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in_the_blue) wrote2008-10-25 11:53 am
in_the_blue) wrote2008-10-25 11:53 am
Entry tags:
A Distraction from Politics
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miriammoules challenged me to do another writing challenge, so here goes.Rules:
Fandom: any fandom, original or not. If you're feeling nostalgic and confessional, Real Person Stuff(TM) allowed too.
Word count: oh, let's don't limit ourselves. Go for it. Any length.
Main theme: Life is measured in song.
Ratings: No restrictions.
Duration: Challenge opens now (October 25) and closes at the end of day Friday, November 7.
Post your fics as comments to this entry but if the rating on yours is >PG-13, please post them in your own journal with appropriate flagging and link to your story below. Feel free to do as few or as many as you want, and if you see one you really like, be sure to leave a review or a comment. Everyone's welcome, so have fun.
P.S. Can't wait for Season Five of Lost? Write with us at
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815survivors.
1/2
Each silken string of the shamisen is pliant under your fingers; it pours its soul out to you at the gentlest tug of your fingertips or stroke of the bachi.
You know each song you sing by heart. You know the lyrics as if they were your own. You feel as though you've lived them yourself.
Your voice never breaks.
You're a goze, and you're not a goze. Blind from birth and orphaned at too young an age, your options have always been limited. Very early on, you began to learn the shamisen.
Your senses are sharp: you can feel the ground beneath you tremble when another approaches, and you can feel changes in the air around you. You "see" a certain aura for every living thing, and even soft breaths can be audible.
At the age of eight, you were teased for the last time about your blindness. The master of the local dojo saw you fight that day, and your life hasn't been the same since.
Masterfully trained for years by that respected teacher, you took up the kama-yari as your second instrument. In your mind it wasn't hard to liken each fight to a song, and in a short time you were as noted for your skill as a fighter as you were for your skill as a musician.
One day a man, Kariya Kagetoki, came to observe your dojo. His name meant nothing to you, but within a month you were pursued by the Shogunate, wanted on their side, needed in their employ.
You listened to their proposal. You reluctantly considered it. You refused.
Six months later, you refused again. You enjoyed having the skills you did, but you never wished to become an assassin. The Shogunate didn't like it, but you had nothing to lose.
Later that year, you met him. He approached you after hearing you perform, and he was kind. He was charming. You could hear his smile in his voice, and you liked it. You grew accustomed to his presence, to his kindness, to his aura. He respected you. He complimented you. He knew his boundaries with you.
The first time he kissed you, you'd been starting to wonder if it would ever happen. He didn't know the first thing about music, he said, but he came to listen every night you performed and you thought his voice was the sweetest melody you'd ever heard.
For six weeks you were happy. For six weeks you lived as you never had, and you loved him. You loved him when he stopped coming around, when he stopped showing up on nights you performed. You loved him for days after that, for weeks. You loved him when nobody could tell you what became of him, when there was no trace left of him. You loved him when you discovered you were going to have his child.
He never came back.
The child was a boy, and you had an undivided adoration for him from the moment he was born. You don't know which of you he looked like, but you suspect it was you. Being a mother was something you had given up much hope of before, but you took to it with the same quietly burning passion that had driven you with your music and your spear.
You had help but refused charity. The baby was yours, and you wanted to raise him to be strong.
He was just over a year old when the Shogunate came back into your life. This time there were no offers, no pleasantries, no requests. There were only demands, threats, and this time they took your son to gain your loyalty.
They got what they wanted.
2/2
The last task sent you after a group of three on the road to Nagasaki. A teenage girl, a ronin, and the one referred to as a vagrant.
You played your shamisen, the amulet hanging from it a reminder of the sweet son you couldn't be with, for two nights at the tavern you'd been pointed to before they arrived. You befriended them easily and started traveling with them.
You grew to like them.
It's possible you liked Mugen the most. Of the three of them, you felt he actually had the most in common with you. It was unexpected: he was rough and tactless, had no manners, and flirted with you shamelessly. He didn't care that you were blind. He watched out for you, but mostly when he thought you wouldn't notice.
He challenged you. He said if you were so content with the way things were you wouldn't sing such sad songs.
He was right. And you identified with him even more because the more time went on, the more it occurred to you that you had never been loved.
Wanted and maybe even used, but never loved.
Prodded by reminders of your son, you continued to lie to them. You nearly killed Jin. You hid the truth from Fuu.
You tried to ignore the change in Mugen's voice when he found your shamisen and staff and brought them to you, but you knew that everything had changed. He had found you out.
He was smarter than anyone gave him credit for.
You fought him, and he was thrown completely off-guard. He wasn't expecting your skill or didn't believe a blind woman could be so capable, and you almost had him. You did have him. It would only have taken a final blow, but suddenly Fuu was there.
Fuu in tears -- you could hear them in her voice -- and begging you both to stop, and it wasn't until you knew she'd flung herself between the two of you that you turned away, unable to go on.
You tried to leave town the next day. The Shogunate operative who'd been shadowing you under the guise of a pinwheel seller knew exactly what you were doing. The breeze made pinwheels sing under his words: Have you become attached to them? The child's life depends on you. Finish it by tomorrow.
And just like that, it seemed the pinwheels sounded different than before.
Maybe you'd imagined it. Maybe you'd simply realized what you'd been too stubborn, too naive, to see all along.
You were being used. You would never see your son again.
Again, Mugen meets you after nightfall by the river. Despite the ringing of steel and the rippling of water and the labored breath that comes from him, there is no music to this fight.
There is nothing to fight for. You've never wanted to kill someone less in your life.
When you both swing your weapons and it's him or you, you pull back on purpose.
Your song is over. You won't be the one to end his.
no subject
That's so painfully beautiful. I can't remember the last time I read something that actually moved me to tears. I know it's late and I know I'm a sucker for your writing, but this is so perfect that I can't imagine any other backstory for Sara and I can't imagine this having happened any other way.
Hand over heart.
Re: 2/2
if this is an actual character from the series you probably got to know this through the series itself but if it's an oc..well you pretty damn well captured how blindness works and how the other senses substitue it.
i actually heard some kind of soundtrack in my head while I read this. which is pretty weird and hardly ever happens.i can see why people love making rp threads with you. yay!!