Just a quick sketch, based on a couple of throwaway sentences
from a longer story I'm writing. Let me know what you think.



                         My Only Love

	The breath catches in my throat as he leaps into the fray. As
always, once the fight is on, he comes fully, gloriously alive. Truly,
there is no one like him. How could I not love him?

	His first clash is with Ryoga Hibiki, the lost boy. When I watch
them fight, I am reminded of the Western alchemists who considered the
world to be comprised of four basic elements. Ryoga is earth: strong,
slow, enduring, stolid, yet given to sudden eruptions. And Ranma?
Sometimes I see him as fire, sometimes as wind; today he is water,
flowing with liquid grace around Ryoga's attacks, then striking with
the speed and power of a tsunami. As water wears away even the
strongest stone, so Ranma wears down his opponent, then finishes him
with a single blow.

	Now Mousse challenges him. Their fights remind me of the clash
of two predators. Mousse is, fittingly, a bird of prey, flying at his
rival with talons outstretched. When he forgets his glasses - I wince
as he collides with a tree - he puts me in mind of an owl blinking in
the noonday sun. While Ranma - he is like a cat, though he wouldn't
thank me for the comparison, a creature of lazy, fluid elegance, and
an unstudied economy of effort. Soon enough Mousse too lies defeated.

	Ranma begins to relax, a moment too soon. A deluge of cold water
announces the arrival of his sometime "master", the lecherous Happosai.
Ranma transforms, and the third battle is on.

	It seems rather unfair that Ranma should be so gorgeous as a
female too. She is not as strong in this body, but somehow she becomes
even more graceful. This is combat as a form of dance, a ballet almost,
involving an enchanted princess and an ugly troll. The beauty of her
movements makes my heart ache within me.

	Once I schemed to secure his affections. I made his life a
misery with my tricks and traps. But he avoided them all, sometimes by
luck, sometimes by skill, sometimes by sheer bullheadedness. Now - now
I've given up. I tell myself that it's to avoid alienating him, that I'm
playing a waiting game. Deep inside, I know the truth. He loves Akane
Tendo. If I cannot have him, let him love as he will. Let him be happy
- I cannot deny him that. He is too dear to me. Some of the others
sense it, I think. I see the looks they give me at times, but what of
it? They say nothing because they can prove nothing.

	Once again Ranma makes use of the fact that the source of
Happosai's strength is also his greatest weakness. With a startled
look, she cries out, "Akane, what are you doing? Get some clothes on
before he sees you!" Happosai knows better, but he can't resist
turning his head for just an instant, an instant that proves his
undoing, as Ranma sends him flying off toward the horizon.

	She spins and falls back in a defensive stance, watching me
warily. "How about you? You want a piece of me?"

	No, not a piece, but all of you, my love. "Not today. Today
I'm just a spectator."

	She begins to relax, and seems to withdraw into herself, as
she returns to the normal face that Ranma Saotome presents to the world.
But not fully. There is still a light in her eyes, that tells me she
is thinking of Akane. I wonder if the Tendo girl appreciates how lucky
she is. I remember with a pang the day he turned that gaze on me, when
the love medicine he took made him all too briefly see me as the center
of his world. I remember how I felt when the medicine wore off. I
remember how I yearned to take the other two pills and feed them to
him, to secure his love forever. But I wrapped myself in the tattered
rags of my self-esteem and refrained. Was I right to do so? I still
don't know.

	I recall the words I said to him when we first met. "You're a
hundred years too late to challenge me." How bitterly ironic those
words ring in retrospect. If he'd been born a century earlier, or I a
century later....

	She turns to go off in search of her fiancee. "See you around,
Cologne."

	Indeed you will, my love. My only love.


Reid Carson
rcarson@mnsinc.com