Hanami – Chapter 31
'I should never have hit her. I should never have yelled at her. I should never have come out from behind that tree.' Raphael had gotten his hand back from her, but now he was the one glowering. 'Fucking stupid bitch. Pissing me off. Saying that shit about Master Splinter. I should never have hit her, though. God dammit.'
"You know, I've already apologized several times for mouthing off like that." Sterling glanced over her shoulder. "I don't know what else you want." Her jaw was beginning to feel stiff, but she kept talking anyways.
"Who are you mad at anyways? I told you I'm fine. It's not like you broke my cheek bone or knocked out my teeth or anything like that." She shrugged, "A little pain brought me back from whatever bitch-kick I was on." She looked back again. Her words didn't seem to be helping. She switched tactics.
"Next time I get mad, you're gonna have a helluva time dealing with me, though." He had no way to see the sly smile that crossed her features, but he heard the challenge in her voice. He looked up, and she caught his eyes. She turned and doubled back. She brought her face down towards his. There were mere inches between their beaks. "I believe you. You swore it wouldn't happen again. That means you're gonna have to find another way to Shut. Me. Up." She leaned in closer, her mouth opened slightly. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek. His mouth had opened as well, though more from shock than anything else.
'Oh god, she's not gonna…' She'd tilted her head, angling so that their beaks wouldn't bump. Raphael froze, anticipation catching up to him. Sterling waited until the last moment before she shut her beak with a loud SNAP of teeth and pulled back.
"Ninja, heh." She snorted. His surprise gave her a good-sized head start as she screamed out over her shoulder, "Race you home!"
"You FUCKING BITCH!" Raphael tore up the path after her.
Leonardo sat beside the tiny grave, lost in his thoughts. Shima was adjusting well, she hadn't left Don's side since he started work on that sewing machine. 'I stayed long enough for lunch, but I just couldn't last. I might have drowned in there.' The kitchen had been awash with literary discussion.
"Orwell was right, you know." Shima was pinning together some pieces of fabric that she'd already chalked and cut. "Human, hell, any sentient nature, is completely malleable."
Donnie looked up from the spread of sewing machine bits across the table from her. He shook his head. "Don't you believe that there is a such a thing as 'true identity?' I mean, even Dostoyevsky and Camus granted that much. There have to be some parts of the psyche that cannot be manipulated. How else can you claim to have a soul.?"
"Conrad didn't." She shot back. "Look at what happened to my sisters and I. We were Orwell's 'proletariat'. We worked and never really looked for anything better, because we didn't know that we were missing anything." She grabbed a few more pins from the pincushion. "Hell, when ever we recognized that somehow things were wrong, we'd rationalize it: the humans were doing it for our benefit, we were beneath human notice, etc. Then we'd forget that we rationalized anything, so we didn't have to admit that anything was wrong. It was classic doublethink. I still catch myself wondering if I'm just 'Winston' somewhere, bound to wake up from all this eventually and hate myself for betraying the humans that treat me so much better than I deserve."
Donatello shook his head, looking up at her he grinned, "Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St. Clement's…"
"I owe you three farthings..." She dissolved into nervous laughter. "Shut up, Donny." This time her laughter was real.
Leonardo looked upwards into the branches of the trees. 'Geez. Who'da thunk it'd be Donnie? First Sterling, now Shima.' He smiled at his own frustrated thoughts. 'I thought Raphael and Mikey were supposed to be the lady-killers.'
He startled as "YOU FUCKING BITCH!" rolled across the landscape. Shaking his head, he smirked, "Well, maybe MIKEY anyways."
'I'm flying! I've never run so fast in my life!' Sterling stretched out her long legs and cornered around the barn. He was just behind her and closing fast. She grinned, he would catch her, but she was making him work for it. She was almost to the porch, when she swerved left and ran full-tilt down the side of the house. She could feel his fingers trying to close on her shell, but there was nothing there to give purchase. The apple trees: dead ahead. She could feel her lungs beginning to burn, but her legs could have carried her forever. She pulled a hard right, hoping to snag Raphael on the branches. 'SHIT! There's Leo!' She hurdled him, startling him from his meditations. "Hi Leo! Bye Leo!" She blurted as she made for the other side of the house.
'God dammit, she was fast! But there's no way I can't catch her!' "SHIT! Leo! What the fuck?!" Raphael had too much momentum and to much adrenaline to give up now. He leapt over his wide-eyed brother, and tearing clods of turf from the lawn, he cornered far more tightly than Sterling had. 'Gotcha now!'
Around the side of the house, 'There's her shell!' "Gotcha!" Raphael made a flying tackle, spinning her as they fell so that her shell took the impact. He'd pinned her arms at either side of her head. The two of them panting, trying desperately to catch their breath. Suddenly very aware of there position, Raphael watched in fascination as her pulse hammered in her throat. Her soft light-yellow stripes outlined the flow of her life-blood down the naked skin of her throat, down towards her collarbones, and toward the rounded tops of her plastron. He could feel her warmth all down the length of him; her legs just seemed to go on forever. But none of that held his mind like her eyes: gray like ocean mist.
She smiled up at him; she had her breath back. She was gonna talk and that was probably a bad idea. He shut her up the best way he knew how. Leaning in quickly, he nuzzled the side of her neck, placing his beak with care. He didn't want to hurt her. He opened his mouth and moisted a spot on her neck with his tongue.
Sterling went completely still. She had no idea what Raphael was up to, but it was starting to feel nice. She relaxed as he nuzzled her neck again. She screamed when he blew a particularly messy "raspberry" on the side of her neck. He was up and into the house before she finished. "YOU FUCKING JIZZ-MOP! Eeewww! Gross!"
OK for everyone wondering if the literary stuff was based on anything in particular: yes. Things that are not mine. George Orwell's 1984: very scary, very good; I recommend you read it if you haven't. This is where the reference to 'Winston,' 'doublethink,' and the 'Oranges and Lemons' rhyme comes from. Fyodor Dostoyevksy's Crime and Punishment: excellent for a work of Russian literature. Russia's seen more than it's fair share of shit, therefore Russian Lit. tends to be pretty dark and sometimes plot-less. (That would be the point the authors were struggling to make: life is pointless, but you live it anyways, god only knows why). But I digress, Crime and Punishment is a good book; read it. Camus' The Stranger: I could take it or leave it, but it does an excellent job of portraying the whole existentialist movement. (I live because I like to live and for no other reason.) Finally Conrad's Heart of Darkness: a painfully long metaphor about how everyone's evil at heart and that you can dress humanity up, but don't try to take it to dinner or you'll only embarrass yourself and everyone else at the restaurant.
Oh, and for those of you without brothers or sisters or parents or friends or physical contact:
a RASPBERRY: when you make a farting noise against someone's skin. there can be quite a lot of spittle involved if done (im)properly. ;)