A Seirei no Moribito One-Shot
Us
Rated: K +
Language: English (Ch. 1)/French (Ch. 2)
Pairing: Balsa / Tanda
Characters: Balsa Yonsa, Tanda, OC
.
.
.
Disclaimer: I don't own Seirei no Moribito or the characters, sadly. I just own the context of the story… Balsa… be miiiiiiiinnnee!
Dedication: This one-shot is a dedication at my own trilogy "no Moribito". It will dig deeper about the parental love that Balsa and Tanda feel toward their first child. Sorry for the title, for a rare time, I wasn't inspired at all for a good title.
Note 1: I would also take this opportunity to thanks my friends, which are "parents", to have participated and shared their feelings through their child to allowing me to write the deepest feeling that a parents could feel towards their child.
Note 2: The pen itch me a little and since I have a baby-boom around me, I decided to write something about parents.
Note 3: I try a new writing style (merge two versions – One into English, Other into French – my native language)I don't own a Beta-Reader, so, sorry for my mistakes or wrong spellings with my English. I'm still improving in this category.
Otherwise, I hope you will enjoy to read!
.
.
.
Balsa's P.O.V
If someone had told me earlier in my life that I will have kids and I get married, I would have laughed. Because I had greatest ambitions about my duty as a bodyguard and redeem the lives of the eight King's spear-wielder that Jiguro killed. Still and constantly stuck in a nomadic routine, from which I couldn't settle. I'm not like Tanda. But now, I will not change the slightest parcel of my present life, because I love it like that. I can't live without what I call today, my child, my daughter, my flesh and my own blood.
When she looking at me with her first gaze when she's born, pressed against my skin, in the dark and quiet, I had this crush. This love at first sight almost indescribable I had never felt before. Even Tanda, who was the father, had never managed to make me live such a strong emotion. She was so small, warm to touch. I must admit that I love to feel its warmth in my arms.
I cannot say from where comes this phrase, but a small voice keeps to telling me, inside: "We love our children from the first breath and love them to our last. We gave them life, and they gave us back a reason to live. "And I believe it, now. I can't help but worry when my little darling of six months can't stop crying even though I rock her, try to breastfeed, check if she hot or too cold. And when I am no longer able, I pass her into Tanda's arms, exhausted but especially disappointed to not to be able to calm her down. Now, yes, I live for the promise to Jiguro, but my daughter became my first priority in my life. I couldn't get out when I wanted to – at last, yes when she slept watched by her father – in fact, I was no longer the center of the universe, but the universe of a center. Sure I went out a few times, but every time I fell on an enemies who wanted to fight me, challenge me to settle some debts from the past. Each time, I had only one goal to stay alive: it was only for my child. I had to survive for her. My habits have changed, I have more patience, and that I wanted it or not, I had to open more myself psychologically to meet their emotional needs: to give her love and affection. Show her that Mom knows how to smile, listen, spoke and advice.
Tanda's P.O.V
Balsa has this custom. To tell me that our child was an accident, although it wasn't planned in her life projects. A positive accident, she often tells me. But I don't think our daughter was an accident, but she entered in our lives for a reason, or how to learn to enjoy life itself, how to live. Enjoy all the happiness, every moment spent with her, with Mom. In my mind, I will always remember her first meeting, when she took her first breath. A strong emotion moment. But everything's actually triggered inside me when Balsa had to rest after her delivery and Torogai was out to do some Yakue magic incantations. The first time I had, by my own, to calm my child down awkwardly, taking her in my arms and try to lull her cries because Mom had to rest. Then I realized that a tiny, fragile life that depended on me for everything, nobody else can't protect it beside us, its parents. I was her father, and I had to try to comfort my baby and analyze her tears in order to meet its basic needs. Her tears were her only way to communicate to us.
I became also more resourceful. Meaning that holding a baby in my arms, I had to open the only door, deposit such object here and there and be more watchful when my child began to crawl. And I looked at Balsa.
She said that she wasn't able to staying in a place indefinitely; she told me she didn't want to settle and have children.
"I am an independent woman, Tanda. I don't want a child under my responsibility, twenty-four hours charging twenty-four, seven days a week" she had told me without emotions.
"Why?" I asked.
"I have no maternal instinct inside me. I'm uncomfortable in the company of children... and then, you will not be able to change my own habits… I mean: always travel in news places. I know you always wanted to have children, Tanda, but me, this is not. I don't want."
I laugh just thinking inwardly at the memory. I watched her play now with our child, laugh and have fun with her. Balsa wheedling her, rocking her and watching her for hours sleep as she listened to her breathing. She's a very good mother. And this new lifestyle doesn't seem to displease her, on the contrary. She seems to take taste, bite full tooth in this new experience.
When our daughter began to make her teeth, the only way I could find to relief her teething discomfort, was to put a carrot in her hand and watching her chew the vegetable with funny noises of satisfaction. I had everything that could make me happier: a child and a suitable mother for them. I don't think I can even call her as my wife, but I can always call her as my companion. The routine has changed; of course, I am more patient than before her arrival.
Balsa's P.O.V
"Mommy!"
It was her first word she released to us. I turned to her and looked at her, stunned.
"What did you say, sweetie?" I living up as I lowering myself to her level.
"Mommy!"
"Congratulations! Say Daddy now. Dad-dy..."
"Daddy!"
She continued to say her words by clapping in her hands and laughing. Her laughter made me melt. I admit, I made a beautiful creation. I loved her of all my heart. So far, one of the best memories I retain was this family day. I have shown my back to my daughter and she immediately climbed nimbly to cling tightly to me before passing my spear under her knees joints. We went out to have some fun to relax a bit. There were other children playing on the playground. From the corner of my eye, I saw my two year old watching them enviously.
"Do you want to go there, darling?" I asked.
She negatively nodded with a pout. But yet I saw her eyes were still looking to the other children.
"Do you want Mom and Dad goes with you, honey?" Tanda added.
"Yes... "
I bent down and she went down before taking my hand.
"Why are we not going to swing?" I offered.
"Yes."
"Mommy will push you."
She sat down and I began to slowly push her in the back. She asked to go higher, but I was afraid she fell and hurt herself. Well, I thought, in the worst case, she will learn from her mistakes, I said to myself. She stood firmly, laughing: I saw her hair flying in the wind, engraved in my mind her infectious smile, radiant and her warm laughter. And just thinking about it, my heart beat with pride.
She was also a little ticklish. When her Dad would examine her to see if she was growing well, she laughed at every touch of his soft hands on her little frail body.
"We have a little ticklish here," He laughed.
"Daddy..." she laughed as she was struggling to find her breath. "Stop it!"
"But Darling, I must examine you to see if you grow up well."
"It's tickles!"
She burst out laughing again, unable to support the slightest touch of her father on her belly. I could see it in his eyes, in Tanda's eyes: he had never been so happy in his life so far. He tried again, this time with a new trick.
"I will spend my hand and put your hand on the top of mine. It'll calm you down."
Our daughter laughed and tried to contract her stomach to not to laugh, even if she was still laughing. I also remember this day, when she was three and had watched me doing my Martials arts training. She came so quietly, so slowly near me that I hadn't noticed her at first, imitate me in my actions. That's when I cried by clearing my energy that I heard her. I turned quickly, thinking that I had hitting her, but when I saw her in the same position of mine, she smiled.
"I also want to be like you!" she told me.
"Do you want... learn martial arts?"
"Yes! Can I, Mommy?! Say yes! Say yes, please!"
She was so insistent that I give up. I don't doubt even one second that she can and wants to be like me later. Slowly I taught her karate's katas and other martial arts that Jiguro had teach me. She was good. She was my pride.
Tanda's P.O.V
Everything seemed so perfect. It was the dream life that I wanted to have, to live. Like this memory, more funny than bad. In fact, I was going to make jumping her on a mattress bouncing, then the backlash made her fly again in the air. She found this funny and gasping for more and more. The second try proved to being particularly catastrophic. I jumped again in front of my companion and this time, instead of fly again and fall back on the mattress, she rushed straight into the wall, face and belly first before collapsing to the ground.
"Oh my God! Sweetie!" I panicked, running toward her.
Balsa laughs despite her even if she was worried. We straightened her, she pouted and cried.
"Honey!" Balsa said.
"It's huuuuuurrt!" she whined.
"But why are you crying? It was fun!"
Balsa continued to laugh and took her in her arms. Eventually our daughter laughed about her pain and asked to start over again, something I didn't understand.
But I would have to expect this outcome. That evening, while our daughter slept upstairs in her bed, Balsa began to being short speech.
"What's happens Balsa?"
"Tanda... I love our children more than anything in this world. I cannot live without her and her without me. She gave me a new perspective in my life, another goal. But I feel locked up... I need to re-experience this freedom that I had before."
"What... Do you want to leave?"
"This will not be forever... I just need to take some new air. Alone. Just like before... independently."
"All will never be like before," I tried to convince her. "Reassure me, you will not leave when our daughter sleeps?"
"I'll leave tomorrow morning. But I need this gulp of air. I beg you, Tanda... these four years have been wonderful. The most beautiful of my life until now and I hope it will continues in the same way in the future, but I need only one a solitude moment. I will burst if it continues like that…"
I sighed inwardly.
"No," she went out quickly, "I'm not leaving because of our baby we conceived together and she's now a big girl. I... I need to not feel glued every time I go out or I fight."
"Our daughter glues you because she loves you, Balsa. This is typical of children, you have already stuck your parents too when you were a kid," I tried.
"I love her also, Tanda... I love her more than everything and what on this earth. She is not a pot of glue, I know, I also need her love to live. But I have this indescribable feeling that continues to gnaw inside me. I really need to go, Tanda. I'll blow up. I feel as if I was in late pregnancy..."
"... Since when do you want to be alone?"
"... Too long time to calculate it."
I continued to watch her in the eye. I knew my eyes transposed in that of our child and she seemed to see the eyes of our daughter into mine. She seemed to waver.
"Since I gave birth, I think..." She confessed to me.
Her gaze pierced me. Is she going to cry because she felt bad to leaves us for a while? I sighed to not manage to find the appropriate words for the situation. She turned and began her preparations.
Balsa's P.O.V
I knew it. I knew it would happen in that way.
I announced to our daughter that I was leaving for a while, traveling alone. But she insisted on, wanting to accompany me. She will not let me to leave soon because she was firmly clutching to my dress and to my legs and Tanda, who seemed to have thought about my situation overnight, also was trying to take off her from my legs. Her dark brown hair like mine and her two low pigtails shaking in her sobs while her little pink kanbalese dress with long sleeves was misplaced.
"You don't love me!" She cried, weeping. "You don't want me!"
These words struck me in the chest. Where had she learned these words in the first place?
"This is wrong, my dear, I still love you. Mom just needs a little from time."
"Take me with you!"
"Later... when you will be older. But not right now, you're still young."
"I want to be with you, Mommy!" she continued to screamed. "Take me with you, take me with you, take me with you, take me with you!"
She continued to cry and scream loudly. She wanted so much to come with me. I had two choices: not respond to her cry of distress or, give up. Finally, I lowered at her level and took her face, trying to wipe her little cheeks reddened by tears.
"Don't leave me... Mommy..." she sobbed.
"I'll come back soon, honey, even before you realize it."
"This is not true!"
"But of course it's true," I attempted a smile, the most reassuring as I could. "I'll bring you a souvenir of my trip. You like surprises, right, honey?"
"Yes..." she pouted
"Do you will babysit Daddy meanwhile ?"
"Huh?" she asked.
"Dad needs a woman to watch over him."
Tanda made an invaluable expression and our daughter gave him a funny look. I smile. After many efforts to try to calm her and being sure that she will not follow me, I could finally go alone at the adventure. Find my old life way, even if it was limited in the time.
It's been two weeks since I've been out. Almost like when I had the habit before the arrival of my child. Without trying to sound wicked, to have experienced to not having my daughter in the legs all the time, it doesn't really missing me – which she wasn't here with me in my adventures. But I love my daughter. I'm very happy she's here in my life. When she is not present, I can do more stuff, I have more freedom without constantly having to turn the head here and there, I am also less exhausted. Meaning that I have to recharge my battery sometime before to become too much exhausted.
Meanwhile, during my trip, I saved two street kids from slaver's hands. I put the five men to the ground without even output my spear. I'd saved a boy and a girl. They called Tohya and Saya. Tohya was thirteen and Saya, ten years I would say. I bought for them some medicines to heal them and have thus helped to find a home at low cost, a makeshift shelter so they can have their own home. We became very good friends.
I slept sometimes in the woods, sleep out under the stars, and when I was desirous, I paid me an inn. But something was different. No comfort or being alone. Each evening, I dared to ask at the maids of the inn if they had another pillow, a little bigger. The received request, I put it close to me, under the covers before sleeping by squeezing it against my body. I didn't recognize this dependence. In fact, I didn't recognize myself.
In the middle of the night, which would begin my third week of vacation alone, I opened my eyes. I turned on all sides and all sides. My daughter constantly haunted my mind. Her smile, her joy, her laughter, her voice, the warmth of her body... I sat up in my bed, preyed by heart palpitations, also by shakiness coming from my legs and my arms and I had to take deep breaths to calm down. Limit if I wasn't afraid to losing consciousness. My hands were numb and I was dizzy. It was the first time I felt this kind of discomfort. I watched the moon through the open window and got up. I breathed again strongly to calm the beating of my heart. I folded luggage, took my spear, paid the owner of the inn and left as I was running. Sorry, Jiguro... I will continue to complete your promise about the eight lives... but for now... I have something more important.
I ran so fast, so long, until my lungs hurt. Tears began to flow freely over my cheeks and I don't even know if it was the wind against my eyes dried out or if it was the thoughts about my family that made me like that.
"You don't love me! You don't want me!"
These words still echo in my mind. She is still very young... but to believe, to might, to think that about me? This is false, my treasure, and you know it. Mom will always love you whatever happens and on the contrary, I want you, much more than I dare to imagine it.
Tanda's P.O.V
I don't manage to calm the crisis of my daughter in tears since the departure of her mother. At least once, minimum, per week, she made me a weekly crisis tears, claiming me her Mom. She refused to be in my arms to being comforting. So I could only wait from her to calm down and she finally fell asleep, completely exhausted. And I looked her sleep: a true spitting image of her mother at this age. And just then, I took her in my arms and laid her in the bed on the second floor by placing the cover to her chin to look at her, for an eternity, sleeping.
The day she was having fun, playing with a small bamboo stick to mimic her mom. She made me laugh even when she moved it from all directions and from all sides. Until the stick hits the back of her head by accident. I laugh, leaning on the edge of the door, when I heard the "sound – pok!" suddenly behind her head.
"Ouch!"
She slapped the bamboo stick as to punish it and threw it into the grass coming towards me, angry. Children bring you such an intense joy, an indescribable joy. The smallest blunders that they're made, beautify your days so it's comical. Every time I see her, every time she says "Daddy" or she smiles at me... it is a story in itself. Every moment spent with her could fill pages of emotions. It is an unconditional love that a child offers and gives to it father... a pure bliss love. Something you will never find in a relationship.
That night, she stung again her weekly crisis to want to see her Mom. As usual, I let her calm down until she asks me, willingly, and more quietly, crying to give her a hug before taking her in my arms and tuck her in the bed. Around 02:00 a.m, I couldn't sleep anymore. So I busied my minds to crushing some medicinal herbs for orders. The ceiling creaked, my daughter got up too. She went down the stairs with her thick blanket wrapped around her body and joined me, her shoulder-length brown hair in disorder.
"Daddy... you don't sleep?"
"No," I smiled, "I have a bit of insomnia."
"What does it mean?" she questioned me as she sat down beside me, laying her head on my thighs.
"It means that you cannot get back to sleep at night," I helped her, playing in her hair. "Or that you cannot fall asleep at night and you spend the night to turn around in all directions and all sides in your bed"
"Ah..."
There was a short silence. The heat body of my daughter against me made me safe. I felt to be her protector, I felt so important at someone's eyes.
"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think Mom thinks at me, right now?"
"Yes, always, my pretty."
She sighed and said nothing more before straightening her head again.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, honey?"
"If I think very hard to Mommy, does will she arrives and appear here?"
Her question, childlike and magical at the same time, made me smile. If only it was as easy and simple with Balsa who wandered as grandmother Torogai-Shi... But not wanting to have to deal with a new flood of tears, especially in the middle of the night, I entered into her game.
"Do you wanna try?"
"Do you know a magic formula for that, Dad? You're a weaver magic Yakue."
"Perhaps!" I laughed. "It is necessary that you repeat after me: 'My mom is the most beautiful.'"
"My mom is the most beautiful..."
"'The strongest and the best. I unconditionally love her and I will cherish her every time that I can."'
"The strongest and the best. I unconditionally love her and I will cherish her every time that I can" she repeated.
"'I must to respect her because she gave me the life I have now. Mom, I love you. Mom, you're my heart. Mom, at the very end, I will love you forever.""
"I have to respect her because she gave me the life I have now. Mom, I love you. Mom, you're my heart. Mom, at the very end, I will love you forever... and how many times must I repeat it?"
"The number of times equal to your age. If you have four, you have to tell it four times. If you have ten, you have to tell this magical incantation ten times."
She repeated the mantra four times. This charm totally improvised and invented everywhere will certainly not going to work, but if so...
"Four times!" She exclaimed. "Mommy should appear!"
I would love to believe her. If it doesn't work, she'll believe I tell her lies and will no longer believe me. I loved her mother, I loved Balsa. I have often heard from men they didn't want to sleep alongside their wife – after they have given birth – for their body… Because, it was too much different than before the arrival of their children. But I don't care that Balsa hasn't the same body, with still retains traces of her pregnancy despite her workouts. I loved her for what she was actually inside.
Balsa's P.O.V
I entered at home. I was surprised to see the fire burning and I heard a voice that made me melt instantly, filling my chest with a warmth.
"The Charm! The charm worked!" Our daughter brightened. "Mom's here!"
"Balsa..." Tanda stammered.
She fell into my arms, dropping her blanket and crying her joy. But which charm?
"Mom!"
"I've never been so wrong in my life," I declared. "Never someone missed me so much in my life... next time, my little Angel, you will come with me!"
"Yes! We will cross the Blue Mist Mountains! We'll go to the Kanbal's kingdom!"
I sat up, our daughter in my arms and looked at her father.
"I love my life now, and I won't trade it for anything," I confessed. "I can settle, but only if I can always travel from time to time. Our daughter has become my whole life... and the essence of my existence. You, Tanda... you're mainly the bird who guide me on the path of life."
"Where did you learn all of these words? These sentences?"
He was right. Hence I went out those words? It wasn't like me. I didn't answer. My maternal instinct must dictate my words and gestures.
"We should never have to choose between work and family," I replied. "Tomorrow, we will leave for travel. Together. In family."
"Yes!" Our daughter brightened.
"Sometimes, when children were small, I thought I could die suddenly, into a fight or elsewhere, but the mere thought to leave them, alone, without me…"
Tanda looked at me without a word, probably speechless. Then, I looked at my daughter, her flashing eyes, the joy she struck out looking at me like if I was the most wonderful thing in her life, at her eyes.
"Mom! How many languages do you speak?"
"Um... I know four, two major mainly, which I speak very well."
"What's your major?"
"Yogoese and Kanbalese. Then there's Rota's language and Sangal's language, but less talented. Why?"
"Teach me how to speak Kanbalese!" Our daughter begged me. "Please do!"
I smile.
"Of course, I'll have to dig a little deeper in my memory, but I can teach you how to talk the Kanbalese's dialect."
"Yeah!"
"For now, you should sleep."
"Nope."
"It is important to sleep, especially at your age."
"It's not funny to sleep..."
I laughed at her cute face, pouting. Her voice always made me melt. I'm always a spear-wielder, but with benefits and disadvantage. I was less selfish, less taciturn and less severe. But I had become much more open, more maternal and emotional and sentimental. We are often told that a child changes the lives of the parents, both for the mother and the father. It's true, I confirm that. I love my children more than anything. Before, I was living just for me. You see, it's not so much that I don't know how I did it until now to live without my child, but rather by how lucky I am and blessed by life.
In the hollow of my neck, in the heat of my arms, she slept, finally, peacefully. So I went to her bed, and rocking her, I sang her this beautiful original poem Kanbalese that my father and my mother had crooned me, still being a child:
"I always love you,
The night as the day,
And as long as I live,
You'll be my baby"
End ~