The Persistence of Perspective
by volta arovet
a Natsume Yuujinchou story with limited POV
Reality was a matter of perception--Natsume was an expert on the subject. For example, from the stranger's point of view, Natsume assumed, there were two teenage boys and a pet cat enjoying a free sunny, summer afternoon. This was true, but from another perspective, there were also five long, red fish swimming through a clear blue pond, and a giant hat-wearing frog perched on its shore.
"Pardon me, Mr. Natsume sir," the frog was saying, its funny straw hat rising and falling with the wind, "but my Lord and Master, the great and powerful caretaker of these woods and leader of the seven--"
"Excuse me," the visitor said at the same time, and Natsume jumped. Natsume glanced at Tanuma, who nodded his head slightly; the man wasn't a spirit, at least.
Tanuma's reality lay somewhere between these two, Natsume realized. His friend was propped up on his elbows, face tilted to the sky. He looked like someone who just wanted to soak in the sun, but Natsume knew (or rather, had been told) that it was easier for Tanuma to see the spirits out of the corner of his eye.
Tanuma slowly stood up. "Can I help you?"
"Hm," the man said, ruffling a hand through his dark, messy hair. "I was just looking for someone."
"My father runs the temple. Are you looking for him?" Tanuma said.
"Mm," the man shook his head. He was looking at Natsume and smiling softly. "I suppose I'll keep waiting, then. Ah!" He withdrew a small package from his pocket and knelt down, long legs folding with easy grace. "Here you go, cat," he said, offering the scraps of a sandwich to Nyanko.
Nyanko gulped them down with the air of a king granting a commoner the right to serve him.
"Good cat," the man said, patting the cat on the head. Nyanko rubbed his nose against the man's fingers, easily pushing him aside; the man looked up at Natsume, his eyes dark and warm. "He's very strong, isn't he?"
"That's one way of putting it," Tanuma said, and Natsume laughed. The man chuckled, too.
"If you would pardon me, Mr. Natsume sir," the frog was saying again. It tugged on Natsume's sleeve, flippers leaving a wet trail on the cloth. "Mr. Natsume sir?"
The man looked Nyanko in the eyes and said, "You take good care of your owner, okay?" Nyanko licked his jaws and gave a deadpan kitty stare.
"Mr. Natsume sir? Mr. Natsume sir?"
Natsume gave a desperate look to Tanuma, who nodded again.
"Sir? If you like, I can show you to the inner gates of the temple. That's where most people tend to go when they visit here," Tanuma said, moving to step between Natsume and the man. He walked the long way around Natsume and the frog, careful not to get too close to where the edge of the spirit pond would be.
The visitor smiled and stood up, brushing the remaining crumbs of his sandwich into the pond. The fish scattered and snapped at the bits of food. "That sounds like a good idea," he said.
"This way," Tanuma said, taking the visitor's elbow in his hand. They were both about the same height, although the stranger lacked Tanuma's apologetic stoop. Tanuma glanced over his shoulder at Natsume, who mouthed 'thank you.' Tanuma made a face at him, and disappeared around the corner before Natsume's laughter could fade away.
"Mr. Natsume sir?" the frog asked again. Natsume snapped to attention.
"Sorry about that," Natsume said, bowing to the frog. "What can I do?"
"Mr. Natsume sir, I was informed by my Lord and Master, owner of the sacred emblem of the--"
"Short version:" Nyanko interrupted. "Misuzu told this guy he could get his name back from you."
The frog frowned and raised an eyebrow at Nyanko, which was impressive in itself considering how few frogs even had eyebrows to raise. "I suppose that is one way to say it, sir Madara, protector of the esteemed Mr. Natsume sir and owner of the most vastly abused liver in the--"
"Oh, you want your name back?" Natsume said, already ruffling in his pack for the book. "I can do that."
"If you would be so kind," the frog said, removing his hat and making a sweeping bow.
"No problem," Natsume said, smiling shyly. The frog placed the hat back on his head, patting it into place with a tattered flipper. "Ah! What happened to your hand?"
"It is nothing, Mr. Natsume sir, though you are very kind for noticing," the frog said primly.
"Are you sure?" Natsume asked, putting aside the book to dig some first aid materials out of his pack.
"I am quite certain, Mr. Natsume sir. It is an old wound, most of which has healed over many years ago," the frog said. When Natsume continued to hestitate, the frog said, "My name, Mr. Natsume sir, if you would please and at your leisure."
"Ah! Right!" Natsume said, and set the book properly on his lap. He clapped his hands together and concentrated, all hints of boyish insecurity dropping away. The pages fluttered until they opened to the proper page. "Reveal your name to me: Kerokerogyou," Natsume said, carefully removing the page from the book and rising to his feet.
He placed the page in his mouth, biting into it just enough for the magic to feel the will within his teeth, wetting it just enough for the ink to see its mate in his blood.
"Please accept it back."
With a sigh, the name was released, ink and magic swirling through the air and settling into its natural owner.
"Thank you, thank you," the frog said, bowing again and again.
Natsume smiled and was caught by Tanuma before Natsume even realized he was falling, or that Tanuma had returned.
"Thanks," Natsume said, starting to move away, but Tanuma kept a steadying hand on his shoulders.
"Kerokerogyou?" Tanuma asked, disbelief evident in his voice.
"He's a frog, sort of," Natsume said, at the same time Kero was protesting that it was an old and powerful name with thousands of years of history and many important antecedents.
"I see," Tanuma said. Natsume turned back to Kero.
"Is there anything else you would like?" Natsume asked.
"Lord Natsume sir of the generous heart and noble breath is very kind," Kero said, hat flapping in countertime to his bows. "Much more kind than the former Ms. Natsume lord, creator of the book of names and wielder of the unforgiving hooks."
"Hooks?" Natsume asked, turning more pale. "Did she..."
"It would be indiscreet and improper to mention," Kero said with a fair amount of froggy pride. "Perhaps it would be best said that some of the names in the book are the product of multiple meetings, and that at times a strategic surrender yields better results than an attempt at seeking one's freedom."
"That's..." Natsume blinked his eyes a few times. "That's..."
"Natsume?" Tanuma asked, squeezing his shoulder again. He looked to the cat.
"Just another bad report about his grandma," Nyanko reported, rolling over onto his back so his belly could get some well-deserved sun.
"It is in the past, lord Natsume sir," Kerokerogyou said, sinking back into the lake. "I shall endeavor to spread word of the current lord Natsume's generosity." There was only a hat and the tip of his snout above the water when the frog said, "How fortuitous! Please, keep this trifle which I have happened across."
With a flick of his tongue, Kero snatched an old coin from the shore and tossed it to Natsume. By the time Natsume finished fumbling the catch, the frog was gone.
"What is that?" Tanuma asked, peering over Natsume's shoulder.
Natsume frowned and rubbed off some of the dirt. "It just looks like an old coin to me," he said. "I can't tell where it's from. The writing's in Japanese, though. Think it's valuable?"
"Can I see?" Tanuma asked. Natsume shrugged and handed it over. "Look there," Tanuma said, pointing to a spot on the coin. "What do those numbers look like to you?"
"Two thousand...ninety eight?" Natsume shook his head. "That can't be right."
Tanuma glanced sidelong at Natsume. "Hm."
"Kitty tackle!" Nyanko shouted, hurtling himself into Tanuma's knees. Tanuma immediately fell, legs buckling and coin flying up into the air. "Get!" Nyanko cheered, snatching the coin before it hit the dirt.
"What was that for?" Tanuma shouted.
"Aha, aha, I see...." Nyanko said, turning the coin over in his paws. "Yep, what we have here is a genuine time travel coin. Very rare, very rare. They start out somewhere in the future and keep hopping back and back and back until they run out of history. The coin doesn't bounce back when you do, so it's only good for a single trip."
"Time travel?" Natsume asked, as he helped a grumbling Tanuma to his feet. "Really?"
"Yep. Anywhen you wanna go, Natsume?" The cat grinned in a way neither kid trusted at all.
"Well..." Natsume thought, and dithered, and dithered. He turned to Tanuma. "What would you do?"
"You should go see her," Tanuma said without hesitation.
"Huh?"
"Your grandmother. Go talk to her."
"But--"
"Natsume," Tanuma said sharply. "You have questions you want to ask your grandmother, right? So you should go ask her. It's just going to bother you until you do."
"Okay," Natsume said shakily, and then, "Okay!" in a stronger voice.
Tanuma smiled and turned to Nyanko. "I'll run interference. Can you take him now?"
"What? Now?" Natsume gulped.
"If we wait too long, Natsume'll end up giving the coin to someone he thinks needs it more," Tanuma said to Nyanko, who remarked "true, true" while Natsume protested feebly.
"All right!" Nyanko said, loud and quick like a preschool teacher asking for order. He dropped the coin at Natsume's feet. "Put that between your palms, think of where and when you'd like to go, and repeat after me."
"But--wait!" Natsume said, but Nyanko had already started chanting, and Natsume had to struggle to keep up.
He closed his eyes, concentrating on what he wanted. He wanted to go see his grandmother when she was alone, when she would be near, when she would be willing to talk with him. He wanted....
There was light, brighter than the sunshine, he could see it even though his eyes were closed. He felt a strange flip in his stomach, like when he'd gone too high on the swings and the rope went slack, weightless but knowing he'd feel the drop all too soon. He squinted past the light, and he could barely see Tanuma waving at him, mouthing 'good luck,' but his smile was so sad.
The light faded, and it was a cool, cloudy autumn day. His position had shifted a little bit, and he was standing near the gates of the temple. There were bright, crisp leaves beneath his feet, and somewhere, someone was roasting sweet potatoes.
"I'll take that," Nyanko said, batting the coin out of Natsume's hands. "You go find your granny, okay?" He picked up the coin and carried it between his teeth like it was a prized dead mouse and headed for the temple.
"Nyanko!" Natsume called after the cat. "Um. I'm used to you being pushy, but why was Tanuma--"
Nyanko spat out the coin. "My guess is, he didn't want to give you long enough to wonder who a kid who only lives with his dad would want to see in the past."
Natsume froze. "I--"
"Don't worry about it; that was his decision. I'm going to go see if I can trick a couple more trips out of this coin. When you're done here, just do the 'release' hand gesture and we'll go back home. See ya." He picked up the coin again and trotted proudly away.
Natsume decided to put off his dismay about Tanuma until he could actually talk to his friend again, and instead set about looking for his grandmother--for Reiko, rather, because although he wasn't sure how far back he had traveled, he knew that she probably wasn't a grandmother yet.
The leaves crunched and crackled beneath his feet, filling the air with their earthy scent. He wondered what he was going to ask. 'What happened to you?' 'What are you really like?' 'How could you do those cruel things and still be loved by so many of the spirits?'
Really, what he wanted to ask was, 'will I end up like you?'
The temple was abandoned, that much was clear. The grass grew long, winding around the fallen leaves, and broken branches lay strewn across the grounds. Natsume wondered what had happened before Tanuma's father had taken over the temple, but more, he wondered whether Reiko was actually anywhere nearby.
The inner gates were abandoned, and the main grounds didn't even have any spirits, never mind any people, but in the back, on a bench by the spirit pond, sat a young girl, maybe ten years old. Her hands were clenched on the peeling seat, her little legs were swinging, barely scraping the ground, and her hair, long and wild, moved with the wind.
She jumped when she heard Natsume approach, and anything he had to say stuck in his throat.
Her eyes were so angry, so distrustful, so full of pain and so old for such a tiny girl, and Natsume suddenly, physically, remembered what it was like to be young and hurt. He wanted to scoop her up and hug her, tight as he could without hurting her, until she believed, truly believed, that someone in this world cared for her.
Instead, he sat gingerly on the edge of the bench, far enough to not be a threat, and said, "Hello there."
She turned back to the pond, staring at the fish like she could burn them with her eyes if only she tried hard enough.
"Nice day, isn't it?" he tried, and she kicked at the ground a little harder. His hand clenched on the bench, and little flecks of green paint crumbled beneath his fingers.
He took a deep breath. "They're pretty, aren't they? The fish."
She turned to look at him, and it took everything he had to keep his eyes focused on the fish, to not scare her away. "You can see them?" Her voice was soft and hoarse.
Natsume nodded. "There are five of them, right now. They're long and red, and they don't do much, but they're pretty." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, smiled. "My name's Takashi."
She turned away abruptly. "You shouldn't tell just anyone your name. It gives them power over you."
"But I didn't tell just anyone," he said. "I told you. You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
She bit her lip and kicked at the ground again. "I could," she said sullenly.
"I don't think you will," Natsume said. The autumn wind was cold and cut through his thin summer shirt, but somehow, he still felt warm. "It's lonely, having this power. Sometimes it feels like nobody else knows what you're going through, nobody will ever believe what you've seen. It makes a lot of people like us turn mean or cold, but." He smiled softly, moved his hand so it barely brushed against hers. "If it means you're a little less lonely, then I'm willing to risk getting hurt by you."
She was crying, silently, her thin shoulders shaking like a leaf caught in the wind. She looked, not at Natsume, but at their feet.
"What's wrong?" Natsume asked.
"If you're really human, like me..." She choked, and her little hands balled into fists. "Then how come you have a shadow and I don't?"
Natsume looked at his feet and saw a sharp, dark shadow, like he was still standing in the summer sun. He looked back at Reiko, paused to think up a reasonable excuse for why he had a shadow on a cloudy day, and in that pause, he was lost.
She lashed out with her little fist, catching him upside the head. She was small, but she put all her weight behind the punch, and Natsume's vision turned white for an instant. She hit him twice more before he managed to stagger away, putting the bench between them.
"I really am human," he protested, holding out a hand to ward off her attacks. "Please believe me: I wasn't trying to trick you!"
She grabbed a very familiar book from her pack--it was less battered and had fewer pages than the one he remembered, but he would know that book anywhere.
"Your name is Takashi," she began, and bit her thumb, pressing the blood to a blank page.
Natsume wasn't sure if her binding would work on a human, even one like him, but it was probably best not to find out.
"I'm sorry," he said, pressing his pinkies and forefingers together, bending the others. "I just wanted to meet you, Reiko."
"Wait!" Reiko cried, reaching for him. "Are you my--"
The light took him, and when it faded, it was summer and he was tripping over an old fencepost. "Ow," he mumbled, rubbing his backside and gently prodding the side of his head. Reiko had a heck of a punch, and he was pretty sure he was going to get an egg. Not that that had been the worst part about meeting with his grandmother, of course.
Nyanko was nowhere to be seen, and somewhere, someone was laughing. Natsume peered around the corner and saw Tanuma sitting with the stranger.
"He's so bad at hiding things," Tanuma said with a grin, and the stranger nodded enthusiastically.
"He really is! And the funny thing is, you know he will always, always be convinced that he's really good at it!" the stranger said, and they laughed again, Tanuma quiet with dark hair falling into his eyes, the stranger more open and free with his head thrown back.
Natsume cleared his throat. Tanuma and the stranger jumped and turned, identical looks of surprise on their faces.
"Natsume!" Tanuma cried, rising to his feet. "Are you all right? What happened to you?"
"Didn't quite go as planned," Natsume said weakly, wincing as Tanuma poked at the lump on his head.
"Well, she is supposed to be really tough," Tanuma said diplomatically, poking the lump again. Natsume batted his hand away.
"Even when she was ten," Natsume said to himself, and Tanuma snorted.
"I think it's time for me to go," the stranger said, rising to his feet. He walked a careful line between the pond and the grass. "Don't worry," he said, giving Tanuma's shoulder a careful squeeze. "Take care," he said to Natsume with a secretive smile.
"Uh, thanks," Natsume said.
"You really should see Dad before you go," Tanuma called after him.
"Okay, okay," the stranger said, ambling around the corner.
Natsume looked between Tanuma and the stranger. "Is he your uncle, or something?"
Tanuma flushed and shook his head. "He's just some guy. Here, sit down. I'll get some ice for your head. Then you can tell me everything that happened. If you want."
"Thanks," Natsume said, and Tanuma loped off towards the main house. Natsume slid to the ground and rested his back against a rock. He wondered what had happened to that old bench, and reflected that, with the state it had been in, it had likely fallen apart.
Nyanko trotted up beside him, collapsing at his feet. "It's gone," he said mournfully.
"What is?"
"The coin," Nyanko said, rolling onto his back in despair. Natsume threaded his fingers through his soft belly fur. "I thought I hid it really well in the past, but it looks like someone's dug it up between then and now. Guess we only got one ride after all."
"I think that was more than enough," Natsume grumbled. He let his head fall back so he could stare at the summer sky.
"Did any of Reiko's things mention her grandfather?" Nyanko asked abruptly, one of his ears twitching.
"No, why?"
"No reason," Nyanko drawled. "I was just thinking. She thought he had powers, like hers. Always liked him, even though he died when she was just a baby. Said she even got to talk to him, once."
Natsume frowned. "How is that--"
"The funny thing about ghosts," Nyanko continued, "is that they're dead but they stick around to watch the living. Kind of the opposite of time travelers, right?" Nyanko gave Natsume a moment to let this sink in. "Now, what was your great-great grandfather's name, again? Began with a 'Ta,' I think...."
"Oh," Natsume said quietly.
Tanuma returned with a washcloth full of ice. "Here," he said, pressing it to Natsume's head. "This should help the swelling go down, so your aunt won't, um, try to kill me when she sees you." Natsume chuckled and winced as the motion aggravated his headache. Tanuma lowered his eyes. "Sorry your day ended up like this."
Natsume's head really hurt and he felt annoyed at himself for wasting the opportunity and confused about whatever Tanuma had been doing and guilty for how he had hurt Reiko and
And from another perspective?
"Actually," he said, "it's been a pretty good day."
And it was.