fandom: Ah My Goddess / Oh My Goddess / Aa Megami-sama
title: Hon no Omoi.
pairing: Keiichi + Belldandy, Sentaro + Skuld
rating: pg-13
description – When Skuld fails her license exam, she realizes she must learn what a goddess really is.

Disclaimer – Aa Megami-sama is a manga written by Fujishima Kousuke and I just love it a lot to write for it.

Hon no Omoi. (The Book of Thoughts.)

By Miyamoto Yui

(Note: This fic will have different narrators for each part.)

Prologue – Belldandy – the simplicity of the heart of the question

"Oh dear!"

I wrapped myself in my coat even more snuggly when the wind violently passed through the small road behind the school. It was my little shortcut and hideaway when I was waiting for Keiichi to finish a class that I couldn't go to.

But now, years later, I was just waiting for him to finish his guest lecture. How time has flown, hasn't it?

I stopped holding onto myself when I noticed an auburn colored pot had fallen down. The small maple tree was on the ground with it with some dirt spread around it. I hadn't really noticed it until something instinctively told me to look back.

It was under one of the professor's windows.

Immediately, I went over to it and helped it stand up again, patting its branches softly. "Please keep going," I sang quietly.

A part of the pot had cracked. I put that part next to the pot and walked away towards the small garden to a large tree with a wooden bench under it.

It would have been easy to just repair the pot and ask the wind to stop. Some people think that because you have the power to do something, you must immediately do it. But by interceding sometimes, you stop something from growing by itself: Its soul cannot expand without touching all its imperfect corners.

Because I was who I was, sometimes these things hurt just a little deeper.

I was sure that many people walked by in a rush and didn't care at all to take the time to know that these little desperate moments were like the ones they themselves wanted to receive help in as well.

No matter what, there was always time to do something for others.

Always.

So, even though it was windy, I went to the bench and stood by the tree, looking up at its swishing branches and watching the leaves fall down in dizzy flutters. I smiled, took a deep breath, and began to sing a lullaby with the sunset,

just to breathe a little easier.

"To break the limits,

We need to know the power of silence.

I know you want to embrace everything,

But if you love it too much,

You suffocate it from seeing who

It really is.

So, be patient,

Let's grow slowly like stars,

Existing more than we planned

To stay.

Gently, gently,

Wind, please be patient with this world

And become

Softer…

And softer…

Until someone can continue

The strength of your ardent melody."

Clap, clap, clap!

Startled, I opened my eyes and gripped onto the tree trunk. Turning my head, I found my little sister looking at me again with those fascinated, admiring eyes whenever I sang. "Whenever I hear you, I wish I could sing like you, Onee-chan!"

The wind had died down and the usually calm scene was splattered with leaves, and Skuld sat on the bench eagerly waiting for me to sit next to her. I went right next to her and touched my forehead to hers. "In the future, I know you will be able to sing much more beautifully than me, Skuld."

Then, I opened my eyes and looked straight into hers, but she shook her head while keeping her gaze on mine. Stubbornly, she sighed and clenched her fists. "No one can beat your voice."

"But you understand that my voice means nothing if no one wants to hear it. How it sounds here…" I touched the tip of her ear. "And how it sounds here," I said while poking the strap of her overalls and the place over her heart, "are completely different."

Skuld looked at her hands, paused, and hung her head in defeat. "Because I couldn't call Noble Scarlet, I failed the Goddess License Examination to be 'First Class, Unlimited'."

I pulled her head to lean on my shoulder. Skuld closed her eyes even tighter than before.

We had been here for many years, and Skuld had much longer hair than before. Her baby cheeks where now sleek and sharp. And, she had grown taller and slender. To think that in such a small amount of time compared to our homeland, she could grow up so much was something I was proud of.

Earth was a place many people in Yggdrasil could not ever fully understand. They observed its events and they could calculate many results. They protected it, but they couldn't ever get truly involved.

They could only watch what was happening and guide what was happening.

I knew more than anything how that felt.

In one way, it was full. In another, it was so empty too.

So, Skuld was still caught in between that mentality over there and immersing her whole self here. She was still trying to figure out who she wanted to be.

However, I couldn't tell her the answer as to why she couldn't pass the examination though I had a hint of what had happened.

I was sure her pride didn't allow her to see the simplicity of the heart of the question.

"What was the question this year?" I asked as I looked out at the maple tree that had fallen earlier while running my fingers through her fine hair.

"What is a book?" Skuld's eyes opened and they wandered onto the grass aimlessly. "What? That was it? I was supposed to call Noble Scarlet to answer what a book was for the most important examination in my life?"

My fingers were suspended in place as she abruptly jumped up and faced me. "I spent so many years and then-"

"Was it somehow anti-climatic to you?" I put my hands over one another on my lap.

I got up as the evening was making the sky darker. With Skuld next to me, we walked a few paces to a bunch of long-leaved, pink flowers. Wistfully, I touched its petals in between my fingers to understand their texture. "You were lucky to get such a simple question, Skuld."

"Onee-chan?" I felt Skuld wanting to reach out to touch my hair and the crack in her voice.

"What did you say to the examiners? How did you answer them?" I cupped several flowers into my hands and leaned closer towards them to smell their particular scent.

"I told them they were a way to give instructions and to express themselves, just like songs. I even demonstrated with my own blueprints and notes. B-but…" Skuld put her face into her white, red-lined, scratched up gloves. "They told me, 'How could you stay on Earth and come back with an inarticulate answer? We will give you a week to take this exam again.'"

My heart beat against the cage of my chest, but I didn't look up.

Nothing would change if I hugged her and let her cry on me at this point.

I took my face away from the flowers, but kept my hands softly on them for strength.

Mildly, yet earnestly, I questioned, "Did you really believe in the answer that you gave?"

"No…I didn't."

I let go of the flowers and got up to turn around and face her. "Why?"

"Because when I had all that time to think of something to say, all I could come up was with blanks. It felt so empty. All I knew was that I had to say something that books were like song lyrics and that was all I put my feeling into when I answered that question."

"So, it means that you still don't know the potential of a book."

"I…"

"Even if there are those electrical touchpads to read books nowadays, why do you think people keep reading paperbacks? This is what they are trying to ask you, Skuld." My eyes couldn't wander away from hers as I pressed on, "Don't you think it's amazing that humans changed to all kinds of technology but still depend on ink on paper to hold their most important things?"

Skuld's tears came out as she gasped for air. In between her sobs, she cried out hoarsely, "I still don't know what it means to be a goddess!"

With that, she ran away from me.

Pushing her shoulder against Keiichi, who was standing in between the two buildings with the maple tree to one side, Skuld was out of sight with Keiichi looking at me with a puzzled look.

"Me too, Skuld," I mumbled voicelessly.

I stared at Keiichi.

I too didn't know the different parts of myself until I met him, Skuld.

"Bell?"

He was ready to run after her, but I held out my arm and shook my head. "Not this time. If she doesn't understand now, after all her time here on Earth, she won't ever surpass me."

"Surpass you?"

"She still is stuck on my image, which is her ideal. But to be a goddess and a woman, she must find the ideal of herself or else Noble Scarlet will never come out."

When he came closer, I explained about the situation to him and at the end of it, he apologized for making me wait, but he had to do something else before going home. I nodded my head and took the bus home.

On the hill, I overlooked the dark city with the lights beginning to light up one by one like stars. It was different to see what humans made that were so similar to my birthplace.

However, I could no longer call that place home. All this before me was my home now.

I gripped onto my bag with my fingers and made my way up the stone steps. Banpei nodded as I came through the threshold and I patted his metal helmet. "Tadaimasu."

But as I pulled my hand away, Sigel tugged gently on my skirt. They both pointed like children at the direction of the garage where I knew I was sure to find Skuld. Whenever she was upset, she dismantled whatever electronic device was at hand, proving to herself that her confidence in her hands was always her foremost skill.

Patting both of their steels hands tenderly, I smiled and nodded my head in thanks.

I stepped through and stopped in between the walkway and the house to look at the direction of the garage with the blaring television set and Urd's voice ringing in the air.

Why…

Why can't she trust her own heart?

Without the heart pumping, the body cannot function. And without trust, the soul cannot move onward.

This is as far as I can go, right? I cannot interfere.

But how does one explain who they are if they are born into it? It is assumed that mothers should know how to automatically bond with their baby, but they don't know. They interact with one another to know.

In order for a person to give to others, they must know what it means to have nothing. We teach our children to know that knowledge is important, but that doesn't mean they instinctively know that either.

Everything must be learned and absorbed. Someone must teach us about compassion. Someone must teach us how to discriminate against others.

In the end, someone must teach us how to communicate with others.

So, even if you are a goddess, you have to know what that is by not being one.

As I was about to enter the house, Keiichi ran up the stairs and was out of breath. He came up to me with flushed cheeks. "I *huff, huff* found these *gasp* books. I borrowed all kinds *huff huff huff* from different libraries and some of the nice ladies *cough* in town, because of you *huff, huff*, said they'd give their books to Skuld."

Tiredly, after all that research last night and doing this, he grinned proudly at me.

I looked at him and at the books and then at him again. There were tears in my eyes. I could only clasp my hands on his and pressed my thumb on one of the books. "Oh, Keiichi-san…"

"I thought that if I could-"

I took the books from him and hugged them with a silent spell.

"The words that must be told,

Please let them unfold,

Return to your former beauty

Where your characters were first pushed

Onto your paper body."

My tears fell onto them and I gave Keiichi a kiss on the cheek before I quickly walked over to Skuld to leave the books at the light peeking out of the garage door.

When I got there though, Urd was already standing around watching Skuld as she tinkered away with the sound of metal and wrench being connected to one another. Urd saw me and blinked her eyes. She signaled her thumb at the door's direction and shrugged her shoulders.

It was then that I noticed a stack of notes in her arms.

We both left our stuff in front of Skuld's door and walked back to the house. I turned to Urd, who had her hands on the back of her head. "What were those stacks of papers anyways?"

"Oh…cheat notes."

I started to laughed and covered my mouth. I shook my head because only she would find a way to still beat the Yggdrasil system. Only Onee-chan.

The both of us came back to find Keiichi had made tea and he only blinked once when he saw one Urd next to me and the other watching television. We sat in the den with our arms crossed over the table and wondered on what to do.

"What does it mean if you fail the exam?"

"You can only take it one more time. And from there, your fate is sealed."

"Why only once?"

"Our flow of time is different."

"So if she doesn't pass that exam…?"

"She can't ever be a goddess."

"That doesn't make sense. She is a goddess."

"Her pride would kill her for not becoming a full one. There are many privileges you forsake for not being a full goddess."

"What does full mean anyway?"

Urd was the one who spoke up and looked at the window and up to the moon. "Acknowledgment is the same in any life sphere. No realm is safe from that kind of discrimination. No place."

At that moment, she took a deep breath and got up to take a stroll outside.

"Urd…" I reached my hand out to stop her as Keiichi's eyes looked at Urd walking out the door.

Longingly, I watched my older sister's back turn away from my gaze. Keiichi sighed quietly, his face turning towards the garage.

He put his hand on my head and tenderly stroked my bangs with his palm as the tears brimmed on my eyes, but I fought to keep them from falling.

Tsuzuku…/To be continued…

Author's note: Years ago, I had wanted to make a fanfic for Ah My Goddess but felt at the time (when I was in high school) that I could not grasp any of the characters no matter how much I liked them. But now, fifteen years later, I felt that I had gained some understanding about all the main characters, especially a love for Belldandy (though my favorite is Urd).

I hope that the changing of first person between Skuld and Belldandy and another person will not be confusing. I had thought hard about how to present this fic and wanted to experiment with each of their feelings. It is a challenge for me to think both in the present, future, and past of these characters.

I am very excited to present this fic to you and hope that you enjoy it.

Love,

Yui

7/30/2010 12:28:38 AM - Tokyo