Week #68 - Origin
This is where I’m from, you think as you stand on the golden sand, feet wet as the tide starts to come in.
This is where your mother was born.
Your eyes are closed, shielded against the burning light that is the sun. The wind is blowing strongly from the east, flicking your once golden hair in wisps against your scalp and your clothes crackling against your wrinkled skin.
This is where your ancestors used to live.
You raise a hand to your forehead and slowly deep cerulean pools are revealed to the world, shadowed and tired but insistent. Your bones may be older than most and your flesh might no longer cooperate with you, but you’re not a cowed man. Tired and done, yes, but never cowed.
This is not where you lived.
Images race through your mind, full of sounds and smells and fleeting emotions. People laughing and people crying, faces of stone and flesh, cheers and shouts, failures and accomplishments.
This is not where you raised your children.
Soft cheeks you pinched like an old lady before you tucked them in, missing teeth under pillow, being the tooth fairy was always a much more pleasant and rewarding job than being a shinobi ever were.
This is not where you fought for good and life.
You learned to play shogi when you were thirty, a wish and favor for and old friend who couldn’t teach the one he had promised so long ago. You never were any good at it, but perhaps, that didn’t really matter in the end. You Learned and you Lived and you Taught, it is hard to do much more than that.
This is, however, where you die.
You may have been the king in the past, but that was a long time ago.
This is where your mother was born.
Your eyes are closed, shielded against the burning light that is the sun. The wind is blowing strongly from the east, flicking your once golden hair in wisps against your scalp and your clothes crackling against your wrinkled skin.
This is where your ancestors used to live.
You raise a hand to your forehead and slowly deep cerulean pools are revealed to the world, shadowed and tired but insistent. Your bones may be older than most and your flesh might no longer cooperate with you, but you’re not a cowed man. Tired and done, yes, but never cowed.
This is not where you lived.
Images race through your mind, full of sounds and smells and fleeting emotions. People laughing and people crying, faces of stone and flesh, cheers and shouts, failures and accomplishments.
This is not where you raised your children.
Soft cheeks you pinched like an old lady before you tucked them in, missing teeth under pillow, being the tooth fairy was always a much more pleasant and rewarding job than being a shinobi ever were.
This is not where you fought for good and life.
You learned to play shogi when you were thirty, a wish and favor for and old friend who couldn’t teach the one he had promised so long ago. You never were any good at it, but perhaps, that didn’t really matter in the end. You Learned and you Lived and you Taught, it is hard to do much more than that.
This is, however, where you die.
You may have been the king in the past, but that was a long time ago.