** Standard Disclaimer **
** All the characters in this story are owned by Pioneer, AIC,
** and probably a bunch of other Japanese people all of whom
** have more money than me. So please don't sue me, 'k?
** /Standard Disclaimer **
** Author note thingum **
** This is my second fanfic and rather a departure from
** my first, but what is life without variation, eh?
** Anyway, it's based on the OAV + MnE continuity
** and I suppose would be classified a darkfic, so if you're
** not into that, shoo.
** /Author note thingum **
Survival
-- April 13, 2001. Day 0
Technically today is the fifteenth, day two, but if I'm going to keep a
journal I should probably start at the beginning. I'd gone out to the lake to
get away from everyone for a while, I do that sometimes when it's all too much
for me to take. I was sketching the lake and the woods in this notebook when
Ryouko appeared. Well, I say appeared, but she'd actually walked today.
Probably because she had Mayuka with her, she's almost a different person when
she's with Mayuka, careful, sensitive, quiet... not at all like she usually is.
"Hey Tenchi," she'd said, "Mind if I sit out here while I feed Mayuka?"
See what I mean? She actually asked if she could sit there. Like I said,
I wanted to be alone, but Mayuka looked so happy to be out in the sun I couldn't
say no. So I nodded and she put down a blanket and sat down while I went back
to my sketch. We'd sat like that for a while before she asked if she could see
my drawing. It was actually kind of nice, her just being there instead of
trying to crawl all over me, and I was in a better mood, so I turned to show it
to her. That's when I saw what she meant when she'd said 'while I feed Mayuka'.
Ryouko had her shirt unbuttoned and she was breastfeeding Mayuka. It's
hard for me to even write about it I was so embarrassed. I must have done
something, looked shocked or backed away or something, because she got this hurt
look on her face and stood up saying, "I'm sorry Tenchi, I didn't think you
would mind. Washuu said this was better for her than that stuff from the
store."
I felt like an ass. It's a natural thing and this is the twenty-first
century, right? It was just so...shocking. I mean, how was I supposed to know?
I didn't even know Ryouko could Do that. I got up and managed to stutter out
some kind of apology and explain that I was just surprised. I hate lying to
her, but I didn't want to hurt her either. The idea of her sitting there
exposed did bother me, does bother me.
Anyway, she sat back down and I tried to keep my mind on my art and not on
her chest, but I kept finding myself looking. I wasn't staring at her breasts,
really, it was just so unlike Ryouko. She looked the picture of motherhood
there with Mayuka, smiling down at her and Mayuka grabbing Ryouko's finger
between her little hands. She must have noticed me staring and misinterpreted
it because she grinned and asked, "You want a turn, Tenchi?"
"What? No! I was just," I trailed off, I couldn't think of any way to
explain that wouldn't sound stupid. Ryouko smiled, I think she understood what
I couldn't say. Mayuka, however, started crying, disturbed from her lunch by my
shouted denial. I looked away hurriedly since Mayuka's head was no longer
between me and Ryouko's breast.
"Tenchi," she'd said while trying to shush Mayuka, "Will you go and get
her rattle from the house? I left it on the couch accidentally."
I muttered something along the lines of, "Why don't you just teleport in
there and get it?" Mayuka's screaming had set me back in my antisocial mood.
"Oh. Okay."
I could hear the hurt in her voice; she'd enjoyed sitting there with me
too. I shouldn't have said it, I should have just gotten up and gotten the
rattle. Ryouko started to get up but her foot got caught in the blanket. She
reached out and grabbed my shoulder to break her fall, there was a flash, I felt
like I was dissolving.
Then I woke up here. I didn't realize at first since 'here' looks exactly
like 'there', but after shaking my head to clear the fuzziness and checking to
make sure Mayuka and Ryouko were okay I stood up and saw that the house was
gone.
We ran over to where it had been, but it was just gone. There were little
trees and bushes growing where it should have been, like nothing had ever been
built there. At first I'd thought it must be some experiment of Washuu's gone
wrong, or maybe something Mihoshi had done. I told Ryouko to stay there with
Mayuka and I'd go get Grandfather from the shrine.
"Don't be silly Tenchi," she'd said, "You hold May, I'll fly up there."
I guess it was silly of me, especially after my comment about teleporting,
but it turned out to be a moot point anyway.
"What's wrong Ryouko?" I'd asked.
"It's not working, Tenchi... It's like I'm about to lift off, but then it
just doesn't work. And I can't teleport either."
She'd held up her hand and a tiny blade, maybe all of a foot long, formed
where her usual energy sword should have been.
"It's no good Tenchi, it's like there's no power in my gems at all."
I'd tried to reassure her, saying we'd ask Washuu as soon as we figured
out what was going on, but it didn't do much good. She just held Mayuka and
nodded silently. We walked over to where the steps up to the shrine should have
been, but they were gone too. Again, as if they'd never even existed. The same
at the lake where Funaho should have been, it wasn't even a lake. There were
just more trees, as if Yosho's spacecraft had never crashed into the earth
there, creating the crater that became a lake.
"Let's just go back to the lake Ryouko," I'd suggested, "I'm sure Washuu
will fix whatever happened and we'll be back home in no time."
"I'm not sure Tenchi," she'd said, sounding worried, "I'm not sure it was
Washuu. I was about to teleport when I grabbed you, you know, so Mayuka
wouldn't hit the ground."
I'd nodded; I guess if I could teleport that would be my first instinct
when I was falling too.
"But I didn't do it. It was... It's hard to explain, It's like flexing a
muscle and then releasing it... I had flexed, but the world flashed out before
I could release."
"You think you brought us here?"
"I don't know Tenchi, nothing like that has ever happened before..."
She sounded worried and looked like she was expecting me to yell at her.
I guess she had reason; it wasn't so long ago I lost it and slapped her. But I
wasn't mad at her, it didn't sound like it could have been her fault we were
here now, wherever 'here' is.
"Come on Ryouko, it's going to start getting dark soon. Even if you did
send us here somehow Washuu and the others will figure it out when we don't come
back soon. Maybe we can figure out some kind of shelter in case we're here over
night."
She nodded and asked if I could carry Mayuka for a little while. I
agreed, of course, and we headed back.
-- April 14, 2001. Day 1
This was our first whole day here. We managed to get up a little lean-to
that first night with some fallen branches out by the lake. I went out and got
wood for a fire while Ryouko fed Mayuka again. Ryouko used her energy, well, I
guess I should call it a knife now, to light the fire I built. It's heading
into summer now, but the nights are still cold to be outdoors in. But this is
about the next day, so I'll start with the morning.
I found out something important Saturday morning about the world we seem
to have landed in. I have to assume this is a different world because I refuse
to believe that the house, the shrine, everything, had been destroyed somehow,
wiped totally out of existence. I discovered that the lake water is Not
drinkable. I'd swallowed some while swimming out during summers past so I know
it wasn't always like this, but now it is most definitely not potable. I woke
up thirsty, and since we still didn't appear to be home I went to get some water
from the lake. Not the most hygienic thing to do I know, but I was thirsty and
it was all there was.
So I walked over to the lake and dipped out a double handful. It smelled
okay, so I drank, only to spray it back out into the air immediately. It tasted
awful! Like chemicals and metal, not at all like water, even dirty water.
Ryouko heard me gagging and came running to see what was wrong. I managed to
sputter out that the water was bad. She knelt next to me and patted my back
while I got myself back under control, then dipped a finger in the lake water
and sniffed it.
"It smells okay..."
"Yeah," I said, "But it tastes awful."
She licked her finger tentatively, her face immediately puckering up in a
grimace.
"Yeah, it does. I've had worse though."
"Uhg, I don't even want to know where."
Ryouko explained anyway. Apparently when Washuu made her she made her a
little better than the average human, or what passed for human in the rest of
the galaxy. During her enslavement under Kagato Ryouko had been stuck on a few
really awful planets and had to make do with the resources she had available.
On a few of them the water was poisoned, either intentionally or just by the
planet's own particular chemistry. It was then she'd discovered she could
handle things that would have killed anyone else. She'd had no choice but to
drink the tainted water and eat food with the god only know what alien chemicals
in it, and even though they tasted awful she didn't feel any worse for it.
"Well, you're set then," I'd sighed, "But what am I going to do?"
"I don't know Tenchi," she'd said, looking at me with an expression full
of worry and a resurgence of the previous day's fear, more for my well being
than that I would be angry this time though I think.
We spent the morning working on our lean-to. It hadn't been much more
than some sticks and a bunch of fallen leaves the night before, and in case
Washuu didn't find us that day we wanted something a little more solid for the
coming night. I said I would climb up the mountain and see if I could see a
town or something nearby but Ryouko disagreed.
"Let me go, there's no stairs now and it'll be a long climb."
"But I thought you said you couldn't fly?"
"I can't, but I can lighten myself a lot, it'll be easier. You stay here
with May and I'll be back in no time!"
So I got babysitting duty while Ryouko went off to scale the mountain.
Mayuka didn't seem to mind staying with her daddy. It feels weird writing that.
Since Washuu brought her back from the gem Ryouko's pretty much taken over
raising her. We all help, of course, but Ryouko spends the most time with her.
She was even breastfeeding her now, like a real mother...
Anyway, Mayuka didn't mind staying with me at all. I walked her around
the woods and showed her all the trees Grandfather had taught me to identify. I
found a berry bush that I remembered the fruit of being tasty. I ate half a
berry and waited a half hour or so, but it didn't seem to have any bad effects.
I guess the plants here are the same, it's just the water that's bad. So I
crushed a berry in my fingers and let Mayuka suck on the juice when she seemed
fussy. I'm not sure it's the healthiest thing for her, but she liked it and
fathers are supposed to spoil their daughters, right?
It was getting on toward afternoon by the time Ryouko got back. I looked
up at her hopefully but she just shook her head sadly.
"I climbed all the way to the peak and then got up to the top of the
tallest tree, but there's nothing. Just woods as far as I can see, no towns, no
roads, not even any smoke or any passing planes."
"Guess we're all alone out here."
She nodded and sat down under the little shelter with me, wagging her
fingers in front of Mayuka's face.
"Hi May! Did you have fun with your daddy today?"
Mayuka seemed to understand her, she giggled and held her hands up anyway.
"Looks like she wants her mommy back," I said, handing the squirming girl
over.
"Want to go get us some firewood for tonight?"
We already had plenty, but I understood. She was going to feed Mayuka and
wanted to spare me being embarrassed. I nodded and headed off into the trees.
We really did have enough wood, so I spent the time picking berries instead.
Ryouko would be hungry after all that climbing. She hadn't said anything yet,
but she probably would soon, especially since I guess she's eating for two now.
-- April 15, 2001. Day 2
So today I started this journal. Now that I look at it I guess it's sort
of pessimistic of me. I'm writing this as if someone else will read it, and
including the year in the date. I didn't even think about it when I started,
didn't really even think about why I was starting. Ryouko's feeding Mayuka
again and so I'm out here by the lake 'gathering wood'. I found my notebook
laying on the grass where
I'd left it, forgotten, and picked it up. I thought I might finish my sketch
while I waited, but somehow I just started writing instead.
So I guess I have to ask myself, what am I expecting? I don't know how we
wound up here and I certainly don't even know where 'here' is. Is it another
world, really? Is it Japan in the distant past? Or is the worst true and it
was all destroyed, wiped out in an instant while somehow sparing us? Ryouko's
powers are so weak they may as well be gone and even if I could summon the Light
Hawk Wings at will I don't know what good they would do me here. I can't fly, I
can't teleport, I have nothing to contribute but my knowledge of the local
plants. And since Ryouko can apparently eat lead and still feed Mayuka, that
knowledge is only useful to me. In the stories where a man and woman are
stranded together the man is supposed to take charge and... well, do Something
useful.
I guess I should talk about today. There's not really much to say, I went
out and got some more berries and collected a few other nuts and fruits I knew
were safe to eat. We can't live off of them forever (well, I can't anyway),
but I hope someone will find us before that becomes a problem. The lean-to
isn't really a lean-to anymore. It has three slanting walls now and an opening
toward the fire pit. I guess between Grandfather's lessons on survival (he
insisted it was a part of what a 'gentleman warrior' should know, I'll have to
thank him) and Father's lessons on architecture I guess I managed to pick
something up. Maybe I'm not totally useless after all.
This is stupid. Why should I sit out here by the lake four or five times
a day while Mayuka gets fed? It's not like I've never seen a woman's breasts
before. I've even seen Ryouko's before. And it's not like she's trying to lure
me with them again. My mother fed me that way, am I such a wimp I can't handle
that? I'm going back to the shelter, I'll write more tomorrow.
-- April 16, 2001. Day 03
I'm thirsty. I haven't had anything to drink since Friday morning and
it's Monday now. Throwing up from the lake water didn't help my dehydration
any, and I've been tramping around the woods every day. Berry juice helps a
little, but I need water. It's starting to cloud over. Maybe it will rain
today.
Ryouko is out with Mayuka, so I'm writing this while she's gone. I didn't
tell her I had this notebook or that I was keeping a journal. I'm not sure
why... I guess because she'll want to read it, and I'm afraid she'll lose hope
if she knows I worry that no one will find us. I do worry. We've certainly
been in far more dire straights than this, but it's been almost four days now.
I've seen Washuu put together a robot more advanced than anything human science
could manage in a half hour, what could have happened that after four days we'd
still have no sign? And why wouldn't Ryouko's powers work any more than they
do?
Ryouko. I walked in on her feeding Mayuka last night. She'd tried to
cover herself up, but I'd gestured for her to go on. I sat down and poked at
the fire.
"You don't mind Tenchi?"
"Hmm? Oh," I'd said, a fount of intelligent conversation, "No, go ahead.
She needs to eat."
"Okay." She sounded puzzled, so I tried to change the subject. Well, a
little anyway.
"How..." I started, and then paused to figure out what exactly I was
asking, "How can you do that? I mean, I thought you had to have just had a baby
to...?"
"Washuu tried to explain it to me when I as--" she stopped mid-word and I
started wondering if maybe Washuu hadn't come up with the idea on her own.
"Earth women can apparently do it any time," she went on before I could
interrupt with a question, "It's something to do with hormones or something. I
don't understand half the time when Washuu explains things."
I nodded. I don't generally think I'm stupid, but Washuu tends to explain
about three levels of complexity above what most people would understand, even
when she's talking down to you.
"So anyway," Ryouko went on, "I'm not an Earth woman, and my body
chemistry isn't right for this normally, but Washuu gave me these dermal
patches..."
I turned and took one of the little round white things she held out to me.
Just as I took it out of her fingers her shirt slipped, revealing the other side
of her chest. I felt myself turning bright red and whipped my head back around
to study the little piece of what felt like plastic. It had a soft pink picture
of a crab on one side, and seemed sort of sticky on the other side.
"It's okay Tenchi."
"Huh?" Ever the conversationalist, Tenchi Masaki.
"If you see me, I mean. You don't have to be embarrassed. I don't mind."
"I know that Ryouko," I said, "Remember the onsen?"
"Oh, yeah. But I mean by accident. It's okay."
"No," I stated firmly, maybe a little more firmly than I meant to, "It's
not okay. It's not proper."
"It's just us here Tenchi. I won't tell."
"It's not proper."
She'd sighed and I sat there staring into the fire and fingering the
little patch until she finished.
So that was last night. I think I upset Ryouko, but I'm just not
comfortable with that sort of thing. I think maybe it's because dad's been so
hentai in the past few years, almost since mom died. But I think I have so many
problems with women because I'm trying not to be like he is sometimes. Deep
introspection, right? It's just so embarrassing when he drools all over a girl
half his age, and some of those movies he has...
Whatever the cause though, I just don't feel right seeing Ryouko like
that...
I'm going to go look for some more berries. I'm thirsty.
-- April 21st, 2001. Day 8
I passed out on Monday. Ryouko found me in the woods near the shelter,
berries scattered all over. At least, that's how she tells it. I was out like
a light. The last thing I remember was eating a few berries and wishing I had
some water. I gathered a bunch and started back to the shelter so I could sit
down out of the sun to eat them, but I guess I didn't make it.
I woke up a few times in the next couple of days to Ryouko letting me
drink out of a cup she'd apparently made of some leaves and a bit of cloth.
She's since explained she put it together to drink from the lake. I guess I
should have thought of that, she can drink the water so she should have
something to drink it with, right?
I didn't think at the time what I would have been drinking; we hadn't
found any water after all. But I was barely conscious for most of a week. Four
days without any water and working hard in the sun had nearly killed me. I'd
been so thirsty I didn't even notice the sores forming on and around my lips.
Ryouko had, but hadn't known what to do so just spent the days looking for water
for me.
I know now what I was drinking. On day seven when I woke up I asked her.
She told me it was her milk. I almost vomited. She looked so hurt.
I don't know how she got it into a cup. I'm not sure I want to know. I
guess it's better than the other way though. I've never been so ashamed in my
life, of what I was drinking, of what I did when I found out. Of the fact that
I'd been reduced to a useless dehydrated husk because I couldn't take care of
myself.
I woke up last night and was actually coherent. Ryouko was asleep and
Mayuka was curled up with her on the blanket out near the fire pit. They'd
slept outside because I'd thrashed around weakly while I was unconscious and
took up the whole shelter. I tried to pull them and the blanket under the
shelter, but I was too weak, so I just curled up on the other side of the pit
and went back to sleep.
This morning I woke up and they weren't there. Obviously they couldn't
leave a note, they don't know I have paper and a pen. Ryouko had drawn a kanji
in the dirt though. I studied it for a few minutes, a long straight line with a
hooked line on either side, the angles opening outward. It was crude, but
Ryouko had never been one for calligraphy and the dirt wasn't the best medium
for writing anyway. Eventually I figured out it was supposed to be the
character for water; she meant she'd gone off looking for water. I tried to get
up, but was still weak as a kitten.
I crawled over to the shelter and got out of the direct sunlight, spying
Ryouko's cup sitting on the ground near the open side of the little hutch. It
was full of a thin, white liquid. I knew what it was. The question was, was I
that thirsty?
I was. As I write this I've just drunk the last of it, it wasn't at all
what I expected. Being mostly unconscious I had barely noticed it was wet
before, much less the taste. It was sort of sweet, not really like regular milk
at all. I had to stop after a tiny sip at first to keep from spilling the
berries and nuts Ryouko fed me over the past days all over our shelter. Not at
the taste, but at the idea of what I was drinking. My thirst got the better of
me though.
It's been probably an hour since then, I've been writing this to keep my
mind off what I was drinking. It really didn't taste bad though, and I Did
drink the same thing, basically, when I was as little as Mayuka is now. Now I'm
just rationalizing. The truth is that once I started I didn't really mind
drinking it. And it is what's been keeping me alive after all. I just don't
know what to think anymore; who'd have thought life could get so confusing in
less than nine days?
Ha! Who could know how confusing life could get? Me, who had women
literally falling out of the sky for weeks and is now stuck on some weird, empty
world with a space pirate who's adopted my genetic daughter, created to kill me
by a girl from another planet who lived in another dimension. Ha! And here
I've wished for a simple life. This is as simple as it gets, and it's still not
good enough for me.
-- April 22, 2001. Day 9
Ryouko didn't find water yesterday, but I did. I guess Washuu has been
rubbing off on me a little after all. I found a sort of flat, dish-like rock
and filled it with water. I put it on the fire and found a big, waxy leaf.
When the water started to boil I held the leaf over the rising steam and let it
condense onto its underside, then drip down into Ryouko's cup. I tasted a tiny
bit on my finger tentatively. It was still a little metallic, but not even in
the same league as before. It took a half dozen trips out to the lake with a
little bark bowl I made, but I managed to boil off and catch a whole cupful of
water. When Ryouko finally came back I got her to taste it and she said it
should be safe to drink.
Way to go Masaki, getting a girl to act as your food taster.
I couldn't think of any other way to do it though. Ryouko can apparently
survive drinking anything from bleach to jet fuel and get at least a general
idea of what's in what she's drinking. So now I have a source of water. Ryouko
hasn't said anything about the milk. I haven't either, but I try not to turn
away when she feeds Mayuka now. We talk about the others and about when Washuu
will find us. I'm not so sure that should be a 'when' anymore. It's been
almost ten days now and not so much as a disembodied voice from the little
scientist. If she could find us, I think she would have by now.
Tomorrow I'll start building a better shelter. It's late and Mayuka is
finally asleep. Lying there asleep with her daughter in the firelight Ryouko
looks so peaceful. How could I have hurt her? What kind of man am I anyway?
-- April 28, 2001. Day 15
Well, one piece of good news finally. The Light Hawk Wings still work.
Well, they sort of do anyway. I hunted around the woods for hours on the
twenty-second for something I could use to chop down a tree. Finally, in
frustration, I held out my hands like I was holding Tenchi-ken and willed the
sword into existence... and it worked! I still can't do it at will really, but
I can pull it into being long enough to hack down a tree, and I only seem to get
one of them here, not three like before. Some use for the most powerful weapon
system in the known universe, cutting down trees.
Anyway, I managed to chop down a few trees and between my half-on-half-off
sword and Ryouko's energy knife we got them stripped and cut into manageable
pieces. I'd started out thinking I'd get some strong, straight poles to make a
better shelter hutch like we'd had, but my project is turning into a cabin. Now
that I can pretty much fell a tree at will, the only problem is actually getting
the things up into place. Have you ever tried lifting a tree trunk, nameless
reader? They are Very heavy. All dads' lectures about engineering are coming
in handy again though, I rigged up some poles and Ryouko managed to make us a
couple of ropes out of some vines and sapling branches, so between us we can
pull and lever the logs up into place. The cabin will be one room for now, but
I have a sketch of how I can add two more to it without an undue amount of extra
trouble. The awful stuff that makes the lake water bad has revealed itself as a
wonderful caulking compound and we've been sealing the gaps between logs with it
to keep out drafts.
Listen to me, I'm rambling on like dad when he's on one of his projects.
I built a still too. It was my first project after I cut down that first
tree, even before the cabin. It just sort of hit me how I could do it, so I put
it together. Now I can boil off water by the gallon instead of the quarter-cup
and there's no more worry about dehydration.
The letters are starting to get blurry and we have a hard day tomorrow, we
have to start putting up the roof timbers. I think I know how to do it, but it
won't be easy without some real tools.
-- April 30, 2001. Day 17
The roof is going up nicely and I'm sitting in the cabin while I write
this. Ryouko made me a little lantern. The stuff from the lake water that gets
left behind after I boil it burns pretty well, though it does smell a little. I
think she might suspect that I'm keeping this journal. She's never said
anything, but she knows I go off by myself for an hour or so at night sometimes.
I'm starting to worry about my diet. I've been digging up some roots to
supplement the berries and nuts, but there's not enough protein or fiber. I
seem to get tired awfully fast, and I can't help but think it's because I'm not
getting any proper meals. Tomorrow we'll have the last of the roof timbers up
and I think I'll go out looking for some more food while Ryouko makes shingles.
I wonder if I could build an oven?
-- May 5. Day 22
I killed a deer today. It's the biggest thing I've seen on this world
since we got here, and I killed it. I found a path through the woods, so I put
one of our ropes across it, tied to a tree at one end, and sat as still as I
could at the other end. The deer came up the trail after I'd been there a few
hours, and before I could even think about it, I yanked the rope up, tangling
the deer's legs and knocking it to its side. I landed on it between its eyes
with a rock, killing it on the first blow. I didn't even realize I'd picked up
a rock until it was done. I've never killed anything from Earth before. Aliens
and demons, yes, but never an innocent animal like the deer. I cried for an
hour after, looking at its sad, liquid brown eyes staring out at me from the
bloody ruin of its skull. I think something died inside me today too, whatever
keeps men from killing died in Tenchi Masaki. I was an animal, only thinking of
feeding myself with no regard for the deer who would give its life so I could
keep mine.
What right do I have to its flesh? That I was smarter and faster than it?
That I was born human and it was born a deer? Grandfather would say that it is
the natural order of things, but what place do I have here, in this world's
order? I prayed to the spirit of the deer and the forest kami who brought it to
me. I thanked my ancestors for the gift of meat and for giving me the knowledge
with which to hunt it. But I feel no better. I am not the Tenchi who was
sitting at the lake that day anymore. I even look different. I lost the rubber
band for my hair and bathing is hard when you can't let any water into your
mouth or eyes, so I'm sure I look awful. Ryouko looks beautiful of course, and
she bathes May with my boiled water. Two forest nymphs and the dirty old troll
who builds their cave.
Tomorrow I will find water. If it means digging a well or hollowing out
tree trunks to make pipes for a mile to a stream, I'll do what it takes. I
don't think we'll ever be rescued from this place, though I'll never tell Ryouko
that. She depends on that hope that we'll go back home one day, that Washuu
will appear in a flash of light and we'll go back and forget all about this.
She even sits out at night, staring up at the stars like she expects Washuu to
arrive on Amaterasu's chariot and take us away.
Whether we are found or not, I will make this a home for her and for
little May. I've started calling her that now too, I guess Ryouko's rubbing off
on me. This isn't a story and I'm not storybook hero, but it's time I start
acting like a man. Grandfather always talked about debts of honor and the way
of the gentleman warrior. If any man has ever owed a debt of honor to a woman,
I owe one to Ryouko. She's saved my life more times than I can count and I've
never once so much as said a simple thank you. She gave of herself to give me
life, and I gave her pain in return. No more...
-- July 1, 2001.
I haven't written in this journal in some time. Looking back over my own
words I see why. I've changed since that day at the lake. I was a selfish
child only concerned with my own happiness. I said I didn't believe I would be
rescued, but I counted the days until help would arrive.
I was right about the well, it wasn't easy but we now have a source of
fresh, clean water only a minute's walk away from the cabin. The cabin is done
now, by the way. Ryouko and I finished shingling the roof and she made mats for
us to sleep on. Next week is May's birthday and I've been working on a crib for
her to sleep in. It's no work of art, but it's better than sleeping on the
floor.
I will continue this journal, though I no longer expect anyone to read it.
I'll keep it for important events that I want to remember, and if by some chance
we are one day rescued, it will remind me of what has changed in my life. Or,
if help does not come, perhaps someone will one day find this and know who built
the little house out here in the woods.
--- July 15, 2001.
Ryouko and I made love last night for the first time. The first time for
both of us, as well as our first time together. I didn't believe her when she
told me, but it was true, my Ryouko was a virgin for two-thousand-some-odd
years. Makes my angst as an eighteen-year-old seem sort of stupid, ne?
We were sitting out under the stars in front of our home, May had gone to
sleep a while before and Ryouko and I sat out there looking at the familiar
constellations in an alien sky, talking about the place that was once home. We
talked about our times together and about happy and sad times from before we'd
met. We both got pretty maudlin, Ryouko crying into her cup of warm berry juice
and me trying to hold back similar tears. We comforted each other and, as the
old clich, goes, 'one thing led to another.'
I don't know why I held back for so long. Now that the deed is done and
cannot be taken back I regret that I waited. I know it wouldn't have happened
back on Earth, probably ever. With Aeka there I could never have let myself
loosen up enough with Ryouko without fear of hurting Aeka. And the idea of sex
with Aeka just never felt right. She was beautiful, of course, but she was the
crown princess of Jurai. One day she would rule over an empire that spanned
more worlds than I had known even existed. Whoever loved her that way would be
king at her side. Tenchi Masaki is no king. I could have loved her as a woman,
as just Aeka, a girl from space who fell into my arms in search of her lost
brother. I did love her, in a way, and still do. It has not been so long since
we were lost here in this empty world after all and memory has not had time to
dull her face in my mind. She was caring, compassionate, and she would have
made a good mother. But she was a queen at heart. Her royalty held me at arm's
length even when she tried to pull me in. She saw in me a king that wasn't
there, the grandson of a man who had died when Ryouko was sealed into the cave.
I'm not the son of Jurai; I'm the grandson of Katsuhito, son of Noboyuki and
Achika.
Ryouko doesn't expect me to be a king. She expects me to be a man, to be
Tenchi Masaki. She expects me to be the father of our daughter and to help her
when she needs help, care for her when she's sick. I can be myself with Ryouko
in a way I couldn't with Aeka, and here in a world where there's no one to hurt
but my two women, and myself. Staying out of Ryouko's welcoming arms was the act
of a foolish child who didn't know love when he was in it.
Listen to me, talking about my own actions of mere weeks ago as if from
across the gap of years instead of handfuls of days. Living to survive changes
you fast I guess. Tomorrow we're going to look for wheat and I will try to kill
another deer. We will need new clothes soon, so one of us had better figure out
how to make them.
-- March 10, 2002.
It has been a long time since I wrote in this book. My pen didn't survive
the winter, so now I'm writing with a bit of flax and a bit of ink I made up
from some dust and berry juice. Amazing stuff that juice...
Winter was hard on this world. The fireplace was a good idea, but I
didn't remember a flue. That was a hard job with hands too cold to flex my
fingers in the midst of a snowstorm, but I got it done. Our crude little cabin
looks more like a real home all the time. We have a bed now, and I managed to
build an oven to go with our fireplace. Neither Ryouko nor I are very good at
making bread yet. We haven't figured out yeast yet, so it's more like tortillas
and crackers than real bread anyway. I've gotten pretty good at deer and
rabbits though, and we have stew fairly often. There has been no sign of Washuu
or any of the others, and I think even Ryouko has begun to give up the hope that
they will ever come. This is home now and will remain home until the day we
leave it, whether by death, rescue, or a desire to move on.
Ryouko got very sick during the winter. I was afraid I would lose her,
but she's stronger than I've ever been. I fed her thin soups and poor little
May had to make do with water and juice most days as Ryouko was too weak to feed
her. We don't know what could have gotten Ryouko sick, she's immune to most
germs after all. It passed May and I by entirely, so perhaps there's something
on this world that Washuu didn't know to defend against but wasn't compatible
with our alien immune systems.
I'm writing this today not because I have any special event to record, I
have not written anything in some time and feared that if I go too long I may
forget. Perhaps a silly fear when we've been here less than a year, but I have
to look at the future. There may be no other humans here, but Mayuka will have
an education anyway. Someday she may find a way to a populated world, even if
her parents can't, and I won't have my daughter going off without even being
able to read and write properly.
-- May 6, 2002.
I am writing this time because I actually have an event to record. I've
kept at my calligraphy on pieces of bark, paper is too precious here to use for
pointless exercise, especially when I have to write larger due to the crudeness
of my brush.
Today Ryouko and I were married. We had no priest, and no witness but
little May, the trees, and the birds, but we stood beneath the cherry tree where
my mother is buried on another world and we said our vows to one another. We
made rings of wood and Ryouko has discovered a new talent, she is a natural
woodcarver. My ring was a simple band into which I painstakingly and with many
failed attempts etched the inscription, "our love is eternal." The ring she
made for me, on the other hand, is beautifully done. I watched her working on
it, her energy knife thinned down to a tiny needle of power, beads of sweat
standing out on her forehead as she hunched over the little band of wood. It
bears an etching of our cabin and the woods around it on the outside of the band
and the words, "you are my soul" on the inside. I made a simple lacquer that I
hope will preserve it, though she insists that she can just make me another if
anything should happen to it. She's a talented woman, my wife.
She's inside now, exercising her newfound talent on our headboard. She
always said the bed I made was ugly (it's just a few pieces of wood pegged
together, with a mat of doeskin, after all) and decided we would have a proper
one for our wedding night, now that she knows she has the ability to change it.
I think I hear her finishing up, so I'll wrap up. I still haven't told her
about this book, though I don't even know why anymore, force of habit maybe.
-- Fall, 2011.
It's been a long, long time since I looked at this book. I'd almost
forgotten that it existed over the years. I look back now and I remember the
days I recorded here.
Ryouko and I are happy here; we live a good life, if a simple one. Little
May is growing up faster and faster every day it seems. I'm not allowed to call
her 'Little May' right now of course, she's going through another of her phases
and has decided she wishes to be called Mayuka-hime. Ryouko and I told her the
story of how we met, she'd never been interested in hearing our stories about
ourselves before... just about 'Grammy Washuu' and 'Gran Katsuhito'. I suppose
because they're people who aren't here, and May thinks she knows all about
what's here. Anyway, we told her about my releasing Ryouko and about Aeka and
Sasami (now dubbed 'auntie Aeka' and 'cousin Sasami'), about Mihoshi and Ryou-
ohki. Ryouko cried when we talked about Ryou-ohki. I can't believe I never
considered how much it must have hurt her to lose someone so closely tied to
herself. I think that night she finally realized we would never be going home,
that we would never see them again, any of them. Ryouko cried a long time that
night and after I got May to bed I cried with her. It's good to let it out
sometimes; otherwise the feelings will build up and build up until they've
nowhere to go. We've learned a lot about letting our feelings out over the
years. You don't stay in a happy relationship with no one to talk to but each
other for nearly a decade without communication.
So now our little May is Mayuka-hime and we have become Lord Tenchi and
Lady Ryouko, the Jurain Envoy to Mirror-Earth. The fact that Ryouko isn't
actually Jurain doesn't bother May a bit, but here I guess it doesn't really
matter anyway.
Ah, but I ramble on so. Talking to you, mystery reader, is like having an
old friend, rediscovered after years of absence. I write today to tell you that
May, I mean Mayuka-hime, displayed her first use of power.
Ryouko and I don't understand how it's possible, but May seems to have
somehow inherited her powers. Perhaps it was something in the transference to
this world, perhaps Washuu did something she never told us about when she was
regenerating May's body. Whatever the case, Mayuka levitated today. Ryouko
still can't do more than reduce her relative weight to a couple of pounds, but
our little May actually flew. I'm so proud of my little girl, I wish I had a
camera here so I could take a picture like dad would have.
-- Summer, 2014
May wants to leave us. No, that's not fair. She wants to get us home.
Our little girl seems to have all the powers Ryouko had with her gems fully
active. She can fly like a little bird; form her own little energy sword, and
this year she's learned to teleport. And now she thinks she can go home.
May says she can remember Okayama home (what she calls dad's house back on
Earth) and that she thinks she can teleport there. Ryouko says it may be
possible, that teleporting between parallel worlds isn't strictly ruled out if
you have the power to do it. She tried to explain how it works to me, but I
don't think it's possible to understand it without actually being able to do it.
So May came to use and asked if she could try. We've taught her well and she
respects her parents. This is a dangerous world we live in, even for all that
it appears to have no native life larger or more intelligent than a deer, and
May knows better than to go off on her own without her mommy and daddy knowing
what she's doing.
But we worry. We worry that if we say no May will go anyway. She's like
her mother in that way too, when she gets an idea in her head all the gods of
the heavens and all the demons of the hells couldn't keep her from getting her
way. She's convinced in her little thirteen-year-old mind that this is the
right thing to do and I'm afraid there's no way we can stop her. Ryouko doesn't
want to let her go, but she sees too that there is little or nothing we can do
to stop our daughter if she decided to do it, so we will give our blessing and
send our hopes and our hearts with her.
I don't know if it will work. I don't know what it will mean if it does.
It's been thirteen years since I last saw them all, I cannot imagine that they
will still be living in the house my father built. I hope that if May makes it
there will be someone waiting with a friendly face, but I doubt Washuu will be
waiting to pull us back after her. I'm not sure I would want to go.
This world is my home now. I've made a life here with my wife and my
daughter in the house I built with my own hands. If this is not my life, I
don't understand the word. Could I even go back there? Could Ryouko and I fit
into a world of television and cellular phones, computers and fast food again?
Or would we both be aliens, strange visitors from a backward world?
May will go, probably next week, and we will pray to all the gods and
ancestors we can name that she will come back to us safe, I don't know how we
could live if she didn't.
-- Spring, 2030
I'm worried about my wife. Ryouko was never the same when May didn't
return. I must admit I haven't been either. We couldn't have another child if
we wanted to; Ryouko says that would require another type of adjustment from
Washuu and I'm afraid my little chemistry set I use to make dyes and such isn't
quite up to genetic engineering. In the past few moons though my Ryouko has
been telling me about dreams, strange dreams she's having. She says that she's
had them for years now, on and off, but that now she has them every night. Each
time she sees her mother reaching out to her, trying to tell her something but
strangely slowed, unable to make herself understood. Ryouko says she thinks
that Washuu is trying to tell her to hold on, that she's coming, but I don't see
how that can be possible.
It's been nearly thirty years since we left Earth. I cannot remember the
face of my father, I remember his moustache and his glasses and his smile, but I
cannot put the pieces together to form Noboyuki anymore. I've forgotten all the
people I've loved except for my wife and my daughter, and now even my daughter
begins to fade. It's a sad thing, knowing that you are growing old and that
even your memory has begun to turn against you. Were I still on Earth I could
have had treatments from Jurai to keep me young and vital for centuries or more,
but I am not on Earth, I'm here on Mirror-Earth, and here there is no Jurai, no
fountain of youth.
Even Ryouko is aging here. Not so quickly as I am, but aging none the
less. She says it's because of her gems being essentially useless here, that
she subsists only off the power actually stored in her body to keep her young,
and there's not enough there to keep her 21 for eternity.
I miss my little Mayuka. She would be 29 now. If she survived she would
probably have found herself a husband on Earth, or even Jurai, by now. I like
to think that she did, to picture how her life would have gone back in the world
of people and things.
Ryouko and I are going to go for a walk now, up to the peak of the
mountain where Grandfather's shrine once was in another world. We do that once
a week or so, to pray to the spirits and the gods to bring our Mayuka back to
us. I've lost my hope now, but I keep up appearances for my Ryouko. She needs
hope. She's a gentle flower that would wilt and perish without it. I hope for
her sake she goes first when our times come, I cannot think how she could live
alone here.
-- Summer
I had to bury my husband today. I have never done something so hard in my
life and I cannot imagine that any woman has. He never told me that this
journal existed, but I've known since those days back on the shore of the lake
where we came to this world. I cannot put a year to my entry in his book
because I do not know what year it is. I haven't known in a long time, and
haven't really cared. I was happy here, with my Tenchi, and with my little May,
but they have left me now.
I do not blame May for leaving; this is not a world for children. Tenchi
and I discovered that when we came here, but we did our best to raise her. Like
Tenchi I like to think that she had a good life, wherever she went when she
phased out that day, all those years ago.
Tenchi was right. I cannot bear to live in this world alone, though I
cannot wish I had gone first. I cherish every moment of our lives together and
I would not end them a second sooner so I could be eased the burden of the pain
I now bear. Reading this book brought me back my love for a few hours, let me
hear his voice in my mind as though he still sat here with me, talking to me as
he has for so many nights for so many years. But my Tenchi is gone, and no
power in this world will ever bring him back to me. Everyone I've ever loved is
gone, and I'm all alone, in a universe with nothing more capable of conversation
than a deer or a rock.
I write this now because I know you'll come someday mother. I've known
for a long time that Tenchi didn't believe in you anymore and I cannot blame him
for it. I lost faith and regained it enough times myself that I cannot fault my
husband for it. But I know you'll come. Those dreams were not just the
delusions of a millennia-young woman, grown old in a handful of decades. But I
cannot wait for you mother. I cannot wait here in this empty world with my
empty heart. I cannot.
Someday you'll come here and you'll find this, and you'll know that when I
lay down my brush I will climb the mountain and I will hang myself from the
cherry tree under which I have buried the love of my life. I will join him
there in death as I lived with him in life and we will be together forever. I
only hope that when you do find this you'll believe my words and heed them.
Do not bring me back. I know you can, I know you have the power to do
that, because you told me once that should anything happen to me you could
revive me. Please Washuu, mother, don't. I know how much it will hurt you not
to do it, I know how it would hurt me if May asked this of me.
But unless you can bring me back my Tenchi and bring me my little
May, don't return me to life. I will not live in a world where I do not have my
family. Like my beloved said, I am a flower that wilts without hope.
If my daughter still lives when you read this, find her for me. If you
have found where we went, you can find where she went. Give her this book when
she is ready so that she will know her mother loved her until the end, so she
can have what I never could.
-Ryouko Masaki
-- April 24, 2001.
Oh my Ryouko. If only I had been faster, if only we had found you missing
sooner and if I had thought what it could mean. Time worked differently in this
world that you, Tenchi, and Mayuka arrived in. Here forty years have passed,
but in the universe of your birth it has been only eleven days. Eleven days!
How could I have done it? I'm the greatest scientist in the universe but even I
couldn't find you in eleven days.
When Mayuka appeared three days after you were gone, aged by more than a
decade and screaming for her Grammy Washuu to help her mommy and daddy I tried.
I tried so hard. I haven't slept since that day and my every moment has been in
my lab. Now I arrive, years too late to save my daughter or her husband, but
had I been only hours faster I may have been in time.
Tenchi built a beautiful house here. His father would be very, very proud
if he could see it. I can see your handiwork too, Ryouko. I never knew you
could carve, but now seeing your work I could not mistake it for anyone else.
I went up the mountain and I found you where you said you would be. I
built well when I built you and the years have barely taken a toll on your body.
You were right; I can revive you. It would be the work of months, but I could
bring you back memories intact good as new. This world drained your energy, but
back home you would be as strong as ever.
But I won't. I wasn't here to see my daughter grow up. I missed your
wedding and I missed my granddaughter's youngest years. But I will respect your
wish. I will take you back with me, and I will take Tenchi back. I know no way
to restore him, but I will try. I will try my hardest until I either have done
it or know it cannot be done, and then I will either give my granddaughter back
her parents or I will give her this book. The gods send that it be the former.
I'm going to go back now. I'll tell them that my experiment failed, that
I couldn't reach this world, and I will tell them that I'm still trying. If it
takes me the four decades that you have lived here without me, my Ryouko, I will
keep trying to find you and your Tenchi.
End
** All the characters in this story are owned by Pioneer, AIC,
** and probably a bunch of other Japanese people all of whom
** have more money than me. So please don't sue me, 'k?
** /Standard Disclaimer **
** Author note thingum **
** This is my second fanfic and rather a departure from
** my first, but what is life without variation, eh?
** Anyway, it's based on the OAV + MnE continuity
** and I suppose would be classified a darkfic, so if you're
** not into that, shoo.
** /Author note thingum **
Survival
-- April 13, 2001. Day 0
Technically today is the fifteenth, day two, but if I'm going to keep a
journal I should probably start at the beginning. I'd gone out to the lake to
get away from everyone for a while, I do that sometimes when it's all too much
for me to take. I was sketching the lake and the woods in this notebook when
Ryouko appeared. Well, I say appeared, but she'd actually walked today.
Probably because she had Mayuka with her, she's almost a different person when
she's with Mayuka, careful, sensitive, quiet... not at all like she usually is.
"Hey Tenchi," she'd said, "Mind if I sit out here while I feed Mayuka?"
See what I mean? She actually asked if she could sit there. Like I said,
I wanted to be alone, but Mayuka looked so happy to be out in the sun I couldn't
say no. So I nodded and she put down a blanket and sat down while I went back
to my sketch. We'd sat like that for a while before she asked if she could see
my drawing. It was actually kind of nice, her just being there instead of
trying to crawl all over me, and I was in a better mood, so I turned to show it
to her. That's when I saw what she meant when she'd said 'while I feed Mayuka'.
Ryouko had her shirt unbuttoned and she was breastfeeding Mayuka. It's
hard for me to even write about it I was so embarrassed. I must have done
something, looked shocked or backed away or something, because she got this hurt
look on her face and stood up saying, "I'm sorry Tenchi, I didn't think you
would mind. Washuu said this was better for her than that stuff from the
store."
I felt like an ass. It's a natural thing and this is the twenty-first
century, right? It was just so...shocking. I mean, how was I supposed to know?
I didn't even know Ryouko could Do that. I got up and managed to stutter out
some kind of apology and explain that I was just surprised. I hate lying to
her, but I didn't want to hurt her either. The idea of her sitting there
exposed did bother me, does bother me.
Anyway, she sat back down and I tried to keep my mind on my art and not on
her chest, but I kept finding myself looking. I wasn't staring at her breasts,
really, it was just so unlike Ryouko. She looked the picture of motherhood
there with Mayuka, smiling down at her and Mayuka grabbing Ryouko's finger
between her little hands. She must have noticed me staring and misinterpreted
it because she grinned and asked, "You want a turn, Tenchi?"
"What? No! I was just," I trailed off, I couldn't think of any way to
explain that wouldn't sound stupid. Ryouko smiled, I think she understood what
I couldn't say. Mayuka, however, started crying, disturbed from her lunch by my
shouted denial. I looked away hurriedly since Mayuka's head was no longer
between me and Ryouko's breast.
"Tenchi," she'd said while trying to shush Mayuka, "Will you go and get
her rattle from the house? I left it on the couch accidentally."
I muttered something along the lines of, "Why don't you just teleport in
there and get it?" Mayuka's screaming had set me back in my antisocial mood.
"Oh. Okay."
I could hear the hurt in her voice; she'd enjoyed sitting there with me
too. I shouldn't have said it, I should have just gotten up and gotten the
rattle. Ryouko started to get up but her foot got caught in the blanket. She
reached out and grabbed my shoulder to break her fall, there was a flash, I felt
like I was dissolving.
Then I woke up here. I didn't realize at first since 'here' looks exactly
like 'there', but after shaking my head to clear the fuzziness and checking to
make sure Mayuka and Ryouko were okay I stood up and saw that the house was
gone.
We ran over to where it had been, but it was just gone. There were little
trees and bushes growing where it should have been, like nothing had ever been
built there. At first I'd thought it must be some experiment of Washuu's gone
wrong, or maybe something Mihoshi had done. I told Ryouko to stay there with
Mayuka and I'd go get Grandfather from the shrine.
"Don't be silly Tenchi," she'd said, "You hold May, I'll fly up there."
I guess it was silly of me, especially after my comment about teleporting,
but it turned out to be a moot point anyway.
"What's wrong Ryouko?" I'd asked.
"It's not working, Tenchi... It's like I'm about to lift off, but then it
just doesn't work. And I can't teleport either."
She'd held up her hand and a tiny blade, maybe all of a foot long, formed
where her usual energy sword should have been.
"It's no good Tenchi, it's like there's no power in my gems at all."
I'd tried to reassure her, saying we'd ask Washuu as soon as we figured
out what was going on, but it didn't do much good. She just held Mayuka and
nodded silently. We walked over to where the steps up to the shrine should have
been, but they were gone too. Again, as if they'd never even existed. The same
at the lake where Funaho should have been, it wasn't even a lake. There were
just more trees, as if Yosho's spacecraft had never crashed into the earth
there, creating the crater that became a lake.
"Let's just go back to the lake Ryouko," I'd suggested, "I'm sure Washuu
will fix whatever happened and we'll be back home in no time."
"I'm not sure Tenchi," she'd said, sounding worried, "I'm not sure it was
Washuu. I was about to teleport when I grabbed you, you know, so Mayuka
wouldn't hit the ground."
I'd nodded; I guess if I could teleport that would be my first instinct
when I was falling too.
"But I didn't do it. It was... It's hard to explain, It's like flexing a
muscle and then releasing it... I had flexed, but the world flashed out before
I could release."
"You think you brought us here?"
"I don't know Tenchi, nothing like that has ever happened before..."
She sounded worried and looked like she was expecting me to yell at her.
I guess she had reason; it wasn't so long ago I lost it and slapped her. But I
wasn't mad at her, it didn't sound like it could have been her fault we were
here now, wherever 'here' is.
"Come on Ryouko, it's going to start getting dark soon. Even if you did
send us here somehow Washuu and the others will figure it out when we don't come
back soon. Maybe we can figure out some kind of shelter in case we're here over
night."
She nodded and asked if I could carry Mayuka for a little while. I
agreed, of course, and we headed back.
-- April 14, 2001. Day 1
This was our first whole day here. We managed to get up a little lean-to
that first night with some fallen branches out by the lake. I went out and got
wood for a fire while Ryouko fed Mayuka again. Ryouko used her energy, well, I
guess I should call it a knife now, to light the fire I built. It's heading
into summer now, but the nights are still cold to be outdoors in. But this is
about the next day, so I'll start with the morning.
I found out something important Saturday morning about the world we seem
to have landed in. I have to assume this is a different world because I refuse
to believe that the house, the shrine, everything, had been destroyed somehow,
wiped totally out of existence. I discovered that the lake water is Not
drinkable. I'd swallowed some while swimming out during summers past so I know
it wasn't always like this, but now it is most definitely not potable. I woke
up thirsty, and since we still didn't appear to be home I went to get some water
from the lake. Not the most hygienic thing to do I know, but I was thirsty and
it was all there was.
So I walked over to the lake and dipped out a double handful. It smelled
okay, so I drank, only to spray it back out into the air immediately. It tasted
awful! Like chemicals and metal, not at all like water, even dirty water.
Ryouko heard me gagging and came running to see what was wrong. I managed to
sputter out that the water was bad. She knelt next to me and patted my back
while I got myself back under control, then dipped a finger in the lake water
and sniffed it.
"It smells okay..."
"Yeah," I said, "But it tastes awful."
She licked her finger tentatively, her face immediately puckering up in a
grimace.
"Yeah, it does. I've had worse though."
"Uhg, I don't even want to know where."
Ryouko explained anyway. Apparently when Washuu made her she made her a
little better than the average human, or what passed for human in the rest of
the galaxy. During her enslavement under Kagato Ryouko had been stuck on a few
really awful planets and had to make do with the resources she had available.
On a few of them the water was poisoned, either intentionally or just by the
planet's own particular chemistry. It was then she'd discovered she could
handle things that would have killed anyone else. She'd had no choice but to
drink the tainted water and eat food with the god only know what alien chemicals
in it, and even though they tasted awful she didn't feel any worse for it.
"Well, you're set then," I'd sighed, "But what am I going to do?"
"I don't know Tenchi," she'd said, looking at me with an expression full
of worry and a resurgence of the previous day's fear, more for my well being
than that I would be angry this time though I think.
We spent the morning working on our lean-to. It hadn't been much more
than some sticks and a bunch of fallen leaves the night before, and in case
Washuu didn't find us that day we wanted something a little more solid for the
coming night. I said I would climb up the mountain and see if I could see a
town or something nearby but Ryouko disagreed.
"Let me go, there's no stairs now and it'll be a long climb."
"But I thought you said you couldn't fly?"
"I can't, but I can lighten myself a lot, it'll be easier. You stay here
with May and I'll be back in no time!"
So I got babysitting duty while Ryouko went off to scale the mountain.
Mayuka didn't seem to mind staying with her daddy. It feels weird writing that.
Since Washuu brought her back from the gem Ryouko's pretty much taken over
raising her. We all help, of course, but Ryouko spends the most time with her.
She was even breastfeeding her now, like a real mother...
Anyway, Mayuka didn't mind staying with me at all. I walked her around
the woods and showed her all the trees Grandfather had taught me to identify. I
found a berry bush that I remembered the fruit of being tasty. I ate half a
berry and waited a half hour or so, but it didn't seem to have any bad effects.
I guess the plants here are the same, it's just the water that's bad. So I
crushed a berry in my fingers and let Mayuka suck on the juice when she seemed
fussy. I'm not sure it's the healthiest thing for her, but she liked it and
fathers are supposed to spoil their daughters, right?
It was getting on toward afternoon by the time Ryouko got back. I looked
up at her hopefully but she just shook her head sadly.
"I climbed all the way to the peak and then got up to the top of the
tallest tree, but there's nothing. Just woods as far as I can see, no towns, no
roads, not even any smoke or any passing planes."
"Guess we're all alone out here."
She nodded and sat down under the little shelter with me, wagging her
fingers in front of Mayuka's face.
"Hi May! Did you have fun with your daddy today?"
Mayuka seemed to understand her, she giggled and held her hands up anyway.
"Looks like she wants her mommy back," I said, handing the squirming girl
over.
"Want to go get us some firewood for tonight?"
We already had plenty, but I understood. She was going to feed Mayuka and
wanted to spare me being embarrassed. I nodded and headed off into the trees.
We really did have enough wood, so I spent the time picking berries instead.
Ryouko would be hungry after all that climbing. She hadn't said anything yet,
but she probably would soon, especially since I guess she's eating for two now.
-- April 15, 2001. Day 2
So today I started this journal. Now that I look at it I guess it's sort
of pessimistic of me. I'm writing this as if someone else will read it, and
including the year in the date. I didn't even think about it when I started,
didn't really even think about why I was starting. Ryouko's feeding Mayuka
again and so I'm out here by the lake 'gathering wood'. I found my notebook
laying on the grass where
I'd left it, forgotten, and picked it up. I thought I might finish my sketch
while I waited, but somehow I just started writing instead.
So I guess I have to ask myself, what am I expecting? I don't know how we
wound up here and I certainly don't even know where 'here' is. Is it another
world, really? Is it Japan in the distant past? Or is the worst true and it
was all destroyed, wiped out in an instant while somehow sparing us? Ryouko's
powers are so weak they may as well be gone and even if I could summon the Light
Hawk Wings at will I don't know what good they would do me here. I can't fly, I
can't teleport, I have nothing to contribute but my knowledge of the local
plants. And since Ryouko can apparently eat lead and still feed Mayuka, that
knowledge is only useful to me. In the stories where a man and woman are
stranded together the man is supposed to take charge and... well, do Something
useful.
I guess I should talk about today. There's not really much to say, I went
out and got some more berries and collected a few other nuts and fruits I knew
were safe to eat. We can't live off of them forever (well, I can't anyway),
but I hope someone will find us before that becomes a problem. The lean-to
isn't really a lean-to anymore. It has three slanting walls now and an opening
toward the fire pit. I guess between Grandfather's lessons on survival (he
insisted it was a part of what a 'gentleman warrior' should know, I'll have to
thank him) and Father's lessons on architecture I guess I managed to pick
something up. Maybe I'm not totally useless after all.
This is stupid. Why should I sit out here by the lake four or five times
a day while Mayuka gets fed? It's not like I've never seen a woman's breasts
before. I've even seen Ryouko's before. And it's not like she's trying to lure
me with them again. My mother fed me that way, am I such a wimp I can't handle
that? I'm going back to the shelter, I'll write more tomorrow.
-- April 16, 2001. Day 03
I'm thirsty. I haven't had anything to drink since Friday morning and
it's Monday now. Throwing up from the lake water didn't help my dehydration
any, and I've been tramping around the woods every day. Berry juice helps a
little, but I need water. It's starting to cloud over. Maybe it will rain
today.
Ryouko is out with Mayuka, so I'm writing this while she's gone. I didn't
tell her I had this notebook or that I was keeping a journal. I'm not sure
why... I guess because she'll want to read it, and I'm afraid she'll lose hope
if she knows I worry that no one will find us. I do worry. We've certainly
been in far more dire straights than this, but it's been almost four days now.
I've seen Washuu put together a robot more advanced than anything human science
could manage in a half hour, what could have happened that after four days we'd
still have no sign? And why wouldn't Ryouko's powers work any more than they
do?
Ryouko. I walked in on her feeding Mayuka last night. She'd tried to
cover herself up, but I'd gestured for her to go on. I sat down and poked at
the fire.
"You don't mind Tenchi?"
"Hmm? Oh," I'd said, a fount of intelligent conversation, "No, go ahead.
She needs to eat."
"Okay." She sounded puzzled, so I tried to change the subject. Well, a
little anyway.
"How..." I started, and then paused to figure out what exactly I was
asking, "How can you do that? I mean, I thought you had to have just had a baby
to...?"
"Washuu tried to explain it to me when I as--" she stopped mid-word and I
started wondering if maybe Washuu hadn't come up with the idea on her own.
"Earth women can apparently do it any time," she went on before I could
interrupt with a question, "It's something to do with hormones or something. I
don't understand half the time when Washuu explains things."
I nodded. I don't generally think I'm stupid, but Washuu tends to explain
about three levels of complexity above what most people would understand, even
when she's talking down to you.
"So anyway," Ryouko went on, "I'm not an Earth woman, and my body
chemistry isn't right for this normally, but Washuu gave me these dermal
patches..."
I turned and took one of the little round white things she held out to me.
Just as I took it out of her fingers her shirt slipped, revealing the other side
of her chest. I felt myself turning bright red and whipped my head back around
to study the little piece of what felt like plastic. It had a soft pink picture
of a crab on one side, and seemed sort of sticky on the other side.
"It's okay Tenchi."
"Huh?" Ever the conversationalist, Tenchi Masaki.
"If you see me, I mean. You don't have to be embarrassed. I don't mind."
"I know that Ryouko," I said, "Remember the onsen?"
"Oh, yeah. But I mean by accident. It's okay."
"No," I stated firmly, maybe a little more firmly than I meant to, "It's
not okay. It's not proper."
"It's just us here Tenchi. I won't tell."
"It's not proper."
She'd sighed and I sat there staring into the fire and fingering the
little patch until she finished.
So that was last night. I think I upset Ryouko, but I'm just not
comfortable with that sort of thing. I think maybe it's because dad's been so
hentai in the past few years, almost since mom died. But I think I have so many
problems with women because I'm trying not to be like he is sometimes. Deep
introspection, right? It's just so embarrassing when he drools all over a girl
half his age, and some of those movies he has...
Whatever the cause though, I just don't feel right seeing Ryouko like
that...
I'm going to go look for some more berries. I'm thirsty.
-- April 21st, 2001. Day 8
I passed out on Monday. Ryouko found me in the woods near the shelter,
berries scattered all over. At least, that's how she tells it. I was out like
a light. The last thing I remember was eating a few berries and wishing I had
some water. I gathered a bunch and started back to the shelter so I could sit
down out of the sun to eat them, but I guess I didn't make it.
I woke up a few times in the next couple of days to Ryouko letting me
drink out of a cup she'd apparently made of some leaves and a bit of cloth.
She's since explained she put it together to drink from the lake. I guess I
should have thought of that, she can drink the water so she should have
something to drink it with, right?
I didn't think at the time what I would have been drinking; we hadn't
found any water after all. But I was barely conscious for most of a week. Four
days without any water and working hard in the sun had nearly killed me. I'd
been so thirsty I didn't even notice the sores forming on and around my lips.
Ryouko had, but hadn't known what to do so just spent the days looking for water
for me.
I know now what I was drinking. On day seven when I woke up I asked her.
She told me it was her milk. I almost vomited. She looked so hurt.
I don't know how she got it into a cup. I'm not sure I want to know. I
guess it's better than the other way though. I've never been so ashamed in my
life, of what I was drinking, of what I did when I found out. Of the fact that
I'd been reduced to a useless dehydrated husk because I couldn't take care of
myself.
I woke up last night and was actually coherent. Ryouko was asleep and
Mayuka was curled up with her on the blanket out near the fire pit. They'd
slept outside because I'd thrashed around weakly while I was unconscious and
took up the whole shelter. I tried to pull them and the blanket under the
shelter, but I was too weak, so I just curled up on the other side of the pit
and went back to sleep.
This morning I woke up and they weren't there. Obviously they couldn't
leave a note, they don't know I have paper and a pen. Ryouko had drawn a kanji
in the dirt though. I studied it for a few minutes, a long straight line with a
hooked line on either side, the angles opening outward. It was crude, but
Ryouko had never been one for calligraphy and the dirt wasn't the best medium
for writing anyway. Eventually I figured out it was supposed to be the
character for water; she meant she'd gone off looking for water. I tried to get
up, but was still weak as a kitten.
I crawled over to the shelter and got out of the direct sunlight, spying
Ryouko's cup sitting on the ground near the open side of the little hutch. It
was full of a thin, white liquid. I knew what it was. The question was, was I
that thirsty?
I was. As I write this I've just drunk the last of it, it wasn't at all
what I expected. Being mostly unconscious I had barely noticed it was wet
before, much less the taste. It was sort of sweet, not really like regular milk
at all. I had to stop after a tiny sip at first to keep from spilling the
berries and nuts Ryouko fed me over the past days all over our shelter. Not at
the taste, but at the idea of what I was drinking. My thirst got the better of
me though.
It's been probably an hour since then, I've been writing this to keep my
mind off what I was drinking. It really didn't taste bad though, and I Did
drink the same thing, basically, when I was as little as Mayuka is now. Now I'm
just rationalizing. The truth is that once I started I didn't really mind
drinking it. And it is what's been keeping me alive after all. I just don't
know what to think anymore; who'd have thought life could get so confusing in
less than nine days?
Ha! Who could know how confusing life could get? Me, who had women
literally falling out of the sky for weeks and is now stuck on some weird, empty
world with a space pirate who's adopted my genetic daughter, created to kill me
by a girl from another planet who lived in another dimension. Ha! And here
I've wished for a simple life. This is as simple as it gets, and it's still not
good enough for me.
-- April 22, 2001. Day 9
Ryouko didn't find water yesterday, but I did. I guess Washuu has been
rubbing off on me a little after all. I found a sort of flat, dish-like rock
and filled it with water. I put it on the fire and found a big, waxy leaf.
When the water started to boil I held the leaf over the rising steam and let it
condense onto its underside, then drip down into Ryouko's cup. I tasted a tiny
bit on my finger tentatively. It was still a little metallic, but not even in
the same league as before. It took a half dozen trips out to the lake with a
little bark bowl I made, but I managed to boil off and catch a whole cupful of
water. When Ryouko finally came back I got her to taste it and she said it
should be safe to drink.
Way to go Masaki, getting a girl to act as your food taster.
I couldn't think of any other way to do it though. Ryouko can apparently
survive drinking anything from bleach to jet fuel and get at least a general
idea of what's in what she's drinking. So now I have a source of water. Ryouko
hasn't said anything about the milk. I haven't either, but I try not to turn
away when she feeds Mayuka now. We talk about the others and about when Washuu
will find us. I'm not so sure that should be a 'when' anymore. It's been
almost ten days now and not so much as a disembodied voice from the little
scientist. If she could find us, I think she would have by now.
Tomorrow I'll start building a better shelter. It's late and Mayuka is
finally asleep. Lying there asleep with her daughter in the firelight Ryouko
looks so peaceful. How could I have hurt her? What kind of man am I anyway?
-- April 28, 2001. Day 15
Well, one piece of good news finally. The Light Hawk Wings still work.
Well, they sort of do anyway. I hunted around the woods for hours on the
twenty-second for something I could use to chop down a tree. Finally, in
frustration, I held out my hands like I was holding Tenchi-ken and willed the
sword into existence... and it worked! I still can't do it at will really, but
I can pull it into being long enough to hack down a tree, and I only seem to get
one of them here, not three like before. Some use for the most powerful weapon
system in the known universe, cutting down trees.
Anyway, I managed to chop down a few trees and between my half-on-half-off
sword and Ryouko's energy knife we got them stripped and cut into manageable
pieces. I'd started out thinking I'd get some strong, straight poles to make a
better shelter hutch like we'd had, but my project is turning into a cabin. Now
that I can pretty much fell a tree at will, the only problem is actually getting
the things up into place. Have you ever tried lifting a tree trunk, nameless
reader? They are Very heavy. All dads' lectures about engineering are coming
in handy again though, I rigged up some poles and Ryouko managed to make us a
couple of ropes out of some vines and sapling branches, so between us we can
pull and lever the logs up into place. The cabin will be one room for now, but
I have a sketch of how I can add two more to it without an undue amount of extra
trouble. The awful stuff that makes the lake water bad has revealed itself as a
wonderful caulking compound and we've been sealing the gaps between logs with it
to keep out drafts.
Listen to me, I'm rambling on like dad when he's on one of his projects.
I built a still too. It was my first project after I cut down that first
tree, even before the cabin. It just sort of hit me how I could do it, so I put
it together. Now I can boil off water by the gallon instead of the quarter-cup
and there's no more worry about dehydration.
The letters are starting to get blurry and we have a hard day tomorrow, we
have to start putting up the roof timbers. I think I know how to do it, but it
won't be easy without some real tools.
-- April 30, 2001. Day 17
The roof is going up nicely and I'm sitting in the cabin while I write
this. Ryouko made me a little lantern. The stuff from the lake water that gets
left behind after I boil it burns pretty well, though it does smell a little. I
think she might suspect that I'm keeping this journal. She's never said
anything, but she knows I go off by myself for an hour or so at night sometimes.
I'm starting to worry about my diet. I've been digging up some roots to
supplement the berries and nuts, but there's not enough protein or fiber. I
seem to get tired awfully fast, and I can't help but think it's because I'm not
getting any proper meals. Tomorrow we'll have the last of the roof timbers up
and I think I'll go out looking for some more food while Ryouko makes shingles.
I wonder if I could build an oven?
-- May 5. Day 22
I killed a deer today. It's the biggest thing I've seen on this world
since we got here, and I killed it. I found a path through the woods, so I put
one of our ropes across it, tied to a tree at one end, and sat as still as I
could at the other end. The deer came up the trail after I'd been there a few
hours, and before I could even think about it, I yanked the rope up, tangling
the deer's legs and knocking it to its side. I landed on it between its eyes
with a rock, killing it on the first blow. I didn't even realize I'd picked up
a rock until it was done. I've never killed anything from Earth before. Aliens
and demons, yes, but never an innocent animal like the deer. I cried for an
hour after, looking at its sad, liquid brown eyes staring out at me from the
bloody ruin of its skull. I think something died inside me today too, whatever
keeps men from killing died in Tenchi Masaki. I was an animal, only thinking of
feeding myself with no regard for the deer who would give its life so I could
keep mine.
What right do I have to its flesh? That I was smarter and faster than it?
That I was born human and it was born a deer? Grandfather would say that it is
the natural order of things, but what place do I have here, in this world's
order? I prayed to the spirit of the deer and the forest kami who brought it to
me. I thanked my ancestors for the gift of meat and for giving me the knowledge
with which to hunt it. But I feel no better. I am not the Tenchi who was
sitting at the lake that day anymore. I even look different. I lost the rubber
band for my hair and bathing is hard when you can't let any water into your
mouth or eyes, so I'm sure I look awful. Ryouko looks beautiful of course, and
she bathes May with my boiled water. Two forest nymphs and the dirty old troll
who builds their cave.
Tomorrow I will find water. If it means digging a well or hollowing out
tree trunks to make pipes for a mile to a stream, I'll do what it takes. I
don't think we'll ever be rescued from this place, though I'll never tell Ryouko
that. She depends on that hope that we'll go back home one day, that Washuu
will appear in a flash of light and we'll go back and forget all about this.
She even sits out at night, staring up at the stars like she expects Washuu to
arrive on Amaterasu's chariot and take us away.
Whether we are found or not, I will make this a home for her and for
little May. I've started calling her that now too, I guess Ryouko's rubbing off
on me. This isn't a story and I'm not storybook hero, but it's time I start
acting like a man. Grandfather always talked about debts of honor and the way
of the gentleman warrior. If any man has ever owed a debt of honor to a woman,
I owe one to Ryouko. She's saved my life more times than I can count and I've
never once so much as said a simple thank you. She gave of herself to give me
life, and I gave her pain in return. No more...
-- July 1, 2001.
I haven't written in this journal in some time. Looking back over my own
words I see why. I've changed since that day at the lake. I was a selfish
child only concerned with my own happiness. I said I didn't believe I would be
rescued, but I counted the days until help would arrive.
I was right about the well, it wasn't easy but we now have a source of
fresh, clean water only a minute's walk away from the cabin. The cabin is done
now, by the way. Ryouko and I finished shingling the roof and she made mats for
us to sleep on. Next week is May's birthday and I've been working on a crib for
her to sleep in. It's no work of art, but it's better than sleeping on the
floor.
I will continue this journal, though I no longer expect anyone to read it.
I'll keep it for important events that I want to remember, and if by some chance
we are one day rescued, it will remind me of what has changed in my life. Or,
if help does not come, perhaps someone will one day find this and know who built
the little house out here in the woods.
--- July 15, 2001.
Ryouko and I made love last night for the first time. The first time for
both of us, as well as our first time together. I didn't believe her when she
told me, but it was true, my Ryouko was a virgin for two-thousand-some-odd
years. Makes my angst as an eighteen-year-old seem sort of stupid, ne?
We were sitting out under the stars in front of our home, May had gone to
sleep a while before and Ryouko and I sat out there looking at the familiar
constellations in an alien sky, talking about the place that was once home. We
talked about our times together and about happy and sad times from before we'd
met. We both got pretty maudlin, Ryouko crying into her cup of warm berry juice
and me trying to hold back similar tears. We comforted each other and, as the
old clich, goes, 'one thing led to another.'
I don't know why I held back for so long. Now that the deed is done and
cannot be taken back I regret that I waited. I know it wouldn't have happened
back on Earth, probably ever. With Aeka there I could never have let myself
loosen up enough with Ryouko without fear of hurting Aeka. And the idea of sex
with Aeka just never felt right. She was beautiful, of course, but she was the
crown princess of Jurai. One day she would rule over an empire that spanned
more worlds than I had known even existed. Whoever loved her that way would be
king at her side. Tenchi Masaki is no king. I could have loved her as a woman,
as just Aeka, a girl from space who fell into my arms in search of her lost
brother. I did love her, in a way, and still do. It has not been so long since
we were lost here in this empty world after all and memory has not had time to
dull her face in my mind. She was caring, compassionate, and she would have
made a good mother. But she was a queen at heart. Her royalty held me at arm's
length even when she tried to pull me in. She saw in me a king that wasn't
there, the grandson of a man who had died when Ryouko was sealed into the cave.
I'm not the son of Jurai; I'm the grandson of Katsuhito, son of Noboyuki and
Achika.
Ryouko doesn't expect me to be a king. She expects me to be a man, to be
Tenchi Masaki. She expects me to be the father of our daughter and to help her
when she needs help, care for her when she's sick. I can be myself with Ryouko
in a way I couldn't with Aeka, and here in a world where there's no one to hurt
but my two women, and myself. Staying out of Ryouko's welcoming arms was the act
of a foolish child who didn't know love when he was in it.
Listen to me, talking about my own actions of mere weeks ago as if from
across the gap of years instead of handfuls of days. Living to survive changes
you fast I guess. Tomorrow we're going to look for wheat and I will try to kill
another deer. We will need new clothes soon, so one of us had better figure out
how to make them.
-- March 10, 2002.
It has been a long time since I wrote in this book. My pen didn't survive
the winter, so now I'm writing with a bit of flax and a bit of ink I made up
from some dust and berry juice. Amazing stuff that juice...
Winter was hard on this world. The fireplace was a good idea, but I
didn't remember a flue. That was a hard job with hands too cold to flex my
fingers in the midst of a snowstorm, but I got it done. Our crude little cabin
looks more like a real home all the time. We have a bed now, and I managed to
build an oven to go with our fireplace. Neither Ryouko nor I are very good at
making bread yet. We haven't figured out yeast yet, so it's more like tortillas
and crackers than real bread anyway. I've gotten pretty good at deer and
rabbits though, and we have stew fairly often. There has been no sign of Washuu
or any of the others, and I think even Ryouko has begun to give up the hope that
they will ever come. This is home now and will remain home until the day we
leave it, whether by death, rescue, or a desire to move on.
Ryouko got very sick during the winter. I was afraid I would lose her,
but she's stronger than I've ever been. I fed her thin soups and poor little
May had to make do with water and juice most days as Ryouko was too weak to feed
her. We don't know what could have gotten Ryouko sick, she's immune to most
germs after all. It passed May and I by entirely, so perhaps there's something
on this world that Washuu didn't know to defend against but wasn't compatible
with our alien immune systems.
I'm writing this today not because I have any special event to record, I
have not written anything in some time and feared that if I go too long I may
forget. Perhaps a silly fear when we've been here less than a year, but I have
to look at the future. There may be no other humans here, but Mayuka will have
an education anyway. Someday she may find a way to a populated world, even if
her parents can't, and I won't have my daughter going off without even being
able to read and write properly.
-- May 6, 2002.
I am writing this time because I actually have an event to record. I've
kept at my calligraphy on pieces of bark, paper is too precious here to use for
pointless exercise, especially when I have to write larger due to the crudeness
of my brush.
Today Ryouko and I were married. We had no priest, and no witness but
little May, the trees, and the birds, but we stood beneath the cherry tree where
my mother is buried on another world and we said our vows to one another. We
made rings of wood and Ryouko has discovered a new talent, she is a natural
woodcarver. My ring was a simple band into which I painstakingly and with many
failed attempts etched the inscription, "our love is eternal." The ring she
made for me, on the other hand, is beautifully done. I watched her working on
it, her energy knife thinned down to a tiny needle of power, beads of sweat
standing out on her forehead as she hunched over the little band of wood. It
bears an etching of our cabin and the woods around it on the outside of the band
and the words, "you are my soul" on the inside. I made a simple lacquer that I
hope will preserve it, though she insists that she can just make me another if
anything should happen to it. She's a talented woman, my wife.
She's inside now, exercising her newfound talent on our headboard. She
always said the bed I made was ugly (it's just a few pieces of wood pegged
together, with a mat of doeskin, after all) and decided we would have a proper
one for our wedding night, now that she knows she has the ability to change it.
I think I hear her finishing up, so I'll wrap up. I still haven't told her
about this book, though I don't even know why anymore, force of habit maybe.
-- Fall, 2011.
It's been a long, long time since I looked at this book. I'd almost
forgotten that it existed over the years. I look back now and I remember the
days I recorded here.
Ryouko and I are happy here; we live a good life, if a simple one. Little
May is growing up faster and faster every day it seems. I'm not allowed to call
her 'Little May' right now of course, she's going through another of her phases
and has decided she wishes to be called Mayuka-hime. Ryouko and I told her the
story of how we met, she'd never been interested in hearing our stories about
ourselves before... just about 'Grammy Washuu' and 'Gran Katsuhito'. I suppose
because they're people who aren't here, and May thinks she knows all about
what's here. Anyway, we told her about my releasing Ryouko and about Aeka and
Sasami (now dubbed 'auntie Aeka' and 'cousin Sasami'), about Mihoshi and Ryou-
ohki. Ryouko cried when we talked about Ryou-ohki. I can't believe I never
considered how much it must have hurt her to lose someone so closely tied to
herself. I think that night she finally realized we would never be going home,
that we would never see them again, any of them. Ryouko cried a long time that
night and after I got May to bed I cried with her. It's good to let it out
sometimes; otherwise the feelings will build up and build up until they've
nowhere to go. We've learned a lot about letting our feelings out over the
years. You don't stay in a happy relationship with no one to talk to but each
other for nearly a decade without communication.
So now our little May is Mayuka-hime and we have become Lord Tenchi and
Lady Ryouko, the Jurain Envoy to Mirror-Earth. The fact that Ryouko isn't
actually Jurain doesn't bother May a bit, but here I guess it doesn't really
matter anyway.
Ah, but I ramble on so. Talking to you, mystery reader, is like having an
old friend, rediscovered after years of absence. I write today to tell you that
May, I mean Mayuka-hime, displayed her first use of power.
Ryouko and I don't understand how it's possible, but May seems to have
somehow inherited her powers. Perhaps it was something in the transference to
this world, perhaps Washuu did something she never told us about when she was
regenerating May's body. Whatever the case, Mayuka levitated today. Ryouko
still can't do more than reduce her relative weight to a couple of pounds, but
our little May actually flew. I'm so proud of my little girl, I wish I had a
camera here so I could take a picture like dad would have.
-- Summer, 2014
May wants to leave us. No, that's not fair. She wants to get us home.
Our little girl seems to have all the powers Ryouko had with her gems fully
active. She can fly like a little bird; form her own little energy sword, and
this year she's learned to teleport. And now she thinks she can go home.
May says she can remember Okayama home (what she calls dad's house back on
Earth) and that she thinks she can teleport there. Ryouko says it may be
possible, that teleporting between parallel worlds isn't strictly ruled out if
you have the power to do it. She tried to explain how it works to me, but I
don't think it's possible to understand it without actually being able to do it.
So May came to use and asked if she could try. We've taught her well and she
respects her parents. This is a dangerous world we live in, even for all that
it appears to have no native life larger or more intelligent than a deer, and
May knows better than to go off on her own without her mommy and daddy knowing
what she's doing.
But we worry. We worry that if we say no May will go anyway. She's like
her mother in that way too, when she gets an idea in her head all the gods of
the heavens and all the demons of the hells couldn't keep her from getting her
way. She's convinced in her little thirteen-year-old mind that this is the
right thing to do and I'm afraid there's no way we can stop her. Ryouko doesn't
want to let her go, but she sees too that there is little or nothing we can do
to stop our daughter if she decided to do it, so we will give our blessing and
send our hopes and our hearts with her.
I don't know if it will work. I don't know what it will mean if it does.
It's been thirteen years since I last saw them all, I cannot imagine that they
will still be living in the house my father built. I hope that if May makes it
there will be someone waiting with a friendly face, but I doubt Washuu will be
waiting to pull us back after her. I'm not sure I would want to go.
This world is my home now. I've made a life here with my wife and my
daughter in the house I built with my own hands. If this is not my life, I
don't understand the word. Could I even go back there? Could Ryouko and I fit
into a world of television and cellular phones, computers and fast food again?
Or would we both be aliens, strange visitors from a backward world?
May will go, probably next week, and we will pray to all the gods and
ancestors we can name that she will come back to us safe, I don't know how we
could live if she didn't.
-- Spring, 2030
I'm worried about my wife. Ryouko was never the same when May didn't
return. I must admit I haven't been either. We couldn't have another child if
we wanted to; Ryouko says that would require another type of adjustment from
Washuu and I'm afraid my little chemistry set I use to make dyes and such isn't
quite up to genetic engineering. In the past few moons though my Ryouko has
been telling me about dreams, strange dreams she's having. She says that she's
had them for years now, on and off, but that now she has them every night. Each
time she sees her mother reaching out to her, trying to tell her something but
strangely slowed, unable to make herself understood. Ryouko says she thinks
that Washuu is trying to tell her to hold on, that she's coming, but I don't see
how that can be possible.
It's been nearly thirty years since we left Earth. I cannot remember the
face of my father, I remember his moustache and his glasses and his smile, but I
cannot put the pieces together to form Noboyuki anymore. I've forgotten all the
people I've loved except for my wife and my daughter, and now even my daughter
begins to fade. It's a sad thing, knowing that you are growing old and that
even your memory has begun to turn against you. Were I still on Earth I could
have had treatments from Jurai to keep me young and vital for centuries or more,
but I am not on Earth, I'm here on Mirror-Earth, and here there is no Jurai, no
fountain of youth.
Even Ryouko is aging here. Not so quickly as I am, but aging none the
less. She says it's because of her gems being essentially useless here, that
she subsists only off the power actually stored in her body to keep her young,
and there's not enough there to keep her 21 for eternity.
I miss my little Mayuka. She would be 29 now. If she survived she would
probably have found herself a husband on Earth, or even Jurai, by now. I like
to think that she did, to picture how her life would have gone back in the world
of people and things.
Ryouko and I are going to go for a walk now, up to the peak of the
mountain where Grandfather's shrine once was in another world. We do that once
a week or so, to pray to the spirits and the gods to bring our Mayuka back to
us. I've lost my hope now, but I keep up appearances for my Ryouko. She needs
hope. She's a gentle flower that would wilt and perish without it. I hope for
her sake she goes first when our times come, I cannot think how she could live
alone here.
-- Summer
I had to bury my husband today. I have never done something so hard in my
life and I cannot imagine that any woman has. He never told me that this
journal existed, but I've known since those days back on the shore of the lake
where we came to this world. I cannot put a year to my entry in his book
because I do not know what year it is. I haven't known in a long time, and
haven't really cared. I was happy here, with my Tenchi, and with my little May,
but they have left me now.
I do not blame May for leaving; this is not a world for children. Tenchi
and I discovered that when we came here, but we did our best to raise her. Like
Tenchi I like to think that she had a good life, wherever she went when she
phased out that day, all those years ago.
Tenchi was right. I cannot bear to live in this world alone, though I
cannot wish I had gone first. I cherish every moment of our lives together and
I would not end them a second sooner so I could be eased the burden of the pain
I now bear. Reading this book brought me back my love for a few hours, let me
hear his voice in my mind as though he still sat here with me, talking to me as
he has for so many nights for so many years. But my Tenchi is gone, and no
power in this world will ever bring him back to me. Everyone I've ever loved is
gone, and I'm all alone, in a universe with nothing more capable of conversation
than a deer or a rock.
I write this now because I know you'll come someday mother. I've known
for a long time that Tenchi didn't believe in you anymore and I cannot blame him
for it. I lost faith and regained it enough times myself that I cannot fault my
husband for it. But I know you'll come. Those dreams were not just the
delusions of a millennia-young woman, grown old in a handful of decades. But I
cannot wait for you mother. I cannot wait here in this empty world with my
empty heart. I cannot.
Someday you'll come here and you'll find this, and you'll know that when I
lay down my brush I will climb the mountain and I will hang myself from the
cherry tree under which I have buried the love of my life. I will join him
there in death as I lived with him in life and we will be together forever. I
only hope that when you do find this you'll believe my words and heed them.
Do not bring me back. I know you can, I know you have the power to do
that, because you told me once that should anything happen to me you could
revive me. Please Washuu, mother, don't. I know how much it will hurt you not
to do it, I know how it would hurt me if May asked this of me.
But unless you can bring me back my Tenchi and bring me my little
May, don't return me to life. I will not live in a world where I do not have my
family. Like my beloved said, I am a flower that wilts without hope.
If my daughter still lives when you read this, find her for me. If you
have found where we went, you can find where she went. Give her this book when
she is ready so that she will know her mother loved her until the end, so she
can have what I never could.
-Ryouko Masaki
-- April 24, 2001.
Oh my Ryouko. If only I had been faster, if only we had found you missing
sooner and if I had thought what it could mean. Time worked differently in this
world that you, Tenchi, and Mayuka arrived in. Here forty years have passed,
but in the universe of your birth it has been only eleven days. Eleven days!
How could I have done it? I'm the greatest scientist in the universe but even I
couldn't find you in eleven days.
When Mayuka appeared three days after you were gone, aged by more than a
decade and screaming for her Grammy Washuu to help her mommy and daddy I tried.
I tried so hard. I haven't slept since that day and my every moment has been in
my lab. Now I arrive, years too late to save my daughter or her husband, but
had I been only hours faster I may have been in time.
Tenchi built a beautiful house here. His father would be very, very proud
if he could see it. I can see your handiwork too, Ryouko. I never knew you
could carve, but now seeing your work I could not mistake it for anyone else.
I went up the mountain and I found you where you said you would be. I
built well when I built you and the years have barely taken a toll on your body.
You were right; I can revive you. It would be the work of months, but I could
bring you back memories intact good as new. This world drained your energy, but
back home you would be as strong as ever.
But I won't. I wasn't here to see my daughter grow up. I missed your
wedding and I missed my granddaughter's youngest years. But I will respect your
wish. I will take you back with me, and I will take Tenchi back. I know no way
to restore him, but I will try. I will try my hardest until I either have done
it or know it cannot be done, and then I will either give my granddaughter back
her parents or I will give her this book. The gods send that it be the former.
I'm going to go back now. I'll tell them that my experiment failed, that
I couldn't reach this world, and I will tell them that I'm still trying. If it
takes me the four decades that you have lived here without me, my Ryouko, I will
keep trying to find you and your Tenchi.
End