Title: Amaranth

Author: Yasmin M.

E-mail: the_jentayu@hotmail.com

Disclaimer: "Shoujo Kakumei Utena" belongs to
Chiho Saito and Be-Papas, as well as associated
copyright holders. I only own this piece of fan
fiction in the most unthreatening way possible.

Archiving: My website by default; also
MediaMiner.Org, Fandomination.Net, Utena
Fanfiction Repository, and the list archive.
Others, please ask.

URL: http://craving.digitalrice.com

Rating: PG

Warnings: SPOILERS for the end of the TV series.
Overwrought metaphors and imagery. Implied
shoujo-ai of the Utena/Anthy kind if you squint
really hard.

This is a slightly revised, final version of the
piece posted to my LiveJournal.

-------------------------------

Amaranth
by Yasmin M.


_The End_

Her coffee is cold, its steam long since
converted to the afternoon heat. The air stands
still and sweats around her on the pavement,
broken only by the occasional humid gust as a car
rumbles by on the tar. She breaks the white skin
congealing at the surface of the coffee, and
orders another one -- hot. The waiter stares at
her, dark patches on his white shirt, smelling of
astringent pine deodorant. She knows that the
seam under his armpit will be stained yellow. He
eventually takes her order, meeting the eyes of a
waitress inside the cafe and twitching an
eyebrow.

She never drinks iced coffee, no matter how hot
it gets. Ice makes the scar on her belly itch.
She never drinks tea either, hot or cold, but she
doesn't know why.

The formica table gives up the skin of her
forearms with a moist, velcro-like sound. Its
swirls of green only makes the whiteness of the
papers on it looks even more stark. Empty. She
wants to fill the paper with the bold sweeps and
curls of her characters, but when she takes out
her pen she finds that she had automatically
reached out for the red pen. Blues and blacks are
the preferred colours of submissions. She touches
the whiteness, and feels that it should be
softer.

Low on her back, her spine tells her that she
should want the jerky dance of pen on paper,
pressing her forefinger into a lopsided point.
She knows she should want the pale light of a
tubular sun, hanging over a measured voice
humdrummed into her head. There are solemn
gauntlets to be faced there, flanked by books
bearing sigils of numbers and faded red dots. She
knows she can make a life among photocopy
machines and graffiti on study desks, then emerge
from a pupae of subway trains into a hothouse of
aluminium glass.

Her fingers, though, crave the scour of bark and
pockmarked bricks. Her feet desires to learn the
difference between cobblestones and marble, and
trip on steps worn uneven by millions of feet
before her instead of marching on concrete
clones. Her eyes long for lightning storms over
red deserts, splitting the sky with electric
rainbow, and the mercurial glimmer of snake-like
rivers. Her ears lust for drums and
indecipherable laughter and the discordant
orchestras of cities whose names she could barely
pronounce. She knows what she *should* want, and
what she *wants*.

She wonders why this seems so familiar.

Folding the mass of paper brings a bitter lump in
throat, coiling up from the pit of her stomach.
She drops them with a grimace, only to feel her
heart jump as they fall against a pot of globe
amaranths on the table. Her papers are safe,
though -- the water dish under the pot is bone-
dry, the flowers' magenta petals cooking in the
heat. She leans back with her eyes closed and
hates how lucky she feels.

Something skitters under her chair. She looks
down at two blue beads set into a ball, flanked
by saucers. It takes her almost half a minute
before she realizes there is a body attached to
the ball, outrageously small in comparison,
covered with mangy indigo fur. Head bumping
against her ankle, the animal grasps her right
shoe with an asthmatic squeal.

"I'm sorry, he's been waiting to see you. Mice
don't live very long."

The girl before her is slender and chocolate-
skinned, a honeysuckle vine caught in long purple
hair. She stands (why?) and gently (she must be
gentle, she knows, but why?) detaches the vine
(all this, why?). Their eyes meet and for moment
she thinks the girl's green eyes should be
obscured by the gleam of glass, her hair
constrained into a crown instead of flowing down
the graceful carriage of her back.

She breathes into the afternoon. The mirage fades
and she only sees a young woman in a white skirt
and a striped lavender-and-white blouse. Her
dress is fashionable, her hat is not: a shabby,
light purple beret.

She wonders.

"I know you... don't I?"

A smile rises like dawn on the girl's face, now
eye-level with hers. "Not yet, but you will."

She doesn't know why Anthy laughs, but she wants
to.

_The Beginning_

-------------------------------


Yasmin M.
http://craving.digitalrice.com/

"In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough scientific research to finding
a cure for jerks."
-- Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes"



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