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"The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard."

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ii. the need to hold still

She really didn't know what it was that made her do it. For several days now she had been entertaining the idea. In fact, on the night she landed in London Heathrow Airport, she had her mother's secretary look up the address and phone number of one Eriol Hiiragisawa. The information was tucked safely away within the pages of an old French history she had been reading.

She knew that Eriol would still have been studying at Eton College so there would have really been no point in trying to see him. Finally after several weeks, noting that it was nearing Lent and he should be on short leave from school, Tomoyo called his residence in Mayfair. At first, he was surprised to hear from her after so many years but he was pleased nonetheless. His voice was a lot deeper than what she remembered. His Japanese, however, was flawless as ever. Eriol had suggested that they meet at Windsor Bridge, by the banks of the Thames.

It was the middle of January, although the weather wasn't as nearly as cold or bitter. The sun was shining brightly that morning and she remembered distinctly the way his hair glowed beneath the sunlight. She was surprised by how much taller he had grown. He wasn't a boy anymore and she, too, was no longer a little girl. Memories have a way of deceiving its possessor.

Eriol had settled well into the position of a young refined English gentleman. His face had grown longer, his jaw line more defined, and he stopped wearing those thick wire rimmed glasses she remembered from her youth and causing his eyes to become even more striking. His skin had gotten a touch of bronze, unlike the pallor of the younger boy from Japan. Tomoyo was a young lady now—no more braids or pigtails. The innocence of childhood was gone from her features, yet she was still angelic; she was even more beautiful now. Her face was like a watercolor; soft lines that flowed like melted snow down aspens.

He had hugged her at first. In an awkward movement, he wrapped his arms around her. Tomoyo hesitated but hugged him back and laughed. They stood in silence at first, taking in each other's appearance and changes. Then they started talking about the dreadful English weather, school, their lives so far, their future plans, what had brought her to England. She explained about how she had come to London with her Mother during the Christmas holidays. They had gotten into an awful row over Tomoyo's future and Tomoyo decided to take a brief leave from her boarding school back in Connecticut.

"Do you not plan on returning to school, Tomoyo?" he had asked quite incredulously. They had lapped into English now. Tomoyo spoke in a clear tone with hints of an American accent. Eriol's speech was the epiphany of that of a courteous British gentleman—the perfect tongue in the Queen's English.

She waved away his anxious expression. "Don't look so worrisome. Some people are simply not as blessed as you are," she smiled. "Some of us must search and search for our places in life. I'm very jealous of you, you know, because you already know exactly where your life is leading you and who exactly you are."

"What are you looking for?"

"Myself," she said the word delicately. "I've been thinking lately and you know what? I think I've been disillusioned all my life. Ever since I was a young girl, I was taught to be the perfect person. I believed that I had to fulfill what was expected of me, to fit into a mold my mother had wanted me to fit into. The Japanese culture is rather stifling that way. I must be respectful to my elders; I must be soft-spoken and pliable; I must be a good student; I must listen to my mother. And she had laid out a life before me, all planned and ready to go. But that life is not my own and it never will be. I never chose to be an executive of a toy company and I had never asked to be. I wish for a future that is truly mine and I suppose that includes making a break with my past. I look forward to making mistakes and not having my mother tell me the consequences. To experience failure and disappointment. I think I would be happy even if I was let down, because the bottom line is at least I made my own choice instead of having my mother chose for me. That is why I am here."

"You are very strong, Tomoyo-chan," he added kindly in gentle Japanese—his voice somehow steely and unwavering.

They were standing in the middle of Windsor Bridge, connecting main street Eton to the Windsor Palace. Tomoyo's cheeks were tinged with red and she looked away. She leaned forward on the stone railings looking into the murky water below. The bridge was three arches and supported by two great granite piers. The sound of water licking the stone was faint in the air. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion under the winter sun. The sky was blue beyond recognition, the water flowing slowly away into the distance. Despite its appearance, The Thames reminded Tomoyo of tea, dark green and mysterious—full of history and knowledge.

"The River Thames has always been very special to me," Eriol spoke again following her eyes to where the river and the sky met. "This nation was born of its waters, lived by its banks. This river is the very vein of England."

"It's also very polluted," she supplied lightheartedly, scrunching her nose at the foggy color.

He chuckled. "That's true. Civilization produces waste, it is inevitable," his eyes twinkled. "Rivers, I think, are amazing. The Thames carries away all the oils, all the dirt of London—of England—into the sea. It cleans us of our sins, our vanity, and our filth. It is the catharsis of England."

"Into the sea."

"Yes, into the sea," he echoed her. "Everything flows into the sea; she is the ultimate taker of all things and she is the ultimate giver. She is merciless, she is merciful. The sea is forever forgiving of our fallacies."

"To be forgiven and absolved," she smiled and closed her eyes to the sunlight.

He noticed how her hair made extraordinary swirls into the air like smoke spiraling into the darkening sky—she was holding the light in her hair. Her lashes were long and dark, making a striking contrast with her pale skin. She was titling her face up above and he swore for moments he thought that she was a seraph.

"Are you happy, Tomoyo-chan?" he asked tentatively, the Japanese words escaping him before he could stop them.

She was shaken from her reverie, looking to him, she was surprised. He wondered if he had finally crossed some invisible line that had always been set between them.

"Do I seem happy to you, Eriol-kun?" she returned in the same gentle Japanese.

He couldn't answer. She looked so broken to him then: standing there on Windsor Bridge with the chill of winter in her cheeks, her dark long hair flowing down about her, her eyes glittering, her small figure holding itself tall and erect against the wind. How unearthly she seemed to him, how divine, how dispirited—how completely, utterly hiemalis. Without thinking, Eriol leaned in and kissed her.

She tasted like the sea—cool, salty, sweet, and infinite. She was soft and giving as satinwood—like sea foam on sandy beaches laced in jagged ocean waves. Kissing her was natural; almost like intuition. When he pulled away, he was suddenly cold and it had nothing to do with the weather.

"Hiemalis," he said almost in a daze.

She was puzzled. "Is that Latin?" she asked.

He nodded. "You remind me of the ocean during the winter. You are of the winter."

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Eriol really didn't know what it was that made him do it. But he will always remember kissing Tomoyo; he will always remember the way she tasted, the way she smelled, the way she felt. He really didn't know, either, what about her that made him think about her all the time. All he knew was the need to hold still that moment in his memory. He needed to hold on to that image of Tomoyo then, standing tall and strong like a redwood on Windsor Bridge, she was beyond comprehension, beyond beauty, beyond the genius of the sea. He needed to hold on to that feeling when he was with her. She was the purity of winter, the silence of the sky, the splendor of the sea and he was everything—he truly felt filled by a sense of vitality—because of her.

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Author's Notes: I'm sorry to report that in writing this I had exhausted every bit of my creative power for the next five weeks. Yet I could not stop myself from working on it. This entire story had been the most personal piece of writing I have done in fanfiction. Looking back on this I realized how much of this came from my own experiences and how many of these thoughts had been mine. The monologue Tomoyo had delivered had been almost the exact words I had spoken. This is about the most autobiographical piece I had ever created. It always shocks me a bit whenever I realize how much of my reality and my fiction collide, although I really shouldn't.

Eton College is a very prestigious private school for boys ages 13 to 18. Many of the most influential and affluent people in Britain as well as around the world send their sons to Eton, including many of the previous British Prime Ministers and most members of the Royal Family. The school is located in Eton, Berkshire, which is a town very close to London. Eton is also across the river from Windsor Palace, connected by Windsor Bridge, where this story took place.

My image of Eriol in England is not complete without Eton. I can really see him there; dressed in the traditional black tail suit with the waistcoat and cufflinks, all ironed the pressed. Eriol to me is very British, almost unbearably so.

London is one of my favorite cities and I couldn't help but set this there. I see Eriol living in Mayfair, set roughly between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane, is at the very heart of London. As I had read somewhere it is "full of refined hotels where affluent foreigners stay, the impressive 18th century edifices of Mayfair are resided in by people of fabulous wealth." Sound familiar?

Hiemalis is Latin for "of winter" or "wintry." As Eriol attends Eton where Latin is stressed I figure I'd throw around one of my favorite Latin words. Even though, Eriol being Clow, would be fluent in Latin anyways.

You might be wondering why this took place at a river instead of the seashore. I tried to inject as much oceanic imagery as possible into this. This chapter is a transition point for the entire plot so it only made sense for Tomoyo and Eriol to be at a transition. They are both seniors in high school. Tomoyo is looking for a new direction in her life. They are standing on a bridge that connects two different places, like how they are both at crossroads themselves in their own lives. Besides, all rivers flow into the sea.

Again, "the need to hold still" is a prompt at 52flavours. The poem at the beginning is the second stanza from "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Wallace Stevens.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. Please review before you leave—I love hearing back from you.