My mother is not like the mothers of other girls my age.
Mother is shorter than I am, with red hair and purple eyes like the foreigners. She lives alone at the top of a mountain in an old potter's shack. She dresses and acts like a man, and can wield the sword with a skill that is lost in the new Meiji era. She follows a code of honor and justice that no longer exists. She remembers events that have become myth, and men who have become ghosts here in Kyoto.
When I was very young I remember playing with a giant man who seemed big and scary but was always gentle with me. His face is blurry and his voice is vague in my mind but I remember distinctly the bright red and white mantle he wore. I can't remember when he fell out of my memories; when I asked my mother about him some years later she would not tell me what happened to him.
Growing up, I remember Mother would make me dolls out of scraps of cloth to play with when she was away. At first she only came to the city to sell the pottery that cluttered our small home. I don't know where it came from, it was just always there. Slowly, over the years, it dwindled until there was only one left; a special sake jar with two matching cups that had dragons carefully painted on them. They were the only ones Mother kept. The rest she sold to support us. When I got older, Mother took odd jobs around the city, but only for short periods of time and only in places out of the way. I had a quiet childhood, never questioning my mother except for stories or more toys, which she somehow produced from the odds and ends we had.
When I was ten Mother said I was old enough to go to one of the new schools. I was scared, and perhaps even a little angry at her, when she made arrangements for me to live with a widowed friend of hers named Ikumutsu. I live with Ikumutsu still, who works as a geisha, an entertainer. She has taught me how to be a proper lady, and I discovered she helps pay for my education at the girl's school. Ikumutsu has the same quiet presence as my mother, but in a more refined and dignified way, and she is much easier to talk to. Through her I have learned more about my parents than anything Mother has ever told me, even when she stays with us in the spring and we go see the cherry blossoms together.
I know my mother posed as a man and fought in the Revolution, where she met Ikumutsu. I know my father was also a warrior in those times. He had black hair and blue eyes like me, for I look nothing like Mother. Ikumutsu confided in me that my parents had never married because my father had died before they knew Mother was pregnant with me. She doesn't know how my father died, only that it had happened in the spring when the cherry trees were in bloom. That is why Mother comes to the city to see them, even though she avoids Kyoto as much as possible, and it is why I was named Sakura, after the same pink blossoms. And yet although I know all this, there is much I do not know. I see the looks that Ikumutsu and Mother exchange when they think I am not paying attention, and I hear the whispers of their voices as they talk long into the night after I have been sent to bed. They keep secrets from me, things they share with each other but choose not to tell me.
I am sure that one of those secrets is why Mother still carries a sword, albeit secretly, and practices swordsmanship despite the new laws. Or perhaps even why Mother does not talk of the past except for vague references and comments every now and then. One day I will discover the truth behind their passive masks. Until then I look at the mothers of my school friends, dressed in colorful kimono and hiding from the sun under broad parasols, who greet their daughters and smile and laugh properly, and I vow that someday I will be like that for my daughter and not treat her the way Mother treats me.
I wish to be treated like an equal; I wish to be treated like her daughter. Her flesh, blood and soul is my flesh, blood, and soul. So why does she ignore it?
OO
Author's Note: Well, I have no idea where this came from. It is a one-shot currently, with possibly something else added later to explain it more. Until then, infer as you will. I am not sure if I spelled Ikumutsu's name correctly or if the timelines are conflicting so if someone could correct me? Hopefully I will finally get around to posting more and getting it off my computer.