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[svn r3] moved all the bad stuff to 'old'
author rlm
date Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:53:12 -0500
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1 By Luriko-Ysabeth
2 iac@tangle.org
3
4 Frame: Pieces of Her Soul
5
6
7 There are two things I have known since before I can remember.
8
9 Firstly, that I loved Kinomoto Sakura.
10
11 And secondly, that she would never care for me the way I did for her.
12
13
14 One can grow accustomed to anything when one is a child, I hear, no
15 matter how odd, no matter how painful.
16
17 And truly, it doesn't hurt that much, not now. Knowing that someday she
18 will go to someone, probably some man, in whose arms she fits, whose
19 house she graces, whose life she completes -- she deserves this, if it
20 will make her happy. She deserves a wedding out of fairytales and a house
21 out of dreams and a husband out of a maiden's longings, and a place in
22 which her soul may fly as fast and as far as I know it can go.
23
24 (He had best be worthy of her, he had best make her happy, or -- he
25 shall answer to me.)
26
27
28 Maybe when my body changes and blossoms, and strange elixirs sing in my
29 blood, it will be harder to remember this, as it was hard for my mother
30 to understand it.
31
32 Mother... you never did understand, did you? You never forgave your
33 cousin Nadeshiko for wedding a kind man and bearing *him* two children in
34 whom there is a perfection.
35
36 Yes, two.
37
38 It... fits, doesn't it, that as Sonomi loved Nadeshiko, Sonomi's child
39 should love Nadeshiko's children?
40
41 Yet, even beyond their differences, my feelings for the one are nowhere
42 near as strong as for the other; even though there are reflections, each
43 in each, there is just no comparison.
44
45 It is nothing to Touya's detriment. He is... earth, distilled and
46 refined to all that earth is, a mingling of all five, protecting,
47 guarding, warm under the sun, cool with the night, fertile ground for
48 small lives, endlessly renewing itself even as it is endlessly worn away,
49 enduring for long years harsh and soft by turns.
50
51 Earth, inexorably drawn to the moon by the forces of gravity, even as
52 the moon is drawn to it and it is drawn to the sun...
53
54 It is no fault of earth that I chose to look up instead of down, and
55 gave my heart to a distant star.
56
57
58 Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the star, just by burning
59 as brightly and as gaily as it did, called my heart out of me.
60
61 It would have been... easier, had I wanted the earth. I might even have
62 had it, if not all to myself.
63
64 But Sakura-chan is -- *Sakura*. There is nothing more beautiful or
65 interesting to me, nothing that I would rather see. For just a moment of
66 her in motion, limbs full of their own grace as she runs towards the
67 goal... I would sell the whole earth for that to hold in my hands and
68 call forth those feelings from my heart each time I gazed upon her, and
69 count it well spent in the bargain.
70
71 And I have that, and a thousand others besides.
72
73 I love my mother dearly, but she can act foolish beyond measure. She
74 loved Nadeshiko, perhaps even as I love Sakura-chan, and wanted nothing
75 more than to be with her forever.
76
77 If Sakura-chan were to dwell in my house, eat at my board, sleep in my
78 bed, then no one in all the world would be happier than I am.
79
80 But even now, I am happy.
81
82 When Nadeshiko married Kinomoto-san, my mother was hurt and jealous; I
83 don't think she had ever thought that Nadeshiko might want someone else.
84
85 And because she was angry, she went away and never saw her again. Where
86 is there sense in that? Where is there reason?
87
88 I like o-sushi. It is good to taste and filling to eat. But just because
89 I cannot have o-sushi, shall I refuse to eat o-musubi? Shall I turn down
90 chazuke? They, too, are filling to eat, and their taste is not bad.
91
92 Sakura-chan will offer the greater part of her soul into the keeping of
93 some lucky other person, to hold and to nurture.
94
95 But that's all right. The sun is bright. Water is wet. Rocks are hard. I
96 love Kinomoto Sakura. She will love someone else and be happy.
97
98 And I will be happy that she is happy.
99
100
101 I don't think Mother ever quite understood that. We were vacationing
102 once, on an island. I woke up very early one morning and went down to the
103 beach as the sun was rising through the clouds. The water shone for a
104 moment like silver and steel, and the clouds were all shot with pink and
105 orange and mauve and gold, and the rocks curved down into the water as
106 the gulls arced out beyond them and the breeze came salt-laden into my
107 face -- that moment, just then, was perfect and eternal, and I was happy.
108
109
110 (I tried to take a picture, but it couldn't hold it all and didn't come
111 out that well anyway -- I wasn't as good then as I am now. It's all
112 right; I can still remember most of it, and there have been other
113 sunrises, even if they weren't the same.)
114
115 Much later, when my mother woke up, I told her how much I liked it
116 there.
117
118 She offered to buy the house and probably the island as well, so I could
119 keep the thing that made me so happy and come there whenever I really
120 wanted to.
121
122 But you can't do that. You can't own a sunrise, or gulls in flight. Even
123 if you lay claim to the place where they are. Even if you put a collar or
124 something on the gulls -- even if you put them in a cage, you can't have
125 the beauty of their soaring unless they give it to you (and I can't see
126 how they could if they were in a cage, anyway).
127
128 So I thanked her, politely, and told her I would rather have a nicer
129 camera and maybe some lessons in how to take better pictures.
130
131
132 Many people, when they first encountered a camera, thought that it would
133 steal someone's soul if it took a picture of them.
134
135 You can't do that, of course. Just one photograph, one frame of film, or
136 even the entire strip cannot be enough for all of a person, in their good
137 times and their bad times, with all their quirks and all their
138 inconsistencies.
139
140 But you can, in one picture, capture a *facet* of them. Not all. Not
141 everything. But a little piece, one solitary moment of what they are.
142
143 The more pieces, the more you can assemble something vaguely like a
144 picture of the person they are.
145
146 And it isn't even stealing, any more than my blurry picture on the
147 island stole the sun out of the sky. It's a record of a gift -- the gift
148 that that person gave to the outside world, of what they were at that
149 moment.
150
151 I have a picture, of Sakura-chan running, limbs full of their own grace
152 as she runs towards the goal. A crystallized memory of how she looked as
153 she was doing her best, for me and for all of us and especially for
154 herself, that I can look at even when Sakura-chan is not around.
155
156 It's one of my favorites; I have many favorites, among all the pictures
157 and movies I have taken of Sakura-chan.
158
159 Someone else will be the recipient of most of her soul, and she in turn
160 will be given that person's soul to have in her keeping.
161
162 (I'm doing my best to help make sure that that person is someone who
163 deserves that very great honor, and will make Sakura-chan happy.)
164
165 And when that happens... she won't have as much time to spend with me. I
166 know that. I'm expecting it.
167
168 Love is infinite.
169
170 A soul is infinite.
171
172 Time in a day has a limit of 8, 6400 seconds, according to my
173 calculator. And every one of those seconds is precious, and every one is
174 no longer than it takes to say four syllables (five if you're quick).
175
176 So time is something you have to divide up. If you have to give time to
177 your family, it needs to come from somewhere else... including your
178 friends.
179
180 And even... even if she took the time from somewhere that wasn't me, my
181 time with her will always be a gift, not a right.
182
183 But I'm not unhappy. I'm content -- after all, how many other people are
184 there who don't know Sakura-chan at all? How many other people are there
185 whose closest contact with her is to see her skate by once, on her way to
186 wherever she's going?
187
188 I, however... I have a treasury of every piece of her soul that she has
189 chosen to give me. Whether she's happy, whether she's angry, whether she
190 is overtaken by surprise or sorrow; all of them are Sakura-chan, and thus
191 all of them are beautiful.
192
193 And each image, a tiny facet in itself, brings back the memories and the
194 feelings, and the way it was before and after and during -- sometimes, a
195 moment so beautiful it hurt.
196
197 And even that other person... they won't have all of her. They won't
198 share in many of these, any more than I'll share in many of their images,
199 or either of us will share in most of Touya's pieces of Sakura-chan. Even
200 beyond that, there are parts of Kinomoto Sakura that none other than
201 herself shall ever see.
202
203 Any more than anyone ever saw some parts of Amamiya or Kinomoto
204 Nadeshiko, as much as my mother wanted to. No one else can own all of a
205 person.
206
207 So why should I be jealous of the person whom Sakura-chan will choose to
208 love?
209
210 I, too, have pieces of her soul.