** Standard disclaimer **
** This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people or
** places is at least mostly coincidental.
** Many of the characters in this work are the property of AIC,
** Pioneer, and probably a number of other Japanese people, all of
** whom are richer than me. Please do not sue this humble
explorer
** in the world to which you gave light.
** /Standard disclaimer **
** Author Note Thingum **
** In case anybody who doesn't know sees this, this
** story is part four in the series begun by Birthday Wishes.
** Continuity is, as always, OAV. Note that I have never read the
** manga or the novels, so any characters or events mentioned
** there which are also mentioned here will not be portrayed the
** same way.
** krin --(krin@hotmail.com)
** /Author Note Thingum **


Reflections Of A Shattered Glass


-- one --
dreams and memories

"I da..da..don't know about this Ka..Kagato. I mean,
wuh..what if she finds out too suh..soon?"

Kagato grinned and patted Yakage confidently on the shoulder.
Yakage flinched slightly at the touch, an unconscious motion.
Kagato knew Yakage hated being touched, so made it a point to do
so as often as possible.

"Don't worry Yakage, she isn't half as smart as she likes to
think she is. Besides," Kagato paused, fishing inside the vest of
his green and tan University uniform for a moment before
withdrawing a small metal vial and holding it tantalizingly before
Yakage's face, "You Do want this, don't you?"

"Th..tha..tha..." Yakage stuttered, a habit that annoyed
Kagato no end. "You really got it?" Yakage asked finally, giving
up on the word 'that.'

"I Said I would, didn't I?"

Yakage started to reach for the vial but Kagato slipped it
back into his sleeve before his associate's hands were halfway
there. "Uh uh, Yakage," he taunted, "You know the deal. We do
her first, Then you get the blood."

Yakage stared at the sleeve into which his prize had
vanished, unconsciously wetting his lips. Eventually he nodded.
"Oh..oh..okay. Buh..but I don't like th..this. I want to go on
th..the rec..record as having sah..said that."

"Record?" Kagato laughed, his spectacles flashing in the
diffuse light of the University lab as he tilted his head back.
"The only record we'll have is with the GP if we get caught. And
if we're captured saying you didn't like it won't do you a bit of
good Yakage. You're either in this or you're not. But if you're
not, you'll never, ever get that vial."

Yakage frowned for a moment, then nodded again.
"All..alright, Kagato. I'm in."

"Why do you persist with that stutter? No one stutters
anymore. I could fix it myself if you would let me."

"I..ih..it guh..gives me texture. Ehv..everyone here is the
suh..same, I want to be duh..different."

Kagato sighed and shook his head, the capacity of humanity
for stupidity was astounding.

"He..here she cuh..comes," Yakage stuttered as the outer door
of the laboratory slid open, "Luh..look busy."


Washuu typed rapidly, if distractedly, across a floating
keyboard near the middle of the lab. Before her hung a complex
lattice of data defining the chemical process she outlined with
her keystrokes. It shifted and evolved through scintillating
rotations as she added new molecules and altered the ambient
forces with deft commands, but Washuu's mind was elsewhere.

All the real work was done. Even all the follow-up work that
Washuu so hated was out of the way. All that was left to do now
was give the go-ahead and watch the light show. Today would be
the day that the Project, culmination of a century of research and
a decade of concentrated effort, came to fruition. Somehow,
though, Washuu did not feel the elation that usually accompanied
an experiment nearing its most important phases.

"Kagato," Washuu asked absently, watching as a long-chain
molecule drifted into the increasingly complex model rotating in
the air, "Do you have the v-tank prepped yet? If we don't start
soon we'll lose containment on the Massu."

"It has been prepared for the past half hour, Senior-
professor Hakubi," Kagato replied in that half-respectful-half-
mocking tone of his. "Yakage has nearly completed preparations
for the power coupling as well. Perhaps you have decided when we
will begin, Senior-professor Hakubi?"

Washuu sighed irritably and let the chemical structure
dissolve in a mass of degrading bonds. There was no point to it
anyway, tweaking the regeneration process by another half-percent
would not out-value any further delays to the Project.

*'The Project,'* Washuu thought in annoyance, *Why do I
insist on calling it that? Everyone, even Yakage when he thinks
I'm not listening, refer to.. her.. as my daughter. Am I becoming
too emotionally attached to the experiment and trying to
compensate by distancing myself? Subset fifty-four was much more
stable, but I used the sample created using my own ova instead.
Am I so desperate for company that I'll grow it in my lab?*

*Yes,* the answer came quickly from the depths of Washuu's
consciousness, "You are that desperate. And you know it.*

"Alright Kagato," Washuu said, stepping away from the
sequencing console and rubbing her hands together, trying to
generate the excitement she knew she should feel. "Let's get
started."


Washuu watched the Massu flowing through their confinement
tubes, wishing it was not necessary to use them. If it were not
for that requirement she could have done the entire experiment in
her own lab, away from University strictures and Fleet interests.
Away from Kagato and Yakage.

There was, of course, a supply of Massu floating in a large
tank within the depths of her lab, but the Project called for them
in the thousands and she simply could not muster that sort of
volume after her last little endeavor into Massu-based
engineering. With a reproduction cycle of one birth in forty-five
years, in a good century, it would have taken far too long to
replenish her dwindled supply to the point where it could be used
for the Project. So Washuu was forced to appeal to the University
board and label the Project a University sanctioned experiment,
thus incurring all their rules, regulations, and whims. That
meant bowing not only to the wishes of the board but also to those
of the Jurain Fleet, the controlling investor in the University's
continued existence. That meant Kagato and Yakage.

Washuu considered herself the greatest generalist scientist
in all existence, present or past, and of her small army of
amassed detractors, none had come close to disproving her claim.
Being an interpdisciplinarian did have its drawbacks though.
Primarily the fact that there was often someone who was
obsessively focused on one field of study and, despite being far
younger, surpassed Washuu's understanding in that narrow area.
When the University board saw that Washuu's project involved a
weapons system they immediately handed it off to the Fleet
interests committee. The University learned long ago the lesson
that when it came to weapons, hiding from Fleet was a bad idea.

Fleet saw the potential of Washuu's concept and decided
letting such a wonderful weapons platform go to waste would be
awful, so they assigned Yakage to the task. Yakage was widely
considered the most brilliant mind in weapons design. Ever.
Since he was old enough to hold a knife he had been designing,
building, and testing weapons delivery and defense systems. It
was said that in any armed conflict, no matter who was involved,
at least seventy percent of the weapons systems involved would
have been designed by Yakage. That was really saying something
for a person under two thousand years old.

Washuu thought she could have put up with Yakage, really. He
was obsessively narrow in focus, caring little about anything but
his precious weapons, but he was a scientist and a truly brilliant
mind in his way. Unfortunately, with brilliance comes
eccentricity, and Yakage certainly had his share. There was the
stutter, of course, but once you learned to hear around it it was
not really so bad. But then there were the swords. Yakage had a
thing for swords. To say that he liked them would be something
like saying 'Why yes, those Jurains certainly are fond of trees.'
Yakage's quarters, the very few times Washuu had seen them, nearly
dripped sharp edges. Every wall was covered in swords, models of
swords, designs for new swords, and pictures of swords in use.
There were stories that Yakage actually tested the things on
himself after making a new sword, slicing his flesh and cutting
grooves into his body just to observe the efficiency of his
creation. Washuu shuddered, obsession was one thing but Yakage's
love of sharp objects was just weird. But aside from insisting
that the weapons delivery system for the Project be capable of an
energy sword he kept his compulsions to himself, and Washuu
thought he would probably be tolerable alone.

But then there was Kagato. If someone were to ask Washuu who
had, in her tremendous tenure at University, annoyed her the most,
she would say Clay. Anyone who had been there more than a week
would say Clay. But if the hypothetical questioner were to
specify, 'who Besides Under-professor Clay,' she would have to say
Kagato.

There was just something about Kagato. The little spectacles
he wore, the way he laughed at his own jokes, the way he could say
the simplest thing as though it were a revelation from the heavens
and why were you not on your knees begging him to impart more
wisdom? Even his extensive collection of ancient, primarily
useless, musical instruments was sinister somehow. But Kagato was
also University's star student. Washuu's thousands of
contributions to the body of scientific knowledge were generally
just accepted as par for the course, the sort of thing that a
Senior-professor was Supposed to do. Kagato got a few impressive
results and pulled in attention from all over. Not that Washuu
thought he had gotten those results entirely by himself, as he
claimed. Kagato struck her as the type of person to steal another
student, or even professor's research and call it his own if it
looked promising. But he was smart. Smart enough that if he were
cheating it would be a long time before anyone found out.

So for University interests, and to balance some of the
stigma of diverting a huge flow of resources to Washuu's
experiment, she was assigned Kagato to go with Yakage as her lab
assistants. One of them she thought was plotting behind her back
every time she turned around, and the other Washuu suspected had
some sort of perverted fetish-centric interest in the Project. Or
at least her sword. Then there was the fact that Kagato could
make Yakage do and say nearly anything with a few careful turns of
phrase and a precisely measured and applied amount of physical
contact.

It was because of that control, Washuu suspected, that Yakage
came to her with his doubts. According to the weapons specialist
Washuu's choices in developing the Project were unsuitable and
that they would compromise it as a weapons platform. Washuu
replied that it was never meant to Be a weapons platform and that
his sword was there primarily as a means of self-defense. Since
then Yakage had been sullenly quiet most of the time and she
thought he was plotting something, though she had no idea what.
Yakage was obsessive, but even he would not stoop so low as to
sabotage the Project. Especially since that energy sword of his,
his masterwork as he called it, was an integral part of the
design. To sabotage the Project would be to undermine his own
work, and Washuu did not think Kagato could force Yakage to go
that far. For Kagato himself, there was no question that he would
do his best for the Project. If it failed the blame would be
attached to him and Yakage much more quickly than Washuu. She
was, afterall, a Senior-professor with more than four times the
span of years he had lived on staff alone. A disastrous failure
in one of her experiments would be more likely the result of inept
help than anything she had done, and Kagato knew it.

And all of this for the sake of a few thousand Massu. But it
had to be Massu, there was simply no way around it. Washuu had
tried a million combinations of natural chemicals, synthetic
constructs, and even a few standing energy patterns, but nothing
worked. She was able to harness the energy of the mysterious gems
using machinery, and actually had such a rig powering her ship,
the Soja, but the extraction and conversion mechanism took up half
the subspace volume of the University station and that would
hardly be appropriate for the Project. So instead she used Massu,
having discovered that with a few simple nerve clusters and
pathways she could replace all the bulky machinery with the
elegance of biomechanics. Originally the Project called for
little more than a vegetable. Just a sort of living sponge that
would draw power from the gems and output it in a more useful
form. It was not until Washuu decided to try fusing the Massu
generation pattern with her own DNA that the Project took on
detail, becoming female and capable of full emotions and logical
thought.

Even after the decision to make the Project a humanoid there
had been a wide variety of possibilities, each variation in the
Massu propagation pattern labeled with a subset number and filed
away. Subset fifty-four was the most promising, a male body
capable of limited emotion and with superhuman reflexes and
cognitive speed, but somehow it just did not seem right to Washuu.
Of all the dozens of subsets none of them seemed as purely correct
as the first one, the one based on her own DNA. There was little
or no scientific reasoning to the decision. Subset one had
inherent instabilities introduced by being based on real human
genetic code, however filtered and altered, and making the Project
female introduced a wide array of difficulties, but Washuu was
determined without even fully understanding the reason for her
stubborn refusals.

Washuu sighed. *I should have taken subset fifty-four. I've
let my loneliness affect my judgement. Maybe Yakage is right and
my choices for the Project were unsuitable.*

*But,* the deep, introspective, lonely part of Washuu
countered, *You're going to have a daughter. To have a child
again, someone to love and to love you back without being
intimidated by your age and your record.. isn't that worth all the
problems in the world?*


"Project structuring completed," Kagato announced, watching
the flow of data across his console.

"Initiating puh..power coupling and buh..building energy
s..ss..sword formation st..structures," Yakage reported, touching
appropriate controls on his own display.

Within the floor-to-ceiling transparent fibramic tube
dominating the center of the chamber a light flared. The body
floating within, built only over the past few minutes using hordes
of Massu and according to the design Washuu could not decide if
she wanted to lament using, stiffened and then relaxed, floating
limply in the yellow fluid filling the tube. Pipes snaked
silentlydown from the ceiling and connected to the central tube,
dissolving the fibramic barrier where they encountered it and
quickly filling with synthetic embryonic fluid.

Washuu watched nervously as the three gems floated down the
transparent pipes, guided by projected forcefields toward the
Project's throat and wrists where the reception mechanisms were.
When the gems came in contact with its flesh the Project arched
its back and, had it the ability, Washuu thought it would have
screamed. Green light flared dangerously from the gems and from
three small circles newly appeared on the Project's forehead,
shining beneath its mane of cyan hair rendered green by the fluid
of the tank.

"Structural instabilities manifesting," Yakage reported
nervously, his affected stutter disappearing in the moment of
stress, "Project energy output exceeding experiment parameters
by... This can't be right, it says the Project is radiating
energy at fifteen thousand times projected norms."

"It's right," Kagato growled, "I have the same thing, and all
forty independent sensors are registering exactly the same power
spike. I Told you this was a bad idea, Senior-professor. We
should have used subset fifty-four, trying to couple Project
designs with your own DNA was a failed idea and we should not have
put this.. this.. Waste product into production!"

"Mind your tongue Kagato," Washuu scolded absently, her
fingers flying across her console while she issued mental commands
to the array of backup field generators, "I have this under
control. The experiment parameters were only a guess based on the
Soja core, I had no idea how the gems would respond to a
biomechanical interface mechanism. There, that's done it."

"Power levels duh..dropping," Yakage reported, "Gem energy
output nuh..normalizing. Project consciousness cuh..coming
online."

Washuu stepped quickly around her console and toward the
transparent cylinder.

"Drain the tank," Washuu instructed, "Get her out of there
before she wakes up."

"Oh," Kagato muttered as he bent to the task, "Now it's a
she."


"Wake up," Washuu whispered gently, touching the Project's
shoulder, "Time to wake up and see the world."

The Project opened her eyes, big, golden eyes slitted like a
feline, and slowly focused on Washuu's face.

"Mmmnnn haaa aaa," it moaned.

"Engage the learning routine," Washuu commanded, still
smiling down at the Project where she lay on an examination table.

A moment later the air chimed, indicating the machines had
completed their task and another phase of the Project was
complete.

The Project blinked, still looking up at Washuu, and asked
quietly, "M..mommy?"

Washuu's heart nearly stopped.

*Normal attachment routine,* Washuu reasoned automatically,
*Hominid subject responding to first sentient figure recognized by
creating parental link...*

*Mommy,* the annoying human part of Washuu's mind cheered,
*Mommy! She called me mommy! I'm a mother again!*

"Hello," Washuu said with a smile, "Good morning.. Ryouko."

"Well. This is all very touching," Kagato said, stepping up
to the opposite side of the table, arms folded across his chest.
"But I think it's time we talked, Washuu."

Washuu frowned, looking up from the face of her new daughter
in annoyance. "What's the meaning of this Kagato? I said not to
disturb me during this phase."

"Yes, yes," Kagato agreed boredly, "You say a great many
things. But now I think it's time that you step back from the
table and shut up."

"What?!" Washuu blustered, "Get out! Get out Kagato! Now!"

"Oh, I'll get out," Kagato agreed with a lazy grin, "But you
and the Project here are coming with me."

"Ry..Ryouko," Ryouko protested weakly, "My name is Ryouko."

Kagato snorted. "So the waste product has a name? Well,
we'll take care of that..." Kagato touched a small control on his
wrist and Ryouko stiffened, her mouth gaping open and her eyes
wide with pain as her wrists slammed against the surface of the
table.

"Stop!" Washuu cried, "You're hurting her! Stop!"

"Hurting her?" Kagato asked, sounding genuinely confused as
he watched Ryouko thrash on the table, "She is an experiment, a
project, a made thing. She has no rights. If I wish to give her
pain it is my right as her creator."

"You're not her creator! You're my lab assistant!"

"Well now," Kagato chuckled, touching the control again when
Ryouko's eyes rolled up her head and she began emitting a
strangled, choking gurgle, "I don't think anyone ever needs to
know that. No, I think Senior-professor Hakubi will disappear in
some sort of accident, the Project will be written off as a
failure, and little Ryouko and I will be off aboard the Soja, a
generous gift from the late Senior-professor to her favorite lab
assistant." Kagato grinned and then turned his head to shout back
through the doorway, "Yakage! Get in here! And bring the
restraints!"


Washuu struggled against her bonds but the holding field was
too strong. She could not even open her mouth to hurl insults at
the two men. And worst of all they brought Ryouko. She stood
there beside Kagato, her beautiful golden eyes turned a malevolent
green by whatever method he was using to control her.

"Ryouko," Kagato commanded, "Seal your mother in the stasis
crystal."

Ryouko stepped forward and touched the control key, watching
with blank green eyes from an emotionless face as the crystal
formed around the woman who had, so briefly, been 'mommy.'

"And now, Yakage," Kagato said, turning from the growing
crystal toward his ally, "For your reward."

Yakage grinned anxiously, holding out his hands to catch the
little metal cylinder as it tumbled through the air, tossed by
Kagato.

The ashes dissolved before they touched the ground. The vial
contained a carefully balanced expand charge, not blood as
promised, and at the moment of impact with Yakage's hands it
exploded in a tiny nova, vaporizing the weapons specialist where
he stood.

"Fool," Kagato sneered, "Anyone with half a brain would have
requested the Project records and design documents so they could
expand and improve upon it. All he could have done with blood was
make a poor copy and the weapons system would have been pointless
without the gems to power it."

Kagato turned back to the crystal, now almost fully formed,
and rapped gently at it with his knuckles, laughing at the pained
expression frozen on Washuu's face.

"Come Ryouko!" Kagato called as he strode away through the
vastness of Soja, "We have much to do and all the time in the
universe to do it!"

Washuu watched Ryouko walking away and listened to Kagato's
madness through the bond she had installed within the being who
had been her daughter during the learning process.


Washuu sat up and wiped her forehead of the thin sheen of
sweat which covered her body. She looked around the bedroom,
remembering that she was on Jurai, in the royal palace, and
forcing that knowledge to supplant the fading memories of her
dream.

It had been an accurate dream, a near-perfect recreation of
the events as she knew them to have happened. All Washuu's dreams
were like that, now. For nearly thirteen thousand years she had
not had anything people would normally refer to as a dream, her
mind no longer needed them to help collate the day's activities.
She only slept out of habit, really, and because everyone she knew
did it. When she was involved in an experiment she would not
bother with it, but when she did her dreams were always little
more than vivid memories.

Washuu hated that particular dream. Of all the memories
which most often surfaced during sleep that was one of the ones
she most detested. There were others, like the moment her husband
was taken from her, or a few times during Kagato's enslavement of
Ryouko, that she hated more, but that one was one of the worst.

Washuu sighed and crawled out of bed. She knew going back to
sleep now would do no good, she would only pick up the memories
where they left off, with Kagato forcing Ryouko to break into her
lab and steal Ryou-ohki. After that he would force her to stand
absolutely still while he led one of his repulsive friends around
the newly redecorated Soja, pointing Ryouko out as a piece of
modern artwork. Washuu shuddered. She did not want to recall the
horrible things Kagato had said and done, but despite being awake
they seemed to come in a flood anyway.

In a way Washuu was grateful for Kagato's egotism. He
considered himself above physical contact with Ryouko, even to the
point of forcing her to whip herself when he felt she deserved it
and wanted a more interesting show than simply giving her pain
through his control mechanism. Because of that belief he never
assaulted her with more than words, and apparently never thought
of her as a subject for sexual conquest. He nearly let a few of
his awful friends rape her, as much to show her that he was in
control as anything else, but he pulled all of them off before
they got further than groping her. Washuu held herself against
the shaking brought on by those memories. She knew Ryouko had
forced herself to forget all that, as well as much of the worst of
her time with Kagato, and it was gone irretrievably now from her
mind. Having an engineered brain had its bonuses, and Ryouko shed
those memories in order to be able to be close to Tenchi without
it dredging up her past. Now Washuu was determined to do the
same.

Kagato was gone, destroyed irrevocably by the power of the
wings, and that time was over. Washuu had her daughter back and
was determined never to lose her again. Memories of her
enslavement, a time she knew Ryouko tried to pretend was only a
nightmare from her years in the cave, could do nothing but hold
them apart.

"Now," Washuu whispered, stepping into a pair of slippers and
pushing away the nightmares, "I wonder where they keep the snacks
in this place..."

* * *

Aeka thrashed against her pillows and moaned, "N..no. No, no
sister... No, not that. Noo..."

Aeka's eyes opened, wide and startled as she stared
uncomprehendingly up at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her breath
came in short gasps and her hands were locked in a white-knuckled
grip on her coverlet, her nightdress soaked nearly through with
perspiration and clinging to her body like a second skin. As the
nightmare quickly retreated it seemed very important that Aeka
remember it, but despite her best attempts she could find no more
detail in the vanishing mist of dream than that it somehow
involved her sister. And yet... And yet it did not feel like the
dream was about Sasami.

Aeka sighed bitterly and rolled over, muttering about the
strangeness of dreams under her breath. She tossed and turned,
trying to find a comfortable position, but her nightgown was
soaked, her hair tangled, and her whole body felt sticky with
sweat.


Aeka padded silently across the carpeted floor of her
chambers and considered having a snack before going back to sleep.
By the time she returned from her errand dinner was over and the
main kitchens of the royal family closed for the night. There was
always the night kitchen, but she had been so exhausted and her
mind in such a confused tumult from her experiences that she
simply went to her room and to sleep.

*No,* Aeka thought as she entered the bathroom, *Tomorrow
will be a busy day and breakfast is in a few hours anyway. I will
be wishing for the extra sleep if I go for a snack now.*

There were three conversations Aeka knew she must have, and
she planned to tackle them all tomorrow, the better to have them
over and done so she could move on with life. First would be with
Katsuhito, regarding his failure to inform her of his intentions
for Tenchi. Then with her father about his past actions and the
possibility that when they all left Jurai this time she would
never be returning. And finally with Tsunami, away from her
sister if possible. Aeka wanted to thank Tsunami for sending her
to Tokimi's domain the previous day and for the knowledge she had
imparted to her to make her task easier. But, too, she wanted to
know why the goddess had never told her that she intended Tenchi
to be with Ryouko. How much easier life would have been had
Tsunami only told her that night at the onsen. Aeka was also
still concerned about the things Tsunami was showing Sasami. That
Aeka had to live through the beatings was bad enough, but the idea
that Sasami had experienced them through her memories was
revolting.

Aeka sighed and peeled her nightdress away from her skin
before stepping into the shower stall. It was the only one of its
kind on the planet, Jurains traditionally took baths and the
modern Jurain household had a standard irradiator to remove dirt
from one's body. This one Aeka ordered built upon her first
return to Jurai from Earth. Having once experienced a shower on
Earth Aeka quickly decided it was absolutely necessary she have
one available here. Baths and irradiation were all well and good,
but there was simply something about the feeling of water flowing
down her body, washing away strife and tension along with sweat
and dirt. If she closed her eyes she could imagine it was a warm
spring rain and that she stood beneath the caring branches of Ryu-
oh, the water filtering down through his leaves before striking
her skin. Such a cleansing was an important part of the ceremony
bonding a Jurain to her tree, and to be able to experience it
again at will was simply wonderful.


Aeka hugged a pillow to her chest and curled up beneath the
fresh sheets on her bed. It was a warm night and she would rather
do without the blankets than waken a maid or trudge all the way to
the nearest linen closet herself to replace the sweat-stained
coverlet now lying on the floor. She could not remember her
nightmare, but it must have been truly awful.

Aeka closed her eyes and tried to drift back into the sea of
sleep but found herself instead thinking of Tenchi. She wished
distantly, and not without embarrassment when she realized her
thoughts, that it was him in her arms rather than a pillow. Aeka
sighed and tried to force the longing from her mind. It had been
nearly a year now since Ryouko gave him her gems and helped him
unlock his heart and Aeka knew that while Tenchi loved her as a
member of his family she had no place in his bed.

In recent months Aeka had been so busy with Jurain government
that she hardly had time to think about anything else and some of
the pain of losing him as her prospective husband had faded. But
now that she felt she had lost her throne Aeka found her mind
wandering to those places once more.

*Perhaps if I had been more bold,* Aeka thought sleepily, *I
could have gone to him that night Ryouko offered to let me.. go
first. Maybe then he would have chosen me instead...* Aeka
yawned and tossed weakly against her pillows. *No, he never would
have taken me to his bed anyway. He loved neither of us that way
then, and Tenchi was not the type of man to sleep with any woman
who was willing.*

Aeka squeezed the pillow tightly in her arms, regrets and
denials drifting through her mind unbidden while she fell slowly
back to sleep.

* * *

There is no environment quite like a phosphoric acid fog. It
takes very particular conditions for a planet to form an
atmosphere capable of producing such a fog, and of course such
planets are the places criminals flock to when in need of a place
to hide out.

*Criminals,* Kiyone thought as she slipped through the dense
mist, her body protected by a Hohanar field, *Are stupid. These
guys are probably wearing enviro-suits from some backward little
dirtball and choking through respirators, thinking it's all worth
it because there's no way the cops are going to chase them down
onto the surface of this moon. But the cops get all the neat
toys.*

"I've got a heat signature up to the left captain Makibi,"
Kiyone said quietly into her communicator, "It's inside that old
neutronium processing station."

"Affirmative corporal Makibi," Kiyone's father's voice
returned across the comm channel, "I'll take the point."

Kiyone watched her father seemingly drift across the surface,
the Hohanar field illuminating his body in stuttering flashes as
it annihilated the phosphoric acid mist. She checked her sidearm
for the thousandth time, a habit instilled in her by her father.

'Kiyone,' he always said, 'No matter where you are or what
you're doing, always, Always keep your sidearm ready. If some
punk jumps up at you out of nowhere you don't want to be trying to
yank your blaster out of your holster, or wondering what you did
with that spare cartridge, you want to be putting a hole in his
chest.' So Kiyone checked her sidearm. She lifted it half out of
the holster, flicking the safety off and then back on with one
finger while tapping the energy cartridge to make sure it was
securely in place with another and feeling the thermal-output
readiness indicator with a third before letting it drop back into
place. She had been doing it so long now that it seemed second
nature, when she was not wearing a gun she often found herself
reaching to make sure the phantom sidearm was clear and charged.

Once her father had disappeared into the dilapidated
neutronium processing station she followed quickly, watching the
upper levels for movement in case one of the perps had somehow
gotten his grubby hands on a thermal cloaking unit.

"Closing on thermal signature," the voice was subdued and
slightly distorted when it sounded in Kiyone's ear. He had
switched to subvocalized communications to avoid the criminals
hearing, as if they could hear anything as quiet as speech in this
environment.

"Affirmative," Kiyone replied automatically. It did not pay
to keep quiet with your partner while you were on a two-man bust.
You stay quiet too long and they start to worry, and when you
start to worry you get nervous, and when you get nervous you let
things slip. Kiyone checked her gun again.

"I got visual, looks like he's in an old ecma suit and the
respirator conked out..."

A blur of motion at the corner of her eye alerted Kiyone just
in time. She dove to the ground, rolling across the dustless
floor, you don't get dust in a room exposed to acid fog, and
rising to a crouch behind a piece of derelict machinery.

"Captain, I've got another.. no, two more hostiles out here.
One just tried to take a shot at me."

"You okay honey?"

"I'm fine dad, you know better than that."

"Right."

Captain Makibi came out of the hallway blasting. He had a
sidearm in one hand and a subsonic vacuum-ready slug-tosser in the
other and left a twin trail of whirling distortions in the
phosphoric acid mist where his shots left the muzzles as he dove
across the room in low-g, landing on his shoulder and spinning his
momentum backward to flip back to his feet.

"You've got cover, Corporal."

"Yes sir," Kiyone agreed enthusiastically, drawing her
sidearm and dodging around her shield, looking for targets. Both
of the punks were hiding on the other side of a door across the
room. Kiyone triggered her gravity boots for a full g and got a
running start, flicking her Hohanar to full as she dove through
the doorway, letting the boots go back to null and twisting in a
complicated arc. A Hohanar could stop a bullet or absorb an
energy pulse at max, but it would overload after more than three
or four and being left with nothing between you and a concentrated
phosphoric acid environment was a bad idea.

The two crooks were gaping at her when she landed, her hair
whipping around her head in the low gravity, apparently
defenseless unless you knew to look for the occasional flicker of
the Hohanar. They brought their guns up, one of them a slug-
tosser like her father's and the other an old-model energy rifle,
and she could just imagine them grinning behind their clunky
respirator masks.

When the punk with the blaster fired Kiyone whipped her foot
upward, catching the slug-tosser's muzzle with the toe of her
gravity boot and ripping it out of the perp's startled hands. The
energy pulse hit the Hohanar field and dispersed, leaving
glittering arcs of energy momentarily cascading around Kiyone's
body as she twisted, bringing her other foot off the ground to
catch the disarmed thug across the respirator before landing
nimbly back on her toes in the low gravity. It was amazing the
stuff you could pull off in a quarter g.

Kiyone grabbed the old pulse rifle by the coolant fins and
twisted it around to the inside, keeping the punk from squeezing
the trigger with the big, bulky fingers of his ecma suit. Kiyone
slapped a contact patch on the perp's wrist, yanking the gun out
of his hands as the energy field formed and bound his wrists
together.

"You're under arrest," Kiyone broadcast across a short-range
broad-spectrum pulse, "For robbing the Subsidiary Repository of
Mindic three, evading arrest, reckless piloting of a spacecraft in
a heavy traffic area, and two counts of assaulting an officer."

Kiyone flicked her leg backward, catching the second perp in
the chin and flinging him backward against the wall, the knife in
his hand clattering slowly to the ground.

"Make that three counts."

"Corporal!" Her father's voice roared across the comm
channel, "We've got another one, he's got a cloaker!"

"Crap," Kiyone mumbled to herself. She hated it when they
picked up a toy like a cloaker, it made them think they were gods.

"You boys play nice now," Kiyone said with a grin, tossing
the standing punk into his friend and dropping a stun grenade
behind her a she jogged back out into the room where she had left
her father.

Kiyone watched the line of energy bursts emerge from
apparently empty air and arrow toward the jinking and dodging form
of her father.

"Got your back Captain," Kiyone sent subvocally, lettering
her sidearm lead the front edge of the arcing wave of assault
across one of the balconies. She squeezed off a shot and grinned
when the punk flickered back into view, his cloaking field
disrupted by the energy pulse and his ecma suit ruptured.

Kiyone lowered her boots to null g and leapt up to the
balcony, touching down lightly and slapping a contact patch over
the hole in the punk's leg. It would not do to have them dying
before they were convicted. So it was that when the fourth and
final ecma-suited figure dodged through a doorway on a balcony
across the room, throwing himself over the rail and somersaulting
down to the floor, she did not see him until it was too late.

The blast from the construction laser ripped right through
Captain Makibi's Hohanar, his chest, and two walls before exiting
the building and kicking up a big cloud of steam from an ice hill
a quarter mile away. The noise was enough to make Kiyone look up
just in time to see the punk toss the laser to the side, its
coolant tank blown from the one shot after sitting unused too
long.

"No!" Kiyone screamed, not bothering with a comm channel.
She leapt over the balcony rail, sidearm blasting away at the
figure on the ground while her father collapsed, a mist of blood
drifting and fizzing in the phosphoric fog.

The punk went down with four shots, center torso, all in a
tight little group just like her father taught her. Kiyone landed
badly, her ankle twisting the wrong way as her mass caught up with
her in the slow descent. She stumbled forward, limping awkwardly
to the perp on the ground and putting two more shots through his
head before stumbling over to her father.

It was too late, of course. Most of his torso was gone,
vaporized by the big argon laser, and what was left was charred
and shriveled. His head had survived, mostly intact, along with
his legs and one hand, still clutching the old slug-tosser.
Kiyone knelt at his side, tears already flowing down her cheeks.

Most cops, in a situation like this, would take out the
portable scalpel on their belt and cut out the implant at the nape
of their partner's neck. The implants were standard issue and
stored a local backup of the wearer's most recent memories. The
rest were kept on file in an archive back at HQ and would all be
transferred to the cop's new body when it finished growing in a
tank and he would get an honorable discharge with full benefits
for the rest of his life. It was standard practice. But not for
Captain Makibi. Kiyone's father was a Midrin and Midrins did not
believe in consciousness transference post-mortem. It was a
bizarre belief by most standards, but there it was. So Kiyone
knelt there and wept, and eventually she got up and emptied the
rest of her cartridge into the very dead corpse of the punk who
had gotten off that one lucky shot with a construction laser that
should have been dead a decade ago. Then she wiped her eyes, put
on a pair of glare-shield lenses, popped a fresh cartridge into
her sidearm, and went back to the room where the two stunned punks
were lying against the wall, checking her gun as she walked.


"Kiyone! Wake up Kiyone!"

Kiyone's eyes flicked open and she reached for her gun, but
it was not there. Kiyone looked around, taking in the room and
the person shaking her.

"Mihoshi," Kiyone sighed wearily, "Stop Mihoshi. I'm awake."

"Sorry Kiyone," Mihoshi apologized, stepping back from the
bunk where Kiyone lay. "You were crying in your sleep and then
you screamed and I thought I should wake you up 'cause you were
having a nightmare."

"Good thinking Mihoshi," Kiyone said gently. She had to be
very carefully supportive for Mihoshi now. Since losing her sight
the blonde was very sensitive to any sort of criticism.

"What time is-" Kiyone stopped, realizing who she was
asking. "Sorry Mihoshi, I'll look." Kiyone rose and went to the
edge of the cell they shared while Mihoshi sat back down silently
on her bunk.

"Three thirty local," Kiyone sighed. "Go back to sleep
Mihoshi. I'm okay."

Mihoshi nodded and lay back on her bunk, tugging a blanket
only partly over one leg before passing back out. Kiyone rolled
her eyes and went to her partner's side to finish tucking her in.
He hand paused as she reached for the blanket, her fingers
hovering scant inches above Mihoshi's thigh, the pale skin almost
glowing in the gentle light that shone in from the hallway outside
their cellblock. Kiyone's fingers drifted closer, then clenched
into a fist which the green-haired police-woman held against her
chest.

*What was I doing?* Kiyone thought desperately, *I wake up
from a dream about how Dad.. how Dad died, and the next thing I do
is try to feel up my partner? My Female partner? God Makibi,
you're such a pervert...*

Kiyone grabbed the blanket angrily and pulled it up over
Mihoshi's scantily clad body, consciously avoiding any exposed
skin and doubly so for any unexposed skin. Kiyone's touch turned
gentle again as she tucked the blanket in around the slumbering
woman, wondering at how calm and peaceful Mihoshi looked in her
sleep.

Kiyone sighed and whispered, "Goodnight Mihoshi." She was
bent halfway over before Kiyone realized she was about to kiss her
partner goodnight and stood, ramrod straight, to walk stiffly back
to her own bunk.

*I have Got to get this under control. It's just not right,
dammit! I'm a woman, she's a woman, we're not supposed to.. it
isn't.. it's just Wrong! And she isn't even interested. She
wanted me to kiss her so I'd be happy, so poor Kiyone wouldn't be
upset that she couldn't get her rocks off with her cute partner.
God I'm such a damn pervert!*

Kiyone threw herself down on her bunk and exhaled heavily,
something somewhere between a sob and a grunt, as she turned to
the wall, pulling her blanket up over her shoulders halfheartedly.

"Damn it Dad, why did you have to leave me?" Kiyone
whispered, tears beginning to form in her eyes, "I never cried
before.. before you went away, and now it's like that's all I do.
If you were here you'd tell me how to stop thinking about Mihoshi
like this. You'd get pissed off, but you'd know what to do. You
always knew what to do. But you're gone and now I'm stuck in a
damned holding cell like some kid that vandalized a store!"

Kiyone rolled onto her back and thrashed about a bit in
frustration, trying to find a comfortable position on the little
bunk before giving up, one knee bent and leaned against the wall
and the other leg tossed over the side of the bed, her arms
crossed over her face. Kiyone stared into the darkness behind her
eyelids and tried to go back to sleep, tried to stop thinking
about the sweet young woman lying nearly naked just across the
room who had had her hands on her just a few moments ago.

* * *

"Security band transmission incoming sir."

"Alright," Captain Takima said, sitting up in his command
chair and straightening his uniform, "Put it up."

Takima stifled a groan when the face of the person on the
other end of the transmission appeared floating before him. It
was one of those University people, and if a University ship was
calling on a secure-band channel it could only be one of two
things. Either they had wandered into hostile space and now
needed someone to come hold their hands while they got back out of
it, or they had an Artifact sighting.

"Mister.." the man in the green and white University jacket
glanced down at a screen below the comm on his end before
continuing in a voice that made it obvious he was reading a
script, "Mister Captain Takima, this is under-professor Kittan
with the university science vessel Corona. We are contacting you
to inform you that we have located an Artifact and request Fleet
intervention to prevent contamination of said under article one
four eight dash seventeen point three subsection nine clause four
of the scientific authority documents of the one hundred nineteen
thousand four hundred and fifty third convergence of the Holy
Council of Jurai since the Reformation."

Takima sighed, it was an Artifact then. At least with the
hand-holding missions you occasionally got a Little excitement.
But no, this was an Artifact mission. That meant one of those
University stooges found a corroded old piece of an internal
combustion engine on some desert planet and now the Fleet would
have to waste thousands of man and ship hours protecting it from
any would-be treasure hunters.

"Alright under-professor, transmit the coordinates and I'll
scramble the planetary confinement squadron." Takima turned to
his helmsman before continuing, "Prepare to rendezvous with USV
Corona for Artifact protection."

"Er.." The under-professor looked nervous. Apparently this
part did not have a prepared script. "I.. um.. I don't think the
placo team is.. um.. I don't think they've got quiet enough
people, that is..."

"What?" Takima's eyebrows rose as he turned back to the comm
display, "What do you mean under-professor? They are equipped to
handle any planet up to four Nebon-masses."

"Well, yes," the under-professor replied uncomfortably, "But
you see the thing of it is.. well, you see Nebon is just a gas-
giant, even if it is a big one. But it's just a planet you know..
and well, you see, this Artifact that we're dealing with... Well,
it's sort of a whole solar system, and..."

"A whole.. solar system?" Takima asked in profound
disbelief. What were they up to now? Had they found a probe
floating around some system and wanted to confine the whole thing?
Those damn University snobs, they never thought about what their
little schemes were going to do to the poor Fleet personnel who
had to clean up...

"Holy Tree," Takima gasped, his train of thought derailed by
the image now floating in place of the nervous under-professor's
head in the air before him, "What in the name of the seven sons of
Jurai is That?"

The 'that' in question was a mass of crystalline structures
rotating in serene patterns around a blue-green star. They were
arranged in concentric rings, but parts of the rings rotated
around themselves or drifted slowly back and forth between
circles. Takima noticed the time indicator in the corner of the
recording and realized this it was supposedly in real-time. If the
scale were as anything like as big as it looked those serene
pieces of crystal were drifting back and forth at something close
to sixty percent lightspeed.

"That, Mister Captain Takima," said the under-professor, his
head re-appearing in a window near the corner of the display, "Is
the Artifact."

* * *

Ryouko opened her eyes to find Tenchi staring at her, a small
smile playing about his lips.

"Hi there," he whispered, "What're you doing up?"

"I.. I had a nightmare," Ryouko replied quietly, pulling
herself closer to him in the bed so she could lean her head
against his chest. "I dreamed that you.. you were dead, and Aeka
was going to make me go back in the cave."

Tenchi wrapped his arms protectively around her and rubbed
her back reassuringly.

"Don't worry," Tenchi said softly, kissing her neck, "I'm
here. I'm not going anywhere. Aeka wouldn't do anything like
that. And you know you're never going back there."

Ryouko nuzzled her cheek against Tenchi's chest and sighed
contentedly. It was nice to have someone to hold you and tell you
everything would be okay after a nightmare. Ryouko had long ago
lost count of the number of times she wished for exactly that over
the years between Tenchi freeing her and falling in love with her.
She never told him, but nearly every time Tenchi had awoken to
find her floating there, watching him sleep, was on a night that
bad dreams troubled her own rest. Upon awakening from a nightmare
she would go to him, hoping, however unrealistically, that he
would wake up and hold her and tell her everything would be okay,
just as he was now.

"I.. I didn't talk in my sleep again, did I?" Ryouko asked,
looking up at Tenchi's face. "Did I wake you?"

"No," Tenchi smiled and shook his head, running his fingers
through her hair, "You slept like an angel. That's why I was
watching you. I had a nightmare too, but when I woke up and saw
you lying there looking so.. so.. so perfect... I've just been
watching you sleep since."

Ryouko felt herself blushing and looked away from his smiling
face, squeezing him tight and breathing in the scent of him while
she hid her embarrassment against the muscles of his chest. "What
was your nightmare about?" Ryouko asked eventually, feeling bad
for not having been awake to comfort him as he had for her.

Tenchi sighed before answering. "I dreamed you didn't want
to marry me. You ran off on our wedding day with some guy you met
before I knew you, and you said that it would be better that way
because I was too boring for a person like you and I'd be better
of with an Earth girl."

Ryouko kissed his chest and smiled. "Well that's never going
to happen," she promised, "For one, I never knew any guys before I
met you. Not really anyway, and none of the ones I met were the
kind anybody would run away with. Two, we're already married.
And three, I was on Earth a lot longer than any girl you're likely
to find, so as far as I'm concerned I Am an Earth girl."

Tenchi looked puzzled and asked, "Already married? Did you
forget to tell me about something that happened while I was
unconscious?"

Ryouko chuckled. "No dear, I didn't dress you up and get
someone to marry us while you were passed out. But you asked me
to marry you. You actually asked and wanted me to say yes... We
both wanted it, we both said so, what do dresses and priests
matter?"

"Well what do you know," Tenchi said thoughtfully, "Here I've
been a married man for going on four days now and I didn't even
realize."

"We're still having a ceremony though," Ryouko said
seriously, "Us Earth girls like getting dressed up."

Tenchi chuckled. "What kind of ceremony? Do you want a
traditional Shinto one, or a western one? Or is there some kind
of galactic standard thing?"

"There are Jurain ceremonies for pretty much everything. I
think they have four different ceremonial ways to wash your hands.
But we can have whatever kind you want to Tenchi. I.. I never
really believed I'd get to marry you. That it's happening will be
enough for me."

Tenchi yawned widely and arranged himself more comfortably
against Ryouko before saying, "Well talk about it tomorrow, okay?"

"Mmm," Ryouko agreed, sleep catching back up to her and her
eyes sliding half shut. "We never got to have our wedding night
though, Tenchi."

Tenchi laughed softly, interrupted by another yawn. "Not
tonight honey, I'm exhausted."

"Mmm," Ryouko agreed again sleepily. She took one of his
hands and guided it to her chest, as much so she could feel the
rough texture of his fingers against her as for him to feel her
heart beating reassuringly beneath his palm.

* * *

Ai blinked.

In front of her stood a tree, perhaps three times her height
at the top of its branches. Those branches were decorated with a
scattering of leaves, each glittering like a tiny, perfect facet
of some great, unseen stone. Silvery flames traced regularly up
and down the tree's ancient bark in complex patterns that
sometimes resembled words, sometimes running water, sometimes
nothing at all. The branches of the tree rustled, though there
was no breeze in the darkness.

Ai looked around. It was dark, but for the light of the
tree, and there seemed to be small streams in the smooth white
floor upon which she stood. It seemed like the Inner Chamber, it
had that strangely distant feel and her fingers tingled mildly,
but Ai had no idea how she had come to be here. She remembered
lying down next to Mataeo and closing her eyes... Then she was
here.

"Ai..." The voice was soft and feminine, but had that
coming-from-everywhere quality of the voice of Jurai. It held a
hint of familiarity, but the nature of the word, the way her name
echoed around within her mind evading study, prevented her from
discerning why.

"Who.. who are you?" Ai asked hesitantly, her voice a
whisper though she had meant it to be in normal tones, "You'e not
the trees.. not like before anyway. How did I get here?"

"I am Tsunami, Ai. Yes, the one the trees spoke of, the one
Yousho called a goddess, the one who will one day be Sasami."

Ai bowed toward the tree. She recognized it now, though the
trees had not shown it to her. They had described it only as the
First Tree, in tones of mixed reverence and the affection of a
child for its mother, but there was no doubt in Ai's mind that
this tree must be it. Why else would she be here?

"Forgive me if I disrespect," Ai said cautiously, "I.. I do
not know how to behave in the presence of a goddess. The trees
showed me many ceremonies and traditions of Jurain worship, but
I'm afraid they've all gotten mixed up in my head..."

The voice laughed softly and said with all the gentleness of
a mother for an infant, "Do not fear me Ai. I am the whole of
creation, what are dances and bows measured against the birth of
stars?"

"Why did you..." Ai paused, reassurances to be at ease were
one thing, but Tsunami was a goddess.. was it polite to question a
goddess?

"Why did I bring you here? I did not wish to disturb
Sasami's sleep, she has had great difficulty these last days and I
thought to spare her any further." Tsunami sighed, a gentle
breeze that, oddly, did not stir the now stilled branches.
"Tonight is the night of wandering spirits, Ai. That is a legend
so old that even the trees do not remember it, but are not the
oldest legends the ones of greatest truth? They are carried down
in the minds of mortals and what was once fancy and fable is given
the strength of belief and the reality of age.

"On the night of wandering spirits it was said that the
memories of one's past broke free of the mind and drifted,
ghostlike, amongst the stars. In the times that people remembered
that legend they would hang bright streamers in their windows and
go to their beds wearing hand-decorated headbands so that their
memories would know to whom to return after their night of
wandering. It was said that dreams on this night would be of
strongest truth, and that those things of which you dream would be
those upon which your waking mind dwells. The people would take
their dreams as guides on this night and use them to shape their
lives away from discord."

Tsunami chuckled softly, the sound in Ai's mind mirrored in
the melody of the water around her. "But you wonder what this has
to do with you, why I summoned you from your bed and the arms of
your lover to tell you stories of an ancient myth."

Ai tried to think of a respectful denial, but it was true.
Those were her thoughts and she thought it better to be silently
repentive than to bluster in contrition.

"You are modest beyond your years, Fujihara Ai," Tsunami said
in an elusive tone that Ai would have said came with a smile, were
there anyone there to smile, "And you are right to wonder. It was
millennia that I spent here alone in the dark Ai, until Sasami
came and gave her life that I could walk the world again. But
that is another story for another time. I brought you here to
explain to you Ai, to explain that one question which the trees
could not answer."

"You mean.. why I could hear them? Why I was.. inside them?"

"Yes, Ai. To be within the trees of Jurai is a complex
thing, for them. It means to be within this chamber, but also to
have ever been within the chamber, whether in body or in spirit.
The trees were here long before I came, Ai, but in a sense they
truly are my children now. I gave them some of my essence that
they could speak with the humans who had come to their world.

"They were never very strict about matters dealing with time,
to them time was a direction of travel, a way that things tended
to drift. Humans confused them deeply for they seemed to move so
quickly about in time, much faster than rocks or the stars. And
with my influence their sense of the separation of events into
sequence grew even more diffuse. Now they simply see moments,
scattered across the great web of existence like gems scattered
across a table. To be within them is to be a shining star within
the depths of time, to have once entered their consciousness and
become a moment gathered. When they recognized you as an Other, a
conscious being who existed within them, they saw that you had
been here before, that you existed already as a moment."

Ai frowned and said, "Yes, I sensed that when they spoke to
me... But how could I have been here before? I had no idea that
Jurai even existed until a few days ago."

"Do you remember a story Ai," Tsunami asked, "Of how your
ancestor fell in love with a forest spirit?"

"Yes," Ai said slowly, wondering what this might have to do
with the trees, "Every year in September mother would make
something sweet and tell me the story while we ate. She said it
was a tradition in her family to do that because her distant
grandfather had left out sweets for the forest spirit to lure her
to his home, and that it was in the fall that he finally won her
love."

"That is the one," Tsunami agreed, again with the smiling
tone, "Embellished by time, but still it has a grain of truth at
its heart. She was not a forest spirit, Ai, though she must have
seemed one to your ancestor. She was of Jurai, of a minor and
distant branch of the noble House, but she lost her memory when
her ship-tree crashed on Earth. I know her story because her tree
broadcast it to the stars that her sisters might know the story of
how her Other-sister had found love, but by that time the tree was
weak and the message did not travel far. That she broadcast it at
all is enough, now that I wish to know it, but I am afraid that
her fellow trees shall never hear the song.

"Your mother told you that the forest spirit was lured over
time by your ancestor's treats, but in truth it was only one
incident. It was some dessert he was preparing, your family
remembers that correctly, and its scent lured the confused woman
to his home. He lived alone, isolated from the world out amidst
the forest, and had it been otherwise she may have avoided the
house from caution. She was lost and afraid, unable to remember
who she was or where she had come from, only that she had awoken
in a forest, her arm injured and something important missing.

"When your grandfather found her at his doorstep he thought
her to be a forest spirit. She was very beautiful, and there were
bits of wood and pieces of leaves tangled in her hair from where
she had fallen. Coupled with the strange clothing she wore that
was enough to convince a man of his time. At first he feared for
the ill fortune she might bring, thinking she had been expelled
from the realm of the spirits to dwell with mortals for some sin.
But she had nowhere to go and only sat, crying quietly, outside
his home.

"Finally he relented and allowed her in, giving her food and
a bed on which to sleep. He tended to her injured arm and made
his next trip to the nearest village early so he could get her
fresh clothing to wear. She did not speak his language, so stayed
behind on that trip.

"As she learned to speak Japanese your ancestor was delighted
by her intelligence and the wonder with which she treated even the
smallest things. With no one else to talk to they became friends,
and as time went by that friendship grew to something more.
Eventually they saw it to be love, and they were married and their
children are your mother's ancestors. She never remembered who
she was, and eventually thought that she might truly have been the
forest spirit your grandfather took her for. She held a close
affinity for trees and all her life she wandered the forest around
her new home, searching for something she could not put a name to.

"Despite her fruitless quest she was happy, and her tree saw
her happiness. When she saw that her Other-sister would have a
happy life with this man she had found the tree let herself take
root, using the last of her fading power and her last conscious
act to send the song of her tale to the stars, hoping to share it
with her kin."

Ai sighed as the last images faded from her mind. A noble
tree, its leaves aglow with alien light where it stood in the
forest, and superimposed upon it her many times over great
grandparents, a woman of ethereal beauty and a ruggedly handsome
man. Ai did not know if the images came from Tsunami or her own
imagination, but the story was far better than the one told by her
mother each year. "That.. that was beautiful," Ai said quietly,
closing her eyes to savor the emotions evoked by the tale.
Eventually she opened them and asked, "So I am part Jurain then?
The trees saw me as my ancestor?"

"Yes," Tsunami replied, "A tiny part, separated by generation
upon generation, but the song of the trees is still in your blood.
They recognized the part of you that is your ancestor from the
moment gathered when she was brought to the Inner Chamber for her
naming day. There are many such moments and your link is
separated by generations, but it was there all the same."

Ai was unsure how to respond. It was strange and wonderful,
certainly. The story of her ancestors was as magical as any
legend, and she felt honored to be linked to the vast age and
intelligence of the trees, but she did not understand why Tsunami
had chosen now to tell her all this.

Tsunami chuckled softly, responding to Ai's unvoiced
thoughts. "I am sorry Ai. Tonight is a night for dreams and
memories and even a goddess grows lonely at times. I merely
wished to share an old story with you on this night of stories,
and hoped to give you an answer you could not find yourself. I
will return you to your bed now, sleep well Fujihara Ai."


Ai opened her eyes slowly and saw Mataeo there next to her in
bed, sound asleep. Had it all been a dream then? But it had the
clarity of reality, not the mistiness of a fading dream.

"Thank you Tsunami," Ai whispered, snuggling closer to Mataeo
and closing her eyes once more, "Thank you for the story of my
grandparents."

It may have been her imagination, or a waking dream, but a
breeze seemed to momentarily stir the air of the windowless room.

* * *

Nobuyuki squeezed the little box in his pocket for courage
and stepped forward from the shadows of the hallway. He walked
purposefully toward the great doors, trying not to look around
nervously for the Guardians he knew were there somewhere.

"Malao nimana," a voice at Nobuyuki's shoulder commanded. He
jumped, turning to look at the young man who had seemingly
materialized at his side.

"I.. I don't speak Jurain," Nobuyuki said, worrying that this
might pose a problem. He had not counted on the language barrier
in his plans.

"Ah, one of the princesses' guests, no?" Asked an older man
wearing an identical uniform to the first as he approached from
behind Nobuyuki and to the left. His Japanese was clear and
touched only by a light accent.

"You should not be here honored guest," explained the first
guardian, "This way leads to the Inner Chamber, it is forbidden to
people not of the House."

"My name is Nobuyuki," Nobuyuki said, hoping to put himself
back on his planned course of action, "Masaki Nobuyuki. I am
Tenchi's father, have you met Tenchi?"

The guardians exchanged a glance before shaking their heads
in unison. "No, honored guest Nobuyuki," said the older, "We do
not believe we have met Tenchi. He is the one who was previously
to be married to the crown princess?"

Nobuyuki nodded, glad they had at least heard of his son.
"That's him!"

"We are honored to be in the presence of a relative of one
who is held in such high regard by the most high of the House,"
the guardians said together, bowing and tapping their chests
formally. After they straightened the younger man frowned and
said, "But I am sorry, we still must insist that you not go any
neared the doors, it is forbidden."

Nobuyuki sighed, he had hoped his connections might bear him
through on their own merit. He debated for long moments while the
guardians stared at him impassively; apparently he could stand
there all night if he wanted to, so long as he got no nearer the
doors. Finally he pressed his lips together in determination and
drew the little box from his pocket. The guardians' staves were
drawn upright at his motion, then relaxed when they saw it
appeared to only be some sort of ornamental container.

"There is something I must do," Nobuyuki said seriously,
looking back and forth between them, "It is a promise between
myself and a woman whom I loved very much, and now that I have the
opportunity I cannot break my vow. She.. she said that I might
not be allowed in, if I ever managed to find my way here. And if
that happened I was to show the guardians this." Nobuyuki opened
the ring box so they could see its contents and watched in
satisfaction as their eyes widened.

"You.. you may enter, honored sir," said the older of the two
when he had closed the box once more and replaced it in his
pocket. "The doors may not allow a person not of the House, but
if you can gain entry we will not stop you." They bowed together
and turned, still bent, before rising and walking in matched step
away from Nobuyuki.

*Well that was easy,* Nobuyuki thought. He turned away from
the retreating guardians and back toward the great doors.

Nobuyuki touched the door plate gingerly and closed his fist
around the box in his pocket.

"Achika," he whispered, bowing his head against the wood of
the portal, "I'm here Achika. I've finally come, will you let me
in?"

The doors parted slowly before Nobuyuki, and swung shut once
more behind him.


Nobuyuki looked up at the tree before him. He knew this was
the right one, though they all looked the same. Achika told him
that the path would lead only to the tree he wanted, and this was
the only tree he had come across while travelling the twisting
paths.

"Hello," Nobuyuki said nervously, performing a small bow to
the ancient tree. "I am called Masaki Nobuyuki. My wife was
Achika, daughter of Yousho."

"Yes..." The voice was soft and feminine in Nobuyuki's mind
and came as though from a great distance. "We know that Other...
You are newly within us, Masaki Nobuyuki... How may we do for an
Other whos moment is so close to that of Yousho?"

"I.. I want to talk to my wife," Nobuyuki explained. "She
said you could do that."

"We are sorry, Masaki Nobuyuki... Your wife is not within
us..."

"She gave me this," Nobuyuki said, removing the box once more
from his pocket. He opened it and carefully lifted the little
wooden plaque, etched with a tall, thin tree. Beneath it was a
twist of hair, tied around a tiny branch from which sprouted a
single green leaf. "She said if I gave it to you she could be
within you, and I could talk to her again."

Nobuyuki took the lock of his wife's hair from the box and
replaced the wooden seal she had given him before stowing it back
in his pocket. He stepped forward and knelt at the edge of the
tree's pond. "Please?" Nobuyuki asked, his voice shaking, "I
don't know your name, but Achika said you would be kind. Please
help me? I miss her so, I just want to talk to her one last
time... Please?"

"You may call us Anomi, Other," the voice said replied
gently, "Place your token in our water and we will do."

Nobuyuki lay the lock of hair and its twig in the water,
watching as it drifted toward the tree despite the lack of any
sort of current in the pool. There was a sound like glass bells
being struck and thin rays of prismatic light shone down into the
water from Anomi's leaves.

"Dream, Other..." Anomi's voice came to Nobuyuki as from a
great distance. "Let your moment be as one with that which you
seek..."


Nobuyuki looked around the little room in confusion. He
could not remember how he had come to be here. It was his father-
in-law's house, out at his shrine in the mountains. There was
light coming in through an open window and shining on the smooth,
lacquered black wood of the table at which he knelt.

*How did I get here?* Nobuyuki wondered, *Where was I just
before this? Somewhere far away.. but I don't remember...*

Nobuyuki turned at the sound of a door sliding open and
smiled. Achika was wearing her purple kimono, she always wore one
when they were here at her father's place. The old man said they
reminded him of times when life was less complicated, and Achika
always indulged her father.

"How is he?" Nobuyuki asked as Achika knelt across from him.

She smiled, a radiant smile that never failed to lighten
Nobuyuki's heart. "Tenchi is sleeping," she said, "Mother and
Father took him down to that cave again and he's all worn out."

"I've missed you Achika," Nobuyuki said, memory of where he
had been and what he was now doing returning in a sudden flash.

Achika took his hand across the table and looked down at it,
running her fingers across the lines of his palm. "We were happy
in our time Nobuyuki."

"Can I stay here?" Nobuyuki asked, already knowing the
answer. "Can't I just stay and be with you?"

"Not yet," Achika smiled sadly. "You have life yet to live
No." She squeezed his hand in hers and her smile turned to one of
anticipation. "But you're a part of Jurai now, and you've made me
a part of them too. When your time comes your spirit will find
me, and we can be together again."

Nobuyuki sighed. "It's so hard Achika. Seeing Tenchi with
Ryouko makes me happy, the first time I've really been happy since
you died, but it makes me remember too. I go to your grave every
weekend and pray, you know."

"You don't have to do that No. I knew you loved me, and you
know it in your heart. That's what counts."

"I haven't been with anybody else," Nobuyuki said, looking
away from her eyes, "Not since you. I pretended to be a dirty old
hentai so the girls would leave me alone." Nobuyuki chuckled and
squeezed Achika's hand. "I guess I pretended too good, huh? Even
I believed it most of the time."

Achika grinned at him. "You just wait No, when you get back
here we'll see how you like getting all tied up."

Nobuyuki blushed and she continued, "But you don't have to
stay alone for me No. Be happy. Our moments will be forever,
don't hold me so tight that the rest of the world slips away."

Nobuyuki shook his head. "I can't Achika.. I can't be with
somebody else. Not ever. You were the only woman for me, and you
always will be."

Achika sighed. "You always were a hopeless romantic
Nobuyuki."

Nobuyuki sat with her in silence for a time, letting his eyes
memorize again the curve of her face and trying to hold in the way
that her hand felt in his so he would never lose it again.

"I can't do this again, can I?" Nobuyuki asked finally.

Achika shook her head sadly. "No.. the power for this was
there only once. Was it worth it, No?"

Nobuyuki nodded without hesitation. "To be with you again..
anything is worth that."

"You have to go back now No," Achika said gently, taking both
his hands in hers. "Take a picture for me, on my son's wedding
day? And make sure he remembers his mother loved him? I didn't
tell him often enough."

Nobuyuki nodded, Achika blurring as tears filled his eyes.
"I will. I'll take a thousand pictures for you, Achika."

Nobuyuki felt her fading and saw the light around him
dimming. Achika started to take her hands from his, but Nobuyuki
squeezed them desperately. "Don't let go," he begged, "Please,
hold my hands Achika."

"I will," Achika promised, the same words she had spoken to
the same request years ago on the day she died, "I'll hold them
Nobuyuki. Can you feel me?"

Nobuyuki bowed his head, shutting his eyes so he would not
have to look at the tree or the pool or the endless pathways. He
stared into the darkness behind his eyelids and tried to hold
Achika there. "I do, Achika. I feel you."

* * *

Something has come.

Yes, something different. Alive.

What does it wish?

It has many desires. Perhaps it is more things than one?

Another We?

There can not be another like We. We is alone. We has
always been alone.

What will it do?

It does many things. The knowing of what it will do is
strange.

We will watch this new thing.

Yes.

* * *