A/N: Six months and suddenly...! I'm so sorry for the wait. x'/ In my defense, writing this chapter was, to quote a Swedish comedian, "Like shitting out a sofa set." I have spent more hours than I care to count on this and I'm positively blind to any mistakes in it by now. I'm not completely satisfied with it and I will most likely go back to poke in it at a later time, but for now: sh*t, you guys really deserve an update. ='D
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
She watches them. The raindrop days, the mirror eyes of rusty barrels. She watches all of them.
There is little else a sun can do but watch. And wait.
For what, she isn't sure. All that she can do is search and hope that it will find her, that one dewdrop day will see her fingers read the answer carved in Braille upon the skin of earth.
how do you tell when a story ends?
She hopes the earth has answers: if not, the story might not end at all. What then? What becomes of tales that fail to find their way, answers that are left lying?
some stories should have ended long ago
She keeps on watching: there is little else a sun can do. She wanders heaven with her lantern eye, pouring life over the plants and trees as her light shines down upon the earth.
so bright it's blinding
Long ago, the sun gave birth and nursed the infant oceans; then she nursed the soil, the air, and all that sprang to life beneath her radiant face. The sun gave life to all of them. That is why they are here, Shiemi thinks, quietly confiding to her pillow's cheek. When the sun arrives to kiss her sleeping eyes it is to nurse and nourish, and when Shiemi rises the sun lives in her gaze; to nourish, to love all that it touches.
That is why they all are here.
The sun lives in her mother, when Shiemi greets her in the kitchen after serving breakfast to her friends. Her chest is puffed with pride, her face is smiling like only a mother's face can smile, and her eyes are bright when she hands Shiemi a plate of omelette freshly from the stove.
"So, what will you be doing in school today?"
Shiemi thinks for a moment. Today is Wednesday: a day of many things. She will be having English grammar, history and social science, and something called arithmetics that she might need to ask Yuki-chan about. She has only been in school for a few days, after all.
Shiemi tells her mother what her day will be like and forgets her omelette until mother reminds her that food is necessary if she's going to be so busy. She will have cram school, too, and maybe study with friends, so she will be home late again.
"You have become a fantastic young woman, Shiemi. I hope you know how proud I am of you. Not only are you going to school for the first time but you're making friends!" Proud hands cup Shiemi's face, buttercup hands filled with sunshine. "I want you to enjoy this time as much as you can, Shiemi dear. Don't worry about the garden – I might not be as good with flowers as Baa-chan, but I'm doing pretty well. Spend as much time with your friends as you want."
Shiemi smiles: a flowerbud smile, one that keeps things to itself. Mother doesn't see what she sees. Shiemi never told her of the dökkálfr. She never told her of Nezumi-san either. Her mother is a sunshine sliver, warm and bright, but she doesn't speak with plants. She doesn't bring food to injured rats. She doesn't play with demon kings.
She doesn't see.
Baa-chan's garden is beautiful. But at night, it's magic. At night it is a blackbird trill, a bustling megalopolis in miniature: the spirits that the Earth King sent are chattering amongst themselves, milling unseen under canopies of healthy Hosta leaves and tilling gently through the earth (must make passage easy for the roots). At night they bury peat moss in the garden soil and tuck the flowers into bed, and Shiemi thinks she once saw Nii-chan giving directions to a stocky maple entling carrying the bucket with manure.
To help each other, to make each other happy…
That is why they all are here, Shiemi thinks – and smiles.
School makes her feel like a woodlouse: a tiny thing best kept curled up out of sight. There are so many people there that hiding feels like the best thing she can do – sometimes. And sometimes she forgets her fears, for school is a garden with every flower given voice and feet; they are all children of the same mother, there to grow, to help, to find their way.
It's magic. Like Baa-chan's garden. She is in the same class as Paku-chan and today they talk in the corridors between history and social science. She doesn't quite know what she says but that doesn't seem important. She speaks with someone and laughs with someone and that… That is important. Paku, Izumo, Rin, Yuki-chan, the boys from Kyoto – that is what's important.
She will catch up with them one day. She will be strong, and help them grow, too. She will pay them back for everything they do for her.
parasite
"Eeeh? Shiemi-chan is leaving already?"
It is Shima that wonders, as cram school ends and books are laid to rest in satchels. His eyes pose other questions, too – few of them appropriate. He is an Italian orchid, Shiemi has decided: pink and bold and… obvious, she thinks. (and blushes) She sends him a smile and lifts Nii-chan back up on her shoulder.
"Mh! The weather has been really good so there's a lot to do in the garden. I'm sorry, but I won't be staying."
It's not a lie; lies taste like mouldy bread and Shiemi doesn't like them. (they nourish nothing) It's a truth that does no harm. Amaimon is no friend of the cram school students', and they… would not see what she sees. (broken arms, rattled skulls, and Rin under threat of execution: that is what they would see)
"No flower can compare to your beauty, Shiemi-cha- Ow! Are you just gonna let him hit me like that, Koneko?!"
Shiemi mutes a titter at Shima-san's hurt display. Ryuji-san was scary, at first: like a bee threatening to lose its temper and sting. He is a bee, but not that kind of bee – she knows that now. Ryuji-san is a busy bee who works hard and means well.
"You brought it on yourself, Shima. When you can't control your desires someone else has to do it for you."
Koneko-san is more monk than Shima-san and Ryuji-san will ever be, Shiemi thinks. He provides calm and balance where none is to be found, however unassuming he may appear: like chamomille, except he smells like temple incense.
"See you tomorrow, everyone!" she calls out, one hand raised to wave and one searching her satchel for the key. Not the shop key: the old key. The key that grits its teeth and sheds its rusty hide each time a lock embraces it.
as if it wished to speak but couldn't
The bog waits. He waits. The bog is good at waiting: he is not. The King of Earth is nothing like the plants he governs, nothing like the patient roots that dream long months of winter, but that thought is one Shiemi keeps to herself. She finds him hanging from a cedar branch, upside down and coat tails fanning out beneath. He could have been a large bat, she thinks – and shudders. Bats are harmless beings, Shiemi knows that well, but she did frighten them in the garden arbor once when she was little. (not more than they frightened her)
The King of Earth drops down before her and somehow doesn't spill the contents of his take away box. (did he really say "gurun"? like a… sound effect?) He smells of cedar, resin, and something fresh that even summer heat can't wizen. It took a while, but Shiemi doesn't tense before him anymore: she only shudders for a moment, reminding herself of the bats that there's no real need to be afraid of.
It's rude to stare. Amaimon does it all the time but now it is Shiemi who can't avert her eyes: rice clings to his face and food scraps dot his fringe. (perhaps he eats upside down so it won't get on his clothes?) Her thoughts head to the satchel to rummage for tissue paper but her hands are slow to follow: Amaimon has already wiped his frost-glass face with the sleeves that cover his arms and hands.
He's so… childlike. (it reminds her of Rin, in a way)
"What do we do today?" he asks, and his voice holds life even if his face is blank and bare.
"Today I've brought these: this is ojami." The bean bags fall into her palm with familiar ease – five of them, cluttered close like frightened baby birds. "You use them to play otedame. You know otedame? It's an old game Baa-chan taught to me when I was little. Come! I have five for you, too."
The bog greets them like dear old friends now. They have their special log to sit on (the Earth King carried it there) and their special wineberry shrub (Nii-chan loves to climb in it), and in the log Shiemi hides a special vial of lemongrass extract to rub into her skin (mosquitoes hate it – although so does the Earth King). The log won't be serving them today: Shiemi picks a dry spot in the moss and seats herself on her knees. Amaimon follows, but not after he has planted a lollipop in his mouth. His wounds have long since healed (he didn't let her look at them) and all that's left to tell of them is the holes in his clothes. (Shiemi doesn't want to think where the other holes in his coat came from)
Shiemi's games are lonely children's games. It takes one to have fun but it takes two to laugh, and although she and Baa-chan played until Shiemi fell asleep up in her lap, one last question always found her lips: Baa-chan, can I have a sister? Or a brother? Then we could all play nawatobi.
Amaimon is a lonely child. How she knows she isn't sure, knowing only that some questions don't need answers. The Earth King doesn't know how to play with others, or how to ask them nicely when he does; he has his pet goblin for company, and it is no more domesticated than its owner. (is it any different from having plants for friends?)
"The game comes with a song", she explains, once they have the bean bags strewn out in the moss before them. "You pick up the ojami and toss them in tune with the song. The pattern is quite complex but I'm sure you'll learn fast."
"How do you win?"
Shiemi has many pots for her plants. Some of them are plastic, some of them are pottery, and some of them are old. The old ones can have quite the attitude. (she won't call them snarky, but she thinks it) There is a pottery one with a particularly nasty edge. She doesn't know what cracked it, but every now and then it shows that unpleasant side and scrapes her fingers raw. It feels like this, she thinks, as the Earth King's question runs a disconcerting tingle down her spine. (some would have called it survival instinct)
It's not the first time that edge shows, and Shiemi has a reply already on her tongue.
"Well, there's no winning or losing in otedame", she says, and wonders if that blank look tilt of his head means he doesn't understand. (that's not the first time, either) "But of course, the one who can keep it up longer without dropping ojami is more skilled."
That seems to do the trick: Amaimon herds his ojami together with determination, and the tingle in Shiemi's spine fans out across her skin in triumph.
She may be weak, but she can see things others can't.
The song comes easy to him. He sings off key, but so does Shiemi, so she couldn't correct him anyway. (it's rhythm and lyrics that matter, and the cedars don't complain) Nii-chan is happy to chime in on the rhythm and keeps them on beat when Shiemi shows her pupil how to catch ojami on the back of his hand. (his hands are so much leaner than her calloused gardener palms)
The Earth King may not have a gardener's hands, but he has a gardener's touch. Those fingers can crush bone – and has, Koneko's arm can testify – but Shiemi sees. Those fingers know how to make a gentle nest around the bean bag, and how to calculate the tosses as minutely as a spider calculates her web: always that little bit higher than what Shiemi tosses, she notes with a smile.
Amaimon doesn't do that sort of thing. His frost-glass face hasn't moved a muscle since they first met, but each time she asks him he says he's having fun. Maybe he is. Maybe he just doesn't want to show it.
There is a shy thought trilling in Shiemi's throat – the kind that doesn't dare come out but knows it will burst forth eventually, like a hiccup building up to leap. She couldn't possibly be right, but what if she is?
"I win", Amaimon declares the moment Shiemi is so deep in thought she fails to catch her ojami.
Nii-chan pipes up a cheer from the school book satchel.
"Wow, you really are good at this!" Shiemi's compliment slides limply off the frosted glass expression, and then she can't hold it in any longer: "Uhm, you face – I noticed you never move your face. Is that… Is that because you don't want people to laugh at you?" Amaimon blinks, and that is all: the question missed its mark by kilometres. The silence lasts only for a second but the embarrassment in that second is enough to fill an hour. "I-I mean, I look so silly when I smile, so I try to keep my face serious, and I just wondered- S-sorry…!"
Shiemi shuts her eyes and throws her head into a bow to hide her burning cheeks. Now he will laugh at her, surely. Any moment now, the bog will ring with laughter.
"I don't like when people laugh at me."
Behind the pale blonde curtain, Shiemi's eyes snap open. She sits up in wonder and suddenly there is no embarrassment to tie her tongue: "Is that why you keep your face so still?"
No, it's not. Shiemi knows the moment the Earth King tilts his head that that is not the reason, long before he speaks: "Why would I move muscles that don't do anything?"
"Oh but they do!" she exclaims, hands becoming eager little fists against her plaited skirt. (where did that outburst come from?) "You can do lots of things with your face. You can show if you're happy or sad or angry, or if you like a person or not. It's good to let people know that."
The King of Earth is old – how old, Shiemi doesn't know, but older than the oldest tree there is; it's strange to think he doesn't know such obvious things. No, on second thought, it's not. How would he know, if no one told him? There are many things that lonely children do not learn. Simple things. Things that others take for obvious.
"So it's like speaking." The verdict is a simple one; he didn't even chew on his claw before deciding. "Without words."
"Mh! It's called body language. It's like the language of feelings."
Amaimon doesn't even need to ponder this before he deadpans: "Your feelings are loud."
They are, they are: and his are quiet. Quiet like the shadowtide that lies in wait as sunset sinks towards the treetop line. Evening turns the bog to molten gold, swimming in the hum of insects and the waking calls of twilight predators. It is the hour when light is bent on trickery and your brain is its amusement park. It is the hour when nothing can be trusted.
few things should ever be trusted
Stories manifold will equate light with good, with clarity, while shaming darkness as the force of chaos and destruction. One must remember that stories are but stories, and stories lie. Light bends. Light fractures. Light is but a crystal ball illusion and, as with all illusion, what the eye sees and what it doesn't see is not important: only what it thinks it sees.
So it is with all things. So it is with the sun, who wanders heaven with her lantern eye, whetting shadow edges sharper as her light shines down upon the earth.
so bright it's blinding
A/N:
Otedame is a dying art in Japan. It's like juggling, except not at all. By tradition it's a women's game, and it's most often taught from grandmother to granddaughter. It's my headcanon that Baa-chan played this with Shiemi when she was little, and that Shiemi is pretty pro at this.
watch?v=u1lo2kSeFGY (this is a youtube link, if you'd like to see otedame in action: the messed up state of it is not my fault)
Nawatobi is the same as skipping rope. (I guess the only way Shiemi could skip rope with Baa-chan was if they tied the other end of the rope to a tree or a door handle or something.)
I gotta say, I had never expected the attention this fic has attracted. ô.ô I'm talking about the view statistics (you lurker readers thought you could slip by completely unnoticed huhuhu~?) and how they've reached figures I really hadn't expected. The pairing isn't that common, I mean, and the fic has been standing still on only two chapters since forever (don't think for a moment that I'd abandon it: I don't do that kind of stuff). So I'd like to say thank you for the support, silent as well as expressed. =) I can only hope these two chapters live up to the expectations.
Dear Guest
Please don't bite your nails, it's not good for your teeth… ;) (I hope you're not doing an Amaimon and biting your fingers when your nails are gone.) That aside, I'd love to update faster, too. Real life just doesn't permit it. ^_^' I study dentistry, which is like studying for doctor. It's like taking on Yukio's workload while at the same time having a muse who is like Mephisto (up and about 24/7, completely egocentric, expecting me to obey her every whim). So yeah, I… write as much as I can, whenever I can, but I'm very busy. Thank you for the comment, it's much appreciated to know that you like the story! =)
/ Dimwit