Platypus 3333
platypus3333@yahoo.com
http://members.tripod.com/Platypus3333
http://evasource.novablast.net
Moonlit Shadows - Prologue
Note 1: I might not actually write the rest of this story, as I'll be taking
summer courses at Brown Universtity (Rhode Island... e-mail if you are
too!), and I might forget this story ever existed by August. Sorry! :)
Note 2: The first site above isn't Netscape compatible. The second has
three cowebmasters working on it with me, so it will actually be UPDATED
ON A CONSISTENT BASIS! Praise God! (Visit that site, tell your friends...
publicity is good stuff!)
Note 3: Please C&C... even if this looks like a final copy... please...
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I don't remember my mother very well, not very well at all. The first-
and most vivid- memory I have of her is when I was a baby, God knows
how many months or years old- that isn't very important, really. When
I close my eyes, I can still see her, looking down at me, looking down
at a little girl lying in a wooden crib, a smile on her lips, her large,
dark eyes shining in the moonlight emanating from the window. Brushing
back a strand of raven hair from her face, she would lean closer, tickle
my nose a little, until I would giggle and she would withdraw her hand.
She would just watch me as I slowly drifted off to sleep, her beautiful
features framed perfectly by the dim lunar light behind her.
Later, though I didn't realize it until, a few years later, when he felt
I was ready, my father took me aside and explained it to me, very calmly
and very quietly. The term "father" should be taken loosely because, a
few weeks after my mother died, "he" became a "she." Now, I don't mean
a sex change, or an operation, or anything complicated like that. My
father had always been able to change into a girl, at least since he was
sixteen or so (that's a complicated story): but, mentally, he had never
fully accepted it, never fully BECAME female.
And then... one day... after the funeral... it just occurred to him that
there was no other way to live...
I don't know why he choose that path to follow, but I like to think that
it was a way of showing respect to my mother; showing that, yes, indeed,
he loved her, a lot. Loved her so much, in fact, that he knew, deep inside
him, that he would never love another girl after her, ever: to prove it,
as if she were watching, one day he took a bucket of cold water, changed,
and decided that that was that, never again. Certainly, the occasional
splash of hot water would come about, but he was never truly comfortable
as a male, not anymore. It was as if his mind had flipped; just as he had
once sought desperately to stay male, he then did the same for staying
female. Eventually, being a man was so unnatural to him, and being a woman
so natural, he just could not grasp how he had ever been anything but what
he was: a woman cursed with manhood.
And... my father was excellent at being a woman. So graceful, so
beautiful- my father, always a handsome man, had somehow turned out
to be an astonishingly beautiful woman. Weird, considering that my
aunts, like Kasumi and Nabiki- they always tell me how my father had
been so loud, so clumsy, so silly all those years ago, in their youth.
Perhaps before my mother died, it was true: afterwards, everything
changed. As far as I can remember, my father has been so quiet, so
demure, so peaceful... I really can't imagine him any other way...
The only word that can describe him, really, is "feminine."
...I guess I should start calling him a "her" and turning "father"
into "mother," huh? Well, sure. I think I'll do that. That's how I
usually refer to her, anyway (could you call someone that looked like
THAT "father?")
My name? Sure. My name is Eriko Saotome.
Before you ask, no, I do not look like Akane Saotome; I look like
Ranma Saotome. So don't bother me with that later, I really don't
have the time to go into that. Let's just say... that genetics is
a very, VERY strange thing.