Musings
Sitting at his desk, Centimus picked up the sheathed sword that had been delivered to him along with the foreign woman so many months ago. Its strange blade made him wonder at its use, undoubtedly different from his own broadsword. Moves he'd perfected with that weapon were impossible with this one. While a war hero – as he was too frequently reminded – he was known for his high number of kills. A perfect record, as it were. It was never his love, bloodshed. A necessary evil, one that he couldn't always reconcile with the outcome. Since the change in his fortunes, he had drawn his sword as a little as possible, trying to find alternate ways to resolve conflicts. He knew that the warrior who had pulled him from begging on the streets laughed at his efforts, preferring to strike now, ask questions later. This distaste, and the nights plagued with memories of death, were the reason he'd settled for banishment of the foreign man who had brought such harm to the Kamiya family, Hiro. Anger surged through him as the name and face rose to his mind - the senseless slaughter and burning of a school where he had once been a student, in a city possibly as large as Rome itself, according to the somewhat feisty boy his houseguest claimed as kin.
The story had unfolded as the child's language developed in leaps and bounds, now that Megana had gotten a hold of him, must faster than his sister. Meg had declared this unsurprising, scoffing at his ignorance of language acquisition while somehow managing to insult the young woman whose blue eyes burned with frustration at the language barrier between them. Meg made it clear that she was tutoring the pair as a favor to him, her ostentatious flirting something he tried to ignore. He took her ribbing in good humor. His own spotty education was a closely guarded secret he was unwilling to share, even with the estate's doctor and sometimes tutor. He had no desire to be the laughing stock of his domain and certainly not led by one of the most educated people he had ever encountered like his female doctor.
As he took control of his wandering thoughts, thrusting them into one of the many drawers of his mind, his eyes drifted back to the sword unsheathed across his desk. He grasped the hilt and lifted it, his thumb and forefinger running along the perfection of the dull side of the blade, examining the gentle curve, tilting the sharp edge to catch the sunlight filtering in through his window. How was such a thing even held? Why did the girl have it? If it was hers, what right did he have to take it from her? Right of conquest! The thought came unbidden to his mind and he pushed it away. The obvious answer was before him, to ask the girl about this strange sword. She was the sword princess, wasn't she?
"Kaoru" – he forced himself to say her name aloud, trying to curl his tongue around its sharp and sweet edges, the letters that had been assigned to that sound in his mind's eye.
He sheathed the sword with a snap as his mind dosed over the memory of how she'd named him - sword heart – the paper with that name for him in her kanji placed safely in his drawer, her name drawn beside his (where it belonged). Megana had puzzled out which letters were to be used to represent the sibling's names the next day, and Kaoru had presented him with the paper with both versions proudly at the evening meal the next day. That page was also in his drawer – records, you know.
Buried even deeper in the drawer were several pages of his own attempts to create her name and the one she'd given him in her kanji. This fierce woman, yet so lovely. He realized he wanted to impress her. He wanted to write her name as she did, he wanted her to be happy here, with him.
As this realization dawned, he jumped to his feet, strange sword in hand. Time for action.