1.1 --- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
     1.2 +++ b/old/stories/tomoyo.txt	Fri Feb 19 20:53:12 2010 -0500
     1.3 @@ -0,0 +1,210 @@
     1.4 +By Luriko-Ysabeth
     1.5 +iac@tangle.org 
     1.6 +
     1.7 +Frame: Pieces of Her Soul
     1.8 +
     1.9 +
    1.10 +	There are two things I have known since before I can remember.
    1.11 +
    1.12 +	Firstly, that I loved Kinomoto Sakura.
    1.13 +
    1.14 +	And secondly, that she would never care for me the way I did for her.
    1.15 +
    1.16 +
    1.17 +	One can grow accustomed to anything when one is a child, I hear, no 
    1.18 +matter how odd, no matter how painful.
    1.19 +
    1.20 +	And truly, it doesn't hurt that much, not now. Knowing that someday she 
    1.21 +will go to someone, probably some man, in whose arms she fits, whose 
    1.22 +house she graces, whose life she completes -- she deserves this, if it 
    1.23 +will make her happy. She deserves a wedding out of fairytales and a house 
    1.24 +out of dreams and a husband out of a maiden's longings, and a place in 
    1.25 +which her soul may fly as fast and as far as I know it can go.
    1.26 +
    1.27 +	(He had best be worthy of her, he had best make her happy, or -- he 
    1.28 +shall answer to me.)
    1.29 +
    1.30 +
    1.31 +	Maybe when my body changes and blossoms, and strange elixirs sing in my 
    1.32 +blood, it will be harder to remember this, as it was hard for my mother 
    1.33 +to understand it. 
    1.34 +
    1.35 +	Mother... you never did understand, did you? You never forgave your 
    1.36 +cousin Nadeshiko for wedding a kind man and bearing *him* two children in 
    1.37 +whom there is a perfection.
    1.38 +
    1.39 +	Yes, two.
    1.40 +
    1.41 +	It... fits, doesn't it, that as Sonomi loved Nadeshiko, Sonomi's child 
    1.42 +should love Nadeshiko's children?
    1.43 +
    1.44 +	Yet, even beyond their differences, my feelings for the one are nowhere 
    1.45 +near as strong as for the other; even though there are reflections, each 
    1.46 +in each, there is just no comparison.
    1.47 +
    1.48 +	It is nothing to Touya's detriment. He is... earth, distilled and 
    1.49 +refined to all that earth is, a mingling of all five, protecting, 
    1.50 +guarding, warm under the sun, cool with the night, fertile ground for 
    1.51 +small lives, endlessly renewing itself even as it is endlessly worn away, 
    1.52 +enduring for long years harsh and soft by turns.
    1.53 +
    1.54 +	Earth, inexorably drawn to the moon by the forces of gravity, even as 
    1.55 +the moon is drawn to it and it is drawn to the sun...
    1.56 +
    1.57 +	It is no fault of earth that I chose to look up instead of down, and 
    1.58 +gave my heart to a distant star.
    1.59 +
    1.60 +
    1.61 +	Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the star, just by burning 
    1.62 +as brightly and as gaily as it did, called my heart out of me.
    1.63 +
    1.64 +	It would have been... easier, had I wanted the earth. I might even have 
    1.65 +had it, if not all to myself.
    1.66 +
    1.67 +	But Sakura-chan is -- *Sakura*. There is nothing more beautiful or 
    1.68 +interesting to me, nothing that I would rather see. For just a moment of 
    1.69 +her in motion, limbs full of their own grace as she runs towards the 
    1.70 +goal... I would sell the whole earth for that to hold in my hands and 
    1.71 +call forth those feelings from my heart each time I gazed upon her, and 
    1.72 +count it well spent in the bargain.
    1.73 +
    1.74 +	And I have that, and a thousand others besides.
    1.75 +
    1.76 +	I love my mother dearly, but she can act foolish beyond measure. She 
    1.77 +loved Nadeshiko, perhaps even as I love Sakura-chan, and wanted nothing 
    1.78 +more than to be with her forever.
    1.79 +
    1.80 +	If Sakura-chan were to dwell in my house, eat at my board, sleep in my 
    1.81 +bed, then no one in all the world would be happier than I am.
    1.82 +
    1.83 +	But even now, I am happy.
    1.84 +
    1.85 +	When Nadeshiko married Kinomoto-san, my mother was hurt and jealous; I 
    1.86 +don't think she had ever thought that Nadeshiko might want someone else.
    1.87 +
    1.88 +	And because she was angry, she went away and never saw her again. Where 
    1.89 +is there sense in that? Where is there reason?
    1.90 +
    1.91 +	I like o-sushi. It is good to taste and filling to eat. But just because 
    1.92 +I cannot have o-sushi, shall I refuse to eat o-musubi? Shall I turn down 
    1.93 +chazuke? They, too, are filling to eat, and their taste is not bad.
    1.94 +
    1.95 +	Sakura-chan will offer the greater part of her soul into the keeping of 
    1.96 +some lucky other person, to hold and to nurture.
    1.97 +
    1.98 +	But that's all right. The sun is bright. Water is wet. Rocks are hard. I 
    1.99 +love Kinomoto Sakura. She will love someone else and be happy.
   1.100 +
   1.101 +	And I will be happy that she is happy.
   1.102 +
   1.103 +
   1.104 +	I don't think Mother ever quite understood that. We were vacationing 
   1.105 +once, on an island. I woke up very early one morning and went down to the 
   1.106 +beach as the sun was rising through the clouds. The water shone for a 
   1.107 +moment like silver and steel, and the clouds were all shot with pink and 
   1.108 +orange and mauve and gold, and the rocks curved down into the water as 
   1.109 +the gulls arced out beyond them and the breeze came salt-laden into my 
   1.110 +face -- that moment, just then, was perfect and eternal, and I was happy.
   1.111 +
   1.112 +
   1.113 +	(I tried to take a picture, but it couldn't hold it all and didn't come 
   1.114 +out that well anyway -- I wasn't as good then as I am now. It's all 
   1.115 +right; I can still remember most of it, and there have been other 
   1.116 +sunrises, even if they weren't the same.)
   1.117 +
   1.118 +	Much later, when my mother woke up, I told her how much I liked it 
   1.119 +there.
   1.120 +
   1.121 +	She offered to buy the house and probably the island as well, so I could 
   1.122 +keep the thing that made me so happy and come there whenever I really 
   1.123 +wanted to.
   1.124 +
   1.125 +	But you can't do that. You can't own a sunrise, or gulls in flight. Even 
   1.126 +if you lay claim to the place where they are. Even if you put a collar or 
   1.127 +something on the gulls -- even if you put them in a cage, you can't have 
   1.128 +the beauty of their soaring unless they give it to you (and I can't see 
   1.129 +how they could if they were in a cage, anyway).
   1.130 +
   1.131 +	So I thanked her, politely, and told her I would rather have a nicer 
   1.132 +camera and maybe some lessons in how to take better pictures.
   1.133 +
   1.134 +
   1.135 +	Many people, when they first encountered a camera, thought that it would 
   1.136 +steal someone's soul if it took a picture of them.
   1.137 +
   1.138 +	You can't do that, of course. Just one photograph, one frame of film, or 
   1.139 +even the entire strip cannot be enough for all of a person, in their good 
   1.140 +times and their bad times, with all their quirks and all their 
   1.141 +inconsistencies.
   1.142 +
   1.143 +	But you can, in one picture, capture a *facet* of them. Not all. Not 
   1.144 +everything. But a little piece, one solitary moment of what they are.
   1.145 +
   1.146 +	The more pieces, the more you can assemble something vaguely like a 
   1.147 +picture of the person they are.
   1.148 +
   1.149 +	And it isn't even stealing, any more than my blurry picture on the 
   1.150 +island stole the sun out of the sky. It's a record of a gift -- the gift 
   1.151 +that that person gave to the outside world, of what they were at that 
   1.152 +moment.
   1.153 +
   1.154 +	I have a picture, of Sakura-chan running, limbs full of their own grace 
   1.155 +as she runs towards the goal. A crystallized memory of how she looked as 
   1.156 +she was doing her best, for me and for all of us and especially for 
   1.157 +herself, that I can look at even when Sakura-chan is not around.
   1.158 +
   1.159 +	It's one of my favorites; I have many favorites, among all the pictures 
   1.160 +and movies I have taken of Sakura-chan.
   1.161 +
   1.162 +	Someone else will be the recipient of most of her soul, and she in turn 
   1.163 +will be given that person's soul to have in her keeping.
   1.164 +
   1.165 +	(I'm doing my best to help make sure that that person is someone who 
   1.166 +deserves that very great honor, and will make Sakura-chan happy.)
   1.167 +
   1.168 +	And when that happens... she won't have as much time to spend with me. I 
   1.169 +know that. I'm expecting it.
   1.170 +
   1.171 +	Love is infinite.
   1.172 +
   1.173 +	A soul is infinite.
   1.174 +
   1.175 +	Time in a day has a limit of 8, 6400 seconds, according to my 
   1.176 +calculator. And every one of those seconds is precious, and every one is 
   1.177 +no longer than it takes to say four syllables (five if you're quick).
   1.178 +
   1.179 +	So time is something you have to divide up. If you have to give time to 
   1.180 +your family, it needs to come from somewhere else... including your 
   1.181 +friends.
   1.182 +
   1.183 +	And even... even if she took the time from somewhere that wasn't me, my 
   1.184 +time with her will always be a gift, not a right. 
   1.185 +
   1.186 +	But I'm not unhappy. I'm content -- after all, how many other people are 
   1.187 +there who don't know Sakura-chan at all? How many other people are there 
   1.188 +whose closest contact with her is to see her skate by once, on her way to 
   1.189 +wherever she's going?
   1.190 +
   1.191 +	I, however... I have a treasury of every piece of her soul that she has 
   1.192 +chosen to give me. Whether she's happy, whether she's angry, whether she 
   1.193 +is overtaken by surprise or sorrow; all of them are Sakura-chan, and thus 
   1.194 +all of them are beautiful.
   1.195 +
   1.196 +	And each image, a tiny facet in itself, brings back the memories and the 
   1.197 +feelings, and the way it was before and after and during -- sometimes, a 
   1.198 +moment so beautiful it hurt.
   1.199 +
   1.200 +	And even that other person... they won't have all of her. They won't 
   1.201 +share in many of these, any more than I'll share in many of their images, 
   1.202 +or either of us will share in most of Touya's pieces of Sakura-chan. Even 
   1.203 +beyond that, there are parts of Kinomoto Sakura that none other than 
   1.204 +herself shall ever see.
   1.205 +
   1.206 +	Any more than anyone ever saw some parts of Amamiya or Kinomoto 
   1.207 +Nadeshiko, as much as my mother wanted to. No one else can own all of a 
   1.208 +person.
   1.209 +
   1.210 +	So why should I be jealous of the person whom Sakura-chan will choose to 
   1.211 +love?
   1.212 +
   1.213 +	I, too, have pieces of her soul.