;ranma.sosei.surface-tension

Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used here
are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her assigns,
and are used without their knowledge or permission. This is
fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose.

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	Sosei: Surface Tension

	-- siaru 01oct01/15oct01


Her brush emerged from the depths of the water, paused to sully
itself with mere hints of pigment, then ventured on, guided by
her sure and expert hand, to apply the color like a wound to the
pure white surface, leaving it glistening wet.

She remembered being a boy, nearly a man; in fact she would have
been called a man in earlier times.

She had, of course, some experience. Her father had seen to
that; it was a clan tradition. She remembered a night of getting
far too drunk for a boy her age, being welcomed by the wise
young woman, shown how to do things the manly way. 

She could only dimly recall the moment when they had joined,
though, the moment when she felt herself invading...

She dropped the brush as she flushed, then she blushed, feeling
her female body respond to that memory in a way that she could
never have felt back then, and firmly pushed those memories
down, ashamed of all the other memories that went with them.
That encounter had been volitional. What she had sought later,
though, would not have been.

She leaned over, brushing her shoulder-length hair against the
side of the easel as she reached to recapture the brush. She
rinsed it in the bucket, purifying it and reshaping its
disturbed bristle back to a form suitable for the purpose. 

Now she drew back from both men and women, reduced once more to
virginity. But... what is a virgin?

She paused in applying a deft stroke of barely visible color to
the paper, to wipe her eyes with the back of her free hand. This
line of thought was getting wet; she had thought she was past
that.

"I was raped by the act of making me a virgin. Now perhaps I am
being purified further; perhaps that is also rape."

She hadn't meant to say it aloud. She looked around furtively.
The various men in this corner of Macarthur Park were oblivious,
intent on their own pursuits.

The thick rounded tip of the brush, having deposited its
contribution to the paper, went back to the water to be
purified. She swirled it around a little in the bucket, brought
it up, rolled it to refresh the tip, then picked up more pigment
for another calligraphic stroke against the moist paper, where
the vague outline of an insect was embryonic near the top of the
uppermost of the pad of slightly-wrinkled sheets.

Amenbo is the name of the water-strider, she thought. What is my
name? What should it be? What name feels like me? What name
would I like to be?

Tatewaki... brings a sword... that won't do anymore.
I cannot be a Takewaki; I no longer carry a sword.
Besides, he asked me not to use that name anymore. Either of
them. Told me not to use the one, and asked me not to use the
other. 

He took my sword away. No, they took my sword away; all he took
away was its fossil remains, like a bone from a dead fish. How
impure.

The brush stabbed the paper, putting hints of ruddy spots on the
developing body of the insect.

He told me I'll be paid to stay here, away from where I
belonged. I used to be paid because I belonged; now I'm paid
because I don't belong. What is the borderline? Not to be paid,
I suppose. If I don't like borders, I'll have to pay my own way
somehow.

Her thoughts were getting discomforting again. She looked up
from the pad of paper bound to her easel and eyed those around
her. 

She realized that she was surrounded by the homeless. There, but
for a clan's obligation, its embarrassment... its face... its
surface... supported by the water even after I left it.

She shook her head, slowly so as not to dislodge the tears she
felt at the edges of her eyes. When I was a man I had no depth,
only skill with my weapon. Now I am a woman, weaponless, and
depth is all I have.

Why does he care about the name? Why do I? Not even a name
matters without other people. If no one ever wants to know your
name, do you have one? If you have no family, do you need a
family name?
Better to take a given name as a surname, then; at least it's
there for the taking, unlike clan names, which are jealously
guarded in clan registries to cast out the impure.

Amenbo is a given name; I can take it as a family-name. A family
of the disowned, a clan of the clanless. No clan, no
obligation... like escaping the water and living on its surface.

The parallel had appealed to her; it was why she was painting
one now, from memory; memory of home. Memory of belonging.
Memory of having to support the surface and hide the depths
until they vanished.

Now that I have depth, my own is all I have. Do I want this? Any
of it? Did I ever want to be touched like this?

But it was forced upon me... all of it. I had no choice. I
suppose I gave that away in seeking to force another, to take
away their choice. When I touched, I was touched. That's how the
water works. To touch is to become involved, ensnared, wetted by
another's life, colored by it. Now I'd rather not be touched; it
has washed away too much already. 
I am still being purified, then; and the only way to avoid being
touched is to give way immediately. Have it your way, then, Lord
Sosei.

She thought about that name, picking it apart and then putting
it back together, both its meaning and its history, seeking its
depth. Rebirth in abandonment? Sosei; it will do. Sosei Amenbo.
Or Amenbo Sosei, depending on which side of the water I choose.
As good a name as any when I don't want anyone to call.

She finished the area around the insect and brought up her ladle
for some preliminary wetting of the lower part of the picture.
It was an affectation: a ladle and bucket such as one used back
home to purify, now used as part of a watercolor kit. She knew
that it also represented the source of the water used to lock
her.

Why not; irony is my only weapon lately. I am being blessed by
the water, unburdened of everything I took for granted. I am
being purified with therapy, too; the process is far from over,
I can tell.

She put down the ladle and picked up the brush and used it to
take up another taint of color. A few sure broad strokes with
the brush delineated the barest hint of outline of the shape at
the bottom of the paper.

She smirked and gestured grandly at the bucket with the brush.
"The water is my weal and my bane..." She stopped herself short
and looked anxiously skyward, half-expecting lightning from the
dirty sky, no longer sure she was immune to its thrust. The Los
Angeles summer sky was static, cloudless and uninhabited, like a
painted backdrop in a movie about itself. It seemed to her to
have no depth. She turned back to her work.

No, no more, none of that. That was part of my last life, when I
acted out my part. Now I must live it, such as I have left. Such
of it as has not yet been washed away.

She brought up the ladle to wash her brush free of pigment,
allowing it to take another color, or just to sit, pure, idle
and useless until next wetting, as she sat thinking for a
moment.

She had been fascinated as a young boy by the seemingly magical
insect, enough to study its methods, its vulnerabilities. The
water-strider skated across the top of the water, living on
whatever became ensnared on that plane and trapped by the
stickiness of the water. The insect sensed everything that moved
on the water's surface, listening with its feet to the
surface-tension like a spider does to its web, but it was
thereby deaf to what moved beneath or above the surface.
Clinging to a plane, it could be captured from either volume
which the plane separated.

She returned to motion, dipping her brush into the bucket water,
and used it to apply more hints of color to the lower part of
the picture. She worked steadily; this part of the picture was
something she felt to be important, something that belonged in
the final image, but she didn't like it. She had to be careful
not to rush things. She distanced herself by deliberately 
thinking in a higher context.

I thought I could study theatre, but it puts one into the art; I
would have drowned there.

If the arts are expressions of passion, one can teach the arts
without feeling them, as long as one remembers how to feel them.
The visual arts externalize passions into captive arenas,
limiting their expression even as they enable them. I can deal
with that. Barely. Some things are too deep for me right now. 

I need something that's safe for someone who badly betrayed
herself by giving herself to passion, and now must avoid it for
the sake of sanity. While I am being washed, I must stay out of
the water.

Her painting, deft and haunting and delicate, was finished. She
stood up and stepped away, turned her back to the easel, fished
out a cigarette from her purse and lit it. She took a long drag
from it, expelled the colorless smoke onto the afternoon air,
and only then turned to try to see her work anew, to arrest it
afresh in her sight and try it for impurity of purpose.

It was as perfect as she could make it from memory.
Water-colored water-thin, water-born and water-borne, still
buried beneath the surface-tension, the koi was in the start of
the skyward leap which would put the insect lovingly and
securely in its hungry mouth.

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My thanks to prereader Rakhal on this one.

C&C welcome: ffml@anifics.com, siaru@stormbringer.org



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