i have a feeling i came across u before, ririri, are u frm tumblr? and thanks for liking rent as well. hiei, thank u, and lol at black magic, yesmin - but can't do
i will bring you happy flowers from the mountain & rustic baskets of kisses
by appleschan
There are only moss-covered rocks and streaks of golden sunlight between them -
Rukia the ghost lifts her hand, observing the unfractured sunrays passing on her palm. If only - if only - she could recall how spring is like, how mornings tucked in bed are like, how sunrays on her back feel like, then perhaps it would make her wait easier, there would be fond experiences to revisit.
But she opens and closes her palm: the sunrays remain unbending and imperceptible to her - everything exists alongside but not with her. Still, Rukia does not come to resent the loss of these little perceptions, only mourn, because such losses are necessary - costs.
Though life has been kind to her, allowing her to stay instead of crossing to wait, and time dealt kindness to her equally, allowing her to retain semblances of her former existence - all things have a cost.
Rukia is not of the living, life took away her freedom to wander but it tethered her to the place she calls home the most - for that she is grateful. Time decides her unnaturally long stay across several lifetimes - more than 300 years - must have something in return: she is subject to withering, too. Decades to centuries, she remembers less of what spring is like or what waking up is like, patches of her memories blurred like dusty mirrors - the passing of time caused her blindness more than any sun did, perhaps there is end to her. If such is so, she thinks, then it could be that time does not discriminate, that all cycles, all things may be heading to an eventual end after all. These are the costs of her waiting.
But until then, Rukia is content to still remember her name, have the strongest of memories to cling to and have her previous home to watch over.
Rukia learned while she was still alive - and eventually saw when she died - that the cycle of life, afterlife and rebirth is never so simple. Rukia knows her old myths, Izanagi and Izanami and their creation; how Tsukuyomi ruled the moon and night; then there's Uzume of dawn who danced; and having been married once during her lifetime, Rukia is well-versed about fate and meetings, and having lost her husband, she knows about a lunar god who ties strings that never break.
(their string has not been broken, only it stretched so far until it disappeared - Rukia asked to stay, to be subjected to a terribly long wait across lifetimes - the costs notwithstanding)
After all the myths, Rukia has come to believe that souls have ties - she believes in it as if there's a level of truth in it comparable to other worldly absolutes like death and sickness and justice: regardless of various lifetimes, souls are always drawn to those they are tied with; they will always find their way.
There are only moss-covered rocks and streaks of golden sunlight between them -
Rukia's consistent visitor, a tall, bright-haired man who identifies himself as a writer in this age has entered her periphery. She looks up. He has emerged from the back of her home, and he carries string-tied bluebells and twigs on his hand - death and life. An understable offering for a greeting. Rukia smiles.
The man smiles, too - or smirks, really, there isn't much difference. But he is welcome. There's a little exchange - he says a quip, she answers accordingly, then she stands to bow to him, to quietly thank him for taking the time to visit her regularly, he does to.
She watches him go and place the bluebells on her home's engawa.
Rukia has not seen much people come her way, so there's none much to compare him with. The man always dresses peculiarly with less fabric but heavier in color. He told her there is a word for it - the way he clothes himself, modern. It's modern, he said, boat shoes and clothes like shirts and fitted pants replaced the hakama and gi, tabi and geta of the past three hundred years.
Rukia always preferred the clothes of her time for their simplicity and functionality, the man disagreed. Simpler, he added, my time's more comfortable as in practical - he's stubborn. When the subject came up first, she politely disagreed then told him that she thought they are dull - modern is dull, in which the man snorted and answered in a somewhat annoyed but relatively good humor, laughing, he said, "we can't be as old and grand as you all the time, ya know." This was the first time she heard him laugh, saw his first grin, too, and this was how they addressed the first, glaring trivial matter that showed the separation of the time she lived and the time he's living.
So Rukia withholds from commenting on his clothes - which are dark - to avert any argument, instead she settles on:
"Do you need to ask me something?"
On times he asks, there are papers he writes on - possibly modern, too - papers with characters admirably handwritten ("they are not handwritten, typed, you know, on a computer - wait, you don't know what a computer is, do you? So it's uh, ahh, machineā¦a machine is..."). He is inquisitive, deeply concerned, asking about her time, about the people she lived with, and she tries to remember for him, recognizing how important it seems to be for him.
The times he spends idly with her are usually slow and uneventful marked with easy conversations and a different kind of mellowness: he naps on her home's engawa when the day is too hot, she lets him inside when it's raining and apologizes for the leaking roof while she stays outside, sitting on her usual spot, but on days when the weather is calm, they walk around and she tells him the old trees know the weight of history and the ocean is open to secrets - these are the better days.
- Rukia hopes for the better day.
"Do I need to 'ask you something' to visit you?" The man tells her, grinning.
Ahh, so it's an idle day, then. "No, you do not," assures Rukia, amused and inexplicably looking forward to the day.
There is something-something about, it's not the color of his hair - outrageous orange - or the sharp grin he has, but Rukia observes - as one who hasn't interacted with a human for too long and someone who can't recall how spring or summer is like - he could be the closest thing to a sunray right now.
her side. should have this added sooner. i hate me. now 3-part.
outloux, cavisce, shirayuki992, everild, manusxmachina, vine, thousandbirds, asian-simbae, funnyeasyme - thank u all, really. i'll compose a proper collective reply when i'm awake (guys from my asia timezone know i usually post around midnight) but do know that i have a lot of influences and i favor writing simplicity.
im sorry vine, lilith is after - really, and this, happy flowers, is an old story, part 3 of something i'm working on since 2009 - but that's a secret, pls pretend i didn't say anything.
