Westward lies bleed t'wards the east,
Wayward daughter, step into the night,
Restless eyes, blind to the beast,
Barren waters yield unto the tide.
-Wayward Daughter by Masayoshi Soken
Apolune: The furthest and slowest an orbiting body will be from the Moon in its orbit around said body
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Tendou Ranko thinks of herself as a good girl. Certainly, she wonders if the name 'Yoiko' would have been better put to her – as either 'Good' child or 'Night' child, depending on the reading. After all, while she thinks of herself as a good girl, she's also a child of night.
She likes to sit on the engawa of her Uncle Soun's home and watch the koi jump from the pond under the moonlight. Ranko loves the moon. Maybe it should have been 'Tsukiko' instead. When she gazes at the moon, she feels her worries disappear.
Nights make her feel safe – the darkness doesn't judge her. It doesn't give her funny stares when it thinks she's not looking. The moon is cold and clear, and bright some nights. Sometimes she feels it shines just for her.
And nights, too, are cool, even in summer. Sometimes when it rains and the clouds obscure the moon, she likes to dance in the cold rain. Something about the cold water on her skin is soothing.
Water is always something that makes her feel better, hot or cold. Sometimes she turns the hot water on for the shower and douses herself in the middle of the day, but she can't ever remember why she does it. For some reason she expects a tingling sensation, but it's just hot water; the prickling of too-hot water on too-cool skin the only sensation she feels. She turns it to cold again and then moves away. It's a ritual she often does before cleaning up time.
So perhaps 'Mizuko' should have been her name?
Flowers, too, she likes flowers. 'Hanako' maybe? 'Yuriko'? Lycoris Radiata are her favourite after all.
She doesn't know why she's hung up on her name. 'Wild Child' – why didn't they use 'Orchid' instead? It isn't like she can ask her parents why they named her 'Ranko' or used the kanji they did; after all they're dead, so she's been told, though there's a small part of her that questions the fact whenever it's told to her.
But her family wouldn't lie to her, right?
Still, even with many wriggling doubts flowering in her mind, she thinks she's a good girl. After all, she makes sure to wake up early enough so she can help Kasumi-nee-chan make breakfast and then spends much of the day helping her genteel eldest cousin around the house.
Kasumi-nee-chan helps her with some of the studying she does as since the accident she's prone to occasional forgetfulness and she's not the cleverest person, so they're keeping her from school for now until she's a little better. The nice doctor who looks after her… Toufu, that was it, yes, he's very nice, but he says her memory should improve with time.
That would be nice.
As well as helping Kasumi-nee-chan, she also tries to look after some of the garden. Some nice person kept sending her lilies when she was in the hospital, white, stargazers and her favourite, higanbana. Red spider lilies touch something inside her, much like the moon does.
So she's been doing much of the gardening, which seems to please Kasumi-nee-chan and Uncle Soun, even if Akane-nee-san is funny about it with her. Especially when she'd brought the bulbs.
"Hmph! Not much to look at!" She'd said, and Ranko's heart had sunk a little. It felt like no matter what she did it wasn't good enough for Akane. Studying nets her small daggers that someone she knew before could get the answers faster. Cleaning gets her told she's a suck up. Cuddling Shampoo (and what a strange name for a cat, if she's still thinking about names – why did she name her cat after a hair product?) and feeding her, that often nets the worst reaction, almost jealousy and then Akane won't talk to her for hours.
It's almost like there's something that subconsciously annoys Akane about her, and nothing Ranko does can be good enough.
She doesn't remember anything like this before whatever accident landed her in hospital with a head injury and some weird amnesia. She remembers sometimes arguing with Akane-nee-san but never frosty annoyance with nothing having been done.
It's really a pain because out of all of them Ranko resembles Akane the most. Though her hair is red, a deep and dark crimson (though she swears it was once the bright ruby red of arterial blood rather than the darker shade of drying blood), and her face a blend of Akane's roundness and a heart-shape that must have come from the side of the family that wasn't related to Uncle Soun.
Not that they'd tell her which side that was – all four of her family members seemed outright determined that she find nothing out about her parents. She'd think they didn't actually know and were embarrassed to tell but she caught the odd glances they gave one another when they thought she wasn't looking.
At least the garden doesn't judge her. Ranko spends more time in the garden, Shampoo sunning herself on top of Ranko's straw hat, than she does inside. Sometimes she goes into the dojo to try to perform katas, but every time she falls over, clumsy as ever.
Once or twice, Akane's caught her in there and seems upset when she can't even complete a simple kata. She can't help that they won't work for her – even though her dexterity isn't too bad. Sure, she's not so good on the left side but it all still works.
Ranko sighs as she sits on the engawa and looks at the moon, full, ripe in the sky. Cold.
Behind her she can hear Akane and Nabiki arguing after a phone call from Auntie Saotome.
"Oh, Shampoo." She says, running her hands down her cat's pink fur, the tiny bells on the sides of her head tinkling. "It's going to be a long night."
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A/N: So this is probably going to get a little weird. It's going to be very introspective and might touch on some uncomfortable topics. I suspect each chapter will probably be shorter than most I write as I plan for it to be mostly internal to Ranko. Also the chapter titles are going to be really pretentious (more so than usual). It's inspired partly by "Wayward Daughter" and the Tsukuyomi fight in FFXIV though that's going to be imagery and motifs.