Disclaimer: I play with them as if they were my very own, but I still have to give them back at the end of the day. Ekkusu and all its characters, locations, et cetera belong to the brilliant ladies of CLAMP, whom I worship and adore, and I hope they will finish the series for us one day.
o-O-o
It's funny, the way people never look up.
Most women would be beyond embarrassed to be out in the middle of a bustling business district at lunchtime wearing nothing but filmy lingerie. But most women would not have been firmly ensconced on top of a telephone pole, well above the heads of the crowd—and Kasumi Karen had noticed long ago the peculiar tendency of human beings to never look up as they went from place to place. She supposed no one would expect to see anything interesting up there—just sky, and the tops of buildings.
And a scantily-clad Soapland girl sitting on a telephone pole as comfortably as if it were a plushy couch in her workplace. Painted lips curved in an amused smile, and on impulse she blew a kiss to the oblivious crowd. She had learned long ago that embarrassment was a self-indulgence she could ill afford.
Karen liked to watch people; she always had. It made a nice change from the carefully-staged intimacy of the boudoir where she spent her days. In there, dim lighting, soft music, and low-voiced conversation were de rigueur, so it was nice to spend her lunch hour out in the sunlight, fresh air and city noise.
And to look down on the people flooding the streets below. Often she would pick one and follow them with her eyes, making a game of trying to figure out where they had come from and where they were going. She would weave entire stories for them in her head, and wonder what they would do if they knew how closely Death was breathing down their necks. Would they leave their jobs? Go home and tell their families they loved them? Would they perhaps be a little kinder to each other, and more careful of the earth, if they really knew what they'd thoughtlessly done to it? Would they try things they'd never taken the time to before, knowing that there might not be a "someday" anymore?
Would they pray?
Closing her fingers around the slender cross that hung around her neck, Karen closed her eyes and prayed for them. God loved His creations, flawed though they may be. If He simply wanted to wipe them from the earth, He could do it; there would be no reason for Dragons of Heaven or Earth at all. No, humanity would suffer, and perhaps rightly so, but humanity would survive and be better for the experience. God wanted humankind to live. That was why He had given her fire, to defend His children against the scourge that was to come.
And her lunch hour was just about up. Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she rose gracefully to her feet and leaped the distance to the roof of the Soapland Flower.
After all, just in case the end of the world doesn't come, a girl's got to pay her bills.
