~Hakurei Shrine~ > Kosuzu's Grand Bookstore
Weekly Writing Challenge Thread the First
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All of a sudden, sometime in summer, a strange restlessness suddenly began taking hold of Mokou, seeping into her interactions like slow poison. Gradually, her answers became more terse and half-hearted, sometimes to the point where she would cut off the conversation in an irritated manner and leave without a word. Occasionally, she would suddenly flare up at the smallest things and say hurtful things to me, and quickly I would grow wary around her. Awkward silences were abound as I struggled to find anything non-offensive to say, and all in all, talking with her became a much less pleasant experience than it used to be.
When I at last raised my fears to her over tea, however, she seemed a bit nervous, and then quickly reassured me, with a sheepish chuckle and a slightly more tender tone of voice, that I was not at fault for all that had happened recently. This frank admission of affection rather startled me, like a soothing remedy that dissolved all my pent-up pain, but what seemed to be a spark of the old Mokou disappeared the moment I inquired questioningly about her ongoing feud with Kaguya and how it had been affecting her; her face contorted into a flickering grimace almost instantly as she turned away, darkly muttering that she was over that issue. Neither of us resumed the dangling conversation, and when she took her leave there was only a burning hatred in her eyes as she intoned the words that shook me to no end.
?We should never meet ever again.?
Immediately, as if ashamed, she stumbled out of the entrance with heavy steps before I could summon up the composure to say anything; the mistake that I had made replayed in my mind to no end as I saw her disappear into the trees, amidst the falling leaves, the image of her back burned softly into my mind. In this laughable way our tea-time friendship came to an apparent end.
The tea on the table was still warm, the shadow of the situation hanging over me like a guillotine? and I could do nothing but calmly sip my cup of hot tea, swallowing back my tears. Everything at first seemed absurd and inexplicable, a product of the wayward meanderings of the heart, and in this way, perhaps to distract myself from my feelings, I started thinking about the issue which had no precedent, instinctively attempting to overcome my shock by casting it into a mold of cause and effect I was familiar with. Hurriedly, I summoned up the images from the past, trying to piece them together into some logical continuation of facts as I did in my study of history, and little did I realize that, by breaking up Mokou into a series of factoids and events, I had already lost faith in her as a friend,
She did talk disturbingly about suicide, for one, and then there were a few instances where dark passions would suddenly possess her while talking about Kaguya. There were rumors that she was becoming rude, brash, and disturbing among the travelers she escorted recently, and very soon these isolated events started to coalesce together with the painful memories of the past month; the intruding inquiries into her situation, the suggestion for her to spend her time on some new hobby, the attacks on her useless fixation on revenge and how it seemed to be eating her up from the inside? I winced at how trite and overbearing I was, and in this sort of fever I reconstructed her motivations and character from scratch, linking it to the coldness she showed towards me, the web of connections leading inexorably towards the end I had feared the most. By this point, the process I thought so meticulous decayed into the sham of making up of reasons for a foregone conclusion, and even the partially reassuring words she had said to me began to seem more fake than real in memory, as if she was trying to lead in politely to those devastating words, A feeling of quiet despair seized me so, and the more I wallowed in the past, the more my thought processes seemed to crumble into a mass of memories, hopes, and fears? how could I forget the long nights spent watching the moon together, and the boring and yet engaging conversations? How much I enjoyed those mundane moments? how inwardly glad I was that I finally had someone who could see me as a friend rather than as a person merely to be respected?
? how sad that all of that had already come to an end, in the most trivial of ways. Already, before I had realized it, the end of a season had already come; the autumn leaves now buried beneath the winter snow, in the long and painful wait for the coming of spring. Depressingly, I imagined that one day, I would soon be able to lose myself in my work and forget my troubles, letting my memories crystallize into bittersweet gems from long time?s past for the occasional viewing, but for now, I could do nothing but succumb to that wave of sorrow building up from within me for so long. In a cradle of tears and memories; the good and happy times, I staggered onto my futon and fell into a restless sleep, my heart bound up in pain and agony.
===
Amidst my restless throes and frequent awakenings, the scene that appeared before me reminded me of the night I met Mokou for the first time, while making my rounds around the human village. She seemed injured as she staggered out of the bamboo forest, her shirt and pants stained with blood. But when I rushed to help her, she did not say that she was fine in her characteristically nonchalant way, but instead, lashed out at me and shouted at me to leave her alone, shooting an amulet bullet at me to drive me away. Taken aback, I felt an overwhelming pressure to avoid getting hurt by her any further, to selfishly forget my worries and to walk on as if nothing happened...
? but under the gentle moonshine, as I saw her bodily wounds recover, the blood on her shirt being absorbed back into her body, somehow the idea came to me that perhaps the injuries inflicted on her soul, hidden for many years, were now at their breaking point. The everlasting flame of the phoenix, having far outstripped the limits of her human heart, seemed to burn her from the inside out, and how pitifully she writhed and how painfully she laughed, but her eyes seemed to plead with me to trust that she would be able to sort this out by herself and perhaps have those tea-time conversations with me again. One day.
The ⑨th Zentillion:
Maidens of the Kaleidoscope Weekly Writing Challenge
Subject: Endings
Tenure
By Jason ?Zentillion? Winter
So, the time?s finally come for me to make my exit from the occupation I had worked and lived through for nearly seven decades. An occupation that has put me through plenty of good times, almost as many bad times, and quite a lot of the in-between. The occupation that has garnered me personally and my place of work and simultaneous residence conflicting things; praise and ire, friends and enemies, fame and infamy; things I wouldn?t have any other way.
Well, at least now, anyway. When I was younger, during the earlier years, effort was something I usually avoided unless there was a threat, mysterious goings-on, or a challenge from someone else - anything that actually piqued my interest or just simply annoyed me enough that I would go out to put a stop to it and get some peace and quiet. Funnily, this usually would only happen several times a year so I was usually lulled back into complacency until the next time. But as I grew older and learned more about myself, I suppose my priorities changed a bit. I began working harder.
My late teens and twenties were only the start of my long road to furthering myself, I eventually was able to summon gods with relative ease, though it wasn?t until my early thirties when I had completely mastered it, and let me tell you, that took actual effort. If I had stayed the way I had when I was younger, I?d still just be resolving things whenever the mood struck me instead of truly fulfilling my duties and learning all of my powers to prepare the next in line.
The problem with that was, well, in all that time I shrugged off love and romance to relax or to train, usually once you hit your mid to late thirties around here (well, when you?re a human at least) you can pretty much only come to terms that you?re going to wind up an old maid, a metaphorical cake beyond its holiday of origin. Then again, with my job, I suppose having children by blood should have been out of the question. But then, I met him.
I?ll spare you the details, I?m sure you don?t want to deal with me talking on and on about every little intricacy of my love life, so I?ll just get to the barebones. I have my first child at 42, but what do you know it?s a boy. He, of course grows up to be a wonderful young man, no doubt about that, and I love him no less because of it. But he?s not, at least? traditionally going to wind up a shrine maiden. Besides, something about our power can only be passed on to a female in the family, which is kind of unfortunate, it would be interesting to have a priest for this shrine. Heh, instead, as a small bit of irony, he took after my best friend instead and became a magician under her tutelage.
At 47, that second child comes, and, there she is, the one destined to take the reins. She grows up to be beautiful, smart, faithful, and strong, just like me. Unlike me, however, she winds up actually taking things in a serious manner right at the start. She?s already summoning minor gods when I was only flying by my own power just before that incident with the scarlet mist that happened so long ago. I remember one thing clearly about it - it was annoying and I went off to stop it at the source. That?s all that had mattered to me then, because it was an inconvenience.
Would I have done things in a different way if I had all of my current knowledge and power back then? Probably not. I still would have gone to that mansion and stopped that mist before it became an environmental hazard. My friends agree with this whole-hearted and with confidence. In fact, most of the things I did in my younger years, I doubt I would have done them differently - well maybe by a few small margins, but that would have been it.
But, moving on, she was going to be the perfect successor. She even winds up with a daughter of her own at 19, and my granddaughter pretty much continues the pattern of beauty, smarts, and skill. I didn?t think I?d see when she went through the ritual to become the next in line. That was, until her mother, my daughter was killed by a youkai when my granddaughter was just two. I, her father, our son and son in law, my friends, all of us devastated by the news. Devastation became anger, and anger became revenge. When we found that youkai, we were going to do the sort of extermination that we didn?t actually call ?extermination,? there would be no returning later for it. This was going to be permanent.
My husband and my son in law found the youkai first, but they were not holy men nor magicians and were cut down with the same overwhelming hatred and fury our child and his wife had been. You can bet my son and I hunted it down, and joined by my best friend and his mentor, put an end to them. We were horrified that it had to come to this, but that?s how it wound up being. We promised ourselves to make sure something like that would never happen again. We made sure the orphaned girl would still have us.
We taught her magician?s magic along with the magic she would learn by tradition. Like her mother and unlike I, she?s completely into her studies, and considering she?s putting work into two schools of power and not one, it?s nothing short of amazing how dedicated she is. Perhaps part of it is also because we didn?t skirt around what happened to her parents. The only secrets we keep are those about what she?s going to learn later in her training.
Finally, it?s come to this point. We?ve set up the ritual just as it has been set up for every one in line before, to transfer my soul?s connection to the Great Barrier over to her own. It?s a huge responsibility, but she says she?s ready, and I can tell she?s completely truthful. Her brother and my friend help, having a magician along is help enough but with two, things are even easier. Her body and mine glow, strands of power and spirit weaving between us. Outside, the Barrier ripples just the littlest bit as it?s prone to do with the ritual.
Finally, all those strands have pulled over to her and are absorbed. The tenure of I, Reimu Hakurei, as the Hakurei Shrine maiden has come to its end after so much joy and pain, more the former than the latter, thank goodness.
Sect:
I see a lot of interesting stories here, so I decided to try something for fun, and as a challenge: write a coherent story, or at least scene, in two sentences. It's much more challenging than it seems.
--- Quote ---Despite her seeming composure, anxiety writhed inside of Kanako, twisting her thoughts with hesitation and fear.
When she saw Sanae in pure white, nervous but so happy, she realized that everything was fine after all.
--- End quote ---
AnonymousPondScum:
Aaaargh. :ohdear:
I was gonna write something for this week but the muse is thwacking me in bursts and every time it thwacks me I have this urge to rewrite things in a different manner.
That and I half-forgot about the whole thing until today and it's late and I don't want to rush it, much less sacrifice sleep for it.
I have a very rough draft but Hell if I'm printing it because it's a long rambly wall of text and zero actual dialogue. Now I want to do it in a totally different style. Bluh bluh bluh.
That much said, when I DO get it done, should I paste it here belatedly or in its own topic?
Iced Fairy:
--- Quote from: AnonymousPondScum on June 04, 2012, 02:55:34 AM ---I have a very rough draft but Hell if I'm printing it because it's a long rambly wall of text and zero actual dialogue. Now I want to do it in a totally different style. Bluh bluh bluh.
That much said, when I DO get it done, should I paste it here belatedly or in its own topic?
--- End quote ---
You should put it in it's own topic. Or perhaps save it for later....