Standing in the Pieces Still Week 4, still day 3
She almost missed seeing it.
As she walked across the room to study the vase, she was surprised that she didn't see it when she first came into the room. It must have been because she was so pre-occupied with what was happening downstairs that she missed it, because it was one of the few things of color in the room.
"It can't be the vase I think it is," Reika said to herself as she lifted the vase. Green, gold and cream the vase seemed to shimmer. She was drawn to this vase; she needed to hold the vase and look at it.
From far away, the vase appeared to be painted green, with a gold and cream flower on its front. When viewed more closely, however, it could be seen that the vase was actually made up of pieces of rubble arranged to create the appearance of a painted vase. That little detail confirmed for Reika that the vase she was holding dated back over a thousand years. The vase in her hands was made for the then princess of earth from the some of the remains of the city of Towana in appreciation for the princess' influence and assistance after the earthquake that leveled the city. It was one of a kind and practically impossible to replace. "As is so much from that time," Reika thought to herself, realizing that she was discovering that fact the hard way.
Her hold lessened on the vase as she stared at the wall. Seeing this vase did make her reflect on her life. Was this past life the reason she studied what she did? Did she go to Africa to try and find other parts of this other life of hers?
If nothing else, that trip should have made her re-evaluate a lot of her decisions sooner. When Makoto came to talk to her outside of the university, she told Reika to decide if she wanted "love or study". And, even with that strong statement, Reika had still decided to go to Africa. She had justified it to herself saying that love that couldn't survive distance wasn't worth it, or that if he loved her, Motoki would support her working towards her dream.
She had to wonder how true all of that was now.
Reika shrugged as she looked back down at the vase in her hands. One old relic and Nishimura Reika had to wonder if she had been lying to herself for years.
While it was surprising that she almost missed seeing the vase, it wasn't surprising that she dropped it after being startled by the bang that echoed from somewhere else in the house. After all, she didn't have the strongest hold on the vase and her mind was somewhere else. She didn't even realize that she had dropped it until she heard the crash.
As she looked down at the now broken vase at her feet, her first thought was that it wasn't the only broken thing still around from that distant past. As she stood there, with a hand over her month, staring at the many pieces at her feet, she thought about crying. In the end, she decided against it. She'd cried a lot in the recent days, crying over a broken vase, original or not, didn't seem to be a good enough reason to cry anymore. She also thought about laughing, but quickly decided against that as well. Laughing over a broken vase was probably a sign that she was losing her sanity. As she had lost a lot of things already, she wanted to hold onto the illusion that she wasn't crazy. She also thought about moving, but, in that moment, the scattered mess at her feet was intriguing. It was like so many of the sites she seen while she was in Africa. Bits and pieces of animal skeletons, pottery, tools that told so many different stories.
One piece in particular caught her eye. She slowly reached for it, picking it up carefully, and wiping it off. It was a piece of a cornerstone or of some kind of marker. It looked like it had some kind of date on it. Staring at the piece of vase in her hand, the intellectual part of her was off and running, trying to tell the story of that piece. The rest of her could take a rest for a moment, and all of her attention could be focused, at least temporary, on something else besides what was happening downstairs.
"I can't believe that she just ordered us to leave!" Yusuke groused as he and Terry walked away from the now occupied kitchen.
"It wasn't exactly an order," Terry corrected. And Yusuke's look, he relented, "But it did seem order-like. What bothers me the most about it is that she didn't seem to understand why we were worried! I mean, sure Mamoru was our brother at some point, but he came through the door WITH Serenity. I'm not so sure we can trust him; I'm pretty sure we can't trust her."
Yusuke snorted, "Like May really thinks about things like her safety when she attempts things." The young man shrugged, "Dying does that to you."
Terry sent Yusuke a strange look, "That sounds like the voice of experience, twip."
"You have no idea."
Terry opened his open to ask about what that meant, when they heard a loud crash. It was rather startling, as if something fell or what knocked aside.
"May!" Yusuke shouted and he turned to rush back into the kitchen.
Terry quickly grabbed the younger boy's arm as his own brain tried to work through various pieces of information. "Wait. That crash came from upstairs. May is still in the kitchen, which is downstairs, so that means…"
"Reika," both boys said in unison and they ran for the steps.
"Reika! Reika, are you all right?" Terry shouted as they rushed down the long hall.
"Reika! Dammit, answer us! Where the hell are you?" Yusuke shouted as well, sounding agitated.
Opening every door they passed, the boys began more and more worried. Finally, upon reaching the tenth door, they found it open. They crossed the threshold to find Reika standing next to the bed, a piece of marble in her hands and various pieces of what may have been a pot at her feet. A bed with beige sheets was just behind her and on the edge of that bed was a first aid kit.
Reika herself hadn't heard them come in the room. Assessing her vacant look, Terry would have waged a guess that she hadn't heard them shouting for her, either. She was thinking rather hard about something; it was like she wasn't there at all.
"Oh what the hell is this!" Yusuke spit out in annoyance as he took in the scene. Reika just stood in a pile of pieces, not moving. Yusuke's vocal annoyance did finally snap her out of whatever she was in, because she blinked a few times and then turned to look in the direction of the open doorway.
"Terry, Yusuke. What-"
"We heard a crash," Terry began. "Are you okay?" he asked as he looked at her.
"Yes, of course," she answered quietly.
"You are NOT okay!" Yusuke objected. "You are staring into space, standing in a pile of broken crap-"
"And you're bleeding," Terry voiced in surprised as he noticed the dark drops falling from Reika's hands. Walking over to her slowly, so not to startle her, Terry held out his hand and requested, "Why don't we go over here and I'll see just what you managed to do to yourself."
As Terry gently led Reika to the gray stuffed chair near the door, Yusuke walked over to the place where Reika was standing moments ago. "What happened?" he asked as he looked at the pieces on the floor, a odd mix of green, gold, cream and crimson.
"I'm not really sure," Reika began as Terry looked her over. "I was hold the vase and heard a bang. I guess it surprised me and a dropped the vase. I didn't realize I wasn't holding the vase anymore until I heard the crash-"
"And you managed to cut your feet as well as your hands. Put that sharp piece down for a second and let me bandage you up," Terry interrupted. Turning back toward Yusuke, he said, "Hey, twip. Throw me that first aid kit."
Yusuke reached down the bed to pick up the kit. After tossing it to Terry, he watched in silence as Terry quickly opened and assessed the contents of the kit. In looking at Reika now, the young hothead could concede that May had a point about checking on Reika. That didn't mean that he agreed with her orders, however; she reminded him a certain annoying toddler when she did things like that.
"So, why are you to up here?" Reika asked in the silence as Terry began to pick small pieces of vase out of the cuts in her feet. "I mean, with our…visitors downstairs, I would have thought that the two of you would be talking to him, too."
"May sent us off to play so that she could talk to him alone," Yusuke complained.
"It wasn't quite as bad as all of that," Terry weighed in as he pour rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball. "May said that she talked to us alone and that Mamoru deserved the same courtesy."
Slipping off one of Reika's slippers, Terry shook
his head as he dabbed the first cut with the alcohol
soaked cotton ball. Reika didn't even flinch as
he did this. "What annoys me is that she doesn't
seem to understand that we are worried about her
safety. I mean, he did walk through the door with
Serenity," Terry reminded everyone in the room,
even though it was unlikely that anyone in the
room had forgotten
At the name Serenity, Reika blinked a few times before shaking her head. Terry missed this as he was cleaning the cuts on her right foot, but Yusuke saw it. "What's with the blinking?"
"I'm sorry," Reika said softly. "It's just that it's still a little hard of me to think of her as Princess Serenity. She's been Usagi to me for the longest."
"The moon brat said something similar downstairs. What do you mean? I mean, she's Serenity."
Reika smiled quietly. "Well, yes and no. What I remember of Serenity was a quiet, proper woman who was so coldly polite. She was very graceful; she actually seemed to float on occasion. She appeared rather other-worldly the whole time she was on earth. She didn't show much emotion and you could never tell what she was thinking. In my book, that made her hard to trust, even it I was inclined to.
"But Usagi," Reika shook her head. "She was almost the anti-Serenity when I first met her."
"First met her?" Terry looked up from his work on Reika's left foot to pose his question. "How well do you know her?"
"Well, I met her through Motoki-"
"Motoki?" Yusuke asked
"My…ex-fiancé," Reika explained after a pregnant pause.
"Way to go, twip." Terry muttered under his breath.
"No," Reika shook her head and she put the sharp piece of vase she still held in her lap. "It's alright." She smiled at Yusuke before continuing, "Like I was saying I met her through Motoki. In fact, when I first met her, it was obvious she had a huge crush on him. So did her friend Makoto. I thought the whole thing was amusing in a sweet sort of way. I mean, they were both only fourteen. I think I may have even joked at the time about having competition. Later, her relationship with Motoki evolved into a big brother-little sister relationship. As Motoki has a little sister about Usagi's age it made sense that he would try to protect Usagi as well. I thought highly of him for it."
Seeing the look of sadness flit across Reika's face, Terry quickly sought to move on with the story. "So, how was Usagi an anti-Serenity?" Terry asked.
Reika laughed out loud. "She was clumsy. Loud.
You could just look at her face and see whatever
she was feeling. I mean Serenity stumbled slightly
when she was adjusting to the gravity of earth, but
Usagi tripped over her own two feet. Constantly.
She ran into people, often at top speed. She was
often late. She could out screech an owl. Definitely
more transparent. Sure, she's a little better now,
but this characterization isn't out of date yet.
Reika sighed as she continued, "To be honest, I was never one hundred percent comfortable around her, but I think that was residual Daniella. And the fact that I don't have a younger sibling myself and I had practically forgotton what it was like to be a fourteen year old girl. But in many ways, Usagi is almost a different person than Serenity."
Reika's last sentence seemed to hang in the air, in part because it had never consciously occurred to any of the three people in the room. If that were as true as Reika just asserted it was, no one was really sure they knew what that meant for them.
"So what do we do now?" Terry asked quietly.
"Find a new first aid kit, since you'd use all of that one on Reika and May's still downstairs with a cooking injury," Yusuke replied. It was hard to tell if he didn't get the deeper meaning of Terry's question or if he was just ignoring it because he didn't have an answer.
"Oh, I haven't called for dinner yet," Reika gasped, putting her newly bandaged right hand to her month.
"Don't worry about it," Terry said. "We still have leftover spaghetti. We'll heat that up later. You can just take it easy."
After that statement a silence descended upon the room, as three people's thoughts turned to what was happening downstairs.
- to be continued -
I don't believe it, either. One little challenge and I have another chapter of A month...and a plan for another one soon. I may be able to wrap this story up in two to three more chapters...if I'm willing to leave a lot of loose ends. I'll have to think about that.
I hope you all enjoy. Thanks for reading (or, at this
point, re-reading) and I hope it doesn't take me years
to come up with the next chapter.
December