Woo-hoo! C&C!  ...Most grammatical fixes/typos have been noted and 
snipped for now, as well as anything that didn't really require any
response.



Vincent Seifert wrote:

{YAAAAY! *ahem* Excuse me. But I was afraid that this one was
back-burnered indefinitely, and I'm really glad to see more of it.}

Thanks!  I do try to come out with at least one chapter a year :)

Ranma Monogatari
a Ranma 1/2 fanfiction
by Bridget E. Wilde

Previous parts available at http://www.psn.net/~wildeman/bridget.htm

C&C welcomed, public or private.

{You ask for it, you get it. All comments strictly my opinion, and
offered in good spirit.}

And taken the same way, of course...

Part 7

The beetle was new to the world, its glistening black carapace
still slightly soft and sticky with the residue of its pupal stage ^�

{Something non-ASCII creeping in there... a comma? emdash?}

At this point, I've had this chapter on so many (&^$*^&%$ word
processors
that I don't even know which to blame for this and the indents... This
is
what I get for not proofing it in Wordpad first! 

ground about it just enough that it could burst out of the darkness.

It barely saw the shadow that loomed over it before it was
snatched up by fingers that moved faster than the wind,

{It's the Catch-you Tenshin Amaguriken!  :) }

....

insectile sigh of relief it felt the familiar ground of its birth
beneath its six legs, and then it was free to dash back into the moss,
blissfully aware of its own life.

{I like the notion of describing this little ritual from the beetle's
point of view.}

Oddly enough, this scene gave me HUGE amounts of trouble until our
friend
the beetle came along.

Not that the messenger would enjoy his visit... Lord Ranma was a
fine one, genuinely concerned for the well-being of his servants, but
he was sometimes just a little... Koremitsu apologized inwardly for
the disrespect... just a little dense.

{"a little"?  The man is a master of discretion and understatement.  :) }

He's just being polite :)

      Ranma stepped from the carriage, grateful for the steady earth
beneath his feet, and straightened his clothing with a tug of
annoyance. <This place has got to get some decent roads...> he thought
grumpily, grimacing as each movement awakened bruises acquired on his
journey.  He could only be grateful that the oxen pulling the cart
seemed to have only one speed: slow.  He shuddered to think what might
have happened had they been in second gear.

{heh.  I love the image of an oxcart with a stick-shift.  :) }

Of course, when you start to think about what sort of mechanism you
could
use to get them to go faster... ouch!

      The oxen shifted restlessly.  A mournful breeze swept through the
darkening bamboo.  Somewhere nearby, crickets heralded the coming
night.
      Ranma stood.
      After several minutes had passed, Koremitsu cleared his throat
pointedly.  "We shall be waiting here when you are done, my lord."
      "Uh, yeah."  Ranma straightened his clothes again.  "Thanks."
      The crickets chirped.
      The oxen stomped.
      The servants glared.
      And Ranma stood.

{You just can't take him anywhere.  :) }

      The servants at the door hesitated just long enough that Ranma
had to stop short while they opened the door before him, their manners
just insolent enough for Ranma to take offense, but just obsequious
enough to keep him from calling them on it.

{They're pretty skillful in their own field, aren't they?}

 He glanced over his
shoulder once, at the sullenly respectful faces of his own entourage,
and the round, sympathetic expression on Koremitsu's face, before the

sympathetic expression on Koremitsu's round face, {perhaps? not quite
sure what image you're trying to evoke here...}

I think I was originally going to say "round, sympathetic face of
Koremitsu"
and changed directions midstream... Just what would a round expression
be,
anyhow?

      Ranma seated himself awkwardly near the tray, noting that the
bottle did indeed hold sake, but that it seemed to be only lukewarm.
The hair on the back of his head was standing up, and his hand shook
slightly as he reached out for a rice cake.  Something was just not
right, and his eyes darted around the room searching for the cause as
he gnawed at the rice cake, which tasted rather like paper.  He felt
somehow surrounded, watched, stalked - a movement at the edge of his
vision startled him, and his mouth dried with a sudden horrible
realization.
      He was surrounded by cats.

{Eeek!  I can just see this.}

That *is* rather the point of description :P

      He snapped his eyes open, avoiding the knowing, expectant eyes of
the lady in favor of the glowing yellow eyes of the cat.  Fear welled
up within him to fight attraction, and he shook with the force of the
battle.  He had to escape; one was sure to win soon, and he couldn't
decide which would be worse, the lady or the cat.

{It's a little tiny tiger!  :) }

For a while I was debating whether this was too cheap of a shot - but 
then I remembered that no shot is ever too cheap :)

      There was no answer to that, and he stared at her for a long
moment, his mouth dry.  In that moment he realized that there was no
trick of the light - the moonlight glistened off her cheeks because
they were wet, the sheen of too many tears for the tracks to be
counted. He felt a quick surge of anger - after all, he was doing this
for her, he certainly hadn't wanted to spend an evening in Cat Hell
with Shampoo and her codependent Auschwitz cat.

{Nice turn of phrase, if perhaps a bit jarring in its 20th-century-ness.}

Heh.  Actually, the Reikeiden lady's cat is none other than my own cat
Sakura (though a bit better treated).  Jamie calls her "Auschwitz Cat"
on
occasion because when I first took her in (she was a stray) she really
looked like that.  Now, of course, she is fat, dumb, and happy.

 But the anger quickly
faded under a flush of shame and embarrassment - there, a bit more
anger because he had done nothing to be ashamed of, really - and from
Reikeiden's attitude, neither had Lord Ranma - but the embarrassment
was definitely in charge, and he lowered his eyes, fidgeting with the
covers.
      "I... I can't tell you." He continued silently, eyes fixed on the

{"continued" what?  Fidgeting?}

Hm... I meant this to refer to the following thoughts, but maybe there's
too much description in there to make the connection?  Will work on
this.

      He was just drifting off into slumber when Aoi's voice came from
behind him, so quiet he would have thought he imagined it but for the
shuddering of her lungs against him.

      "Your song, O cuckoo,
      Would have me believe you sleep
      In no tree but mine,
      But whose might be the dwelling
      You fail to sleep in tonight?" (KKS 710)

{Ouch. What a complex emotion that expresses and evokes.}

Finding the poems has always been one of the most challenging parts of
writing
this, and at the same time the most satisfying :)

      He was still awake, head reeling lightly from something he didn't
understand one bit, when the spirit arrived that night.

End Part 7

AARGH!  Darn cliffhangers!  I will have my revenge, I swear it.  :)
Yes, I know it's the right place to break between chapters, but... argh.

Well, I hope part 8 comes easily.

I'm sure I'll have it by next June. :P

The Reikeiden Lady may look like Shampoo, and glomp like Shampoo, but
she sounds more like Kodachi. I can't help thinking that the Lady of the
Evening Faces will be much more easily recognizable when we meet her...

I'd think so... The speech problem was definitely one of the big tie-ups
with
this story - and not one I'm sure I successfully solved.  But at the
same time,
Shampoo has such a distinctively... exuberant... way of speaking, that
didn't
really translate well to the Reikeiden Lady, or to the Heian Period. 
One
of the main issues being that in this period, Japanese is her first
language
so there's no resorting to either comic errors or accent. 

The overall feel of the language is decadence, broken crudely and
abruptly by Ranma's thoughts and actions: an unusually apt case of prose
matching plot and setting, and a pleasure to read. Very nicely done
indeed.

Thanks for writing and sharing!

Thank you for the C&C!  

Bridget
probably late to work now... :)

-- 
       "Why are they wearing bras?"
          -Rachel Wilde, age 4,
while watching the Dirty *ahem* Lovely Angels...
________________________________________________
   Come and see the fanfics and food of
         Bridget and Jamie Wilde!
            wildeman@psn.net
      http://www.psn.net/~wildeman/