First Bleach fic! Oh my. The character is unnamed, but it's easy to figure out (in case you don't figure it out, I tell you anyway at the end.) Fic takes place several years before the first chapter of Bleach. Randomly, writing in present tense is kind of hard.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything! Sigh.
Lilium
By Windsong
Written 27/28 September 2005
The sour smell has followed her for days.
She lifts her head, nostrils flaring as she gives the air a delicate sniff. Sliding one eye backwards she slyly looks behind her; no one is there, as always. These days, she is always alone.
The smell is utterly unfamiliar, she decides. She wonders if she should ask someone if they can smell it too, or if they know what it is, but she is reluctant to talk to the others. If they didn't smell it it would be another strike against her—that crazy girl, talking to the flowers on the side of the road and dancing to strange songs she sings in her pleasantly-off-key voice, alone, she deserves to be alone, always alone.
Reaching up to flick her hair away from her shoulder, she steps forward again, determined to be cheerful. Although the smell is unusual, it is not entirely unwelcome. After all, it's the only thing that's stuck with her for this long, she thinks to herself, since her brother went away. And if no one else has mentioned it, perhaps it's a strange kind of gift, a singular presence that only she can sense.
She always has looked on the bright side of things, this peculiar, isolated girl with no past and little future.
The road is dusty, and she sneezes as she walks along, resisting the urge to stare at the sun until her sight sparkles, fighting the desire to look down at the tiny things below her, flowers and bottle caps and scattered shards of glass, looking straight ahead and neither to the left or right. Even though she hears the gentle whispers of the things around her, asking her to come sit down in the dirt with them and listen to their stories, she stubbornly walks forward, stopping for no one. Conformity is serious business, she thinks to herself, and it means that she has to walk forward, even though she doesn't entirely know where she is walking to.
Taking one day at a time, one moment at a time—that is how she gets through things. Perhaps the smell will be gone tomorrow, or in the next instant, but for now it is here and its presence is oddly comforting.
She tilts her face to the sky again, lets the sun strike her closed eyelids, and inhales.
The character I had in mind was Orihime, with the sour smell as the Shun Shun Rikka, somehow. For some reason Tatsuki either A) doesn't exist or B) has dropped from Orihime's thoughts for the moment, or something. I tend to lean towards A. Um.
The title comes from the smell, kind of. There is a kind of lily known as "Voodoo Lily" that has a sour smell that is said to be so strong it can wake someone from unconsciousness. I liked that idea a lot—of trying to wake Orihime from the mundane life she led, kind of. I also liked how it tied into flowers and the Shun Shun Rikka, so I went with it. Since it's in latin, yes, it's a reference to that chapter title that has stuff about lilies in it. Lilies are also representative of innocence and purity, which I also feel fit Orihime.
...I can't believe I talked that much about a title. Shutting up about that now.
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-Windsong - windsong 137 at gmail dot com
"Without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues." -Maya Angelou
