Waters Under Earth
Waters Under Earth
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)
All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.
Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html
Vignette Two : Embers
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee weresoe'er thou shinest.
-Percy Blythe Shelley
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away
childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am
known.
-The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthiaans, xiii, 11-12
Two brothers, one fair, one dark, were upon the landscape
of rain-soaked grass. Mountains rose around them, and from the
sky the last dying remnants of the rain pattered down, through
the misting haze the storm had brought.
The head of the fair lay in the lap of the dark. There was
a terrible wound upon his heart, blood across the pale gold of
his skin, blood in the golden of his hair, blood across the
golden wings. There was no pain in the pale scarlet of his eyes,
though. He was so close to dying that pain had ceased to matter.
Each breath was shallow and slow, each intake of air slipping the
eyes a little further closed.
"You're holding me here, aren't you?" the fair whispered to
the dark.
The dark said nothing, stroked back the golden hair from the
forehead. His fingertips were cool and gentle.
"You know you can't," the fair said. "It is not allowed."
"I know," the dark said finally. "But I must speak to you
before you go, brother. It has been so long."
"Four thousand years," the fair said. "I think. Everything
is so jumbled."
"It's a lot of memory to deal with at one time, little
brother," the dark said, and smiled down upon his dying kin,
gently.
"Little brother," said the fair, and made something from the
pain in his voice that could have been laughter. "By how many
minutes?"
"Four, I think," said the dark, and smiled down at his
brother, his black wings draping about his body, soaked with
rain, spreading over he and his fair twin as if to shelter them
from the rain that fell like tears.
The fair closed his eyes. "Forgive me, brother. For all
that I have done."
"Shh..." the dark said, stroking the brow again. The skin
of his brother was cold and clammy, a sheen of sweat over the
pale gold.
"Do you know," the fair said, "for three centuries they
believed that I needed sacrifices to transform? They gave the
fairest of the young children to me, the most beautiful maidens,
the strongest young men."
His eyes snapped abruptly open, and he gave a soft gasp.
"And I took them. All of them. Absorbed them with the threads.
I felt them die, and become a part of me."
"I know," the dark said. "I know."
"Why, brother?" said the fair. "Why did you not stop me?"
"Because I could not," said the dark. "I was mad for nearly
a thousand years, brother. My powers waned. I feared to use
them; how could I, after what I did? And how could I lift my
hand against you? It would have destroyed our home, our people.
I did my work slowly, brother. It has not been easy. They said
the day would be come when you would be released. It has come."
"There are so few," said the fair, his voice raw with grief.
"So few of us left."
"A little more than a thousand," said the dark. "We decline
slowly, but we decline."
"I remember," said the fair, wistfully, "when there were so
many of us that at the celebrations each year, when all of us
took to the air, and we each carried a light in our hands, it
became so bright that it was like day to those below."
"Long past, brother," said the dark. "Long, long past."
"We were like stars in the sky," the fair said. "Like stars
in the sky, and on the ground, I remember the children, looking
up and pointing at us, the light shining on the trees and on the
lake the surface of the water was like crystal... I remember you
and I, when we danced in the air at the end, and I played the
part of the Golden One and you played the part of the King of
Ashes, and the light was all around us..."
"Brother, it is long past," said the dark. "Long, long
past."
"Look, the children said, the stars, they are coming down to
visit us. I remember..."
"Brother," said the dark. "We are long gone from that day.
Long gone."
"O my people," said the fair, and his voice was long gone
beyond whispering. "O my people, what have I done unto ye."
"We knew the price," said the dark, reaching down and
clasping his brother's hand. "Your sin can be no more than
mine."
"But so great a sin," said the fair. "So very, very great.
Four thousand years of slow fall towards the Dark."
"No, brother," said the dark. "Never that. Never towards
the Dark. They are not as they were. We are not as we were.
But our people shall rise again, brother. We are all of the
phoenix, and embers and ashes give birth again to fire."
"What of the boy?" said the fair. "Is he..."
"He is the one," the dark said. "He is the one."
"Oh," said the fair, and that was all there was to say. He
smiled. "I am sorry, brother. The burden is entirely yours to
bear now."
"I know, brother," said the dark. "I know."
"I hope that someday I may be forgiven," said the fair. His
eyes were almost closed now, and his dark twin knew that when
they closed entirely, that was the end. What was there to say,
here at the end, after four thousand years of separation?
How many times, he wondered, had this taken place before,
this duality cast upon time's river, the two brothers parted and
united again only by the death of one, that last act of
dispensation for a nature thought frivolous or evil that could be
found only in this final moment? How many fair had lain their
golden heads upon the ground with their dark brother beside them,
how many dark had been cradled dying in the arms of the fair who
was their kin? And what to say, what to say, after all this
time?
So simple, he realized. So very simple, so obvious what to
say.
"You are forgiven, brother, if you wish to be," he said,
gently.
He stroked back the golden hair again and bent down, kissed
his brother upon his cold forehead, at the spot where four
thousand years ago they had bound the golden circlet with the
phoenix upon it to his brow, before the two of them went to
Jusendo, to bathe in the waters, as to the north the Ravager
gathered his armies in the wasteland in preparation for war. He
felt the remnants of his own circlet, the single pale circular
birthmark hidden always by the cloak of his own power, pulse
slightly.
"Go easy and with love, bright one. It is well," he said as
he straightened back up.
And it was, the dark brother realized. He held his brother's
fair hand gently in his dark hand, pale golden fingers enmeshed
with dark golden ones. It was well. It really and truly was
forgiven, if it was desired.
And as he watched his brother's eyes close for the last
time, watched him pass to that realm that lies beyond sleep, past
the edge of night, he closed his eyes as well, as if against the
tears that flowed down his face, though he could not hold them
back, and did not wish to.
And in the shadow of the mountains, beneath the light fall
of the rain, four thousand years of death and rebirth ended
beneath a grey sky, and as the last of life faded like the
embers of a fire, as the last of the raindrops finished their
long fall from the heavens to the earth, so too the beautiful,
fair brother passed to peace at last, and left his brother,
dark but no less beautiful, to carry on.
(
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