She is far from perfect. She has callouses on her hands that should have been holding tea cups and arranging flowers on her palms.
She tends to blurt out the wrong thing and has no experience in covering her words with lies.
She has nothing to hide and everything to share.
She is honest, to a fault—her heart is constantly on her sleeve—when she cries her tears fall everywhere, and they are not hidden.
She laughs loudly. She eats voraciously.
She punches like a boy and there is always a little speckle of dirt on her cheek when she isn't looking.
She doesn't smell like perfume, she smells like sweat and earth.
When she is angry, everyone knows.
When she is hurting everyone acts.
She is strong without lifting a sword.
She is weak without saying a word.
When she cries it paints her nose red, and her cheeks ruddy. Her sobs are not delicate, and the aftermath isn't pretty.
She is as pure as a child and yet her eyes hold the wisdom of a woman—she is neither, but she is more.
She loves with every part of her. She always has leftovers to share—and that's everything, clothes, food, housing, hands, smiles. A heart always on standby and never without a bruise here and there when they pass it by.
They love her. She loves them.
The girl who is like sunlight falling without reservation to anyone and everyone with blessings and affection she wanted just as badly as they never knew they did.
She isn't perfect. But it's more than enough for the people with nowhere to go and every reason to open the gates and see her run, arms out, smile bright, "welcome-home" at the ready.
We're home. Ugly. Jou-chan. Tanuki. Kaoru-dono.
Kaoru is my favorite anime character of all time. I was always hesitant to write an idea about her but this sort of came up. With Rurouni Kenshin (my most beloved fandom ever) coming back in full swing I wanted to write a tribute to the girl who I feel like was so strong and so fragile at the same time. There is so much to admire about her. I will probably write more about her but I decided to write this on Tumblr and here we go. Oops.