Cracking the World's Shell: A Drabble Collection
Two
mentalyoga

(A/N: This chapter's a collection of Juri-centric ones.)

Rainfall

The sky has been clouded and gray every day for nearly a month, threatening the land below with rumbling thunder and sparse sprays of wetness, as if warning that soon it will break free of its shell and bring forth a flood of epic proportions. But it does not. The vengeance it dangles, taunting, is trapped in its lonely atmospheric cage, conjuring a façade of strength each morning that dissipates by dusk, not realizing all the time that one day it will die off, as all things do eventually. The sun will conquer it like a tyrant, throwing it to its private devils in the void that is not known unless it is visible.

Juri wants to reach out with her delicate and fleshy ivory fingertips and run them along the clouds gently, reassuringly. She wants it to know that others live, as hollow scarecrows of themselves, in the cage with it and that they are simply hiding away until their hearts are sufficiently impenetrable. She tucks her pain away in a locket—her pain being, of course, the woman-child that has broken her down. She would offer the sky a locket if she thought that the spaced atoms in the stratosphere could sustain the weight. Sometimes, she does not feel as if she can bear the weight of her own locket—her gilded Scarlet Letter—but her atoms are close-knit and strong, and she has no excuse.

Each day the sky threatens rain, she sees the woman-child striding about with an unnecessarily large umbrella, mainly because the woman-child does not believe in spontaneity. She does not believe in living. She prepares for the worst, and when the worst hits, prides herself on her cleverness. If nothing happens, she simply stows her umbrella away in a hidden place and acts as though it had never existed.

See, but they have that much in common. Cynicism is a strong bond in hard times. But the woman-child does not empathize with the sky; she protects herself against the pain it exudes, not wishing to taint her own happiness with the knowledge of its discontent. Juri should strike her for her selfishness, but steadies her hand with the patience of one much accustomed to restraint.

She and the cloudy sky can exist in solitude, retreating to their warm corner of the cage, away from the others. It is a well-known fact among the cage-dwellers that the others would side with the tyrannical sun if they thought it beneficial. The sky believes in resolution and Juri honors conviction. If she steadies her hand often enough, perhaps the woman-child will take it in her own, and she will finally shatter the locket.

a glance

It was only a glance. A mere turn of the eyes in a seemingly random direction, plum-stained irises taking in the scenery.

But it was enough.

Her heart had never stumbled; she was Ice Queen Extraordinaire. Feelings were left to silly girls and to the weak. Maybe Miki cried in his room as he fell to sleep at night, dreaming of arpeggios and of shining things, maybe Nanami cried when she wasn't invited to some inane soiree, maybe even Touga cried, but who could say what it was he would be vulnerable to? Juri did not cry. Juri did not feel.

But that glance–that simple act of human sensory perception–had something within her sobbing like a child. Not that anyone could see, past her fortified veneer of indifference.

She found the locket several weeks later, a hidden treasure spying out at her behind reference books in a secluded corner of the library. It's beauty lay in its facades. A pretty rose decorated the faux-gold surface of the locket. But what was almost indistinguishable was the fact that behind the rose, any number of secrets could be held. It took Juri several days of wearing the locket to realize that it opened, a veritable Pandora's Box waiting to unleash the Apocalypse.

She placed the yearbook picture of Her inside the locket, so that when she opened it, she could find that glance waiting for her for all of eternity. Yes, it was a sideways glance–Juri does not remember what She was looking at, and it was irrelevant, besides–but forever, and forever, Juri had captured the only feeling she had ever known.

It wasn't a particularly pleasant feeling, but Juri knew that, with this feeling, somewhere inside the shell of her body, there was a soul.

White Sheets

Her skin was smooth and tasteless, and Juri felt bland and meaningless running her tongue across it. They both realized that this was no emotional affair; it was devoid of any carnal impulses and they were driven by a need that far outran any primal instinct. Juri took the girl's breast in her palm (they were dainty enough to fit) like the bud on a flower, firm but yearning for the caress of a hand, no matter how uncaring it was. In the bed lined with sterile white sheets, she crushed the girl's heart as easily as a rose petal; she was unflinching and she liked to imagine that the girl liked being crushed on a very basic and masochistic impulse.

For her part, the girl made no protest to the degradation. She had compulsively scrubbed the sheets to their pristine state in some wild hysteria only this morning, and she was submitting completely to the leopard's pounce. If she submitted completely, then she had taken no part in the matter. She was as pure as the sheets.

"This changes nothing," the leopard growled, muffled by the sheet the girl had laid over her head.

The girl's silence was enough an answer to her statement. A vaguely eerie stillness settled over them like dust as they lay in the bed, knowing that they had turned to one another out of a humiliating desperation. Despite any protests or denial to the contrary, Juri could not put out of mind the fact that as they writhed as calculating as snakes between the sheets, she had not once removed the locket from about her chest. In the girl's mind, she had imagined his dark-skinned body above her, controlling her as he controlled that vicious and repulsive sister of his.

There were no illusions of love or lust in their sordid romp. Escapism, they knew, was the only motivation and that they, like all dwellers of Ohtori, were merely covering up their dubious flaws with thorny branches and wilting rose petals. It was of no consequence, and in the tiny moment when their two worlds met and collapsed or imploded or exploded or whatever it was they did, there was no chain holding them down to their respective steel balls (of miracles or of need), and there was no shell blocking their sky view. There was only the Prince, claiming their small dreams as his own so that he could project them upon the Ohtori captives forever and forever.

Finally, Kanae rose. The sheets needed cleaning.

Drugged

Juri swallows the pills with a rigid, dictatorial determination. They cluster in her throat, scratching the tender pink surface of her esophagus, and she nearly gags on them right off the bat. That wouldn't be any good. You see, she needs these pills to wash away the pain inside her gut; in go the little cylindrical mind-numbers, and the hurt inside makes an unnoticeable exit, only to return when the happy hallucinations grow tired and doze off. It is then that the gold chain encircling her slender swan's neck begins to tighten and choke, drawing the vitality and pride inside of the golden cage that lies on the sharp edges of her collarbone.

But the pills, at least for the time being, erase the memories of her shining violet irises, glistening with the sadomasochistic glee of a suicide bomber, for she is willing to bring harm unto herself in order to chip away at the glass hearts of others. They erase the visions of her younger self, blinded by naïve love for the Girl, being thrown to the side for the boy-of-the-week. They loosen the chain and lighten the locket, and Juri knows—despite the veil the pills draw across Juri's conscience—that without them, she would be caught once more in the cage where miracles slip just out of reach as soon as she desires them.

Without them, she yearns for miracles that she knows do not exist. Beneath the veil of hopes, she can lead the life of one who knows miracles intimately. When the Universe exploded into existence, and Akio created his shining dollhouse and the eyeless, soulless puppets, somehow, Juri had missed out on the privilege and been made with the undying curse of sight and of self-awareness. Hiding within the illusions the pills give her, however, she can find a safe haven in a false life, as the other Ohtori prisoners have done for all of eternity.

Crushed Pearls

The noon light gleamed off of the fencing sword, blinding in its intensity. It was always noon and always sunny in the Arena. This was because it did not rain in the Arena; the rain, instead, was confined to the hearts of the duelists that dared to step foot inside. And for a moment, it was this ever-dependable light that was her Achilles heel, and she couldn't see as her opponent flicked her wrist, sliding the rose from her lapel. But like a mother bird, she claimed the rose gently, firmly. The petals were intact when it collapsed upon the cement. They both grinned.

"Another decent match, Tenjou, but I might have to look for a new sparring partner if you insist on losing all the time." Juri applied a light coat of gloss to her already moist lips as she

"If it were up to me, you know I'd have you and that damned flower on the ground in two seconds," Utena joked bitterly, letting her gaze linger a bit too long on the woman's pursed lips, before quickly looking to the waiting gates.

"Whatever happened to that Prince of yours, the one that won all the duels for you? He abandon you?" she inquired, rubbing her lips together to spread the wet substance evenly.

Utena blushed lightly. "Not so much that, but it…it's complicated."

Juri met her faltering glances with a stern one. "Men. Who needs them?" She began to undo the buttons on her jacket with deft fingers. She was accustomed to removing clothes in a hurry—modeling had its benefits, she supposed.

Utena felt a flush rising from her breast up her throat up her cheeks up her forehead upupupupup. "Er…Juri…?"

The bold woman laughed; but it was a shrewd, weary one. "Don't mistake my intentions here, Tenjou. You aren't my type. I have a tee shirt underneath this. It's just damn hot up here." She surveyed the naïve girl's boyish frame. "I like my women meatier than you are, kid."

Utena cleared her throat nervously, "Well, now that we have that cleared up—"

"This can continue just as it was, a blossoming companionship," Juri finished, "Besides, you know I'm hung up on someone else." She made a nonchalant grab at the locket; it was habitual, ingrained deeply within her psyche. Utena ignored the move, as you would politely overlook a particularly unpleasant sneeze or belch, noting instead the way that Juri's green-blue eyes reminded her somehow of crushed pearls, hard, but precious and beautiful—vulnerable—at the same time.

Dusk began to settle, dust-like, upon the Arena. Utena led Juri down the marble stairs; this would all disappear if they stayed any longer, vanish like the illusions that had invaded every crevice of Ohtori with the loss of the sunlight.