He drifts in her direction after the world meeting (she is seated on a stone bench just outside, the garden is very beautiful). With every step, there seems to be the weight of an entirety of age. Their parting had been very polite—too courteous. A light touch of lips to fingers, a delicate smile under the swirling petals of spring, and just the slightest hint of sorrow—and then she glided gracefully toward China. She did not look back.
Decades have passed.
His breath rustles her hair; she does not permit herself to turn around.
"Taiwan." Her name drops from his lips. She cannot help thinking that she would much rather her more exotic name, Ilha Formosa, but the time—for such childish things—is past.
Their history had been almost-friendly, but for her refusing to be broken. She had humored him, learning his culture, dressing as a young woman should have, eating daintily in his presence, his name trilling off her lips as the bright chirp of a bird. Their days had been spent swaying with the breeze, gracefully twirling with the light beating of butterfly wings.
—
He watched her as she danced to the tribal dances of her nation, feet pounding the ground decidedly to the beat of drums and the thrum of the land.
—
China arrives on the dawn of a misty day. He wants her back. She does not say word, does not make a sound as Japan falls. There are no words to express this.
—
China is her brother. He's easy to love and easier to hate; she does both. She cannot oppose him, he is too strong, but what he has in size and influence, she makes up in tenacity and spirit. He wants complete control of her; she refuses. Others may try to take her, but she belongs to no one.
—
Her head does not turn, and her voice does not waver as she politely acknowledges him: "Japan."
"You've grown up." You've become independent and rebellious.
"So I have." I refuse to belong to anyone, neither you nor China. I belong to only myself.
"I hope that you've not forgotten your manners." There was a purpose to my teachings.
"I'm speaking to you, aren't I?" It was just a minor detail that she was not facing him, that her back was to him. He had no right to brand her as improper. One simply had to read in-between the lines.
—
She lifts a wooden flute up to her lips and plays, weaving a melody through air tightened by tension and unspoken years.
He leans against the wall, watching leaves flutter through the air and listening to the unfamiliar music, contemplating the position of the sun. He muses over the freedom that she so longs for. They have an eternity stretching ahead of them.
(but, then again, she had always been impossibly impatient)
