Unhelpful Summary: In modern day Tokyo, no one believes the legend of the bamboo cutter... A goddess and a jealous man... But a sleeper wakens, and a conspiracy is forged in the Mikage Co.—Before Aya there were others… this is the beginning… Mainly Wei/OC, with Aya/Toya eventually, and Chidori/Yuhi eventually
Expect madness, love, sex, and murder.
Rating: G for this chapter; eventually up to NC-17
Genre: I suppose. Drama/Angst/Romance.
Disclaimer: I don't own Ceres!!
I promise this is the final confusing chapter for a while before it all begins! And again I do not own Ceres in anyway; if I did I would be much richer and much better off! Sorry for the delay.
…
"Water Under the Bridge"
It's
hard to believe
That there's nobody out there
It's hard to
believe
That I'm all alone
Red Hot Chili Peppers
…
"
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with
yesterday's omissions and regrets."
–William
Faulkner
Wei
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but as I looked at the photos littering my bed I did not hear a one. Her face stared back at me, a dozen images, a hundred meanings, a thousand words never said, never heard. I pressed her fifteen and grinning into the palm of my hands, lifting the Polaroid skeleton by my ear to listen for her voice, like a seashell whispering of the sea. Minutes pass and the only whisper I hear is my own dry breath. The photo wrinkles in clenched hands as I set it onto a growing pile faded and creased, my prints branding the sides of her face in every one like a scar. She is trapped in there and I have no way to get her out, I can see her, but I hear nothing. I place the photos carefully back into an old cookie tin; only then between the closing of the lid and the holding of my breath do I realize that silence had a sound. Sealing the tin tightly I slid it under the bed into the darkness and dust, pushing the tin as far back as they would go until not even the magnolia flowers were visible. Sitting up I looked around and saw there was only one thing left in my apartment that reminded me of her. It was the panel of stained glass, the peonies on a translucent sea that she'd given me the months before. I stood in the bedroom doorway, staring as the morning sun filtered through it and burned the colors and patterns onto the mattress. When she had gave it to me that day, I'd held it up to the light, turning it back and forth, until her hand had come over his, stilling. "Be careful," she said. "It's fragile. See the soft lead? It bends. It can break."
Dimly I wondered why I had not perceived that conversation then the same way I did now: as a shrill and distant warning. Instead I had only stared, and said I knew this; that of course I understood.
The menagerie of colors branded the room with her permeating presence; it dug deep and stuck like a barnacle and ship. The apartment became an empty place. I stood with my hands fisted, stoically accepting the absence of laughter and the tangle of voices. With deliberate slowness I look at the phone hanging off the hood. I step back and closed the door.
…
Suzumi
The tea was a bland mixture; two parts grief, one part regret.
It ran down my throat like bitter news, filling the pit of my stomach with the same satisfaction as dry air.
There was no aftertaste, no evidence of its journey into my body, just a memory staining my tongue, a faint trace of what had once been. Swirling the contents of the cup I watched the shadowed reflection of the green tea make faces my eyes hadn't seen in years, in the veils of steam I saw their turned backs as they walked away.
In the landscape of morning tea and recollection I felt my own isolation, it settled then like dust, staining the edge of my mug with the crystalline knowledge of what had been taken. My expression thinned as I pressed the mug to my mouth, parting lips searching for the taste he might have left behind on the brown rim, a taste I had not been able to find since his death. Without his unique flavoring nothing tasted the same, everything was too bland, too spicy… too unfamiliar. The tead leaves filled my mouth, and in crushed follicles I tasted nothing but my own loneliness, a spice I had too much of. Without him to act as my filter I was always left with the raw ingredients; I had no idea how to combine them, to make the happiness that once lit my morning table and lined his shadow.
Setting the cup down in a puddle of dim sunshine and sighs I looked out of smudged windows to the lilac trees swaying in the winter breeze. The skeletal branches were outlined in gray morning light and the tangled memory of autumn; a large raven lining the gnarled sticks of the tallest one. He sat in somber silence.
Kazuma had planted them for our wedding day, and when he was alive we used to sit watch them bloom like our love.
Now I do it alone.
They were something to hold onto, something to take his place.
…
It took me a long time to remember Kazum'a funeral, because I was working so hard at the time to pretend it wasn't happening. If I didn't acknowledge it, it wouldn't exist.
Yuhi, my brother in law, had rode with me in the black box of a limo as dark as a fear. I remember shaking as I sat in the worn leather, wondering how many other wives, mothers, girlfriends, lovers, had made the same journey.
There were townspeople lining the streets of Okinawa as we drove the streets; it was wintertime, and the ground sank beneath the heels of my shoes where I stood.
I was surrounded by men and women, relatives and friends who had met Kazuma, who had known him personally, and hundreds more who did not. It was cold and my back hurt, and my feet were swollen in my hose, borne down with the invisible nails of grief. I found myself concentrating on the cherry blossoms outside the chapel that shuddered in the icy breeze that cut through the bodies like a guillotine, pearly petals falling like stars... like rain.
Beside me in the grand chapel Yuhi stood stiff necked and tense as if ready to bolt as the speeches were given and said. I was offered a place to speak as Kazuma's wife, but the words seemed unimportant without him there to here.
When the priest had stopped speaking words of ash and fire I drifted – I didn't listen to a word of it; what could he tell me about Kazuma that I did not already know?
The funeral director had let me see him before the funeral, his body tight in silken cloth, his hair long and sweeping. It almost looked as if he was sleeping; I brushed back his bangs and saw the crushed in indention of impact his head had made with the semi-truck. I touched it tenderly and wondered if he had felt any pain. I laid his hair back into place, covering the imperfection, the truth like dirt over a body. Kazuma's arms were stiff by his sides as I tucked his dress kimono around him, a small smile painted on his face. He looked the way I wished I could now: smooth and peaceful, a sky undarkened by clouds.
It was supposed to be a comfort that he was not in pain anymore. It was supposed to make up for the reality of it all, for the fact that I would not be able to follow.
"Take care of yourself," I whispered to Kazuma, my breath blowing a kiss against the gleaming wood, a kiss I convinced myself he felt.
Watching the light play over his face I began to wonder what it would be like to climb in there with him, just to lay down and lay my head in-between the dip of his strong shoulder and soft neck. Before I even realized what I had done I already had one heeled foot beside his arm. I thought how silly I must have looked hanging half in, half out of the casket, but I didn't care. I thought of reasons to stay and found none. With grim determination I braced cold hands on the sides of smooth wood, preparing to vault.
Then as if I'd summoned him, Yuhi's voice drifted through closed chamber doors. At the sound of his voice Kazuma's baby, our baby moved inside me then: a small tumble of fairy limbs, two reasons of why I had to stay behind.
Carefully, as Yuhi knocked on the doors urgently I shimmied from the open casket, touching Kazuma's face lightly as I closed the lid forever.
…
Stone faced I watched as the trees swayed with the weight of his memory. My hair slid back, a curtain of black silk as I traced the coffee mug with callused hands; he had always loved my hair… maybe that's why I cut it off, to hurt him as much as he had hurt me.
The lone raven sang a song of loneliness in the distance; a song I knew by heart. Listening to the shaking notes I thought of how it sounded more like crying than singing. Delicately I lifted the cup to my lips only to find it empty as the raven cut out a final shrieking note, a worn cry more grief than song. I tasted crushed leaves and rough grains of material on the precipice of my lips before setting it down. My eyes scanned the cup and indeed it was empty except for the stains of tea powder and veined leaves sticking to the edges; tilting the cup carefully I looked at how the grains seemed to make a heart broken, a lopsided flower with pointed leaves, and a flock of dots. Frowning absently I turned the cup in my hands, looking at how the images seemed to overlap.
"Strange."
Setting the mug down again I reached for the bone white tea pitcher. The violet sleeve of my kimono running down my arm like an exotic snake as I lifted the peony stained pot over the mug, the steam curling my lashes as I tilted the mug closer to the long nozzled nose of fine china.
The liquid burned my palms through the ivory, and as it seeped into my skin I felt something click into place.
'Flocks… flowers… separate… broken…'
The pictures ran together in a never ending wheel as the pot slipped from my loose fingers and fell to the floor, smashing itself hundred times over, warm liquid seeping through the soft pads of my shoes.
Moments later a flurry of footfall echoed through the winding hallway.
"Suzumi!!" A harried voice cut through the shoji screen, a long shadow casting itself through the rice paper and over the broken tea pot. "Are you alright in there?"
Sharp shards caught dreary light like broken bones through papery skin as I shakily ran a finger over a sharp edge. "Fine Yuhi, I just dropped the tea pot." My voice was level, but my heart was an erratic blur that hurt my ribs.
"Do you want me to get Ms. Q?" His hand hesitates on the door jam, I can see his fingers curling to open it but he hesitates.
"Yes Yuhi. That would be most helpful." I watched crushed leaves crumble beneath the sopping puddles, disintegrating like sand castles as I turned to watch his hand slide back down. His shadow turned itself but paused. "Are you sure you're alright Suzumi."
In the silence that followed I heard every question he didn't ask, they soaked into the room like the tea in the floor.
"I'm fine Yuhi, just get Ms. Q." My voice was colder than I wanted.
I can not see his face but I know he is frowning, through white paper I can smell spice and indecision; he has been cooking.
"Alright then. I'll get her." His footfall is light and quick as I watch his shadow disappear again and again through the rooms and layers of rice paper.
As I bend down to pick up sharp shards I look at how the concoction is burned red by the wood of the floor, of how it runs through my toes like freshly spilt blood. In the drying patches of wood and tea I see brands of dots with feathers, jagged halves of broken hearts. I dig into the smooth wood with my kimono, trying to absorb the pictures embedding themselves into the floor; they are unyielding and unmoving, they mock me with there presence.
As I scrub wildly in desperation the garden outside erupted in a chorus of broken cries. I glance up through dark hair, watching as the sky erupts in a field of black, the outline of the sun bleeding through itself in an inky cloud of ravens. They erase the gold like permanent marker over paper.
They ascend over the walls to line the trees like a bad rumor, filling my eyes with shadowed lilac trees.
At least a dozen.
I think of how a single raven has no name. That one in your tree meant company. A tiding of ravens, though, meant something else entirely: that loneliness would be your lot, that there was no hope of changing your course. I watch as they sit like statues, their feathers falling to the ground like black rain…
Ms. Q
The black cloud hovered just outside the corner of my eyes as I washed the dishes with absent minded motions. Outside rectangular windows their irksome calls grew in volume with each moment, and a part of me wondered if they were just trying to get my attention.
Detachedly I remember how my mother always used to say a flock of ravens was bad luck, that they foretold death, illness, misfortune and impending loss. Scoffing at the thought I scrub at a dark stain clinging like a barnacle to the powder blue bowl. I watch as the stain seems to grow beneath the rubbing, how it seems to shape into a broken wing.
"Ms. Q." The hollow tone of voice is un-natural for Yuhi and I find myself thinking of broken feathers and dark omens. As the kitchen door is thrown open to reveal his thatch of brown hair in disarray and chiseled features troubled, I dip and hold the plate deep beneath the water hiding it from sight.
"Suzumi broke the teapot again." Shadows cling to his eyes and I think of impending loss and misfortune.
"Don't worry Yuhi, we have plenty more." The kitchen is quiet for a moment.
"Ms. Q couldn't you try to fix it this time?" As I turn my head over a black clad shoulder Yuhi withers beneath my stare. Chocolate strands fell over his dark eyes like a veil as he turned to the window. His posture is strangely tense, his hands fisted at his sides. I know this is not about the teapots or spilt tea. It is about our own selves slowly cracking at the seams.
"I can try Yuhi… I can try…"
For a moment he says nothing as I climb down from the step stool at the sink, rummaging through dark cupboards for a bucket and a dustpan.
"Ms. Q, what's with the birds?" The remnants of his voice are curious; I can hear him brush back yellow laced curtains.
Without hesitating I pulled out a red bucket and a small hand held broom. "What birds?"
Death, illness, misfortune and impending loss…
What you can't see won't hurt you.
Yuhi
Cold metal burned my hands as the heirloom chopsticks of my family twirled familiarly in my hands, vegetables coordinated into piles, the spices of the earth lingering around the edges of my fingers as I chopped in a whirl of true silver and cultivated skill.
The kitchen was my true north, my sanctuary… the place where I could create something perfect. I could take a recipe and make it flawlessly, with nothing to guide me except the basic instinct of too much or too little. It was the place where I did no wrong… it was a feeling I wish I could carry through the sliding doors, beyond the table, beyond the skin of my hands.
As the slicing of raw vegetable and silver ceased I could hear the sliding of rice paper and the low murmur of hushed voices. All of this secrecy pissed me off, but deep down a part of me was more worried than afraid of the haunted glances of Suzumi and Ms. Q. As I dumped the zoo of vegetables in the simmering pan for some reason I found my gaze drawn not to the festive vegetation but to the morning framed garden, the pastel colors swallowed by the black blanket of ravens watching me through the kitchen windows.
I thought of night, of oncoming storms… of Chidori's changing hair… of her coffin.
Suzumi
I had left the cleanup to Ms. Q, pretending her probing glance was one of worry and not of question as she scraped the heart shaped stain off the floor with a broken dustpan and a ruddy broom.
Clumsiness was what I had told her, it was anything but.
In the dim interior of my room, our room I ran the ivory comb through my hair, the pearly teeth snagging on darkened strands. I watched the sun slice through the holes of venitician blinds like Swiss Cheese, careful not to slide to close in case the tell tale light cut through the own holes my body held.
Pulling the white mouth free I placed it on the vanity, dusting powder over skin too pale and lining haggard eyes with dark kohl to give some form of coloring to withered violets and gardens of weeded eyebrows. Running a hand over my reflection I notice how lonely it looks, I used to dress myself for my husband. Now I do it for the dead.
Ms. Q
As Suzumi slid shut the shoji screen I watched her shadow disappear into bigger ones, overlapping into themselves until she was devoured whole by their unsated hunger. My clock shrieks the hour, reminding me we will all be leaving. I scrub harder, splinters of floor embedding beneath my skin.
Aya
There was a picture for each headstone, a holder for things no longer here; Chidori amber eyed and smiling on the beach, Shuro distantly lovely beneath a shading willow, Kei standing above her, his piercing's glinting in the sunlight, and Aki grinning, uncharacteristically relaxed as he posed for their Jr. Year photo. My hand, pale and cold ran tenderly around the frame of Aki, my silver ring catching the light and diffusing it over his face.
"I miss you Aki… everyday…" My face was strangely serene as I stared at myself in framed glass, seeing my reflection in the eyes of my brother.
"I miss all of you…"
Leaning back I looked around the four markers, the faces that stared back were eternally happy, their expressions made it easier to believe that their lives had been full of joy, when in reality they had been filled with little but sorrow. Four dead, four remembered, four smiling. And that it is why I have come to love these photographs so much. They hold happiness, they hold it forever. Whenever you feel sad or down you can flip through the albums and point out the smiles, borrow them until you find your own again. No matter what may happen, or how much time has passed you can turn back years later and say "I remember…" For me I have come to learn that memory is the most important thing in life. It tells us not only who we are, but who we were. That at one point and time, if only for a moment we were okay, we were together, we were happy…
Smiling I sigh a thought. "Did you hear that?" Tenderly I placed a hand on my stomach, feeling the warmth pooling there. I tilted back against Aki's memory, my hands resting over my abdomen in wait for the stir of limbs, a legacy unborn. Looking to the clouds gathering in the distance I inhale the scent of no longer fresh flowers, of wet earth…and then I drift…
"We were happy…"
A whisper that carries itself to the sea.
…
The first thing Toya saw when he went to tend to the small cemetery behind their modest seaside house was a body that someone had forgotten to bury.
She was lying on top of a grave, her head pressed close to the headstone, her arms crossed over her round stomach. She was almost as white as the four faded granite markets that surrounded her.
Somewhere overhead a gull screamed.
…
My eyes burned as they flew open to the sound of his breathing, my body had long ago accustomed itself to his presence. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, my vision clearing enough to see the shape of his face. Sitting up I touched the gravestone and squinted as the letters dipped and blurred before my eyes. I pulled myself to my feet and balanced against the stone for support.
Strong hands gripped my wool clad shoulders, pulling me back against a firm chest.
I breathed in the scent of the ocean, the wind, and the spray of salty water.
"You should be in bed Aya." His voice is like the tide, low and sweeping, it carries me away.
"Not today." I pulled myself from the comfort of his grip. I looked up to see the ambered green of his eyes disapproving, the jeweled depths nearly hidden beneath strands of fired auburn. His skin appeared pale in the dim morning half-light, and his face still held a long crease from the sleeves of our feathered pillows as I stared at his face.
"You should be in bed." He says it slower, as if talking to a small child. My cheeks bloom with fire.
"Have you forgotten?" It is an accusation wrapped in a question and he flinches a little at the stone flint of my tone.
"Have you?" Softly he places his hands beneath the flak of my jacket, his palms cupped around the unborn child waiting inside. Half-heartedly I pushed his hands away, giving him the view of my back as I gave myself the view of the ocean.
The salt of the sea scratches my words; they are shifting sand, falling apart before it has even been put together. "I made them a promise Toya."
"So did I." He wraps his arms around my neck, he pulls me back. I let him. Through the shag of my hair I feel his heart beat, a strong rhythm that keeps me steady.
As my breathing fits its motions to his I let the tense line of my shoulders erase. I inhale softly, his breath fanning the crown of my head. "Then you should understand."
He pulls me closer. "I do, better than you think."
Tilting my head upwards I look at the valley beneath his jaw and envision myself falling there, forever wrapped in his skin. In the shadows of his face there is a story of our lives, of our pain, of our love. I brushed the pads of my fingers on the sides of his jaw as he tilted downwards, his gaze intense. My life before him had been empty, and envisioning the unwinding clock that resided in his heart I realized that in the next few years to follow, it would be again. I press hard enough on his face to bruise, to hold him here forever. I feel the shadows of the gravestones at my feet and I shudder, I can't lose anyone else, I can't lose him. Thinking of how they must have felt I realize that maybe the pain of death is a fair trade-off to the pain of living.
"No, I don't think you do… but maybe I really don't either… who's to say?" I let my hands slide as Toya gave me a quiet look. Silence is born and dies again, a cycle that has become easier to bear.
"Aya why do you come out here?" His chin is square and hard against the top of my head, I feel myself cracking beneath his weight, this knowledge of him.
"I'm practicing for you…" The unspoken words hang between them like glass ornaments, fragile, falling down at any moment. I think of ambered eyes, jealous tribesmen, bleeding women, and boxes of bones and forgotten hands. There are so many things to imagine; broken songs struck with glass, unrequited love bled dry by lead bullets, empty rooms that hold scents beginning to fade. Every picture I have is one of tragedy, except here, in this place there is only peace, only captured smiles...
"To remember them smiling." There had never been enough for any of them.
"How do you remember her?" He turns his head over a broad shoulder; a distance away is an unmarked grave that sits shaded beneath a lone magnolia tree. There is no picture, no inscription, really there is no memory. It is like a canyon that once held water, a canyon baked dry from the yellow sun. The rocks may be smooth from erosion, but there is no water, no visible proof. I cast dry eyes to lonely shadows and look for redemption in the tangles of the branches, but I see nothing but emptiness, feel nothing but guilt.
I smile softly, "I don't." Toya frowns for a moment, his grip unconsciously loosening. "She is not mine to remember." I turned my gaze to the lonely grave, barren and isolated with only a collection of fallen magnolia leaves to give it color. "She is his, always his."
Toya tensed, his embrace crumbled and I was left standing without his warmth, only his tangible presence that stood beside my own. An unreadable look is on his face, a question unasked strings us together. "Aya you don't know."
I say nothing.
I would wait until I did.
Thanks so much for reading! Please review and let me know how I am doing. I stopped writing because I thought no one was reading it… Any ideas or requests will be appreciated.