Hey everyone! This is my first start into the world of Cowboy Bebop FF writing. I usually stick to the lighter side of things, Rurouni Kenshin and the like, but I'm very fond of Bebop and I thought I'd give this a try. I don't know if this is a prologue to a multi-chaptered story or just a twisted little one-shot, depending on reviews it will go either way. So leave me something interesting and your opinion on whether the story should stop here or if it's interesting enough to keep going. Thanks! ^_^
On with the story!
Once, when I was young and moldable as the brown clay in the hands of the creation deity, my eyes alighted on a peculiar picture in a heavy, glossy covered book.
It was a painting in light pastels and comfortable grays, the colors making the observer feel warm and relaxed while experiencing something outside their realm. In the picture, an old, wrinkled, brown paper bag of a woman, her face echoing the vitality of a fleeting youth, lay asleep on a tatami mat with a large comforter pulled up to her long chin. She was turned towards a far thin paper wall. This wall was illuminated by a light in the next room and two silhouettes could be clearly seen. One was of a younger woman, her kimono open in the front and her new, elastic breasts bouncing against the harsh scattered light of the room. Her hair held many intricate hair pins and gave the impression that she was a lower caste geisha.
The other shadow was of an older man, perhaps the older woman's husband. He had his body and arms stretched out towards the young woman, about to receive her in a deep embrace of carnal love.
However, the interesting thing to me was not the man and the woman with their grotesque behavior, but the older woman's expression.
At first glance, she appeared to be in a deep meditative sleep. But upon my scrutinized view, it was apparent that one eye was firmly shut and the other eye opened a sliver smaller than a thin sheet of worn Egyptian papyrus. The eye bore silent, quiet witness to the scene with an eerie discrepancy. The old woman's mouth was twisted up into a smile, a jest at the follies and the cruelties of her condition. She was the unseen, unaccounted for observer, not wishing to look in for fear of sin but not entirely certain she should look away either.
I feel sure that the next morning, when the woman would have served the man his breakfast and tea, she would not have mentioned what she had seen. She merely would have smiled that inscrutable smile. Perhaps her husband has been wondering all of his life what that smile means, perhaps that is why he was driven into the arms of the hired courtesan so late in life. I can readily guess that if I were to tell the old woman of this possibility, she would turn from the painting and grin at me; cold, numb, and unfeeling.
In the years since that painting enchanted me, I have strived to be that woman, the underestimated and invisible one. And it has always served me quite well, living my life as if I were partially insane made everyone else take me for the resident Bebop jester. But it has not been I that has been cast as the fool in this spectacular performance. That role belongs only to you; Spike, Jet, Miss Valentine.
I was never sorry for my actions before.
A spy must never be sorry.
But as I stand here above this grave, in the living, breathing air, I read the epitaph that Faye has constructed for you. Simply put in large ancient letters chiseled into the headstone, it calls out to the world from a face of granite:
Spike Spiegel
A Man Among Cowards
Captain of a Ship that Sails the Winds of the Past
These words do not fit you, Spike. Possibly for someone lacking in originality or the potential to cultivate some, they would be just fine. But for you, they sound hackneyed and used, as if the engraver forgot to come up with something and in his haste pulled out his book of proverbs which resides between "Big Beautiful Behinds" and the latest issue of "100 Funny Things to do in the Can" on his workshop bookshelf.
I bend down, and taking the key to my spacecraft, scratch out my sentence across the void.
For every wave of countenance to pause upon this ground,
Mine eye hath been opened.
Maybe, across the eternal chasm, you hear my honest prayer for your forgiveness. I will wait forever to receive it. Upon this hallowed earth I prostrate myself, I, the woman you know as Edward, the catalyst to your death, tell you the solemn truth.
There are waters you have naught to know. Here be the Dragons.
Well, what do you think? A one shot? A story? Tell me! Use the little button at the bottom of the page and leave me something! ^_^