She is dead.

	My ... she would insist that I refer to her as `sister-wife' ... 
is dead.  The third person who shared our life is gone.

	Did you know, when I first came to this world, and learned about
her, I believed that I would long for her death?  I was all too aware of
the differences between us -- she had grace and charm and standing, and
all that I had was power ... power that would give our children greater
power.  I didn't fool myself that there was any other reason you had
married me.

	Everyone knew it, though they didn't know where I was from.  They
laughed at me, when they thought I could not hear them.  They called me
`the brood mare'.

	All the laughter stopped when I made my presence known, of course.
They hid their smirks, and were graciously polite.

	But one day, after they had uttered some vile slander that I could
not even remember, I stepped into sight, and opened my mouth to retort.

	And then I heard her laughing.

	I turned to stare at her.  She kept right on laughing, that
strangely dainty yet menacing laugh, somewhere between a giggle and a
sneer, that her oldest daughter has since mastered.

	When she realized that I was glaring at her, she paused, and said,
"Is something the matter, Sister?"

	I waited until we were back in the royal appartments before I
turned and began shrieking at her like a fisherman's wife.  How *dare* she
humiliate me by laughing along with them, I demanded -- not in so many
words.

	She looked at me in shock throughout my rant, until I finally ran
dry of curses and vituperations.  And then she quietly said, "Sister, you
do not understand.  I was not laughing at you.  I was laughing at *them*.
They are so pathetically frightened of you ... how can you *not* laugh at
them?"

	I had never dreamed that anyone would fear me.  The possibility of
hatred was drilled into all of my family who had the Power, but the fact
that it was derived from the fear of the mindblind ... it either never
occured to us, or those who taught us kept us from realizing it, knowing
that there is something in the human spirit that can revel in another's
fear.

	The years passed, and children came to both of us ... my one, and
her two.  I watched as she lavished her daughters with affection, and gave
it freely to my son, as well.  She could love another woman's children.  I
seized on it as a challenge, and gave her children the same stern guidance
that my son gave.

	I failed them.  I failed all of them.

	But not half so much as you did.

	That is unfair.  We destroyed our son together, you whom I
laughingly call husband.  I tried to make him as hard and as relentless as
I saw you to be ... and I never saw that what made you hard, what drove
you to be relentless, was not courage, but fear as profound as the fear 
which those laughing courtiers felt.  And what I taught him, ultimately,
was that the throne was something which he should fear at all costs.

	And unlike you, who sought to inspire greater fear in those whom
you feared, he sought and found a way to flee from the thing that he
feared.

	I stopped loving you when I realized that, within a year of his
flight.  I only remained because ...

	... because she told me to.

	I told her all of this, and said `No more', and said that I would
leave, and go back to my world, and she slapped me.

	She had never raised a hand against any man, woman, or child in
her life, and she slapped me.  "How dare you even think such a thing?" she
cried.  "How dare you think of leaving our beloved husband when he needs
you so much?"

	She always called you, `our beloved husband.'

	I had not, until then, realized how much she and I did in the
palace.  And how little *you* did.  Do you even realize that you are
nothing more than the bully of an interstellar elementary school?  As long
as they are more afraid of you than you are of them, you are safe.  And
that is the sum and total of all your efforts -- keeping them afraid.  If
either of us were to leave, the centre would not hold, and the Empire
would fall within a day.  No, an hour.

	And now she is gone.

	And I cannot think of a single reason that I should stay.

	She asked about you, while the medics were fighting for her life.
"Funaho," she screamed, "is he all right?  Is our beloved husband all
right?"

	And I told her, `yes', and then she smiled, and died.

	Other people mattered to her.  Vastly more than they matter to
you, and much more than they mattered to me.  She forgave me for not
loving you.

	There was only one thing that she never forgave me for, and that
was your fault as well.  Once, as we lay together, passion cooling
together, I whispered, "Beloved" in her ear.

	She hit me a second time, and this time, she was in a fury such as
I had never seen before.  "*He* is our beloved," she said.  "He and no
other.  Even if it is not true, it must be *thought* to be true."

	She never forgave me for tempting her to forget that.  She never
forgave me for wanting to love her, openly, as I was supposed to love you.
Because she knew that if they knew that you could not even keep peace in
your home, they would surely challenge your ability to keep peace in the
Empire.

	We loved again, of course.  But she never let me call her beloved.

	I hate you for that.

	And that is why I cannot think of a reason to stay with you.

	And I hate myself for that.

	Because I know that I will.

	Why do I even maintain this pose?  I know that I will never send
you this letter, that I am talking to myself, so why do I bother?  Why do
I bother with anything?  No one would blame me if I killed myself,
claiming to feel too much guilt for having failed to save my `sister' to
continue to live.

	I have lost everything.  I have lost my son to your ambitions.  I
have lost my world to time -- I cannot even stand to breathe the air in
Okayama anymore, so tainted is it.  And now I have lost the only thing
that I loved anymore about this life, to assassins hired by those whom you
have taught to fear you.

	No one would blame me.

	She would.

	And that is why I will maintain the lie, call you, `beloved
husband', and protect you from those who would take your life.

	For my beloved.

	Sleep well, Misaki.

[Letter, found in the office of Masaki Funaho, shortly after her death.
Oil stains suggest that one other person had handled it, aside from Funaho
-- an inconclusive test suggests that it was her descendant, Masaki 
Tenchi.]

Author's Notes

	Yet again, the Images `storyline' has taken a turn that I wasn't
expecting.  I should be expecting the unexpected, by now.  These stories
write me, not the other way around.

	This takes place *long* after the three stories that have been
told so far.

  	The characters of Tenchi Muyou were created by Hiroki Hayashi and 
Masaki Kajishima, and brought to North America by Pioneer LDC.  This
story, while incorporating aspects of this motion picture held under
copyright by others, is copyright 1998 by Chris Davies.

	Nobody sue me, okay?

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part-Time Champion of Light.
"WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?" 
-- Death, in "Reaper Man", by Terry Pratchett.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cdavies/hmpage.html