![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsToday my weekly trip to Jefferson City wore me out, so I ended up getting a late start and was all bracing myself to fall short, but no, I pulled it out. I'll definitely have to stick with it tomorrow so I can reach the halfway point on schedule.
BTW, little PSA in case anyone else is using the NaNoWriMo site: when I signed up I set my time zone, and it didn't automatically adjust for the end of Daylight Savings Time. Since I tend to get my daily bit done and submit the new word count between 11 and midnight, it was counting me as a day late. I will try not to let it get that down to the wire on the 30th, but if it came to that and I hadn't caught the problem, yeah...
Anyway, in today's installment, Tamahome is depressed because Miboshi is a bastard. And you might know from the beginning how this is going to end, but when Internal Critic tried to say that made it a useless exercise, I didn't think so anyway. (Characterization and stuff! Tamahome deserved to get a scene.)
She rolled up her sleeves, sat down on the opposite side of the tub, grabbed a cloth, and started in on the dishes as well. “Do you think you can talk about it no da?” she asked.
“Actually I wanted to talk to you,” Tamahome said, sluggishly getting back into the work now that she was setting an example. “I want you to send me back.”
Chichiri dropped a plate with a sploosh! “Tamahome-chan...”
“You know why, and don’t tell me you don’t think I should,” he said. “It’s not like that Miboshi character is just going to leave us alone, and now that Mitsukake’s not here... The best thing I could do to keep Yui safe is run away, and I couldn’t even do that right!” He clenched his jaw against the threat of tears.
“There will be plenty of things to deal with that aren’t Miboshi no da,” she pointed out.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t take much of him.”
She couldn’t argue with that; one wrong word during one encounter with Miboshi --- or with Miaka, although Chichiri might be able to counteract one of her commands --- and the rest wouldn’t matter. “But even going back, you can’t know if it’s the safest way no da. If he went there after you, none of us would be there to help no da...” But her empathy power told her that suggesting nowhere was safe only heightened his stress.
“I have to take a bet one way or the other,” he said. “Racing for those other-gods’-whatevers...”
“Shinzahou,” she offered.
“Well, I think he’d stay on that and not take time to bother with me... You could check in on me, too, and then if something happened, you’d... You’d know to expect me,” he said darkly.
It was a reasonable enough calculation. The thought of sending Tamahome back like this, with his dignity brought so low, was hardly bearable, but even Chichiri couldn’t just dismiss the risk, of Tamahome having his free will taken from him again in itself, as much as of Yui or the rest of them being hurt. Still... “Do you really want to go no da?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I want to or not.” He scrubbed a plate conspicuously hard.
Chichiri gave one little mirthless chuckle. “You sound like Hotohori-chan,” she said. “...Although just between you and me your reasons are better no da...”
“Well, he didn’t go off and get himself into something like this.” Tamahome worked in silence for a moment. “He deserves to win.”
“Tamahome-chan... Love isn’t about what you deserve no da.”
“But I used to be so... I’d go off about ‘I’m the one who’ll always be there for you; I care enough to give everything I have,’ and then I was the one who took off and left her and let myself get like this... ---I know, we talked about it before,” he cut her off as she opened her mouth, “but... While you were still in the capital, she tried to tell me that if he couldn’t touch her... That if no man was allowed to touch her with love, that meant me, too. I said something about what if I touched her like a friend or a brother, and she called me a liar and ran off.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to---”
“But that’s the thing,” he insisted. “I was a liar! I’m just upsetting her because I can’t get my head together. She can’t trust me about something like that; she can’t even trust me not to go off and try to kill her...”
“You know we’d all stop you no da.”
“I hope so,” he said and sniffed. “I mean if you get those Shinzahou things, you don’t even really need me at all...”
Chichiri gripped the side of the tub. As soon as her empathy power told her that he wasn’t too fragile for it, she suddenly leaned out across the dishwater and slapped him. “I don’t ever want you to think like that no da! And if you think that’s the way to keep Yui-chan from getting hurt...” She was at a loss for words as to how misguided that would be.
“I know that, I was just...”
“It just feels that bad, doesn’t it no da?”
He nodded.
“You know,” she confided, “if it was Hotohori-chan, I never would have done that; he’d just think I was angry at him and feel worse no da.”
“He takes everything too seriously,” Tamahome said.
“So, what would you do back in the capital no da?”
“Well, since Dad lives there now I’d just go back home, I guess...”
That Tamahome of all people would sound so diffident and spiritless about being reunited with his family was a distressing measure of how depressed he was. “Promise me you’ll stay with your family no da.”
“Huh?”
“Well, you have to stay somewhere we can find you if we need you or you change your mind, and...” She trailed off. The real reason she wanted him to promise was that he needed supportive people around him, and his family might even be more helpful than the other Seishi, but she didn’t think he needed her to say it. “If I’m going to send you back, you have to promise that you’ll stay with your family, and that you’ll tell your father everything that’s happened no da.”
He gave a slight start, but quickly settled into an attitude of acceptance. “If I was staying with my family and they did come for me, though...”
“We could at least send guards to the house no da...”
He thought about it and nodded slowly.
“Promise no da?”
“Promise.”
Chichiri sighed. Under the circumstances this was probably the best she could do. “So, when do you want to---”
“Right now.”
She stared. “You don’t want to say goodbye to everyone no da?”
He shook his head. “It’d just be awkward. Besides, you’re supposed to check in on me every day, remember? I can always do it later...”
“Well, all right then... I will check on you every day no da.” She got up and took off her cape. The room was too small to lay it out flat, but she put it down in a rumpled pad large enough for him to step onto and cast the teleportation spell. “There, just step onto it and it’ll take you to your family’s house no da.”
He got up and walked around the tub, but only stood staring down at the cloak for a long time. “I think I need you to throw it over me,” he said.
“You’re sure no da?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Hesitantly, Chichiri picked up the cloak, but as she started to swing it toward him, his hands shot out like a reflex, catching her wrists and stopping her. They stared at each other for a moment before Tamahome pushed her away, turned, and threw himself against the opposite wall, screaming in frustration and beating his head on the timbers. “DAMMIT!!!”
“Tamahome-chan!” As she rushed to take hold of him, she remembered that Miboshi had said one thing to him during the battle before Chiriko interfered: “Don’t be leaving us, Tamahome.”
She pulled him away from the wall, and he whipped around and seized her by the shoulders. “You can tell me to do something if he’s not here, right??” he demanded. “You can tell me to go back, right??”
She recoiled. It had been hard enough for her just to lay out the cape for him to go by his own choice. To make it an irresistible order was another thing altogether. Barely even meaning to, she shook her head.
“Why?? I’m telling you, I want you to do it!”
“But if it’s me telling you to---”
“You can’t take away free will I don’t have,” he said bitterly.
“That doesn’t mean I have to be the one who does things like that no da!” she insisted. Her sad and angry face told him it was no use arguing. “I don’t know if it would work anyway no da.”
He let her go and dropped himself back to a seat exhaustedly. “You don’t actually want me to go; that makes a difference, too...”
“I would hope it doesn’t, but it might no da,” she admitted.
“Maybe I should just stab a stick into my ears,” he said.
“It wouldn’t help; it doesn’t work like that no da,” Chichiri told him, settling back down to the dishes.
“How does it work, then?”
“Something about the sound travelling through the air and hitting your whole body; it’s totally weird no da.”
He finally picked up the rag again, and the two of them washed the dwindling pile of dishes in silence for awhile.
“When we’re done here, the others went up on the deck to watch the snow no da,” Chichiri finally said. “Yui-chan wanted me to bring you a coat so you could go too no da.”
He nodded slowly, but it was a long moment before he spoke. “Is there a mark on my head? Where I hit it?” he asked.
She looked. “We can cover it up with a hat no da.”
*******
Up on the deck, the sky had turned dark, but patches of stars and a round bright moon were visible through the patchy clouds, and the sailors had set up lanterns. Large, light flakes wafted down through the pools of light and dusted the deck. As Yui watched it fall, it reminded her of winter in Japan and Christmastime, but the others regarded it with such awe that she couldn’t help feeling bemused. Hotohori tried to catch falling flakes on his hands and look at the lacy crystals before they melted, and Chiriko stooped and gathered it up in his hands, although it lay so thinly on the deck that he had to sweep up a wide arc.
“It’s because it almost never snows in Konan,” Nuriko told her, apprently noticing the look on her face as she watched them. “Maybe every year or two, in the dead of winter, or a little more in the northern part of the country, but it never stays on the ground.”
“And up here it isn’t even winter,” the ship’s captain added. “Good thing, too; that time of year this far north, we’d have to worry about the river icing up.”
PS: The way Chichiri talks is another thing I wouldn't do again, at least not without some ground rules that could keep it both reasonably consistent and moderated to a manageable level (say, only simple declarative sentences), but it was already so well established, I'm stuck with it.
BTW, little PSA in case anyone else is using the NaNoWriMo site: when I signed up I set my time zone, and it didn't automatically adjust for the end of Daylight Savings Time. Since I tend to get my daily bit done and submit the new word count between 11 and midnight, it was counting me as a day late. I will try not to let it get that down to the wire on the 30th, but if it came to that and I hadn't caught the problem, yeah...
Anyway, in today's installment, Tamahome is depressed because Miboshi is a bastard. And you might know from the beginning how this is going to end, but when Internal Critic tried to say that made it a useless exercise, I didn't think so anyway. (Characterization and stuff! Tamahome deserved to get a scene.)
23439 ★ 50000 (46.88%)
She rolled up her sleeves, sat down on the opposite side of the tub, grabbed a cloth, and started in on the dishes as well. “Do you think you can talk about it no da?” she asked.
“Actually I wanted to talk to you,” Tamahome said, sluggishly getting back into the work now that she was setting an example. “I want you to send me back.”
Chichiri dropped a plate with a sploosh! “Tamahome-chan...”
“You know why, and don’t tell me you don’t think I should,” he said. “It’s not like that Miboshi character is just going to leave us alone, and now that Mitsukake’s not here... The best thing I could do to keep Yui safe is run away, and I couldn’t even do that right!” He clenched his jaw against the threat of tears.
“There will be plenty of things to deal with that aren’t Miboshi no da,” she pointed out.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t take much of him.”
She couldn’t argue with that; one wrong word during one encounter with Miboshi --- or with Miaka, although Chichiri might be able to counteract one of her commands --- and the rest wouldn’t matter. “But even going back, you can’t know if it’s the safest way no da. If he went there after you, none of us would be there to help no da...” But her empathy power told her that suggesting nowhere was safe only heightened his stress.
“I have to take a bet one way or the other,” he said. “Racing for those other-gods’-whatevers...”
“Shinzahou,” she offered.
“Well, I think he’d stay on that and not take time to bother with me... You could check in on me, too, and then if something happened, you’d... You’d know to expect me,” he said darkly.
It was a reasonable enough calculation. The thought of sending Tamahome back like this, with his dignity brought so low, was hardly bearable, but even Chichiri couldn’t just dismiss the risk, of Tamahome having his free will taken from him again in itself, as much as of Yui or the rest of them being hurt. Still... “Do you really want to go no da?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I want to or not.” He scrubbed a plate conspicuously hard.
Chichiri gave one little mirthless chuckle. “You sound like Hotohori-chan,” she said. “...Although just between you and me your reasons are better no da...”
“Well, he didn’t go off and get himself into something like this.” Tamahome worked in silence for a moment. “He deserves to win.”
“Tamahome-chan... Love isn’t about what you deserve no da.”
“But I used to be so... I’d go off about ‘I’m the one who’ll always be there for you; I care enough to give everything I have,’ and then I was the one who took off and left her and let myself get like this... ---I know, we talked about it before,” he cut her off as she opened her mouth, “but... While you were still in the capital, she tried to tell me that if he couldn’t touch her... That if no man was allowed to touch her with love, that meant me, too. I said something about what if I touched her like a friend or a brother, and she called me a liar and ran off.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to---”
“But that’s the thing,” he insisted. “I was a liar! I’m just upsetting her because I can’t get my head together. She can’t trust me about something like that; she can’t even trust me not to go off and try to kill her...”
“You know we’d all stop you no da.”
“I hope so,” he said and sniffed. “I mean if you get those Shinzahou things, you don’t even really need me at all...”
Chichiri gripped the side of the tub. As soon as her empathy power told her that he wasn’t too fragile for it, she suddenly leaned out across the dishwater and slapped him. “I don’t ever want you to think like that no da! And if you think that’s the way to keep Yui-chan from getting hurt...” She was at a loss for words as to how misguided that would be.
“I know that, I was just...”
“It just feels that bad, doesn’t it no da?”
He nodded.
“You know,” she confided, “if it was Hotohori-chan, I never would have done that; he’d just think I was angry at him and feel worse no da.”
“He takes everything too seriously,” Tamahome said.
“So, what would you do back in the capital no da?”
“Well, since Dad lives there now I’d just go back home, I guess...”
That Tamahome of all people would sound so diffident and spiritless about being reunited with his family was a distressing measure of how depressed he was. “Promise me you’ll stay with your family no da.”
“Huh?”
“Well, you have to stay somewhere we can find you if we need you or you change your mind, and...” She trailed off. The real reason she wanted him to promise was that he needed supportive people around him, and his family might even be more helpful than the other Seishi, but she didn’t think he needed her to say it. “If I’m going to send you back, you have to promise that you’ll stay with your family, and that you’ll tell your father everything that’s happened no da.”
He gave a slight start, but quickly settled into an attitude of acceptance. “If I was staying with my family and they did come for me, though...”
“We could at least send guards to the house no da...”
He thought about it and nodded slowly.
“Promise no da?”
“Promise.”
Chichiri sighed. Under the circumstances this was probably the best she could do. “So, when do you want to---”
“Right now.”
She stared. “You don’t want to say goodbye to everyone no da?”
He shook his head. “It’d just be awkward. Besides, you’re supposed to check in on me every day, remember? I can always do it later...”
“Well, all right then... I will check on you every day no da.” She got up and took off her cape. The room was too small to lay it out flat, but she put it down in a rumpled pad large enough for him to step onto and cast the teleportation spell. “There, just step onto it and it’ll take you to your family’s house no da.”
He got up and walked around the tub, but only stood staring down at the cloak for a long time. “I think I need you to throw it over me,” he said.
“You’re sure no da?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Hesitantly, Chichiri picked up the cloak, but as she started to swing it toward him, his hands shot out like a reflex, catching her wrists and stopping her. They stared at each other for a moment before Tamahome pushed her away, turned, and threw himself against the opposite wall, screaming in frustration and beating his head on the timbers. “DAMMIT!!!”
“Tamahome-chan!” As she rushed to take hold of him, she remembered that Miboshi had said one thing to him during the battle before Chiriko interfered: “Don’t be leaving us, Tamahome.”
She pulled him away from the wall, and he whipped around and seized her by the shoulders. “You can tell me to do something if he’s not here, right??” he demanded. “You can tell me to go back, right??”
She recoiled. It had been hard enough for her just to lay out the cape for him to go by his own choice. To make it an irresistible order was another thing altogether. Barely even meaning to, she shook her head.
“Why?? I’m telling you, I want you to do it!”
“But if it’s me telling you to---”
“You can’t take away free will I don’t have,” he said bitterly.
“That doesn’t mean I have to be the one who does things like that no da!” she insisted. Her sad and angry face told him it was no use arguing. “I don’t know if it would work anyway no da.”
He let her go and dropped himself back to a seat exhaustedly. “You don’t actually want me to go; that makes a difference, too...”
“I would hope it doesn’t, but it might no da,” she admitted.
“Maybe I should just stab a stick into my ears,” he said.
“It wouldn’t help; it doesn’t work like that no da,” Chichiri told him, settling back down to the dishes.
“How does it work, then?”
“Something about the sound travelling through the air and hitting your whole body; it’s totally weird no da.”
He finally picked up the rag again, and the two of them washed the dwindling pile of dishes in silence for awhile.
“When we’re done here, the others went up on the deck to watch the snow no da,” Chichiri finally said. “Yui-chan wanted me to bring you a coat so you could go too no da.”
He nodded slowly, but it was a long moment before he spoke. “Is there a mark on my head? Where I hit it?” he asked.
She looked. “We can cover it up with a hat no da.”
*******
Up on the deck, the sky had turned dark, but patches of stars and a round bright moon were visible through the patchy clouds, and the sailors had set up lanterns. Large, light flakes wafted down through the pools of light and dusted the deck. As Yui watched it fall, it reminded her of winter in Japan and Christmastime, but the others regarded it with such awe that she couldn’t help feeling bemused. Hotohori tried to catch falling flakes on his hands and look at the lacy crystals before they melted, and Chiriko stooped and gathered it up in his hands, although it lay so thinly on the deck that he had to sweep up a wide arc.
“It’s because it almost never snows in Konan,” Nuriko told her, apprently noticing the look on her face as she watched them. “Maybe every year or two, in the dead of winter, or a little more in the northern part of the country, but it never stays on the ground.”
“And up here it isn’t even winter,” the ship’s captain added. “Good thing, too; that time of year this far north, we’d have to worry about the river icing up.”
PS: The way Chichiri talks is another thing I wouldn't do again, at least not without some ground rules that could keep it both reasonably consistent and moderated to a manageable level (say, only simple declarative sentences), but it was already so well established, I'm stuck with it.
