononoke were not allowed to exist. Not within the human world. Not in the spaces in between. Someone, something had to be given the task in hunting them down, slaying them and dispelling them from the physical realm.
'Perhaps we have met somewhere in the middle? I am merely partially asleep beneath the blossom trees and you have only partially awakened in this white world? '
However, to walk in the physical realm required a physical form. A breezed cooled at the spirits temple.
'So...what do you...suppose?'
Whether the task had been given or merely assumed was of no importance. But he had created a body to walk alongside humans. Whose aloof tones verged on the seductive, so those that surrounded his little plays –always broken down into three separate acts: form, truth and regret – would spill whispered secrets into his white ears. Key stage notes, hints towards an ending they may not have told altogether. A soft voice, but with dangerous edges to demand more when they had lied.
The breezed mixed together the scent of tobacco and blossom.
The peddler cast another glance behind his shoulder but the spirit did not answer. It did not trouble his mind. And there lay another difference.
'I wonder...no, that is to say, I have...often wondered...which of us is the form...which...the truth?'
The spirit continued to gaze at the peddler's back.
It was a play on words. More precisely, the words used in a speech the peddler often gave with every separate story told. Although differing slightly for each individual– at times quick and sharp, at others drawn out slowly, like unsheathing a long blade from its scabbard - their meaning always remained the same.
But he was using them differently here. What the peddler really desired to know was the beginning of one being and the ending of the other. So, in a voice as harsh as cries for battle, the spirit replied.
'I am you and you are me.'
It was typical of his human form to phrase his question so obscurely. More so the playful manner he had to ask it. It was understood by many, the spirit notwithstanding, that the peddlers' sense of humour was a little odd – evident from the curious ornaments he picked up, which frequently caused a ripple of scandalous delight among the young maids to noble houses - at times a little cruel. Trickery of others seemed to cause the peddler a sensation of great delight and he revelled in provoking reactions from others. Whilst on a merchants ship caught on a long, sad journey besieged by ayakashi to edo; he had openly laughed, his teeth flashing, at the moment his fellow voyagers turned to him in hope.
To find humour in the most obscure situations. Yet another habit that the spirit did not own. Nor fully understood.
The spirit was close enough now to hear the first flutter of a laugh.
'Is that so?'
As a human, the medicine peddler understood the emotions that ruled humans and mononoke alike. But as with all humans the medicine peddler was brittle. He bled and felt pain. He misjudged, at times taken off guard. And always he was susceptible to succumb to such raw emotions that would show in the grimace of sharp teeth or at the corners of his smooth and charming face.
'Yes.' The spirit said gently stepping closer still 'You encompass the flesh, I the spirit that resides deep within.'
A diminutive silence painted the walls of white in between.
'And...when our quest is complete...when all mononokes troubled souls have been laid to rest...what then?'
The spirit was an arm stretch away. The medicine peddler did not turn his head again. There was no need to. They could feel how close they were to one another.
'We go back.'
The answer was a simple one.
'To one entity?'
'Yes.'
The spirit was a breath away. Another gasp of smoke escaped the peddlers painted lips.
'And this human form will cease to exist.'
It was not a question. The spirit sank low on his haunches and curled his arms around the slope of the peddler shoulders.
'Yes.'
But perhaps he would be the one to disappear.
The medicine peddler laughed softly.
'Oh my...my...my...that is a scary thought.'
An arm clothed in the green wing of silk rose and laid a white hand against a dark cheek. The spirit spoke quietly into the curve of a white pointed ear, made corporeal by flesh and by blood.
'Yes.'
Trails of smoke coiled itself around them both.
'Perhaps we are both regret?'
Who knows, the spirit did not say.
The scent of blossom and smoke faded.
The spirit closed his eyes.