Okay...I THINK this is final. I think. ^^;; You gotta love
how school treats a person...
Anyways, will sell body parts to science for C&C and all that...
here goes...
Thanks go to Richard Taylor, Andrew Huang, Rob Barba, and Timothy
Miller for giving me much needed criticism in this work. Raspberries
go to #fanfic on IRC for adamantly hating this fic. (I still luv ya,
don't worry!)
And just one raspberry to the Nakoruru (you know who you are!) for
not writing more fics! ^^
Secondary Thoughts The Violent Bore
-----------------------------------
I - Thought Straightforward
Father talked as a charged man would, which removed me from stale,
rank visions of dreams. It still lingered, though; the pain of death
at my own hands. By the looks of the mind, my death was expected over
that of my opponent. If Father had seen me, he would have been pained
into similar ideas. I once dreamt him a gopher, washed white in the
dress of a working man. That pained me. These days were startlingly
fermented, waking me with talk of business and politics. Subjects
seemed to desire to be conjured of scattered fragments of days past,
striking of notions of devout white men some days, of Christian women
others, of atheistic intelligent idiots when nights thought good enough
to bring alcohol and muscle and blood. Far too few days would let me
be, Father and another speaking of people while walking the edge of a
pool too deep for goodness. This morning brought an intangible fresh
subject, stirring far more than I anticipated; the cock crowed until
silenced, though the former was welcome (I could not hear its song
often enough.) "Death's brewing in the world," a voice said. "No
choice but embracing it." It lilted with uneven rhythm, like the dance
of peasants.
"So you like the world," Father said. "I see." His voice struck of
innocuous passion. The last comment was an annoying habit; he often
did not see, or perhaps only as often as he did see. And that struck
of passion too! In times, few but existent, I hear passion when I
speak alone, something I can't see.
"Far from the truth. I'm tolerating it."
"Don't scare me," Father said. "Just tell me if tolerance is the
same as satisfaction."
"I'm surprised!" His voice didn't create the idea for me. "You
should know how opposite the two are; still, I am satisfied." "Still"
received the emphasis this time.
"I see." Father cleared his throat loudly, which nearly pressed me
out of the warmth of sleep that stays for fleeting moments after
slumber ends. That was when pain ended; once warmth ends and the young
sheath of reality would envelope me, and I could do nothing but
continue to move forward as singularly charged to reality.
Sitting in bed, I thought visions of my father smashing his chest in
plain view of a troubled guest, troubled not of tuberculosis or some
other ailment, but of comments only conformists could make. Perhaps
now would be the best of times to make myself heard, if not seen.
"Excellence," the voice said. "This really is." The door to my room
was a hairline open, enough to see the world as it lay, restlessly
sleeping. In terms of color, only blue and green...but the blue! It
was a thing of pride for my father; he called it a lake; I called it a
pond. For as long as I have known, its hue was a crystalline blue not
rivalled by a clean sky. Why I never swam in that lake was not visible
to but gods and roamers, and Father at times he hated with passion that
wrecked his nerves with troubling action. The other color was paler
than I or any other person would have liked; summer is never quite as
kind as it should be.
"There, my friend, is the just wage...cost." He clinked coins
together as my feet touched the warm wooden floor. "You see," he added
quickly, and I pictured him saying it through clenched teeth.
"Nothing of justice is quite like that," Father said. "Not quite
that quick," my father told the visitor. "You see," he added.
"No, I don't."
"Well, I see. And in the end, isn't that the meaning? That you're
simply left wondering what it is I've found?" Father was interrupted
by the coins' metallic ring. "Longing."
"Then that's it?"
There was the sword at the foot of my bed; Father mandated that I
practice most every morning. "For the world!" The visitor started
laughing without regard to boundaries.
"You're a good man; there's your cost."
A woman once told me of the goodness inherent in being the daughter
of a man obsessed and the terror that comes with a father possessed. I
practiced the sword all my life, I think and thought. To a great
extent, I was fond of the action; such, it was natural for all my life.
I took off my white shift and proceeded to change into more appropriate
attire for the practice that occurs naturally once I awaken. I have
never been one to think about presentation; perhaps that's the only
idiosyncrasy that matters. Yet, I was pretty; other women would tell
me that much. I was never beautiful, and that was because of youth.
Later on, I was not beautiful because of age. That's the apathy, then.
I was light blue when I left the room with sword in hand. This was
never unexpected.
"You'd best be proud of her," said the man. One could hear the
thrusts as the sword was thrown through the wind in motion far too
slow for anyone of experience. "She is a thing of beauty."
"So now it's a she? I wasn't aware." Father coughed coarsely.
I didn't pay attention to sounds, or thought, and that is what helps
to succeed in form and style. Form and style mean nothing in practical
matters, Father loved to tell me. There is nothing in flow that cannot
be surpassed by the sum of successive velocities. Or so he understood,
and I learned to understand. One can't win by doubting one's own
process. In any case, I was and am good at the latter process. That
is created by continuous attention; thus, form was outstanding while
process was buried for thirty seconds, perhaps.
"You don't understand," he told Father.
"Oh? I think I do...Hibiki!" Father called out to me in that
wondrous voice reserved for daughters. I threw my sword out into air
for the lesser part of a second and brought it to its original position
in far less. I cursed. His ears were dying, and I knew that too well.
His hands were still there, and those who came to him knew that well.
I looked out from the corner and retreated with the man's image. He
had a tattered beard; his hair and hands were nothing. As good as a
dead man, I thought.
"Shy?"
"No," Father said. "Cautious. Wary." He laughed quickly. "She
has only excellent traits." Father taught me those characteristics,
and I loved him for making me like that. There was another girl who
said I should have hated it. She told me no girl truly longs to be
either: cautious; wary. Women? She gave an unequivocal yes yes! No.
Not the girl.
"Oh?" I imagined a pleasant smile, and this scared me. "Very few
are like that. I might ask for your daughter, then!" He most likely
heard the growls from around the corner. "Perhaps not..."
"Yes. Perhaps not."
"Is she good?"
"Good?"
"Yes." The visitor coughed violently. "Is she good with the
sword?"
"Why?"
He groaned. "Because, even if a girl shouldn't take it in, she had
best be good." He tapped his foot harshly on the floor.
"She's better than you...Hibiki!"
"The girl's there. You don't have to shout like that." I hated the
man already for the obvious logic. Style does matter; he obviously had
none.
"Father?"
"Your friend was here this morning; she has something for you."
She agreed with me on so many things, that I wondered why we had no
share in blood at all. She was a friend, and sometimes I found myself
wondering why she couldn't be more and wasn't more. Of course, isn't
that a friend: static? I'm not sure.
"May I go there now?" I asked Father.
"No. One minute."
One minute of practice was what Father meant for me to do. It's the
longest period of time when counting the parts between seconds, worse
because of technique. Worse because of lack of style. My face was wet
after fifty seconds, I was proud of that. Father was too; he gave me
leave.
There is nothing between Father's and my friend's father's estate.
To move between the two is to move through vast nothingness. Along
the line there are no trees, no bushes; I never see birds land on the
dirt. I rarely see birds, but I do know they do not like dirt. Father
told me I wouldn't see one who was not as such, but he wasn't right
once. There was a bluebird, a week after he said this, that embraced
the dirt readily. With passion.
"Hibiki-chan!"
Father never called me by that. He thought it terribly diminutive;
he shouted my name like an obscenity or let it float in the wind as
something only somewhat real. He kissed my forehead and touched my
lips with long, slender fingers. He never said 'Hibiki-chan'; he never
said he loved me. I once asked if he did and he addressed the question
immediately.
"I don't say I love you, Hibiki." In his right hand was a brush and
his finger were only slightly tinged black. He wrote five characters
in succession; I couldn't read any of them. "I do love you."
Which makes sense.
It troubled me, seeing Seira as a topic of conversation. There, she
was not Seira at all but 'Sera', which was "interested corruption" in
her words; she also took the title of "Hibiki's friend", from which
there were unfavorable implications for both of us. I was never her
friend, not to the women; for Father, I was, and he was a questioning
person. He knew what many people were not and framed questions around
this knowledge. "Where are your brothers? Sisters?" She had none.
"You take to the practical?" The arts beckoned her quietly and
consistently. She knew that he understood what she was not, and this
was enough to make her happy.
"Hibiki-chan! What do you think!" She held a large frame which
dropped from her chest to her feet.
"What do I think? It's a very boring frame." I sat down beside her
on the stairs.
She looked down. "Yeah, it is boring. But what about this side?"
She turned it such that the paint faced me.
"Not bad, not bad." It was the third I've seen by the Frenchman.
Seira found much to like in Daumier.
"You don't like it?"
"It's glaring. It stares at me." I sat such that it would not.
"It's red."
"Yes, it is quite red. Come in, come in!" She grabbed me by the
lapel of my thin coat and brought me to my feet. "Let me just put this
here...do you know what I traded for it?"
"The shrike?"
She shrieked. "No! No, of course not!" We went to her room and
she closed the door behind us. "It's still here, see?"
"I know," I said as I inspected the bird again. It was a wonderful
detail. It possessed majesty not becoming of the bird itself. "You
would be stupid to think of giving it someone...for that." I pointed
at one of her later acquisitions.
"It was nice." She sighed as she looked upon the flowers. "It was
nice. I guess that has no strength now."
"Well, are you sure about that?"
"No. I'm not."
"Good."
"How is your skill now?"
"That came out of nowhere."
"Well?" She sat down, her back straight against a wall. "How is
your skill?"
"It's good."
"I know that."
"You're terribly obtuse, Seira-chan."
"Aren't I, though!" She laughed until she had to breath;
wonderfully contagious laughter. "Just so I can know. It's good to
know relative amounts of skill."
I frowned. "I don't know relative amounts of skill."
"That's too bad," she said. "It could do you some good."
"Never does me any good. Any." There was an oil painting hanging
on the north wall I had never seen before. She stared at me through
crazed, glazed eyes; she glared and gazed upon me with those terror-
stricken, ecstatic eyes!
"You like her!"
"Not at all! How terrible she looks!" If I had not turned away,
I would have seen her eyes for too long; she churned my stomach.
"She revolts me!"
"That. That is Ophelia's madness." She said this with such pity
in her face that I wondered if she knew it, the madness. "It is a
portrait of madness, not of her."
"That is Ophelia, right?"
"Yes."
"Then, it is a portrait of her as well!"
She shook her head sadly, not in mock sadness, bringing puckish hair
around her shoulders. "But that's not her." She glanced upward at the
portrait again. "She's mad, after all..."
"But that has...no, I don't want to get into this."
She had that same, boring smirk on her face. "Of course you don't."
"Of course...of course I don't." I glanced around the room and saw
nothing else new. "There's more?"
Seira giggled. "Of course! Here, look at this." She handed to me
a leaf of paper with a girl's image on it, her hair segregated
arbitrarily into two tails to either side in the back by loops of
cloth.
"Nice." It was a good likeness.
"What? It's you!"
"No, it's not."
"Oh, come now! Look at it. Just change the hair and it's you."
She was right in saying this. "Yes, that's me, but not my hair."
"So, you wouldn't like it?" She frowned. "You wouldn't have such
hair?"
"It would make me look too young."
"I see."
"I don't like being young."
"Most people don't," she replied with much vigor.
"I don't."
"But don't you think it's pretty?"
"Of course!" It was.
"So why not?"
"I want to get older!"
She frowned; her face was sincere in what it conveyed. "I thought
it would do well for your features."
"I wouldn't say so much..."
"It would keep your hair neat."
"I am neat!"
"Yes, yes. Of course you are."
I was quick and neat. Father didn't ask for much else. "Uhm, yes.
Feel like walking?"
"Your home?"
"Of course."
I had left my sword in my room many times; Father hated that. I had
to be ready with the sword in hand at all times. At ten, I carried my
sword into town and bought medicine. "Is that yours?" I would hide it
by my side or behind me. "It's Father's." "What's your name?"
"Takane Hibiki." There was a lot of breath on the road. "Takane, of
course."
"Of course?"
"You've an artist for a father."
"How terrible!" women said.
"How terrible?" I asked the collective.
"Artists are not fathers."
I brought the sword in front of me and hid behind it. I bought the
medicine quickly afterwards.
Leaving the sword afterwards was intermittent intention. Takane
Gensou was my father.
"Do you know what you are?"
"What?" I asked without looking up.
"You're old already."
"Seira-chan?"
"Look at you." She didn't look at me; her eyes were fixed on a
mockingbird. "You're terribly serious about what you are doing."
"Which is?"
"Killing."
"I've not killed anyone!" I heard that voice far too many times as
a young girl. Me, replying to the aggregate of the world who only saw
a brutish art. I was a kind girl striving for the other end of the
spectrum, in the eyes of a village. Gensou always wanted a boy who
could carry out his art. His love was to the forge and only his
services to the wife he lost. So was the image in the village's eye.
I was no boy and I was given a different art. I had two, actually.
Mother gave me the naginata, in which all girls should be able; Father
gave me the sword. They were many and strong and heavy. They radiated
of pondering, ponderous steps of ardor and thought. He taught me in
large steps.
"Of course not, but you can."
"I won't."
"No no...you stopped walking."
I pointed towards the pond of my house. "You were watching the
bird."
"Oh yes." She glanced about with quick positions. "It was pretty."
"I know that one well, she." He flew to and from our rooftop every
day. He bounced over shallow waters and sang with wonder. "I meant
she."
"You gave it a name?" Seira stared at me with bored, thoughtful
eyes. She was somewhat interested.
"No...not at all." I looked at the bird until my house stopped me.
"You can tell, though. By the size of colors on the belly."
She laughed. "Oh! Is that all! Ah, who's that?" She pointed at
our visitor and I explained. "How terrible!" She squinted and looked
disagreeable in complement as Father called us.
"Did you hear?" the visitor asked. "I asked of you, Hibiki!" He
waited for a second as if it was eternity. "Do you know how utterly
easy it is to pair youth and excellence?"
"No," I replied.
He went up into my face and shouted. His diction was terrible.
"Terribly easy!" he said with more clarity as he moved back to his
original position. "You're everywhere!"
"Not at all. I am unique."
With that he took my right wrist, the weaker. "Are you?" He knelt
down before me, his left hand clutching the new acquisition and the
right a new sword. He brought his nose to touch mine. "Are you?"
With this, he was pulled away from me violently. Not by Father; he
looked upon us with an insane thoughtfulness.
"Your manners!" Seira cried, her hand still tightly holding a
sleeve. "She's a woman!"
"Oh? I didn't realize."
"Hibiki? Your sword."
"Yes Father. Seira-chan?" She followed me to my room as the two
men talked to each other. Father spoke of nothingness. The visitor
spoke of violence. Both of us knew Father would not be able to create
meaningful conversation out of his business today. Business is too
often a practice of a single dimension. That pains me. Why, the days
are deathly when they are of business and businessmen.
"There's no benchmark for customers to overcome?"
"What?"
Seira repeated, "There's no benchmark for customers to overcome?"
"Money." I shrugged my shoulders. "I guess," I added.
"Well!" She shouted this with undeterred passion. "I suppose the
gods have made the world beautiful."
"I...I find it ugly."
"Do you? Maybe..."
"Maybe?" I took the sword with my right hand. With hesitancy.
"Maybe. Think about this." I brought my left hand to the hilt.
"Everyone knows everything. That is, in their minds, everything and
every possibility exists within their mind." Seira stretched her arms
out so as to show expanse. "All that changes is how sure anyone might
be about a certain thing. The certainty is all that changes.
"For example," she continued, "You see I am wearing red. But that's
not all you know." She lingered on the last word like one would relish
an exotic flavor. "You know, however that I am wearing blue. And that
I am wearing yellow. And that I am wearing white. See?"
"No...I don't...Father's calling me..."
She went on as if I had said nothing. "You have all of these things
in your mind as possibilities...indeed, you know all of these things.
What changes is your certainty."
I grew weary. "I know that you are wearing red. Not blue. Not
green..."
"Because the certainty with which you know me to wear red right now
is such an overbearing power. It thrusts itself upon the other ideas
and tramples upon them like bears upon an ugly crop."
"An ugly crop!" I exclaimed.
A scream threw its presence into my room. Following it was a short
task.
The visitor had his sword in a woman, who stood but with the
strength of fast held steel. She died the way a man was to die, with
the necessities moving through, from, and of the gut. I imagined her
as mother...and I couldn't. This woman was ugly, now, in her death.
Upon her face was a terrible powdered shade and her eyes were large
from the west. Larger from death. There's nothing in standing watch
over death. It comes regardless of whether one watches over it or not.
I drew my sword with the left hand and brought it through the man's
shoulder.
He screamed as any boy would. His left hand drew the sword out of
the woman, the sheath falling to the ground with a dull ruckus. His
sword lashed out at me in an uneven arc. Any other sword would have
been terribly ineffective. As I brought my sheathed sword forward and
my body away, I realized that fortune was a capricious thing. It went
through my sword in all of its poor thought. My left hand held a hilt
with not a half of a blade.
There was no technique in him. He was easy to kill with an
incomplete blade. I brought it into his neck.
"Hibiki," said Father sternly.
I did no more than release the hilt. The partial sword stood in
flesh even as Father took the bloodied body. He brought the visitor
into his arms and carried him as one would a small child. The blood
neglected his yellow and overcame it.
I followed him to his lake. My pond. The blade stayed in the neck.
He threw the body into the middle of the water. It bubbled as the dull
hue spread from its location.
"Throw it in..."
"Father?"
"Throw it in."
I didn't understand his lunacy.
"Throw it in!" He turned quickly, like a beast before the prey, and
put his finger into my shoulder. "Throw it in!"
"What! What Father!" I screamed as a girl should, not as one
would.
"The blade! The violence!" He took the sheathed partial blade from
my right hand and threw it high into the sky. His grip loosened on my
shoulder and I watched without pain as the blade dislodged itself from
lacquered wood and fell into the center of his lake. The sheath
splashed silently into shallow waters on the opposite side from us.
Only then did the realization enter my mind. There was a concern of
the flesh that catapulted itself upwards in my whole.
"Why?"
"Why, Hibiki?"
"WHY!" There, in front of my friend and my father, I cried. I
knelt on the ground and touched my fingers to a living earth. "See?"
I shoved my hand heavenward. "I'm dying!"
"No you aren't." He stared across the waters. "You're thinking
in weak terms."
"No! I'm thinking in strong terms! WHY!" He turned to me as if he
lacked an answer. "Because of you! You gave me...that!"
"I gave you...that?"
"You gave me the inferior weapon!"
"Hibiki."
"Inferior."
"Hibiki-chan," said Seira.
"Inferior!" I took my hair in my hands. "How is it that I can kill
one with the superior weapon!"
"Skill," said Father.
"Skill is terrible to acquire and wonderful to have." I took to my
feet and took the woman from her death. She was ugly; her eyes now
were closed but struggled for a natural state. A person without a left
arm hung from a cross without a left beam around her neck. I took her
to the pond and dropped her in.
"She had nothing."
"She WAS nothing," I corrected Father.
"She deserved nothing."
"Not one deserved anything. I'm giving this to her."
"Giving what?" asked Seira.
I touched the woman's long skirt just before it completely fell
below the surface. "The ability to be a remembrance for her killer.
A chance to see her killer off to her hells."
Only then did Seira cry. She touched her hand to my shoulder. "You
are violent," she spoke through coarse tears. "And violent bear much."
"Then, that I bear."
That is why the occurrences of that day are a dream and I awoke with
with pain and joy. I ceased being eleven years old that day; I am very
certain of that fact. The day was fermented with pain and I bore it so
long as I knew the occurrences as a dream.
- - -
The gravestone was tall and had little written on it...just a name:
Takane Gensou. Names are petty things; they are echoes of the actual
person which the name represents. Perhaps I shouldn't say as much, for
I can be defined as an echo; my person is an echo, then. Perhaps only
because I dreamt myself as the wind, roaring through the mountains,
to find myself dashed upon myself, toppling against the parts that make
me and are me. I laughed at the craggy surface and couldn't stand up
to the advances which were my own.
When the villagers heard of his death, they thought the obvious.
"He's done his half, his pact with the devil." But, villagers knew
nothing of the devil itself. In their minds, it is a concept which is
not fully realized by any individual. The problem here lies in the
concept; the concept as I understood was defined as a person while the
concept for others could never be this. The devil is a personal being.
It lies within me just as it lies within the persons about me while
remaining external; it is something that I'm not but something within
me.
"But, maybe I AM the devil..." was all I could say.
"You're the devil!" Seira laughed at this thought. "Devil devil
devil!" she said, laughing at me, smiling, grinning impishly. "Oh, why
didn't you tell me sooner!"
"Not funny. Not funny at all."
She frowned at this. "Just because I'm laughing doesn't mean I
consider it funny in the slightest," she said with fixed eyes.
The problem I possess is being the daughter of one possessed by the
devil. Father was an act of raw balance; he took on a quality and thus
lost his life. One should not take on qualities in order to
accommodate jobs; however, the job was a quality. This quality can be
either good or evil, depending on the criteria being used. One can
look to a result of the quality, or one can look at the outcomes of
general situations which employ the quality. There was Father's death
before me...and then there are the general outcomes of passion.
Passion isn't a bad thing, though Seira says I think this only
because I am passionate and therefore unable to think otherwise. That
is true; I am a passionate person. One might say I am passionate in
restraint...and that can be a truth as well. I use the sword with a
type of passion, and that type I am not qualified to define. I cannot
define it, for it is Father's passion, instilled in me. He failed to
define it for me.
Father died in realizing his passion.
That scared me.
"He should have made it for me..." I sighed.
"What? The sword?" Seira asked.
"Of course."
"Then that means you would have killed him."
"That's not true! Not true at all..." I said as I laid my hands on
the sword in my lap.
"How is it not? Wanting the sword killed him, so the one who
requested it killed him." She shook her hair, quickly, vigorously.
"See, look at you! You know it!"
"Quiet! I would not kill him in a request! I don't ask much!" I
shouted. "The passion killed him!"
"Then stop being passionate, Takane Hibiki."
At seventeen years, there is little one can do but be passionate.
That pains me, though the direction is constantly different.
- - -
C&C is ALWAYS welcome. Please send it to sklathill@cephiro.com
or diamante@usc.edu. Thanks! ^^
Sklathill