Arms in the Garden
by Doomed but Over It
Magic comes in many forms. All have stories. The carnivorous arms in the park are only one.
Jonah loved playing in the garden. His grandma had tended it and planted everything in it. She always hid a present for him somewhere in the garden, among the sweet smelling marigolds or in the center of the sweet pea forests. She would make up stories about the magical people that scurried among the paths, sprinkling monster-dust on the leaves to make them grow up tall and strong and beautiful for their favorite person, Jonah himself. Jonah would eat special sweet onigiri, wide eyed, as she told him about the wise magic queen, called the Wonderful Witch, and the wicked tyrant who tried an steal all the monster-dust with his million and two arms. Jonah forgot the world, as he drew circles around the plant's bases for the magic people to keep their water. He tended his garden for years, remembering his grandmother with every pat of the soil. She was there, always. He remembered the last story she had told him, about the wicked tyrant of the million and two arms.
He had finally gone to far. She told him solemnly, he had tried to contaminate the monster-dust, so that the dust would make the monsters stronger, not kill them. The Wonderful Witch was furious. She had been lenient with him, remembering him when he had been her childhood friend, always the first to agree to a race and the last to admit he had lost. She remembered the past, when he was unaccepting of his fate, of hitzuen, when he promised her he would never ever be her enemy. She remembered only, blind to the truth, that hitzuen was bigger than any of them. Even bigger than you, Jonah. She hated him for deceiving her. Still, she was too kind for her own country's good. She sentenced him to exile, stripped of his powers and memory. She removed everything magical about him, and banished him forever.
"Did he ever come back?" Jonah asked.
"Never," she promised.
Jonah let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "And then they all lived happily ever after?" he asked hopefully.
"Well, that's what they thought," she said sadly. "But they hadn't understood his power. He wasn't the powerful one after all. The true power lay in his million and two arms. They were scattered on the trash heap, with his broken scepter and sword of fire. They scuttled up and away, running in a million and two directions. A little boy, just like you, Jonah, saw the arms running away, and rushed to the Witch to tell her of the strange thing he saw during tea-time.
"Then what?" Jonah asked, "What did the arms do?"
"They were horrible. They were looking for a suitable host, so they reached out of the ground--swa-shoosh, swa-shoosh-- and grabbed at passing magic people. You see, they were looking for another host to latch onto so they could regain all their power. Whenever someone was too good, or too weak to hold the power, they weren't freed, oh no! they were consumed to give the horrible hands enough energy to reach for new people and move to where likely candidates played.
"What happened? The Witch wouldn't let her subjects be eaten by arms! Would she?"
"Of course not!" she said, waving away the very idea. "The Witch put up a wall all around her garden, forcing the arms out and away. But what she didn't know was the arms could exist outside of the realm, unlike her people. They went on to look for a host amongst the people who couldn't see them. They were forever grabbing.
"So the arms win!"
"No, they didn't win. The people who couldn't see them could FEEL them, so they never went close, except for very few. Many of the arms died from hunger, until there were only 100 left.
"What did those arms do?"
Same thing they had been doing all along. But they were weak, very weak. People could fight them, now. Slowly even they started to die off. But there will always be those few people that get eaten, so the arms live on, for a while. But don't worry, Jonah. The magic people will never let the arms or anything else get to you.
Jonah finished watering and walked over to a small lump to the left of the garden, covered with a deep purple blanket of flowers and butterflies. He absently brushed some ivy off the tombstone, noticing how old and worn it was looking. Its no wonder, I guess. Grandma's been buried here for here for twenty years. Sometimes I wish I could have met her, in the flesh.
Arms in the Garden End.
Author's Notes-- the arms had so much potential, but no elaboration. I changed that. This is the first in a collection of fics devoted to the magic in xxxholic. Please R and R.