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PARABLES
A Claymore Short Story (Originally "A Sermon of Galatea")
DISCLAIMER: Claymore & its characters belong to Norihiro Yagi & his affiliates.
RATING: T
For those who have helped me find, define and refine my faith - MX, Nian, HuiM, Mel, Dan, Shahiddin & Shahmir.
And thanks to Kinematics and Shiek from Animesuki who helped me with this fic.
"My heart has adopted every shape;
it has become a pasture for gazelles,
and a convent for Christian monks.
A temple for idols, and a pilgrim's Ka'ba,
the tables of the Torah and the pages of the Koran.
I follow the religion of love; whatever way Love's camels take,
there Love is my religion and faith."
- Ibn Arabi (1165-1240)
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At lessons, the children look to her with wide, demanding eyes. So she gives them stories of kneeling saints and devoted angels. At the end of each story, they wait for instruction, their enthusiasm sapping. They ask questions too. Why? How? Why? What? Why? – trying to grasp the most important point.
So Sister Latea helps them, even though she can't be sure if they will see things in exactly the same way.
'the poor in spirit'
Like Yuma, who is awkward around the children, their exact opposite. She ghosts among them as they grasp at the edges of her cloak, transparent as the aged pages of a hymnal from her days of wandering. When Yuma is with the children, Sister Latea returns to a mental glimpse of something good enough to be heavenly: Yuma, balanced low on one knee, while a young girl scribbles symbols on her open palms. The light reaches in to illuminate one-half of Yuma's face: the one-half with her lower lip curved in worry.
Sister Latea's entrance makes all the children attentive again. But long after the girl has stopped, Yuma continues staring down at her hands.
'they that mourn'
Sister Latea thinks Cynthia has a natural affinity for children. But when they pass each other, Sister Latea captures a dense, brooding scent. It's deep and sweet like frangipani, playful and tempting like honey crusting at the edge of a simmering pot. Then, it's intense and smothering, like overripe oranges rotting after summer harvest in the orchards outside Rabona.
When Cynthia is alone, Sister Latea plumbs the depths of a yoki so stable and weak she can barely feel it. When she notes Cynthia, she understands the source of the fragrant yoki: a restless, crushing stink, like untouched blood, like a cut left to fester.
"Will you come and help Yuma with the children?" she asks Cynthia.
Her yoki fluctuates. But Cynthia agrees. Sister Latea never really finds out who Cynthia mourns over, but she always remembers the scent of her yoki, like the faint air of incense from a funeral.
'the meek'
She never comes in to be with the children, Sister Latea notices. Even when the group is together, she loiters at the fringe. She has a heavy presence, there but not there, like a misplaced younger twin.
"Miria needs you for something," says Deneve.
Deneve shows up at the window this once, her face a totem of shadow against the sunlight. When the children stare and point at the face hovering at the window, Sister Latea feels a downshift in yoki. It gets drowned by a coarser wave of impatience.
"Did you hear me, sister?" Deneve repeats.
A hand claws into her shoulder, its weight extending into the flesh. Sister Latea turns. Deneve's yoki unfurls before her like a breaker edging into sand. But the children don't want Sister Latea to leave, and the little ones protest at not having her complete attention. At the uproar, the load on her shoulder dissipates. She traces the weight till she can find Deneve's hand, and she brushes the grooves that are her knuckles.
"Peace, peace," Sister Latea says. "Last verse, and I will come. Miria can wait for the sake of the children, can she not?"
A boy at the front makes a face. She hears Deneve sigh, her upper body leaning to fit the window like a fist unclenching. As Sister Latea indulges the children, she feels Deneve's yoki dissolving, like the sweep of the current slipping into waterlogged sand.
'which do hunger and thirst after righteousness'
Sister Latea leads one of the children for a walk. They cross the quadrangle at the orphanage and pass the monastery, built like a crouching animal before the looming bulk of the cathedral. They stroll by a crypt, the graves of former bishops stranded in an ocean of hogweed, and then the churchyard. There Sister Latea finds Helen looting fruit from the trees.
"Oh." She says. Her yoki distracted at the interruption, like an unfinished meal. "Galatea."
"Is she stealing?" asks the child, curious.
Sister Latea picks up a fallen fruit. In the pause, she notices Helen waver; then she leans on the tree, her character billowing a sweet, succulent confidence. She knows Helen has been caught before, and has gotten away with it. A crunch: Helen takes a swipe of the fruit, her tongue washing in the moisture, the fruit's sheen. Her hunger presents itself so strongly, Sister Latea can almost taste the acid of fruit flesh in the confined space of her own jaw.
"C'mon there, little one," says Helen. She bites off a chunk of the fruit, and Sister Latea briefly has an image of fangs twirling with red. "Can't a warrior indulge herself a bit?"
"Man doesn't live by bread alone, don't you know?" the child says.
Sister Latea smiles. She touches the child's head, her hand feeling the quiet pulse of someone still untainted by the world. Helen finishes her fruit, her tongue lashes as she consumes the last bit of the fibrous flesh. Her appetite, like her yoki, settles for all but a second before flaring. But Sister Latea speaks first:
"Not all of us are like men," Sister Latea says.
The child, curious again, moves against her. And Sister Latea nods to Helen, and satisfies her questioning gaze by handing over the fruit.
'the merciful'
Sister Latea knows that only one of the Ghosts is truly interested in how she works with children.
But Miria, like Deneve and Clare, keeps her distance. She's the phantom waiting at the doors, a dark guard at the rear of the crowd. Sometimes her shadow, robed in its imposing patience, slips across the floor to mark the progress of the day as she moves around the rectory. Sometimes Sister Latea can even see her: a vein of black, bleeding yoki, just beyond the small lights that are the children.
The attentive children, at her prompting, acknowledge Miria. After class they peer at her uniform, stare at the blade she guards so religiously, and try to tug at her fingers. And Miria responds, lowering herself to her knees. A girl asks her if she's supposed to be a monster. She grins, and nods. Here, Sister Latea sees, there is no black cloud draped over Miria's shoulders, just a wispy shawl of grey.
When she goes to Miria, that shawl becomes a drained, colourless veil. Beneath it, Sister Latea only sees the fierce silver of Miria's eyes as she bears the burden of the question. But her eyes dim, silver diluting, as frail bright stars surround her, more interested in Miria's lanky limbs and shredded locks than the implications of that question.
"Even monsters are God's creatures," Sister Latea concludes aloud.
'the pure in heart'
Of the ghosts, there is only one whom Sister Latea can see, even without the access of sight.
Sister Latea is with the children when she encounters Clare. In her deep vision, she can make out the contours of Clare's scowl, the tense muscles around her jaw and the flashy (if not excessive) moodiness she wears like ornament around her heart. But Sister Latea knows this is the warrior who saved her, the one with thoughts like a difficult dogma and strange blood filtering through her.
She senses the children are wary of Clare's indifference, so she leads them to her. She stops exactly two paces opposite the warrior whom she had spared so many years ago. Children shuffle around her feet, not taking a step forward. She picks up nothing of Clare's yoki. She can only hear the thrashing of the desire in Clare's unsteady heart.
"I do not understand," Clare begins, "how someone like you could've given up a warrior's life to watch brats."
Sister Latea imagines Clare drawing her sword, solely for effect, to illustrate her progress. But Clare remains still, her body flickering with mild annoyance at the children pooling around her. So Sister Latea lowers herself to the level of the children. Wary of Clare, a boy tugs at Sister Latea's sleeve. She suffers him and, as her robes slip off her left shoulder, she flashes to Clare her scarred bicep, healed after the confrontation with Agatha.
"Doing things one does not understand," Sister Latea says. She tries to smile. "I like to call that, faith."
A spike in Clare's mood. "You and your rambling," she says. "I don't understand that either."
Sister Latea laughs. "Really?" She points towards Clare's heart. "You of all people should probably understand it best."
'peacemakers'
Sister Latea assembles some of the children on the highest balcony of the cathedral. They break the cluster around her in collective awe at what she thinks is the entire skyline of Rabona.
"What can you see?" she asks.
"The shrine!"
"The market!"
"Seven people at the shrine with one of the ghosts. At least fifty-one on the road leading to the market, including at least one of the ghosts."
Tabitha leans at the balcony's edge with the children. Sister Latea seizes upon the images Tabitha supposedly can see, firing her vision along the jagged stone shoulders of buildings and up cobbled streets. Confronted by the static pulse of humanity, she seeks out the yoki that Tabitha can only guess at.
"Who do you think is at the market?" Sister Latea challenges.
She gropes through the faceless crowd, whipping under arms and around corners until – She sees the shape of a dark sentinel, easing her way through the crowd. Her target, as she expects, gives away no yoki. Just a dim outline of a warrior, a familiar stillness and the dead weight of a Claymore strapped to her back.
"I can't see." Tabitha says, her tone as tight as the hand of a child being lead through the dark.
"Don't use your eyes."
There's a flare in yoki, so slight that Sister Latea registers it as Tabitha taking a deep breath. When she concentrates on the sentinel across Rabona in the market, she fastens her gaze on the stillness, the geography of a face she cannot see, the thoughts distilling from each breath. She finds the patient fountain of yoki: a signature as luxurious as silk tassels from an altar cloth.
"It's Miria," Tabitha says.
"And what is she feeling?"
Sister Latea holds onto Miria's silence, the ease at which she waits, watching the activities of the market like a resident of Rabona herself.
"She's at peace," Tabitha says.
"How does she know all that?" asks one of the children. She perches on her toes, face following the invisible line of Tabitha's bowed head and folded hands, as if trying to detect the moment a prayer rises to God.
Sister Latea nods to the question, says:
"Remember: we walk by faith, not by sight."
'those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'
She sees the cathedral walls, flanked with statues: hundreds of characters made of plaster, pushing their way out their surfaces. A bearded Methuselah with a staff in his right hand. Tamar seducing Judah. Joseph fleeing from the embrace of Potiphar's wife, the sharp flex of rock folded into a fluttering cloak.
She smells the remains of the host at the altar. Stray crumbs prick her fingers, along with the three-day old scent of wine lingering in the edges of the chalices.
She sees the swelling colours of stained glass dripping down onto her arms. The prayer beads coiled snake-like in cavities between her fingers. The single stabbing spear of sunlight in the dark. The spire beyond. And further still: bodies of buildings, draped in Rabonan colours. The mountains rising from the frame of the easternmost gate. The hilly incline where she can still remember, in her mind's eye, the dense thicket by the stream.
And finally the sun bouncing on the water, as the current carries away flecks of blood –
It's the last thing she can remember seeing, physically, before everything turned to black.
She sees seven flares enmeshed in the dead blackness warped beyond her. Their yoki glistens like the eager eyes of children she hasn't seen in too long. Their individual signatures intensify: Yuma's curled palm, the whiff of jasmine from Cynthia, angular scowl on Deneve's face, the acid taste of Helen's apple, the black veil bunched at Miria's throat, Clare's unblinking eyes, and the blush of light on Tabitha's right cheek as she closes her eyes and leans into the sunshine.
Then there's the orphanage. Sister Latea sees the door. She's waiting outside. There's the sing-song voice of children. She takes the stories of these seven warriors as she enters the threshold, whispering her own blessings, the children calling out for her.
NOTES:
Section headings are taken from a passage in the Bible, the Gospel of Matthew chapter five, verses one to twelve (5:1-12). Most people refer to them as the 'Beatitudes'.
Two things got me writing this fic. First, I wanted to look at every one of the seven Ghosts as they were, with all their flaws and strengths. And of course, I wanted to write a Galatea fic, with her as someone 'seeing' beyond the physical.
Galatea in this story was also meant to counterbalance Revan's portrayal of Galatea in his very well-written epic Silver-Eyed Empress. (I couldn't resist writing something)
Thanks for reading. And, as always, appreciate feedback & comments.
06.11.11