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 Three : In My Beginning
Home is where one starts from
-T.S. Eliot
He went to the house first, and found it unchanged since he
had left it nearly eight years ago. The fire had left little
more than burnt timbers, and flame-scorched stones collapsed
upon themselves after it had been put out. As time had passed,
wind and rain had worn the wreckage dry, taken the ash away and
scattered it, leaving only debris. Year after year, the layers
of ash and burnt wood had been taken down, until only the
unburned core of the roof beams remained, polished smooth by the
elements.
Kneeling down, he picked up a rough brick that had been part
of the walls of the tiny one-room house, weighing it in his
hands. Here was where everything had changed.
And now everything had changed again, because if it hadn't
changed, he wouldn't have come back.
They said you couldn't go home again. The truth was that
you could, but home had changed, and you had changed, and nothing
was as you remembered, not the scent of the air or the play of
sunlight on grass, nor anything else at all, nothing the same.
So maybe you couldn't go home again, but perhaps the fault
didn't lie entirely with you, then. He put the brick back down
and stood up. Down the hill, he could see the village, the
close-clustered houses, but they had lived on the outskirts,
because an unmarried mother, a child without a father, they were
not welcome there.
His hand clenched tightly, almost painfully, into a fist.
Then, slowly, his fingers uncurled, because what use was getting
angry right now?
Looking off to the south-east, he knew that if you walked up
the tallest hill to the sparse copse of slim-trunked trees that
rose on the summit, you could climb up, up to the highest branch
of the tallest tree, and from there you could stare down over the
dip of land that held Jusenkyou, and watch the sun casting the
pools in rippling fires of bronze and gold as it set, and gaze at
the high mountain peaks, and there would be child's dreams of what
lay over them running through your head like wine, sweet and
clear and cool.
But he wasn't here to remember this.
He walked away from the house, away from the view of the
village, and went into the stand of trees that lay nearby,
searching out one that he remembered, remembered with cold earth
scraping on the shovel blade, cold earth returning to cold earth,
and the tree above leafless in the coming winter, thin and naked.
But winter had come, and winter had gone, many times, and it
was summer now, the last dying breath of summer, and the tree had
changed, taller, straighter, and the leaves such colours, green
and lush, and in time they would turn to red and gold and bronze,
and in time after that they would fall, and the tree would be
barren, but it would live, through the fall of cold and snow,
through the dark of winter, and in time, the leaves would come
again.
He walked and stood looking up at tree, and then stepped
forward, kneeling down on grassy earth where the wildflowers
scattered, laying a hand against the trunk, laying his face
against rough bark, like he'd lain against cool scales before,
golden as the sun.
Rivers flow to sea, he thought, and the waters rise from the
sea and become rain, and the rain returns to the rivers. And the
rivers flow to sea.
He looked up, opened his eyes and stared at the leaves of
the tree. Winter comes, and then spring, and summer and fall,
and winter again.
From old death, new life. From ends, beginnings.
So it goes, he thought, and smiled as he stood. He put a
hand against the bark, tracing the texture, remembering fingers
tracing his face, remembering the texture of a voice, singing.
Everyone has a path to walk, he realized, and sometimes it
is easy, sometimes it is hard, sometimes you walk in light and
sometimes you walk in darkness. And for a long time, so long you
think you can do it forever, you can tread the line between, you
can walk between the light and the darkness, caring for neither,
only for yourself.
Only, though, so long as you walked the path alone.
Because with every path you cross, every road that joins
with yours, for even the briefest time, you have to make a choice
of the way in which you walk. And sometimes to walk in the light
you have to walk the harder road.
And every choice makes other choices, and every road other
roads. And with every choice, the easy road or hard, the dark
road or the bright, it becomes harder to change the way in which
you walk.
Once in a while, you saw where the road was leading. You
saw whose road would cross yours, whose path would intersect
with yours.
But often, it was only random chance.
Perhaps that was only what it had been.
Even from random chance, though, good could come.
He wondered if that was what he had been, or if it had been
meant to be like this from the start, meant that his path would
cross with others at a point where he would be forced to make a
choice.
Well, if it was fate, let it be fate. And if it was chance,
let it be chance. Whichever it was, let him do what he could.
Because, he had realized, there are things in the world
beyond yourself worth fighting for. If he was a wild card, then
at least they would never see him coming.
He looked at the tree again, and smiled, thinking of ends
and beginnings. The old roads end, but with each ending of a
road, another road begins.
He took the flask of water, emptied it over his head, and
lifted into the air, flying towards the east. Sometimes the road
was easy to see, worn smooth, trodden by many feet already.
And sometimes it was only waiting, for new feet to walk it,
to find where it leads. It was not always an easy road.
But always, always, it was there, if you were willing to
look for it.
(
geocities.com/tokyo/pagoda) (
geocities.com/tokyo)