Disclaimer: This is an amateur fanfiction. Watase Yuu owns Fushigi Yuugi and all its characters to which I claim no ownership or profit. I also claim no profit from Ms Kamala Das.
Author's little note: I guess I am a Nakago-holic. I've got more Nakago fics than others in store, I've even got a Nakago scarf and a Nakago earring to boot!This here is a special Mother's Day tribute to Nakago's poor, lonely mother. Since I won't be able to post this at the actual day,Happy Mother's Day, everyone!
NAKAGO'S MOTHER
Sometimes I feel it a pity to grow bigger each day. I sigh with assumptions as my hidden fears get a hold of me. Bringing children into a world that is ready to force them right back in … the sad, groaning womb that had bore them for so long scares me. They would come out as Hin; and Hin they will be for the rest of their lives. But, as I think about it, there is nothing I would rather choose for the identity of my unborn children, not the Kutou tyrants or the strange ones from Konan. Hin I was, I am; and will always be. But they would be different, would they not? The pale yellow of my hair turning white as I age … I age too quickly. Why was my skin so pale and bland, was that a reason to look at me differently, and hate me? Because I am different?
The way you picked up your weapons and looked at me, expecting me to fasten your armour against your body, my husband; only deepens the pain of a wound that was already there, placed by forces I do not know. It is the pain of the world placed upon our reluctant shoulders, the pain of having to brave a dozen eyes filled with poison and hatred at the sight of even the tiniest golden curl. It was not as if we were born free to chose our race, was it?
I put your helmet on your head, hoping that it would be so kind, that it would hide your hair and face; but your eyes, as blue as the great skies above me, looked back and overthrow my petty hopes with cold, hard truths – truths harder than the hearts of Kutou. We are who we are now. The choice had been made for us before we are unaware, and thus we are but a part of a great and endless chain.
Your hand came up to caress mine as I let it slide from your helmet to your face, your hard eyes focused upon my tearful ones. We may be different, my love, but there is nothing that should come between the two of us, because I know deep in my heart that we are one.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as you placed my hand on your lips. I could not see them, my husband, forgive me. My eyes were focused upon that cold, hard metal gauntlet you wore, its slightest touch stinging deep into my flesh; and without a mouth it spoke to me of war, and death; and destruction. I could see that you were crying too, as those same hands went down to touch my growing belly, trying perhaps, with a hope as faint as a moon behind a cloud; that you could feel too the child of our love that I had held for you.
Your lips were trembling as you kissed me – with fear this time you have trembled, not with the passion of love as they had done when we were promised to one another only mere summers ago. Yet, that happy time seemed so long, as long as a thousand years; as distant as another world, another star, my love.
Then you pushed me away. Not because you wanted to, but because the world has forced us apart, with a spear in between – your spear of war, stained with the dirty blood of Konan, rusted with my tears and sighs, but just as stubborn as the forges of that damned war that brought it to be. I cannot forget the way you turned around, your eyes dimming with force-fed war. They may have let us be, they may have left us alone for a little while, you said. They may have given us peace – peace as fragile as a newborn hatchling; they may have lived off our farms and flocks, our herbs and juices; but in their hearts they despise us, you said. They then snatched our youth away and sold them, they tore our maidens from their home and hearth to ornament their great silken beds with their naked flesh. They trample upon us as they did to the dirt underneath their feet, because of who we are. We are Hin. We are different, you said. And difference is everything. It is Heaven. It is Hell.
But why … why had you to preserve that difference, my husband? To defend our honour, you say? Defend out hapless young maidens, that they not become outcaste concubines of jeering, wine-reeking lords, defend us from them as they took over? But had you not defended that difference instead of destroying it, and upon doing so, you had upheld it even more so?
Ah, my simple mind could not comprehend the depth of such words, my love; only that we are who we are. I will not forget the day they came for you with their horses and spears, their heavy helmets that covered their golden hairs; and you went to join them.
You left me standing at the doorway. You left me forever.
The war had just begun then, they say. But for me, it had always been. Kindled again the moment you left me, to defend our pride, our honour, our freedom, our dignity; I had already swum upon a sea of war. The finest of the Hin fell the day you fell – the battle was fierce, but way beyond our control, so say the elders of the tribe – a battle that you had lost, my husband. The moment you went away, your child too, had stirred inside my womb, and I wept, knowing deep inside that you are the father whom our child would never know. Forgive me for ever doubting you, my husband! Please, forgive me for ever thinking with this profound fear that you will never come back to me because … my hope was forced into hibernation, thinking that we are but a small, wild island upon an endless sea where tides continually rose to consume us. What hope have we, with all the hatred and oppression, our numbers fading day by day? You knew that too. You knew, but you fought it anyway, to the very end.
The day they gave me your bloodstained armour and chipped spear was the day I felt the pain of a thousand wars, the pain of losing you, the pain of your unborn child kicking inside me, the pain of being Hin, and having to ever live in this world, my love! I had no more desire to live. For a long, long time I was egged on simply by the other life inside me – your very own child to be born in a world of fear and hatred, a world of ever conflicting contraries. It is for this child alone that I have lived, with petty little hopes and fancies such, that only a mother could ever have. I do not know how long we would still exist under this oppression. I do not know how much longer we can bear it, or how much longer I would have to live without you.
My child is my life now, my beloved, for you have broken free of the earth and me, while I for a while, must remain Hin.
I bid you now farewell, beloved husband. I must now place my little hopes upon your child, that it may teach me hope and how to hold on; and that this truce with Kutou, short as it is, stretches to span lifetimes to lifetimes on end. With each shriek of my labour pains, that hope will be reborn. Perhaps it will remind me that such is the price of peace and happiness – with much pain. I only pray it be not thankless.
With deepest sincerity I hope for a son, for a daughter would only break my heart as Kutou soldiers trail her with lusty eyes. They may despise us, yes, but still – their harems and flesh markets are full of us. Before and after the truce, that is what things have always been. If I am allowed to ask the gods any favour, it would be a humble plea that she find a good husband who will fend for her, as well as love her; and I may too, rest easy in my life's last evenings if such hopes were reality.
But, with a son if I am to be blessed, if you would forgive the vivacity of a lonely mother's dream … my hopes soar towards his future, that he may perhaps share his noble father's dream of freedom and liberating the Hin. That he may rise to stand for what is true, that which is good and just. How could I forget then, that sweet evening when you came home from your duties saying you want a son who would one day be a pride of all Hin? If! If only you could rise again from your deep winter sleep to hear the Hin still moaning for liberty! You would not blame the intensity in passion of this dream, my husband. Such is our suffering. Such is our need for a redeemer.
Perhaps you may ask me what chance this child of ours would have for attainment of such a title. Yes … so goes the desperate dream of a lonely widow and future mother. But I have long dreamed of such a child, be it mine or not. A Hin at his pride, a man under whose light-skinned feet lay humanity's awe and marvel. He will be a Hin, a great leader, and the gods will smile at him.
That is what I have always hoped of, and for you, my child. You will rise – and be a follower of what your heart says – a good heart inside you. And I will suffer whatever I may to bring these dreams to reality. May you be a tower for many, but most of all, a man with an essentially good heart and soul.
Out of the darkness of a starry twilight, as the passing sun kissed the blood-red horizon, out of my pain, my sorrow and my glistening tears was he born, so fair, so bright – like the sun rising from behind the breathing hills.
My son Ayuru, the Hin's pride.
This story is inspired by the poem, "Jaisurya" written by a very popular Indian poet named Kamala Das. Like the poem, I've written it completely from the point of view of Nakago's poor mom. As you might have noticed, I have kept the reasons why the Hin had been considered outcastes by the rest of the mainstream as predominantly racial. This, of course, is my opinion. What do you think ? Please review!