Subject: [FFML] Re: [Ranma][Fanfic] Waters Under Earth - Chapter Forty
From: Alan Harnum
Date: 12/15/1999, 12:49 AM
To: Vincent Seifert
CC: ffml@fanfic.com

At 08:30 PM 12/14/99 -0800, Vincent Seifert wrote:
As always, commentary is welcomed and appreciated.

Incoming!  :)

And fast, too.  :)

As usual, the grammar corrections/suggestions have been snipped, unless I
had specific response to them.
 
Chapter 40 : The Night-Sea Journey

Now hollow fires burn out to black,
  And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
  And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
  Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
  There's nothing but the night.
-A.E. Housman

{Oh, great.  Optimism.  Now I'm REALLY worried.  :) }

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.  :)
 
halls of the mountain.  No one but her walked those stone floors,
and she made her way down to the lower levels with only the 
company of her footsteps.  She did not fly, and could not say why
she did not.

{Ah.  Kiima.}

*bing* Give the man a fish.  :)

     He was just leaving as she found him, closing the door
behind him.  Beyond it, she knew, Akane would lie asleep amidst
the tangle of covers.  He had touched her cheek, gentle, before
he went; she felt the sympathetic tingle of it upon her own face.

{glack.  I just realized why.  Akaneniichuan.  Eeeee...}

Creepy, ain't it?  
 
     He stepped lightly towards her.  "I can only bear so many 
goodbyes, you know.  Even that one..."  He gestured to the closed
door.  "...even that was nearly too much."  In his eyes, she saw a
flash of the boy he had been.

{caps? tricky, but suggest}  Even that one," he gestured to the
closed door, "even that was nearly too much."

Better, yeah.  Will change.

     "Sympathy and contagion, Kima."  And he touched his hands to
hers.  "I freed her, and in freeing her, I freed something else
as well.  He has returned, and I must go to fight him."

     "Alone?"
     
     "Oh yes."  And there were many languages, many stories, in 
his speech.  "At the end, I always have to go alone."

{Very, um, mythological.  No time for the dissertation... :) }

I've mentioned how influenced I was by Joseph Campbell and his hero's path
concept, right?  (Rhetorical question)

     "What about her?"  She pointed to the door.  Then she took
the last step.  "What about me?"

{ O_o  Boy, now would be a bad time for Tarou to walk in... }

He's busy evolving into Garterhose.  :)

     "I saw things when I went up in those flames," he said, 
voice coming distant.  "So many things that I have not the voices
or the words to speak them all.  I saw paths, and ends.  One 
path, things went differently on Chenmo Shan."

     Oh, gods, she thought.  Oh, my dead kings, I do not wish to
hear this.

     "And it wasn't her and I, it was you and me."

{Is that the path where Akane DID drown to make the spring?  Shudder...}

Who can really say?  
      
     His fingers traced the line of her wing, the wing that had
been dead.  The wing that he had healed.  And she had loved him
since then, and never voiced it.  Could not voice it now.

{Aiyaa.  Poor Kiima.  Poor Akane.}

Yup.

     "No," he admitted, "you are not.  There are two more to whom
I should make my farewells, but one is not yet come.  To the one
who is come, and was here before me, I shall try to make what
peace I can with her."

{gramatically, should be "I can." but I like the sound, so how about}

before me....  I shall try to make what peace I can with her."

Better.

     They embraced.  It was the embrace of siblings, and the hurt
was not so much now as it had been.  He left, walked away down 
one empty stone corridor, and left her to stay alone, until the
sun rose.

{Well, that's better than it might have been... but I think they'd
both rather fight bloody battles.}

Who wouldn't?  It's a lot easier.

     The bed sank beneath his weight as he sat down beside her.
"Yeah, Mom.  I came back for you."

{And here he's using the speech of the Ranma she knows. Very
considerate.}

Yup.

     "Must you?  Must you?"  She asked the question, even though
she knew the answer.  Had always known it, in her heart.  

     "Of course I have to," he answered, even though she could 
see no way he could not know she knew the answer before he spoke
it.

{Aiyaa, that's tangled, but there's no way around that, is there?  :) }

Well, sure there is.  As a purely existential being, Ranma doesn't have to
go.  He chooses to, whatever his reasoning for it may be.  :)
 
     "Why do you always leave me?" 
     
     He held her tighter, for a moment, and she remembered when
he was the small one.  "It's what a son does."

{Ouch.  "A son's a son 'til he takes a wife..."}

But doesn't Ranma count as a daughter, too?  ^_^
 
     "Thanks, Mom," he said, and the relief in his voice made her 
smile.  A part of him was still only a boy, wanting and needing 
his mother's approval.  I shall be strong for him, she vowed, 
that he may be strong for what he must do.  Whatever it may be.

{Well, and it's a fine thing she did there, too.}

Definitely.

     He passes beneath the archway at the top of the stairs, and
steps into the cold crimson light of early dawn.  He, Baazel - 
named Ravager, World-Hater, Scourge of Life - at the battlements
stands.  His hand of flesh strokes bone-white blue-veined 
parapets sharp as razors.  Their edges slice his flesh to ribbons;
the wounds heal almost as fast as they are made.  Bloodied, the
parapets glisten almost hungrily, as though in anticipation.

{Yuck.}

"No, on second thought, let us not go to Camelot.  'Tis a bloody place."

     Throwing back his awful, beautiful head, he laughs at the
coming dawn.  Fool, he thinks, as his laughter courses across the
waves and makes sleepers wake screaming.  Sweet pawn, all has 
come to fruition by your ignorant hand.  Still laughing, he 
raises Wordcleaver, and with it stirs the air.

{Famous last words.  :) }

Doesn't make them untrue, though.  :)

     The clouds answer, and darkness begins to spread over the
sky.  The seas answer, and slowly begin to turn around the axis
he has created.

     There is a third answer coming.  And so Baazel waits.

{Of course it would be three.  :) }

It couldn't be any other way, of course.  :)

     But some partings were easier made if unacknowledged, and 
each farewell would have been another weight upon him to hold him
here.  It was hard enough to leave already, but he had left; 
walked out of one of the passages of Phoenix Mountain into the 
open air.  And there he had grasped his power, and loosed 
gravity's bondage upon his body.

{To ride secure the cruel sky?  :) }

Hmm... may add that.  :)

     This, then, was the first thing he had to do.  He dropped
from the sky, slowed himself a few feet before he hit, and landed
lightly in the epicentre of the stone circle.  A deep breath drew
he, and then he placed one end of the staff Tianzhu against the
stone.

{Epicentre's a damn good word here, meaning as it does the point on the
surface above the point of interest. Nice.}

I love finding the perfect single-word expression of a complex concept.  :)
 
     Walking upon the surface of the now-glowing lake, Ranma
made his way to their edge, the division of earth and waters.  He

to its edge {? or do you mean to emphasize that this is two edges, the
edge of earth and the edge of water? There's the edge of air, too... all
we're missing is fire... er... maybe not.  :) }

No, I just messed up in my pronoun assignment.  :)

     I am gathering back the souls that died within the pools,
that they might at last find rest in dissolution.  Some I have
brought to me already, even as I lay wounded; now, I must take 
the rest.  And there is no more for you to learn from her now.

{!  I wonder if he'll miss her... I wonder if he'll have time.}

See epilogue.  Oh, wait, it isn't written yet.

     He pulled himself through the water with pushes of his arms
and legs.  Beside him, the Lady swam, and sometimes she was a
dragon, and sometimes she was a woman fairer than the rising sun.

{Amaterasu Oomikami?}

Could be.  The sun, like the moon, is an old symbol of death and rebirth.  :)

     As Ranma descended towards the top of one hill of sand, his
wind-aura scattered tiny dust devils about his feet.  They died
and collapsed as he let the power shrink again.  His bare feet,
still damp from his bathing, left muddy tracks upon the sand as
he descended the dune.  The wind sobbed in his ears.

{Now that's eerie. Usually wet-footed walkers take sand with them rather
than leaving water behind, but it's clearly different for the Lord of
Waters...}

Naturally.

     A geyser of water exploded through the sand, towered thrice
his height into the air, and then began to splash down.  Sand
turned to mud, and began to wash away; the land around him began
to level out from dunes and valleys into level plains.

{The ones that were left from the previous dunes collapsing and valleys
filling in... did you mean to do this twice? Had it been thrice, I would
not have wondered. :) }

Umm... didn't mean to do it twice.  Inadequate proofreading.  Will fix.  :)

     "This shall be Tu Mu again, the centre of things.  And 
this..."  She swept her hands outward, in a gesture of infinite
giving, and from the sands green grass began to sprout.  It died
immediately.  But more grass grew, and died.  Grew again, and
this time did not die, but took root in the bodies of its
predecessors.  Flowers began to stretch forth and unfurl their
petals; springs of water bubbled from the now-fertile earth.  As
far as his eye could see, it happened.

{Ever seen life moving onto a new lava flow? It happens too slowly, of
course, but there are places -- Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, one of
my favorite places in the world, is one -- where you can see lava flows
of all ages in one place, and imagine it. It goes very much like that.}

Can't say that I have seen life moving onto a new lava flow... sounds like
the kind of thing I'd like to see, though.  :)

     All this shall be so, if only he does what he requires.

{pronoun trouble? suggest perhaps} if only the one does what he

Actually, the confusion of pronouns here is deliberate, to hint that
Baazel's only actual existence is as an extension of his god's will--which
is why he dissolves into dust, with considerable complaint, upon his
failure to kill Ranma.

     He did not need to call for her attention.  This was her
domain, and she had never been bound or broken.  Silent, stately,
she rose up from the lake and stood upon the water, white-garbed
and black-tressed.  Footprints formed and died upon the water as
she walked to greet him at its edge.  He knelt before her, and 
she touched his brow, and bade him rise.

{...and in my mind, she looks like Kodachi... as Kodachi wishes to look.
Must... have... fanart...}

Nikki Wilcox did a superb picture of the Lady of Death in her White Bird
aspect (from Chapter 15) that I have up at the homepage... that isn't the
same aspect as this one, though.  :)

     "Since I came to this place," she said, turning again to
face him, "I have laboured each day upon these garments.  With
each turning of the world, I drew my needle once; my threads were 
the beams of the moon and sun, and my needle was the tip of the 
mountain.  Last night, my long labour came to an end.  Receive 
your garb, Lord of Waters."

{ !!! }

Ever heard that parable about the bird, scraping his beak on the mountain
once every year?  That's kinda what inspired this paragraph.  :)

     Once the Lord of Waters was gone, a pale-faced shadow 
stepped from the concealment of a formation of craggy 
stalagmites, and knelt.

     "My lady, may I follow?  I shall hide myself from his sight;
I shall aid him not.  I want only to witness, for he was my
friend once.  Is my friend still."

{ Mousse?  Or, rather, he who once was Mousse? }

Bingo.

     He thought, in a single moment of weakness, of turning back.
Let someone else fight Baazel; let others leave all they love
behind.  Take this burden from me.  Send another champion, so 
that I can go back, spend my life with Akane, with my friends, 
with my mother; send another, so that I don't have to do this.

{I've seen that sentiment before, of course...}

I've seen it a few places before this too, yeah.  :)

     This had gone many times before, and would go many times
after.  Final battle?  It would be the final battle for one of
them, of course.  Not the final battle, though; merely a final
battle.  

{Nontrivial distinction.}

Just the difference between AN end and THE end.  :)

     Unhindered by her aged, crippled body, her mind and far-
seeing sight roamed free, and watched the present become the 
past, as it sped relentlessly towards one of two futures dark to 
her.

{A weasel down the trousers of time... sorry.  :) }

Look, do whatever you want with weasels and trousers, but keep it outta my
fanfic, okay?  ;)

     He ceased his words, and lay panting upon the unpitying

{"panting"? Um, that's a bit too much life for me to be complacent about
just yet...}

Well, he does have a glowing staff shoved straight through his body.  Then
again...hmm.  May change.

     A harsh, percussive voice - his own refutation, or the 
master's, he could not tell - seemed to answer in response.  
Healing is not mine; you insult me by the very asking, weak fool.
Have you no knowledge of what I am, even after so long within my
service?  I am that which brings all healing to futility, King of
Ashes and Unmaker - ask not for healing from me.  

{heh.  Nice philosophical point.}

Well, I thought so.  

     Xande opened his mouth, closed it.  He had some pride, in 
the end; he did not love the mere fact of his life so much that 
he would turn against the very foundations of it.  In the end, 
he would at least be a true servant of something.

{Integrity. Doesn't that violate his allegiance too? What a paradox he's
caught in...}

I'd venture that all living beings serving that which wishes to bring an
end to all life are caught in something of a paradox.  :)

     "City.  You know nothing.  You know nothing at all, you 
stupid, foolish child."

     Dread came down like a shower of icy rain, suffusing Ranma's
bones.  "What?"

{Me too.  Ohshit.}

If this were a film, there'd be one of those ominous chords right about now.

     Could Baazel, he wondered, have escaped becoming Ravager and
World-Hater, any more than he could have escaped becoming Lord of
Waters?

{What a fine question.}

And one that I, in my usual way, am not going to try and answer right now.  :)

     The creeping dread had grown so great that he had to seize
his tongue between his teeth to keep from crying out in terror.
His arms and legs quavered, and it was all he could do to keep 
hold of his power and remain airborne.  Why such excess of fear?
Unnatural though it might be, it was only an island.

{uh... famous last words?  :S }

No comment.
 
     Now he saw that dozens of rocky stalagmites hung down from

stalactites {stalagmites rise up}

Doh!  I usually get these right; stala_C_tites hang from the _C_eiling,
stala_G_mites come up from the _G_round.  :)

     Then, in answer to all questions, the two hills blinked,
exposing the black-slitted red fires lurking below their crust,
and the island reared back to roar its hatred to the sky.

{Ohshit.}

No, there's nothing like a dragon whose size is measured in miles to ruin
your day...

     Now, if only it seemed that he had been destroyed in...

{Trying the same trick twice?  How Ranma...}

Hey, if it worked once... 

     But it held, quivering like a tuning fork as it separated
upper jaw from lower, and saved Ranma from death.  The hot wind
of the Oldest One's breath clawed at his throat, and he felt
suction from deep within the craw; the Oldest One was going to

{"craw" is a crop or stomach; "maw", perhaps? Usage implies some synonym
of throat or mouth...}

Will use "maw".

     The Oldest One began to exert his strength; the tree
shuddered.  And Ranma knew it would soon fall, riven in half
despite its age and strength.  The dragon held the great tree
within his jaws, and sought to devour it.  It was all wrong; how
had he come to hold the tree like that?

{OK, now we're back to Norse mythology... sort of.  :) }

This is where the imagery came from, yes.  Just like the Oldest One of All,
the primordial dragon rising from the seas to devour the world, was
suggested both by the Midgard Serpent and by Nidhug, the dragon who gnaws
at the root of the world-tree... :)

(And also by Tiamat and Apsu of Babylonian fame, and quite a few other
sources... :))

     His skin went first, as the shield tightened; it burned 
away, becoming not ash, but light.  Then flesh and muscle too;
then bone, blood, organs.  Then all of him, until he was nothing
but a rushing spear of light, so that time slowed down and the
tree crept by him so sluggishly that he could note every knot and 
wrinkle in the bark.  It did not seem as though this existence 
would ever end; at last, though, he passed the apex of the tree,
and there an eagle whispered into his ear.

{Yup, Norse. If Greek, the eagle would have been snacking on his
giblets. :) }

Hmm... according to my sources, that should be a vulture.  :)
 
     After a time he could not name or measure, though, he came
to the dark shores and the dark waters, and there he found again
his friend, Ranma Saotome.

{!  You-- you-- AARGH!}

Yeah, I'm a bastard, but I swear that I'll have the epilogue out soon.
"Within a few days" soon.  

Epilogue and author's notes coming very soon.

Well, I should hope so. Jeez, every time I think I'm due for a
denouement, you spring another climax on me... I'm too old for this. :)

"Back in my day, fanfics ended properly, and there wasn't none of this
new-fangled climactic hogwash."

I'm a bit low on superlatives at the moment, so all I'll say is that
this is a fitting conclusion to what has gone before. Everything works,
mythologically and, er, prosaically. :)

That means the writing doesn't suck, right?  Yay!  

Damn fine job, Alan.

*^.^*

Thanks for writing and sharing!

And thanks, as always, for catching all my spelling errors, improper
phrasings, mangled pronouns, and otherwise.  Also, for encouragement.  :)

Epilogue coming soon!

Ciao,
-Alan Harnum


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