...Brain, you have some 'splaining to do....
Um, I have absolutely no idea where this came from, or what it's supposed to be. Can someone let me in on the secret?
The title is Tare, which refers not to the Japanese sauce, but to a term in measurement used for the weight of an empty container.
Once upon a time, there was a group of ordinary humans who came together to create something extraordinary: a Clan, a great lineage of exorcists that wielded such power that one of the great Scales of the cosmos, the Balance of life and death, began to tilt.
Of course, since power always requires sacrifice they had paid dearly for this moment of supreme power, with their lives and their sanity and their shattered dreams. The price had been terrible enough that some among their descendents had turned away completely from the soaring dream of altering the mechanism of the Scales. They sought instead the safety of the mundane, the human, the living.
Like the security of a window properly shut and locked, Ishida Ryuuken thought to himself. Or a refrigerator properly cleaned. Both had just been tended to, as he moved through the not-so-silent house, Uryuu’s somnolent breathing following him at every step. These days, the walls fairly radiated with the boy’s repressed anger, his blatant confusion. It could not truly be called quiet that way.
So perhaps that was why Uryuu did not stir at the turning of his father’s key in the front door, though he would wake to find himself shut in on every side. Not that the locks would hold him forever-nor was that their purpose. A lock, after all, is only there to slow one down, not to bind things shut for all eternity.
The key turned, and Ryuuken walked slowly down the front steps, sniffing at the moisture of the approaching rain storm that would have already been and gone by the time Uryuu awakened. He paused for a moment at the sidewalk, as the white robe glided over his shoulders to settle in place as if he had been born to wear it…which was nothing more than the truth.
And the Lord High Quincy stepped out down the street.
And once again the Scales creaked and tilted.
The title is Tare, which refers not to the Japanese sauce, but to a term in measurement used for the weight of an empty container.
Once upon a time, there was a group of ordinary humans who came together to create something extraordinary: a Clan, a great lineage of exorcists that wielded such power that one of the great Scales of the cosmos, the Balance of life and death, began to tilt.
Of course, since power always requires sacrifice they had paid dearly for this moment of supreme power, with their lives and their sanity and their shattered dreams. The price had been terrible enough that some among their descendents had turned away completely from the soaring dream of altering the mechanism of the Scales. They sought instead the safety of the mundane, the human, the living.
Like the security of a window properly shut and locked, Ishida Ryuuken thought to himself. Or a refrigerator properly cleaned. Both had just been tended to, as he moved through the not-so-silent house, Uryuu’s somnolent breathing following him at every step. These days, the walls fairly radiated with the boy’s repressed anger, his blatant confusion. It could not truly be called quiet that way.
So perhaps that was why Uryuu did not stir at the turning of his father’s key in the front door, though he would wake to find himself shut in on every side. Not that the locks would hold him forever-nor was that their purpose. A lock, after all, is only there to slow one down, not to bind things shut for all eternity.
The key turned, and Ryuuken walked slowly down the front steps, sniffing at the moisture of the approaching rain storm that would have already been and gone by the time Uryuu awakened. He paused for a moment at the sidewalk, as the white robe glided over his shoulders to settle in place as if he had been born to wear it…which was nothing more than the truth.
And the Lord High Quincy stepped out down the street.
And once again the Scales creaked and tilted.