GB drabbles
Sep. 18th, 2003 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaOkay, let's try this again.
0.
Ginji doesn't remember his first step outside. It should have felt momentous – like falling off a cliff – but his eyes were dazzled with dreams, and there was no lintel to speak of. Mugenjou blurred into mundane slums when he wasn't looking, which then became warmth and light and working cars and the music of happy impetuous crowds.
That's how easy it was, to discard history and be born anew.
He does remember new boots, sometime that week. "Plenty of footwork in this job," Ban says, co-opting his laces. And Ginji, trying not to bounce on his heels, thinking: Ready.
Ready.
i.
Ban is charming when he wants to be; he's clever and has a way with words, spinning out guarantees of successful retrieval to befuddled potential clients. To Ginji it looks like magic. Something from nothing – not so different from what Ban does with a glance, every human desire or fear unravelling in his blue eyes, quicksand mirages that shatter like glass.
(Ban corrects him, tells Ginji he's making a place for himself – for them – out of their combined pride and effort. No magic involved. But perhaps he doesn't believe it: they were once strangers, and now they have each other.)
ii.
What Ban dreams sometimes: sense impressions. A dim parlor, redolent of bergamot and lemon tea. Always a little too warm. Wavering shadows of lace curtains.
What he dreams: hands shuffling the oracle deck, veined and dark-spotted with age. The exhausted cards fall with a sound like rain. She'd told his fortune long ago, decades before his birth, and laid his fate at the altar of the pinwheeling stars. This he knew before a word ever passed between them. Understanding was written in his sursurrating blood, in her blue eyes.
"Do you think you're strong, boy? Tell me what you dream."
iii.
Hevn has a ringtone for each subcontractor, former client, and contact category; the sound is how she remembers.
Basically she's on 24-hour call. If it's not arranging interviews or following up on cases, it's answering ads. Or networking. A sexy phone manner nets surprisingly good results. The boys (that's how she thinks of them, with a note of motherly affection lacking in their face-to-face interaction) accuse her of skimming off the top, and see nothing of her hard work. She bitches them out, but expects them only to succeed.
Push comes to shove, jobs equal food for everyone. It's that simple.
iv.
Shido had said simply: "I will follow you." He rarely spoke, in those days, and his words meant everything.
Kazuki had knelt, graceful in princely fealty.
MakubeX had begged to join Volts, eyes wide and shining, and none could refuse him. He rose through the ranks, became indispensable, honoured.
Masaki was always there, a pillar of strength at his back.
Their belief and that of others made him what he was: emperor, nearly a god. He brought harsh justice to Mugenjou. Thunderstorms caused his name to be invoked, in terror and respect.
He hardly understood why his lands seemed barren.
v.
Paul likes his life organised. Coffee in the morning, paper during the day. Natsumi, Rena, an occasional customer. The blessed quiet.
Then there's the dreaded duo. Paul kicks them out when their tab runs too long, and inevitably the west wind blows them back in the door, with gusts of rain and a little bit of money to tide things over. Never enough, but he takes what he can. A man has his responsibilities.
One such responsibility lies under his counter, magnetised data enclosed in unassuming plastic. Paul glances at it occasionally. Then he closes the drawer again and waits.
vii.
Afterward comes mundanity: to wit, obtaining a set of wheels. Ginji watches in wonder as Ban tinkers, cursing and prodding irritably at his glasses when they slip down. It leaves motor oil smudges on his nose.
"Will it really run?" he asks. But Ban can do anything.
"The purpose of a retrieval specialist," Ban quotes absently, "is to fit the last piece back into the puzzle. Because until that screw is found, there's no telling what the nitro tank will – aha!" He steps back, triumphant. "Number two wrench, Ginji."
Ginji complies. "What's nitro?"
"Oh, you'll see," Ban says. "You'll see."
viii.
On summer nights Madoka plays for Shido in her garden: Paganini, Tchaikovsky, folksongs that catch her fancy. Shido sits with his back against a tree trunk, and his animals creep stealthily close through the grass, drawn by the music. Even the lion lies quiescent at her feet, golden eyes hooded and attentive.
A poet would not lack metaphor, but mythmaking (firelight casting flickering shadows over a cave wall) is an all-too-human endeavour. Shido has no use for allegorical praise. To him as to his beasts, these things are singular and beloved: darkness, the sweet complaint of one violin, and she.
xiv.
Despite what outsiders assume, Fuuchouin School was never intended for women: it is not taught to them.
Kazuki learnt as a child that there are two sides to every coin. Light/dark, male/female, yin/yang, hidden/apparent. His lessons trained him in self-possession and equilibrium, in willow-strength and silk-strength, in the intellectual knife's edge of paradox.
What he was not taught was that there was a hidden side to Fuuchouin as well; not until the black thread tore his childhood apart, in an hour of blood and terror.
It took him years of darkness, afterward, before he was reconciled again to the light.
...Uh. (Really obvious by this point.) Whoever gets it first gets acookiedrabble? ^^;
0.
Ginji doesn't remember his first step outside. It should have felt momentous – like falling off a cliff – but his eyes were dazzled with dreams, and there was no lintel to speak of. Mugenjou blurred into mundane slums when he wasn't looking, which then became warmth and light and working cars and the music of happy impetuous crowds.
That's how easy it was, to discard history and be born anew.
He does remember new boots, sometime that week. "Plenty of footwork in this job," Ban says, co-opting his laces. And Ginji, trying not to bounce on his heels, thinking: Ready.
Ready.
i.
Ban is charming when he wants to be; he's clever and has a way with words, spinning out guarantees of successful retrieval to befuddled potential clients. To Ginji it looks like magic. Something from nothing – not so different from what Ban does with a glance, every human desire or fear unravelling in his blue eyes, quicksand mirages that shatter like glass.
(Ban corrects him, tells Ginji he's making a place for himself – for them – out of their combined pride and effort. No magic involved. But perhaps he doesn't believe it: they were once strangers, and now they have each other.)
ii.
What Ban dreams sometimes: sense impressions. A dim parlor, redolent of bergamot and lemon tea. Always a little too warm. Wavering shadows of lace curtains.
What he dreams: hands shuffling the oracle deck, veined and dark-spotted with age. The exhausted cards fall with a sound like rain. She'd told his fortune long ago, decades before his birth, and laid his fate at the altar of the pinwheeling stars. This he knew before a word ever passed between them. Understanding was written in his sursurrating blood, in her blue eyes.
"Do you think you're strong, boy? Tell me what you dream."
iii.
Hevn has a ringtone for each subcontractor, former client, and contact category; the sound is how she remembers.
Basically she's on 24-hour call. If it's not arranging interviews or following up on cases, it's answering ads. Or networking. A sexy phone manner nets surprisingly good results. The boys (that's how she thinks of them, with a note of motherly affection lacking in their face-to-face interaction) accuse her of skimming off the top, and see nothing of her hard work. She bitches them out, but expects them only to succeed.
Push comes to shove, jobs equal food for everyone. It's that simple.
iv.
Shido had said simply: "I will follow you." He rarely spoke, in those days, and his words meant everything.
Kazuki had knelt, graceful in princely fealty.
MakubeX had begged to join Volts, eyes wide and shining, and none could refuse him. He rose through the ranks, became indispensable, honoured.
Masaki was always there, a pillar of strength at his back.
Their belief and that of others made him what he was: emperor, nearly a god. He brought harsh justice to Mugenjou. Thunderstorms caused his name to be invoked, in terror and respect.
He hardly understood why his lands seemed barren.
v.
Paul likes his life organised. Coffee in the morning, paper during the day. Natsumi, Rena, an occasional customer. The blessed quiet.
Then there's the dreaded duo. Paul kicks them out when their tab runs too long, and inevitably the west wind blows them back in the door, with gusts of rain and a little bit of money to tide things over. Never enough, but he takes what he can. A man has his responsibilities.
One such responsibility lies under his counter, magnetised data enclosed in unassuming plastic. Paul glances at it occasionally. Then he closes the drawer again and waits.
vii.
Afterward comes mundanity: to wit, obtaining a set of wheels. Ginji watches in wonder as Ban tinkers, cursing and prodding irritably at his glasses when they slip down. It leaves motor oil smudges on his nose.
"Will it really run?" he asks. But Ban can do anything.
"The purpose of a retrieval specialist," Ban quotes absently, "is to fit the last piece back into the puzzle. Because until that screw is found, there's no telling what the nitro tank will – aha!" He steps back, triumphant. "Number two wrench, Ginji."
Ginji complies. "What's nitro?"
"Oh, you'll see," Ban says. "You'll see."
viii.
On summer nights Madoka plays for Shido in her garden: Paganini, Tchaikovsky, folksongs that catch her fancy. Shido sits with his back against a tree trunk, and his animals creep stealthily close through the grass, drawn by the music. Even the lion lies quiescent at her feet, golden eyes hooded and attentive.
A poet would not lack metaphor, but mythmaking (firelight casting flickering shadows over a cave wall) is an all-too-human endeavour. Shido has no use for allegorical praise. To him as to his beasts, these things are singular and beloved: darkness, the sweet complaint of one violin, and she.
xiv.
Despite what outsiders assume, Fuuchouin School was never intended for women: it is not taught to them.
Kazuki learnt as a child that there are two sides to every coin. Light/dark, male/female, yin/yang, hidden/apparent. His lessons trained him in self-possession and equilibrium, in willow-strength and silk-strength, in the intellectual knife's edge of paradox.
What he was not taught was that there was a hidden side to Fuuchouin as well; not until the black thread tore his childhood apart, in an hour of blood and terror.
It took him years of darkness, afterward, before he was reconciled again to the light.
...Uh. (Really obvious by this point.) Whoever gets it first gets a
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Date: 2003-09-18 02:10 pm (UTC)