11/9/09
Yes, this was an english assignment! :P
Byakuya Kuchiki looks out his open window. He loves to do this, to watch the transient sunrise, its bright oranges and purples blazoned across the sky. It is at this time that he allows his straitlaced noble training to fall away, and allows the gossamer rays of light that can pass through the aura of morning fog to touch his normally inscrutable façade.
His wife, Hisana, always liked the sunrise. She would usually join him on mornings like this, take the cup of tea offered by the servant, and tell him about what was going on in the Royal House of Kuchiki. She always found the sunrise salutary, a promise for a new day to search for the sister, Rukia, that she abandoned so long ago.
Hisana was like the sunrise. She could talk for hours with almost anybody, her affable demeanor touching everybody's heart, no matter how deeply it was hidden. That was before she became too sick to look for her sister.
As he thinks that thought, he can hear that same sister shuffling down the hallway. He found her about a year after Hisana's death. He lifts the teacup up, letting the amorphous steam cascade upwards.
Rukia calls through the traditional Japanese doors. "Brother, I am leaving now, to meet Kurosaki Ichigo."
"Fine" he said. The sound of her sandals moves away, and he takes a sip of the tea.
He can not figure out that enigma of a boy, Kurosaki Ichigo. When Byakuya first met him, he seemed like the epitome of a foolish young boy flouting the rules and trying to aggrandize himself, but Byakuya has seen deeper into his mind, and grudgingly admits that there is more to the boy then you first see, and the ruling of the government to give him and his friends amnesty was an equitable one.
Neither Ichigo nor Rukia are like the sunrise. Rukia is more like a White Moon. She is cool, but not cold, a light in the darkness. Ichigo is the opposite, a Black Sun, lighting the way ahead, but not following the precept set by his ancestors, and ignoring what seems like axiomatic truths. No matter how different they may seem, though, they are both resilient travelers across the sky, sedulously fighting inch by inch to get their way. Neither of them are like the sunrise though.
Byakuya loves the sunrise, and the silence that allows him to think, so unlike the vapid paperwork, the soporific effect of the captain's meetings, the querulous and factious members of the squads. Byakuya is loath to change this propensity of his, to filch these little moments of peace in this scathing war.
He sighs as the sky finishes its brilliant display, and the sound of swords clashing and scurrilous language reverberate across the land. He extricates his mind from the depths of his thoughts, sets the teacup down, and fixes the captain's cloak around his shoulders. Time to face the new day. After all, there will be a new sunrise tomorrow.