NOTES: Strangeness. Analytical conversation. Sanada & Yanagi. Sanada POV.

Birthday drabble for Sanada~

Tale

During the Sung Dynasty, there lived an artist who only painted images of horses.

His goal was to paint 108 horse pictures, each presenting a horse in a different pose.

Because of his skill and talent, he quickly finished 107 paintings. But there was one painting left, one he was having extreme difficulty in creating. In his final painting, he wanted to paint a dead horse, lying on its back and all four hooves reaching to sky.

He tried and he tried, but inspiration just would not come to him. He thought about the dead horse when he ate, he thought about it when he slept, he thought about the dead horse nonstop.

Until, one day he grew so tired that he laid down in bed for a nap.

That was when his wife walked in. She screamed when she saw him on the bed.

Her shrill scream awoke him immediately and he asked her what had occurred.

She replied, confused. "Where did you come from? There was a dead horse on the bed you were sleeping on."

"Now, the question becomes," Sanada spoke after narrating this story to his companion, "Had the painter thought so hard about the dead horse that he, himself, became the dead horse he wanted to paint, or had his wife seen an illusion in her madness?"

"...Or," Renji added, "due to the influence of her husband, her mind had been so preoccupied with the images of horses that it fooled her to see a dead horse in her husband?"

"If the point of the story is for us to discard reality and allow nothing to limit our minds, then anything is possible."

The two of them laid on their futons spread side by side. They both peered through the darkness to the ceiling up above. They stared hard, as if trying to focus their gaze on a certain speck straight ahead like their minds concentrating on a single subject.

This was a ritual the two of them engaged in when they slept over each other's houses. They took turns telling short stories, parables, perhaps, which usually generated a small discussion. Though, the ritual at times did nothing to aid their sleep, for the heat of their argument burned and destroyed all somnolence that dared to approach. While, other times, their battered minds resulting from an extensive verbal battle quickly fell prey to sleep.

Sleep should have been induced naturally tonight after they reached the agreement that anything was possible in the world of fiction.

It was the solution he proposed as the conclusion of their argument. It should have been enough to convince him to retire for the night.

But he does not.

His mind would not rest, for it has not yet found solid evidence to support his statement.

Fiction or nonfiction, the mind was a thing that should not be limited.

He turned to his companion who was supposed to be slumbering on the futon next to his.

Sanada's eyes widened, as if he was attempting to see through the mirage of the elusive night.

His hand reached out, crossing the boundary between their futons.

His fingertips brushed against the smooth surface of a single petal on a blooming lotus flower.

Explanation:

Wait. I know what you're thinking: WTF? It's okay. I totally understand.

This is a story within a story. While the painter's wife saw a dead horse in the painter's position, Sanada sees a single lotus blossom in Yanagi's position. Because the two stories are similar, the questions that Sanada and Yanagi were discussing about the painter's tale apply to their own situation towards the end as well. However, the only difference is, while it is revealed to you that obsession was the reason the painter "became" the image he wanted to paint, the reason to why Yanagi became that lotus flower in the end was never really touched upon.

It was simply another allusion to the flower in Yanagi's name. Regardless of how old and cliched the allusion is, I never grow tired of using it. XD

The sentence before the last, where Sanada "crosses the boundary," is actually a suggestion that he is crossing from reality to fantasy. But, of course, the boundary between reality and fantasy is not the only boundary he is crossing...

Also, the story in the beginning came from a book on Buddhism I am reading.