[Multi-Chapter] How to catch a Falling Star: or Stardust, the Tegomass Edition, Ch. 1
This is totally coldbloodedfire's fault for encouraging my brain's sudden need to write Tegomass fairytales. XD
(I can't say I'm too upset out it, though, as it's coming surprisingly quickly and is really fun to write. >.>)
This is based on Neil Gaiman's book Stardust (which, if you haven't read, you totally should), cast with JE boys and with a few of my own added twists, of course. I'm not sure how long it will be but this is what I have so far and I wanted to get it up in the hopes of inspiring myself to finish.
I do not in any way own JE or Stardust and all that other important disclaimer type stuff.
"Just one kiss," Takahisa murmured as they stopped in front of Maki's house, his cheeks stained pink and determination warring with the shyness in his eyes.
She laughed softly and shook her head, giving him a look that was almost pitying. "And why would I want to kiss you? You're nothing but a shop boy."
"Because I love you and I think you're the most beautiful girl in the world," he stammered, the blush crawling down his cheeks and onto his neck as he offered her the shyest of smiles.
"No," she answered simply, but had the grace to look flattered by his praise. "If I give you a kiss you have nothing to give me in return. Not that I couldn't get myself, anyway. If I kissed every boy who said he loved me and told me I was pretty I should have kissed the entire village by now!"
Takahisa let his eyes drift away from her face to hide his utter disappointment and to give his brain time to work up an appropriately witty response. It was times like these that he wished he was as skilled with words as his brother Hironori.
It was then that fate intervened in the form of a falling star.
"There!" Takahisa shouted, the loudness in his voice startling Maki into looking, despite her normal disdain at being ordered about. "That... that's what I shall give you for a kiss. A fallen star." He smiled, his heart telling him he'd found the answer to his problem (even if his head was telling him otherwise, and quite condescendingly so, since he was the one foolish enough to make such an impossible promise).
Maki scoffed and turned to him, one eyebrow lifted and a bemused smile playing across her lips. If she had been honest with herself (which she almost never was, as it was a dreadful habit to get into), she would have admitted that his promise, however impossible and foolishly made, touched her in a way. It was almost... sweet. "Fine, then. The day you bring me that star-- and not any other, mind you-- I shall give you a kiss."
"You swear?"
"Of course. A lady never lies," she answered, tilting her head back somewhat indignantly as she turned and was off with the soft rustle of skirts.
Takahisa stood in the road long after she had disappeared inside her family home, a small, hopeful smile playing about his lips. And then, as suddenly as he had made his promise he turned and headed off toward his family's farm, his head spinning with thoughts of how to find Maki's fallen star and earn a kiss from the only girl he had ever loved in all his 17 years.
--
"Mind your muddy boots when you come in this house, boy!" Takahisa's mother called out to him, drawing him out of his daydreaming and back into harsh reality. She gestured at the offending boots with the wooden spoon she had clutched in one hand and he stopped and did as she asked, not even the haze of young love enough to make him forget how much a wooden spoon to the head could hurt.
His father came into the room and patted his wife on the shoulder, smiling at her warmly enough to make her turn back to attend to the pot of stew she had going over the fire, but not enough to stop her from grumbling something about ungrateful children under her breath. "You're home later-- and muddier-- than usual, son."
Takahisa couldn't help but grin as he finished with his boots and looked at his father. "I walked Maki home this evening."
His father nodded and gave him an indulgent look as he took a seat at the table. "Well, then, go wash up for dinner and then you can tell us all about it."
Takahisa nodded excitedly before he scampered off, his steps as light as his heart felt with so many thoughts of his future with Maki dancing through his head. By the time he returned to the kitchen his family were all seated around the table, his mother looking him over carefully for any remaining traces of mud before she made a sound of grudging approval and moved to dole out stew into four worm-eaten wooden bowls.
"What are you so happy about?" His brother asked as he took a seat beside him, his eyes a little wide as he took in the dopey looking grin on his brother's face. He had the same look his friend Shige got when he looked at their teacher, Ms. Koyama, and one that reminded Hironori of the permanently dazed, stupid look one of the boys in their class had worn after he'd been kicked in the head by a donkey. He very much hoped that his brother wasn't going to start spouting off about how nice and sweet Ms. Koyama was or how pretty her eyes were like Shige did. It was enough having to deal with it from one person.
"Maki said she'd kiss me," Takahisa sighed, altogether ignoring the bowl of stew that his mother shoved in front of him as he stared dreamily off into the distance.
"Gross," Hironori mumbled, making a face as he picked up a spoon and started to eat, wondering when everyone had gone stupid and forgotten how entirely disgusting and boring girls were suddenly.
"A kiss?" His mother answered between bites of stew, her voice somewhat scandalized. "Really, in my days a girl would never promise such a thing at such an age. It's altogether indecent."
"That's nice," his father murmured, clearing his throat and offering his son a wan smile, memories of his own youth coming back to him at the look on Takahisa's face. "And do you, by any chance, have to do something in return for this kiss?"
Takahisa nodded and breathed a sigh, his face breaking out into a bright smile. "I promised I'd bring her a fallen star."
"A fallen star? Really... some girls think far too highly of themselves. Girls these days have no morals," Takahisa's mother continued to mumble, growing more outraged with each words she spoke. "I shall have to talk to her mother myself."
"That was a stupid thing to promise," Hironori answered with a loud snort. "What is she going to do with a fallen star, anyway? Girls are so strange."
Takahisa blinked, his brother's practicality managing to draw him out of his daydreams for a moment. "... she'll look at it, I suppose."
"And how are you going to catch a falling star, anyway? No one I've heard of ever has," Hironori pointed out around a mouthful of stew.
Takahisa had just opened his mouth to reply when his father cleared his throat and met his son's eyes across the table. "Let's not discuss such things at the dinner table. Takahisa, I'll need to have a word with you after supper."
Both boys murmured an obedient "Yes, Father" and turned back to their meals, although Takahisa barely managed to pick at his stew, his mind so full of thoughts of Maki and kisses and falling stars that he didn't even taste those few bites that he did manage.
--
Once dinner was through and the dishes were cleared Takahisa's father drew his son with him upstairs and bade him to pack a small bag with a change of clothes and a few of his more practical possessions. Takahisa frowned a little but nodded and did as his father asked him, a certain spring to his step as he made his way down the stairs to where both of his parents awaited him.
His parents gave each other a knowing look-- his mother's looking rather sullen as she often did after she lost a particularly long and difficult argument-- and his father turned to him and spoke, "Well, then. We'll be off to find your destiny."
"Destiny," Takahisa repeated, furrowing his brows a little in thought. He supposed that it was as good a word as any to describe a journey to go and find a falling star.
"Be sure to keep your jacket buttoned," his mother mumbled, her voice a little gruff as she thrust a small bundle at him. "There's food enough here for a few days if you make it last. You'll lose weight this trip, I suppose-- but I guess you've kept your baby fat longer than most."
"Thanks, mother," Takahisa mumbled, his throat mysteriously tight as he took the bundle and moved forward to wrap his arms around her in a brief, awkward hug. She didn't return it or even make a sound of protest as he pulled away, but then he hadn't expected her to. His mother was never the sentimental sort or much on affection. He could have sworn, nonetheless, that her eyes had a suspicious shine to them as his father took him by the arm and lead him away.
--
The night air was thick with the scent of apples and woodsmoke as Takahisa followed his father through town, his thoughts too centered on Maki and the soft pink flush of her lips and her dark, cascading hair to wonder where exactly they were going. Later, when he actually stopped to reflect on that journey through town-- the beginning of an even longer journey to come-- he suspected that deep down he'd already known where they were headed, just like he'd known in his heart how to find the place the star had fallen.
He became aware of his surroundings again only after they'd stopped in front of the old, crumbling wall that bordered the forest on the edge of town.
It was an old wall and there was nothing particularly special about it at first glance, and yet somehow everyone in Takahisa's sleepy little village (which was, aptly enough, named Wall itself) held it in highest regard. Midway along the wall there was a break in the stones just wide enough to admit a person, and through that break in the wall an average looking meadow bordered by a few sleepy looking trees could be seen.
Despite how normal this all would seem to an outsider, there was something special about the wall that even the least imaginative of Takahisa's village recognized, and for as long as anyone could remember all the men and boys of age in the town had taken turns standing watch over the slight break in it to keep curious children and bumbling travellers from crossing over it. Takahisa himself had stood sentry not two weeks before, a duty that he and his friend Yuichi had undertaken with the utmost seriousness. The biggest threat on their shift had been a group of small boys eager to get a peek through, but the two older boys had scared them off with stories of goblins and warlocks that liked to feast on children (the same stories that had scared their curiousity about the wall out of them a mere ten years earlier).
Now, standing in front of the crack in the wall with his father as the two guards gave them slightly curious looks, he suddenly knew what he was meant to do. In order to find his fallen star and win his kiss he was going to have to cross the wall.
Somehow this didn't frighten him as much as it probably should (but, then again, it is quite hard to frighten anyone made foolish by first love).
Takahisa glanced at his father and wondered what the other man had planned, since they both knew very well that the guards weren't going to just let him past. It was the whole reason they had guards, afterall.
"Evening Ken, Hiroshi," his father spoke, his words as easy as if he had been passing the men on the street or had stopped to chat with them in front of the general store.
"Evening," both men chimed back, and Takahisa was left to stare on in wonder as their conversation turned to rainfall and weather patterns and the poor yield for turnips this year, as most old mens' conversations did. It was all so startlingly normal that Takahisa was beginning to wonder if his father meant to lull them both to sleep so that he could slip through.
He was busy stifling a yawn when his father finally arrived at the point of the rather long and drawn out coversation. "You both know the story of where my boy is from."
"We've heard the stories," Ken spoke, his voice a little skeptical as he glanced at Takahisa. "But you know how talk around town is. I never believed it, myself."
"Well, you should." Takahisa turned to give his father a questioning look, wondering what exactly his father was alluding to and why he'd never heard it. He'd always thought that his mother knew all the gossip in town and she's never breathed mention of anything concerning him or where he was from (whatever that meant). "It's true."
The older men blinked, turned to look at each other and then back to Takahisa and his father, looking a bit paler than before. "R-really?"
"Yes. And now he needs to go back," Takahisa's father answered, his voice seeming to echo off the very stones of the wall itself, despite the softness of its tone.
Everything was suddenly very silent around them, as if the Earth itself were holding its breath. Takahisa, for one, knew he was holding his, just as he suddenly knew that the men would say yes--although not why-- a split second before they stepped aside to let him through.
His father clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a fond look before he turned his gaze to the break in the wall, a hint of longing in his eyes. "Good luck, son. Remember your manners while you're gone."
Takahisa nodded, his throat suspiciously tight as he gave his father a quick impulsive hug before he turned and hurried off through the wall and into his destiny.
(I can't say I'm too upset out it, though, as it's coming surprisingly quickly and is really fun to write. >.>)
This is based on Neil Gaiman's book Stardust (which, if you haven't read, you totally should), cast with JE boys and with a few of my own added twists, of course. I'm not sure how long it will be but this is what I have so far and I wanted to get it up in the hopes of inspiring myself to finish.
I do not in any way own JE or Stardust and all that other important disclaimer type stuff.
"Just one kiss," Takahisa murmured as they stopped in front of Maki's house, his cheeks stained pink and determination warring with the shyness in his eyes.
She laughed softly and shook her head, giving him a look that was almost pitying. "And why would I want to kiss you? You're nothing but a shop boy."
"Because I love you and I think you're the most beautiful girl in the world," he stammered, the blush crawling down his cheeks and onto his neck as he offered her the shyest of smiles.
"No," she answered simply, but had the grace to look flattered by his praise. "If I give you a kiss you have nothing to give me in return. Not that I couldn't get myself, anyway. If I kissed every boy who said he loved me and told me I was pretty I should have kissed the entire village by now!"
Takahisa let his eyes drift away from her face to hide his utter disappointment and to give his brain time to work up an appropriately witty response. It was times like these that he wished he was as skilled with words as his brother Hironori.
It was then that fate intervened in the form of a falling star.
"There!" Takahisa shouted, the loudness in his voice startling Maki into looking, despite her normal disdain at being ordered about. "That... that's what I shall give you for a kiss. A fallen star." He smiled, his heart telling him he'd found the answer to his problem (even if his head was telling him otherwise, and quite condescendingly so, since he was the one foolish enough to make such an impossible promise).
Maki scoffed and turned to him, one eyebrow lifted and a bemused smile playing across her lips. If she had been honest with herself (which she almost never was, as it was a dreadful habit to get into), she would have admitted that his promise, however impossible and foolishly made, touched her in a way. It was almost... sweet. "Fine, then. The day you bring me that star-- and not any other, mind you-- I shall give you a kiss."
"You swear?"
"Of course. A lady never lies," she answered, tilting her head back somewhat indignantly as she turned and was off with the soft rustle of skirts.
Takahisa stood in the road long after she had disappeared inside her family home, a small, hopeful smile playing about his lips. And then, as suddenly as he had made his promise he turned and headed off toward his family's farm, his head spinning with thoughts of how to find Maki's fallen star and earn a kiss from the only girl he had ever loved in all his 17 years.
--
"Mind your muddy boots when you come in this house, boy!" Takahisa's mother called out to him, drawing him out of his daydreaming and back into harsh reality. She gestured at the offending boots with the wooden spoon she had clutched in one hand and he stopped and did as she asked, not even the haze of young love enough to make him forget how much a wooden spoon to the head could hurt.
His father came into the room and patted his wife on the shoulder, smiling at her warmly enough to make her turn back to attend to the pot of stew she had going over the fire, but not enough to stop her from grumbling something about ungrateful children under her breath. "You're home later-- and muddier-- than usual, son."
Takahisa couldn't help but grin as he finished with his boots and looked at his father. "I walked Maki home this evening."
His father nodded and gave him an indulgent look as he took a seat at the table. "Well, then, go wash up for dinner and then you can tell us all about it."
Takahisa nodded excitedly before he scampered off, his steps as light as his heart felt with so many thoughts of his future with Maki dancing through his head. By the time he returned to the kitchen his family were all seated around the table, his mother looking him over carefully for any remaining traces of mud before she made a sound of grudging approval and moved to dole out stew into four worm-eaten wooden bowls.
"What are you so happy about?" His brother asked as he took a seat beside him, his eyes a little wide as he took in the dopey looking grin on his brother's face. He had the same look his friend Shige got when he looked at their teacher, Ms. Koyama, and one that reminded Hironori of the permanently dazed, stupid look one of the boys in their class had worn after he'd been kicked in the head by a donkey. He very much hoped that his brother wasn't going to start spouting off about how nice and sweet Ms. Koyama was or how pretty her eyes were like Shige did. It was enough having to deal with it from one person.
"Maki said she'd kiss me," Takahisa sighed, altogether ignoring the bowl of stew that his mother shoved in front of him as he stared dreamily off into the distance.
"Gross," Hironori mumbled, making a face as he picked up a spoon and started to eat, wondering when everyone had gone stupid and forgotten how entirely disgusting and boring girls were suddenly.
"A kiss?" His mother answered between bites of stew, her voice somewhat scandalized. "Really, in my days a girl would never promise such a thing at such an age. It's altogether indecent."
"That's nice," his father murmured, clearing his throat and offering his son a wan smile, memories of his own youth coming back to him at the look on Takahisa's face. "And do you, by any chance, have to do something in return for this kiss?"
Takahisa nodded and breathed a sigh, his face breaking out into a bright smile. "I promised I'd bring her a fallen star."
"A fallen star? Really... some girls think far too highly of themselves. Girls these days have no morals," Takahisa's mother continued to mumble, growing more outraged with each words she spoke. "I shall have to talk to her mother myself."
"That was a stupid thing to promise," Hironori answered with a loud snort. "What is she going to do with a fallen star, anyway? Girls are so strange."
Takahisa blinked, his brother's practicality managing to draw him out of his daydreams for a moment. "... she'll look at it, I suppose."
"And how are you going to catch a falling star, anyway? No one I've heard of ever has," Hironori pointed out around a mouthful of stew.
Takahisa had just opened his mouth to reply when his father cleared his throat and met his son's eyes across the table. "Let's not discuss such things at the dinner table. Takahisa, I'll need to have a word with you after supper."
Both boys murmured an obedient "Yes, Father" and turned back to their meals, although Takahisa barely managed to pick at his stew, his mind so full of thoughts of Maki and kisses and falling stars that he didn't even taste those few bites that he did manage.
--
Once dinner was through and the dishes were cleared Takahisa's father drew his son with him upstairs and bade him to pack a small bag with a change of clothes and a few of his more practical possessions. Takahisa frowned a little but nodded and did as his father asked him, a certain spring to his step as he made his way down the stairs to where both of his parents awaited him.
His parents gave each other a knowing look-- his mother's looking rather sullen as she often did after she lost a particularly long and difficult argument-- and his father turned to him and spoke, "Well, then. We'll be off to find your destiny."
"Destiny," Takahisa repeated, furrowing his brows a little in thought. He supposed that it was as good a word as any to describe a journey to go and find a falling star.
"Be sure to keep your jacket buttoned," his mother mumbled, her voice a little gruff as she thrust a small bundle at him. "There's food enough here for a few days if you make it last. You'll lose weight this trip, I suppose-- but I guess you've kept your baby fat longer than most."
"Thanks, mother," Takahisa mumbled, his throat mysteriously tight as he took the bundle and moved forward to wrap his arms around her in a brief, awkward hug. She didn't return it or even make a sound of protest as he pulled away, but then he hadn't expected her to. His mother was never the sentimental sort or much on affection. He could have sworn, nonetheless, that her eyes had a suspicious shine to them as his father took him by the arm and lead him away.
--
The night air was thick with the scent of apples and woodsmoke as Takahisa followed his father through town, his thoughts too centered on Maki and the soft pink flush of her lips and her dark, cascading hair to wonder where exactly they were going. Later, when he actually stopped to reflect on that journey through town-- the beginning of an even longer journey to come-- he suspected that deep down he'd already known where they were headed, just like he'd known in his heart how to find the place the star had fallen.
He became aware of his surroundings again only after they'd stopped in front of the old, crumbling wall that bordered the forest on the edge of town.
It was an old wall and there was nothing particularly special about it at first glance, and yet somehow everyone in Takahisa's sleepy little village (which was, aptly enough, named Wall itself) held it in highest regard. Midway along the wall there was a break in the stones just wide enough to admit a person, and through that break in the wall an average looking meadow bordered by a few sleepy looking trees could be seen.
Despite how normal this all would seem to an outsider, there was something special about the wall that even the least imaginative of Takahisa's village recognized, and for as long as anyone could remember all the men and boys of age in the town had taken turns standing watch over the slight break in it to keep curious children and bumbling travellers from crossing over it. Takahisa himself had stood sentry not two weeks before, a duty that he and his friend Yuichi had undertaken with the utmost seriousness. The biggest threat on their shift had been a group of small boys eager to get a peek through, but the two older boys had scared them off with stories of goblins and warlocks that liked to feast on children (the same stories that had scared their curiousity about the wall out of them a mere ten years earlier).
Now, standing in front of the crack in the wall with his father as the two guards gave them slightly curious looks, he suddenly knew what he was meant to do. In order to find his fallen star and win his kiss he was going to have to cross the wall.
Somehow this didn't frighten him as much as it probably should (but, then again, it is quite hard to frighten anyone made foolish by first love).
Takahisa glanced at his father and wondered what the other man had planned, since they both knew very well that the guards weren't going to just let him past. It was the whole reason they had guards, afterall.
"Evening Ken, Hiroshi," his father spoke, his words as easy as if he had been passing the men on the street or had stopped to chat with them in front of the general store.
"Evening," both men chimed back, and Takahisa was left to stare on in wonder as their conversation turned to rainfall and weather patterns and the poor yield for turnips this year, as most old mens' conversations did. It was all so startlingly normal that Takahisa was beginning to wonder if his father meant to lull them both to sleep so that he could slip through.
He was busy stifling a yawn when his father finally arrived at the point of the rather long and drawn out coversation. "You both know the story of where my boy is from."
"We've heard the stories," Ken spoke, his voice a little skeptical as he glanced at Takahisa. "But you know how talk around town is. I never believed it, myself."
"Well, you should." Takahisa turned to give his father a questioning look, wondering what exactly his father was alluding to and why he'd never heard it. He'd always thought that his mother knew all the gossip in town and she's never breathed mention of anything concerning him or where he was from (whatever that meant). "It's true."
The older men blinked, turned to look at each other and then back to Takahisa and his father, looking a bit paler than before. "R-really?"
"Yes. And now he needs to go back," Takahisa's father answered, his voice seeming to echo off the very stones of the wall itself, despite the softness of its tone.
Everything was suddenly very silent around them, as if the Earth itself were holding its breath. Takahisa, for one, knew he was holding his, just as he suddenly knew that the men would say yes--although not why-- a split second before they stepped aside to let him through.
His father clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a fond look before he turned his gaze to the break in the wall, a hint of longing in his eyes. "Good luck, son. Remember your manners while you're gone."
Takahisa nodded, his throat suspiciously tight as he gave his father a quick impulsive hug before he turned and hurried off through the wall and into his destiny.