challenge response NUMERO DIECISEIS
Title: A Still Wind
Series: Inuyasha
Genre(s): Drama, Angst
Rating: PG-13 for imagery
Words: 520
Summary: She thought herself free.
Notes: Response to a challenge issued by rianax, who I lurve for her deeply flattering comments and her truly excellent writing ability.
A Still Wind
©2005 by me
Kagura died, scattered the way baby spiders scatter, and the wind carried her aloft into the sky and a new life.
- - - - -
At only eight years old, Kamiyo was terribly frightened to one morning look in the mirror over the sink and see her normally black-brown eyes flash wicked red back at her. Horrified, she cried out and jumped back, then instinctively grabbed about for anything that would prevent her inevitable tumble to the ground. Her small hands flailed, knocking various grooming implements to the floor along with her.
Earsplitting shrieks of pain just moments later brought Kamiyo’s parents running in worry to the bathroom, upon the tile floor of which they discovered their daughter wailing and holding out before her a hand burned on the back by her mother’s plugged in and fully heated up curling iron. Her mother immediately forced Kamiyo’s injury under a stream of cold water from the bathroom faucet while Kamiyo’s father went about cleaning the disarrayed sink area.
Later on, after healing ointment and bandages had done what they could, Kamiyo bore a scar possessing a curious resemblance to a feather.
- - - - -
One time during her fourteenth year, Kamiyo awoke suddenly, gasping, from a zombie-racked dream. By the moonlight creeping through her blinds she espied a tiny creature spinning a white web between the ceiling and wall right above her bed.
The spider’s image reflected in her sometimes-ruby eyes and she felt crashing over her very soul waves of loathing tinged with fear, resentment awash with desire for freedom, a craving to break loose from her bonds.
The fingers of her burned hand flashed open like a fan and she snatched the spider as it dangled down by a thin thread. She crushed the little body in her fist, grinning maliciously at the feel of the guts squishing between the folds of flesh of her palm.
Something grim and morbid within her whispered that this was the only victory she would ever claim over a spider.
- - - - -
By twenty, Kamiyo is dancing to live, but doesn’t live to dance. Nevertheless, each movement is tragic poetry, her hands clasping fans that her nimble fingers easily snap open and closed, open and closed, like eyes, like doors, like windows of opportunity she missed.
Customers love her windswept grace and entrancing red gaze, which is nearly coquettish at the times when those eyes alone peek over the edge of an unfolded fan. The men who come in are sometimes nice, sometimes rough, sometimes repellent, sometimes attractive; but in the end she always goes home with Kumode, her daddy longlegs, a creature (for he appears human but his eyes are red like hers have become and she is certain that inside he is composed of writhing masses of demonic deformity) in whose web she was caught right out of junior high school. When she told him her name then, he laughed at her and renamed her Rakua.
Every night Kumode takes Rakua home and doesn’t touch her and allows her to touch nothing, not even herself. She cannot move; cannot leave. She can only wait for him to stop her heart.
FINIS
I would appreciate any comments the reader might have. Also, one may be interested in the names I chose and their meanings. For some exposition thereof, look behind
1. 神楽 【かぐら】 Kagura. Literally, "gods music."
2. 神代 【かみよ】 Kamiyo. Literally, "soul replace."
3. 蜘手 【くもで】 Kumode. Literally, "spider hand."
4. 楽空 【らくあ】 Rakua. Literally, "comfort void."
Series: Inuyasha
Genre(s): Drama, Angst
Rating: PG-13 for imagery
Words: 520
Summary: She thought herself free.
Notes: Response to a challenge issued by rianax, who I lurve for her deeply flattering comments and her truly excellent writing ability.
A Still Wind
©2005 by me
Kagura died, scattered the way baby spiders scatter, and the wind carried her aloft into the sky and a new life.
- - - - -
At only eight years old, Kamiyo was terribly frightened to one morning look in the mirror over the sink and see her normally black-brown eyes flash wicked red back at her. Horrified, she cried out and jumped back, then instinctively grabbed about for anything that would prevent her inevitable tumble to the ground. Her small hands flailed, knocking various grooming implements to the floor along with her.
Earsplitting shrieks of pain just moments later brought Kamiyo’s parents running in worry to the bathroom, upon the tile floor of which they discovered their daughter wailing and holding out before her a hand burned on the back by her mother’s plugged in and fully heated up curling iron. Her mother immediately forced Kamiyo’s injury under a stream of cold water from the bathroom faucet while Kamiyo’s father went about cleaning the disarrayed sink area.
Later on, after healing ointment and bandages had done what they could, Kamiyo bore a scar possessing a curious resemblance to a feather.
- - - - -
One time during her fourteenth year, Kamiyo awoke suddenly, gasping, from a zombie-racked dream. By the moonlight creeping through her blinds she espied a tiny creature spinning a white web between the ceiling and wall right above her bed.
The spider’s image reflected in her sometimes-ruby eyes and she felt crashing over her very soul waves of loathing tinged with fear, resentment awash with desire for freedom, a craving to break loose from her bonds.
The fingers of her burned hand flashed open like a fan and she snatched the spider as it dangled down by a thin thread. She crushed the little body in her fist, grinning maliciously at the feel of the guts squishing between the folds of flesh of her palm.
Something grim and morbid within her whispered that this was the only victory she would ever claim over a spider.
- - - - -
By twenty, Kamiyo is dancing to live, but doesn’t live to dance. Nevertheless, each movement is tragic poetry, her hands clasping fans that her nimble fingers easily snap open and closed, open and closed, like eyes, like doors, like windows of opportunity she missed.
Customers love her windswept grace and entrancing red gaze, which is nearly coquettish at the times when those eyes alone peek over the edge of an unfolded fan. The men who come in are sometimes nice, sometimes rough, sometimes repellent, sometimes attractive; but in the end she always goes home with Kumode, her daddy longlegs, a creature (for he appears human but his eyes are red like hers have become and she is certain that inside he is composed of writhing masses of demonic deformity) in whose web she was caught right out of junior high school. When she told him her name then, he laughed at her and renamed her Rakua.
Every night Kumode takes Rakua home and doesn’t touch her and allows her to touch nothing, not even herself. She cannot move; cannot leave. She can only wait for him to stop her heart.
FINIS
I would appreciate any comments the reader might have. Also, one may be interested in the names I chose and their meanings. For some exposition thereof, look behind
1. 神楽 【かぐら】 Kagura. Literally, "gods music."
2. 神代 【かみよ】 Kamiyo. Literally, "soul replace."
3. 蜘手 【くもで】 Kumode. Literally, "spider hand."
4. 楽空 【らくあ】 Rakua. Literally, "comfort void."