Supporting Character, Week 2: Senbazuru
Title: Senbazuru
Author: inocciduous
Genre: Secondary Character Appreciation Day
Prompt: Fairy Tales
Word Count: 1,577
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Senbazuru: a group of one thousand origami paper cranes held together by strings. An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane. It is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person's wish come true. They can also be gifted to a new baby for long life and good luck. Hanging a Senbazuru in one's home is thought to be a powerfully lucky and benevolent charm. (Wikipedia)
Notes: All of my knowledge about origami is second-hand, the result of either friends' experiences or intensive googling. Any glaring mistakes are all my own.
She stands entranced, hair pulled diligently back by a band framing a round face alight with curiosity and wonder. That such small and delicate birds can come from the stacks of paper piled haphazardly at the old man's elbows is a miracle beyond her comprehension. His nimble, gnarled fingers fold the bright paper almost faster than her eyes can follow and she thinks it's magic.
***
Later, only after she has learned to bend light and twist matter does Miko appreciate the subtlety of shaping one thing, taking one object and forming it into another with no consequences that weren't planned. The artistry of it is appealing, so small and simple compared to the complexity of ancient equations twining their way around modern technologies. In her last year at university, well into her dissertation and riding a high she's not yet familiar with - caffeine, stress and too little sleep - she starts folding all of her papers. It's soothing, to take these formulas that don't add up and connect them across tesseracts of paper into a new kind of sense. After that last disastrous semester, the paper follows her everywhere and she leaves them behind her as she travels. Her crowning achievement is a senbazuru draped over her newborn niece's bedroom doorway.
Akiko is a small, wiggling mass that Miko understands in the way she understands the size of the universe; theoretically, but here in front of her it's a thing too big for her to explain. The way her tiny little fingers reach out to wrap around whatever is nearest with such faith and wonder is incomprehensible and bewitching. She can't remember ever being so sure of anything.
Miko is staying with her brother Koji and his wife Mai who live within a bike ride of the university labs where she works. Her experiments keep her out to all hours of the night - simulations and calculations that she can't trust to hands and eyes less skilled than her own. Sometimes when she comes home and the moon is high in the sky Miko will sit with Akiko and a bottle and teach her about the dancing particles that make up life.
And when, on a Wednesday that would otherwise only have been memorable for the way the network at the university crashes every time she tries to run a calculation across more than one database, her brother calls and speaks in a deep rasp that belongs to a man three times his age of things that don't mean anything to her - SIDS and doctors and there was nothing anybody could do. Miko feels the universe expand beyond her reach again, this time spinning out of her grasp with no replacement. She is distant and swirling, set free without gravity to show her the rules of this new existence.
She rushes home, the muscles her legs burning blood-bright as she pushes the pedals faster faster but of course it's too late. She bursts through the door to see Mai curled on the floor with her eyes squeezed shut and Koji clutching Akiko's blanket tightly in his hands, tears rolling down his haggard face.
The day of the funeral is, bizarrely, bright and sunny and although Miko knows that meteorological patterns don't subscribe to the whims of her feelings she can't help but wish that the weather would howl and rage to match the tearing inside of her.
She can't look at her brother as the priest lowers the small coffin into the ground.
That night Miko is restless, pacing from the kitchen to the study and back again, something deep inside of her coiled and gnawing. She doesn't know how Koji can sleep, but supposes he that he's so exhausted that he just couldn't stay awake any longer. Miko lets herself wander into Akiko's room, gently pushing the door open. She's startled, but unsurprised, to see Mai asleep in the chair in the corner, slouched uncomfortably onto the changing table the blanket that her mother had made for her first granddaughter clutched tightly in one hand and her thick hair covering tear-swollen eyes. The sight of her simple, heartbroken grief is more than Miko can stand, and she turns to go when she sees the senbazuru gently floating above the doorway, each gently pressed fold containing a bit of ruined hope.
Miko picks her way carefully through the overgrown brush to the banks of the river, the cranes held aloft in her hands, floating around her on the breeze. She thinks of the wishes and joy wrapped up in each one and the look on Koji's face this afternoon. At the edge of the river, the water numbing her bare feet she lets each crane go. They fly briefly, airborne on the moonlight before settling into the water and sinking, washed away by the river's ebb.
The next week Miko receives a job offer in an undisclosed location working for the U.S. military.
***
When she goes to Atlantis she doesn't bring any paper with her. It's been over five years since she folded her last crane and no matter how much her fingers itch for the soothing rhythm of it, Miko doesn't know if the delicately folded birds can bear the weight of her hopes and fears anymore. She doubts she'll have time to worry about folding paper in another galaxy anyways.
She spends weeks preparing to go, meeting with the other scientists and military offices accompanying them, trying to plan for too many unknowns to make any kind of a reliable hypothesis about what they could possibly need in another galaxy. She meets Doctor McKay who terrifies her and Colonel Sumner, who she fears in an entirely different way. It is, for the most part, however, like any other job. Her boss intimidates her, she has colleagues she cannot stand and those she can tolerate, she works late hours and spends more time discovering what won't work instead of what will.
And then she steps through the gate and she's in Atlantis and it's absolutely nothing like what she imagined. It's wonderful and it's terrible and it feels like this is what she's been preparing for her whole life.
She learns and she copes and she loves the city like it's her own, like they're all not just unwanted squatters, standing on the shoulders of giants. It's a heady thing, sometimes, to have a city like Atlantis under her control, to be able to tease out answers about life and death, the rhythms of existence and the secrets of a civilization greater than anything Earth has to offer. Yet in all of it's glory, it's a responsibility that Miko sometimes feels like they're not ready for. In quieter moments she sees the weight that Dr. McKay carries, the way Colonel Sheppard prowls the halls at night, compulsively checking and rechecking that everyone is tucked in safely. She was once unlucky enough to startle Dr. Beckett in his labs, and almost got an injection of whatever he had in his syringe for her troubles. If Atlantis is teaching them, it is also robbing them and she hopes that what is gone is not irreplaceable.
Sometime into their third year in Atlantis, Koji sends her a package (addressed to Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, USA - and she wonders how long it took her brother's small box to travel from Sendai, Japan, Earth to Atlantis, Lantea , Pegasus Galaxy) filled with delicate, colored paper. Her world is now filled with computers and crystals and abstract theories; the vibrancy of the paper startles her.
It's a slow thing, almost unconscious in it's hesitancy, but once she starts she's unable to stop. Her first crane she makes for herself, and the second for Akiko and they're both so imperfect and damp from the mingling sweat and tears that it takes for her to build them. She doesn't remember it being so hard to learn the first time. Once she starts, though, it is hard to stop. Her collection grows, and once she runs out of Koji's paper she moves on to old copies of Annales de Physique and the peculiar clear paper that they found stacked in reams higher than her head. There is one for every person who's lost to the Pegasus Galaxy since they came here; there are some that come quickly, the memories bringing a smile to her face and some that take her weeks to make. She becomes their guardian, their keepers, each precious life contained in the city held aloft by the wings of her cranes.
The crane tied to her desk lamp jerks on it's thread as the Atlantis lands in the water of what she will learn is San Francisco Bay, a snow-white bird that she'd made for Kate Heightmeyer, and when she thinks of Carson in the chair, of Radek's frantic Czech cursing as he tried to hold together the city and the look on Rodney's face as he leaves to go to the Hive ship, she knows that it is the memory of the lives contained in her hundreds of cranes that let them land safely.
That night, after the debriefing and endless hours spent in the mess hall speculating on what will happen next, Miko gathers up her cranes and heads towards one of the smaller spires. There are less than a thousand this time but she thinks that maybe what she has are enough. With the lights of Earth sparkling on the horizon, she lets the cranes go.
Author: inocciduous
Genre: Secondary Character Appreciation Day
Prompt: Fairy Tales
Word Count: 1,577
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Senbazuru: a group of one thousand origami paper cranes held together by strings. An ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane. It is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person's wish come true. They can also be gifted to a new baby for long life and good luck. Hanging a Senbazuru in one's home is thought to be a powerfully lucky and benevolent charm. (Wikipedia)
Notes: All of my knowledge about origami is second-hand, the result of either friends' experiences or intensive googling. Any glaring mistakes are all my own.
She stands entranced, hair pulled diligently back by a band framing a round face alight with curiosity and wonder. That such small and delicate birds can come from the stacks of paper piled haphazardly at the old man's elbows is a miracle beyond her comprehension. His nimble, gnarled fingers fold the bright paper almost faster than her eyes can follow and she thinks it's magic.
***
Later, only after she has learned to bend light and twist matter does Miko appreciate the subtlety of shaping one thing, taking one object and forming it into another with no consequences that weren't planned. The artistry of it is appealing, so small and simple compared to the complexity of ancient equations twining their way around modern technologies. In her last year at university, well into her dissertation and riding a high she's not yet familiar with - caffeine, stress and too little sleep - she starts folding all of her papers. It's soothing, to take these formulas that don't add up and connect them across tesseracts of paper into a new kind of sense. After that last disastrous semester, the paper follows her everywhere and she leaves them behind her as she travels. Her crowning achievement is a senbazuru draped over her newborn niece's bedroom doorway.
Akiko is a small, wiggling mass that Miko understands in the way she understands the size of the universe; theoretically, but here in front of her it's a thing too big for her to explain. The way her tiny little fingers reach out to wrap around whatever is nearest with such faith and wonder is incomprehensible and bewitching. She can't remember ever being so sure of anything.
Miko is staying with her brother Koji and his wife Mai who live within a bike ride of the university labs where she works. Her experiments keep her out to all hours of the night - simulations and calculations that she can't trust to hands and eyes less skilled than her own. Sometimes when she comes home and the moon is high in the sky Miko will sit with Akiko and a bottle and teach her about the dancing particles that make up life.
And when, on a Wednesday that would otherwise only have been memorable for the way the network at the university crashes every time she tries to run a calculation across more than one database, her brother calls and speaks in a deep rasp that belongs to a man three times his age of things that don't mean anything to her - SIDS and doctors and there was nothing anybody could do. Miko feels the universe expand beyond her reach again, this time spinning out of her grasp with no replacement. She is distant and swirling, set free without gravity to show her the rules of this new existence.
She rushes home, the muscles her legs burning blood-bright as she pushes the pedals faster faster but of course it's too late. She bursts through the door to see Mai curled on the floor with her eyes squeezed shut and Koji clutching Akiko's blanket tightly in his hands, tears rolling down his haggard face.
The day of the funeral is, bizarrely, bright and sunny and although Miko knows that meteorological patterns don't subscribe to the whims of her feelings she can't help but wish that the weather would howl and rage to match the tearing inside of her.
She can't look at her brother as the priest lowers the small coffin into the ground.
That night Miko is restless, pacing from the kitchen to the study and back again, something deep inside of her coiled and gnawing. She doesn't know how Koji can sleep, but supposes he that he's so exhausted that he just couldn't stay awake any longer. Miko lets herself wander into Akiko's room, gently pushing the door open. She's startled, but unsurprised, to see Mai asleep in the chair in the corner, slouched uncomfortably onto the changing table the blanket that her mother had made for her first granddaughter clutched tightly in one hand and her thick hair covering tear-swollen eyes. The sight of her simple, heartbroken grief is more than Miko can stand, and she turns to go when she sees the senbazuru gently floating above the doorway, each gently pressed fold containing a bit of ruined hope.
Miko picks her way carefully through the overgrown brush to the banks of the river, the cranes held aloft in her hands, floating around her on the breeze. She thinks of the wishes and joy wrapped up in each one and the look on Koji's face this afternoon. At the edge of the river, the water numbing her bare feet she lets each crane go. They fly briefly, airborne on the moonlight before settling into the water and sinking, washed away by the river's ebb.
The next week Miko receives a job offer in an undisclosed location working for the U.S. military.
***
When she goes to Atlantis she doesn't bring any paper with her. It's been over five years since she folded her last crane and no matter how much her fingers itch for the soothing rhythm of it, Miko doesn't know if the delicately folded birds can bear the weight of her hopes and fears anymore. She doubts she'll have time to worry about folding paper in another galaxy anyways.
She spends weeks preparing to go, meeting with the other scientists and military offices accompanying them, trying to plan for too many unknowns to make any kind of a reliable hypothesis about what they could possibly need in another galaxy. She meets Doctor McKay who terrifies her and Colonel Sumner, who she fears in an entirely different way. It is, for the most part, however, like any other job. Her boss intimidates her, she has colleagues she cannot stand and those she can tolerate, she works late hours and spends more time discovering what won't work instead of what will.
And then she steps through the gate and she's in Atlantis and it's absolutely nothing like what she imagined. It's wonderful and it's terrible and it feels like this is what she's been preparing for her whole life.
She learns and she copes and she loves the city like it's her own, like they're all not just unwanted squatters, standing on the shoulders of giants. It's a heady thing, sometimes, to have a city like Atlantis under her control, to be able to tease out answers about life and death, the rhythms of existence and the secrets of a civilization greater than anything Earth has to offer. Yet in all of it's glory, it's a responsibility that Miko sometimes feels like they're not ready for. In quieter moments she sees the weight that Dr. McKay carries, the way Colonel Sheppard prowls the halls at night, compulsively checking and rechecking that everyone is tucked in safely. She was once unlucky enough to startle Dr. Beckett in his labs, and almost got an injection of whatever he had in his syringe for her troubles. If Atlantis is teaching them, it is also robbing them and she hopes that what is gone is not irreplaceable.
Sometime into their third year in Atlantis, Koji sends her a package (addressed to Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, USA - and she wonders how long it took her brother's small box to travel from Sendai, Japan, Earth to Atlantis, Lantea , Pegasus Galaxy) filled with delicate, colored paper. Her world is now filled with computers and crystals and abstract theories; the vibrancy of the paper startles her.
It's a slow thing, almost unconscious in it's hesitancy, but once she starts she's unable to stop. Her first crane she makes for herself, and the second for Akiko and they're both so imperfect and damp from the mingling sweat and tears that it takes for her to build them. She doesn't remember it being so hard to learn the first time. Once she starts, though, it is hard to stop. Her collection grows, and once she runs out of Koji's paper she moves on to old copies of Annales de Physique and the peculiar clear paper that they found stacked in reams higher than her head. There is one for every person who's lost to the Pegasus Galaxy since they came here; there are some that come quickly, the memories bringing a smile to her face and some that take her weeks to make. She becomes their guardian, their keepers, each precious life contained in the city held aloft by the wings of her cranes.
The crane tied to her desk lamp jerks on it's thread as the Atlantis lands in the water of what she will learn is San Francisco Bay, a snow-white bird that she'd made for Kate Heightmeyer, and when she thinks of Carson in the chair, of Radek's frantic Czech cursing as he tried to hold together the city and the look on Rodney's face as he leaves to go to the Hive ship, she knows that it is the memory of the lives contained in her hundreds of cranes that let them land safely.
That night, after the debriefing and endless hours spent in the mess hall speculating on what will happen next, Miko gathers up her cranes and heads towards one of the smaller spires. There are less than a thousand this time but she thinks that maybe what she has are enough. With the lights of Earth sparkling on the horizon, she lets the cranes go.