Anonymous 2012/06/26 (Tue) 19:15 No. 523 ▼ File 134073810686.jpg - (52.27KB, 480x360 , festival-japan-fireworks.jpg)
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A RAIN WAS falling, and plainly, not of the warm summer’s shower variety. This rain had a chill, disheartening tinge. A low sky poised over the Land, laden, grey, and laden; and the downpour soaked, even the rocks, to the bone: streaks dark icicles, needles of cold. The stripe as stayed the bravest home. That stripe of rain.
And there was she.
A light-clad someone splashing a way tween gutter and house, feet caked in filth and mud. The garb on her back was heavy, blackened with rain. She had long hair and a fearsome name for sure; yet the deluge cared naught for neither, nor her sneezes nor curses spluttered from betwixt clattering teeth. The deluge was not something she might touch. Thus it cared not.
The village flashed by her behind a dull curtain of fall. The unpaved streets lapped and smacked beneath her broad paces, gravel and dirt, a cold brown soup.
She slipped.
The mud swallowed her face, plugged her ears with a probing cold. She half-rose, on chafing hands, snorting, spitting, cursing. A finger of sticky moist dirt slithered down her collar, between her breasts; the more she swore. The pads of her hands throbbed. She gulped back the tears. She must not cry. A woman grown she was, if but barely. She must not cry.
She felt her throat clench into a hard gag. Oh, marry this! she thought. She would cry. As if any one an oaf would poke their nose away from their hearth in this weather, see and make gossip of it; nobody would know. She could cry if very well she wished.
She let the tears come out… but then the rain stopped, as sudden as strange.
No, stop did it not, pounded yet, all around pounded on the ground, roofs and porches and walls, but on her. She lifted her face, misery on it plain, and what she lifted it to was another, and a brown tunic, and a parasol of dark treated fabric, stretchers bent, yet holding. The rain thrummed on the cap, trickled from the tips: around her, around where she lay. An instance passed, and she sensed all of a sudden, and it shook her, the clothes clinging to her body, cold and wet and heavy.
And then he spoke.
“What’s you doin’ out here, pray? ‘S raining as heck.”
His voice was thick with broken sleep. The tunic lay hastily thrown over his shoulders, and his hair was swarthy and messy. She glared on him with a swelling anger. I was to cry right then! And here he looks on me as some sodden wretch, he does... whether I am or not.
“Why, is it so?” she mouthed back at him, “raining, is it? How was I to guess? What blest luck to have some come tell me, grar!”
She gave a growl, hoping to affright him away, but her teeth chattered and spoiled the intent. She would blush... if she had warm blood left to do.
“Aye,” said he, smile-less, “that it is: as heck. A girl might better do to put off what she does till a drier day.”
“A girl doesn’t care what you think. A girl hadn’t thought it’d be bad as this.”
“Alas.”
They fell to a short quiet. The idiot is letting his own self soak, the girl marked, holding that thing over me. Yet the man seemed to mind scarce. The black of his eyes met her stare by no means shy. He might not be much older than she, some year, perhaps two or three. A thin beard sprinkled his chin with sharp pitchy hairs.
And once more he spoke.
“Won’t you want t’get up? The ground surely isn’t th’best o’ places to rest in this sort-a-day.”
“I fell,” she replied, stingy. “I was not resting.”
“Surely ‘peared as you was.”
“Was not.”
“Surely—”
“Can it,” she rode him over. “What’s your deal? Can a girl not fall these days with no one giving her grief?”
The man stabbed a thumb at the closest house: a squat block of logs and murky windows. “There’s as where I live,” he told her. “As it happens, I was restin’ myself right then. When all out of nowhere I hear thrashin’ an’ splashin’ right in front of th’house, and cursin’ and all that. An’ I see outside an’ see a girl in the mud.”
“And you thought to go out and harass her?”
“Aye.” He paused for a beat. “I mean, no. I came out to see what is wrong. As a gentleman ought.”
The idiot must be daft or some such.
“So what now? That you’ve seen?” She glowered on him again.
The man seemed now troubled.
“Ah n—now,” he stammered, “well, what now... There’s one thing as comes right t’mind, yes. Alas...” He tested her with a glance. Then a confidence mounted in his eyes, a confidence almost of a child come up with a bright idea. “Come inside, you might,” he said at once, “yes, inside, out of the weather, come and dry. How’s about that, yes? There’s warm inside, I’ll make a fire, tea maybe...”
The idiot’s wanting me to come into his house, the girl realised bitterly.
And yet something stayed her from spitting in his plain honest face. The chill had begun to settle in now, and she noticed her shoulders were quaking in the cool breath of wind. The palms of her hands ached. She ached all in truth, from head to the littlest toe. She was drenched, tired, and weak, and this here numbskull thought her also stupid enough to come along. I’ll tell him what I think of him right enough, she swore inside...
... but the swear alone was so far as it went. The thought wafted for yet a while on her mind; then as though from the house that stood open right there a warm breeze blew and swept it away, and brought a new think with it. What matter does it make? He seems right enough an idiot, but not that sort as does such things. And anyway I’m cold, oh so cold...
She gathered up the front of her garb in her still-trembling arms, and her chest, though only for a last precaution.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll come in.”
“Truly?” said he. “I mean, natural, yes. Truly, says I... What says I? Ah, anyway. You’ll be welcome in my walls... however they are at any rate.” He held out the free hand. “Here then, let us get’ye on them legs.”
I could stand on my own, the girl reasoned.
She let him pull her up to her feet nonetheless. The dirt bit in the skin of her palm when he squeezed it. She came short of wincing. She’d not show him weakness nor pain. His hands were strong, but they were hands soft, of a scribe, or clerk, or teacher. The hands of a man read, unblemished by labour. More safe he.
To the house he led her, held for her the door. A shadow closed about them, and once it did, once then, the chill crept up threefold on the girl. The man took note of her quivering. Then walked he deeper in the house, ushering to come. She did, dripping rain, mud, and whispered curses.
“I’ll warm a pot o’ water,” he spoke, “there be a wash-basin in that there back-room, right so. Ah, also.” He tore a blanket from a couch. “This here, for the time. I’ll make the fire go right now.”
She took it, cloaked her trembling shoulders.
The man kneeled at the hearth, striking at a flint with his steel. There came a subdued clicking sound, and a shower of bright, lingering sparks spilled onto the stack. A speck of orange grew and smoked where one fell aglow onto the touchwood. “Sit,” said the man, leaning, and blew gently ‘til a tiny lick of orange flame rose from the kindling.
She did not sit.
The flame caught to tinder, and it swelled and it danced, and spread with a dry crackling. “There goes,” the man murmured, rising also. And when he did, then his heart leapt under his throat. There beside the girl crouched; wrung rain-water from her clothes. Should’ve thought, the man himself reproached, she’d want fire. This girl. And what a girl that was. The hair clung to her face, yet she seemed all but as miserable as they do. A fire was in her eyes, yes, and more than that reflected from the hearth.
“Where is you from then?” he asked, returning the flint and steel to a shelf. “Your looks don’t be much as from here us village. Where’s as where you live?”
“Aren’t we curious?” She flashed him vicious teeth.
“A glower as that ill becomes a maid,” he said. “I was asking mere, is what.”
“You were at that, weren’t you?” She heaved a sigh between the white fingers. “That’s none of the darn concerns of yours; it isn’t... though for gratitude I may tell you so much. You’ve a right enough eye; I don’t live here.”
“Where then?” The man filled a kettle from a bucket as he asked.
“That’s so much as I’m telling.”
“A right shame,” he said. “Have you a name then?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
He laughed. A spiky one, this is. But rightly. He could not take that from her.
“I have a name also,” he said.
“What a wonder.” She let him through so he might hang the kettle above the flames. “You’ll doubtless insist on impressing it upon me for some dark end of yours.”
She plainly was goading him for another riposte. Yet he was not near so dumb as he must have to her seemed.
“I may pass at that,” he said.
That tied her lips.
She turned her head about at the room, bathed in the outside grey and dipped in the orange of the fire. ‘Twas a gloomy room, ‘twas: bare but for a couch, stove, bed, and shelf at the wall, laden with the weight of queer assortment.
“What’s all that?” She moved her chin at the strangest. “That there, horn-like?”
The man followed her gaze. A smiling pride lit up his face.
“That,” he said, “that there makes music.”
“Music? How? It looks as a trumpet. How do you blow it?”
“You don’t.” He stood. To the shelf he walked. “You place this here—” he showed a disc of glossy black, half as much wider than his hand outspread, “—on this plate, as so. And you spin this winch a few... as so. And at end you set this arm here on it. And lo.”
A faint music poured forth from the device, a sweet and merry tune.
The girl gaped.
“What a wonder,” she murmured. And then her teeth gleamed once more. “And what’s one as you want music for?”
“I dance,” he said with delight.
There was naught she may say to that.
She watched, with the music playing, how the man fingered the golden funnel of the machine with an undue almost softness. The colour of his eyes glazed over, stuck on the turning plate, but someplace far also, far beyond. A right idiot, she thought, to space out as so, for just some crummy music. She might not bear the silence.
“Show!” she said. “Show then. How you dance.”
The man looked on her all but unbelieving.
But he bobbed his head as soon. He rolled up the frayed sleeves of his tunic and readied a pose. And out of a clear sky, he sprung to move.
There his shoes clapped on the floor. There the heels tapped on the wood, and on each other also, as he swung about.
Tap here, tap there.
Swing here, swing there.
Swoosh, cloth fluttered in the air, an instrument of itself.
And clap, and again, tap here and back, he spun, he hopped, he danced.
All ‘til the music faded he kept, each step, each move a different love.
And when at last it ended, he flourished, bowed: as though to an audience out there, watching from afar.
But his audience had nothing for him but a gasp. “Ha.” Then one more. “Aha.” And then...
“Ah, hahaha!” The girl exploded with laughter. She covered her mouth with a hand, with the other clutching at her belly, doubled over, and laughed, laughed so loud and so much tears rolled down her cheeks.
The man, soured, demanded, “What’s so funny about a dance?”
“What, he says!” She wiped at her eyes with the blanket. “You, man, you ought see yourself in a mirror, you should! Aha!” She laughed more, ‘til she sneezed; but the sneeze melted right again into laughter. “What a show, indeed! Ahh.” She gasped for air. “That it was, a show. I’ll not likely laugh so hard again on my life.”
“Small chance,” he grated. “The water’s on boil anyway. There’s a wash-basin—I’ve told this. There, in that back-room. Wash the cold off. I’ll need t’lie down. You know how t’work a kettle.” Not waiting an answer he removed the disc from the device and went to flop on the couch. “‘Tis dark out,” he said by way of courtesy. “Like it won’t stop to-night. You may take th’bed if I’m dozed off by time you’ve washed. Good-night.”
And he said no more.
The girl remained where she’d been, at the fire, her stare so much queer as the display she’d witnessed. Unlike safe to let a stranger stay the night, but yet... She climbed on the aching feet, slid the kettle from the hook. The steam all but seared her skin. All the better.
At the time she found the basin and cloth for towels, she heard a snore without. The dancing man had fallen asleep. She would too. She feared not this strange man, with his passion for musics and prancing as a fool. Nor for his turn of mood. Certainly not that.
She washed, set her clothes before the hearth, and lay on the bed he’d left set for her.
Yet she could not sleep.
He woke in the dead of night, to the sound of music. And wheezing.
He heard rapping, clapping, of bare feet on the floor. A gasp and a curse, intermingled with the tune, rustling of cloth in the still, night air. He worked the courage to rise, and did.
And there she was. The girl from the rain.
She moved, but without his surety, playing out his motions and swings as good as she might—and failing, slipping, cursing. The music played, even when her eyes fell on him and she grew a flush and scrambled to kill the sound, go back to bed. Yet he was there already.
He took her by the arm and whispered, “Come. Come, I’ll show you.”
She showed first: a blush even deeper, but her head inclined in a nod. He nodded also; grasped her hand.
Then the two... began to dance.
They parted in the morning.
There were no promises, no good-byes; only there was a simple “thank you,” a word and a wave of the hand, and her figure fleeing in the morning light. The man repaired to the house and sat on the bed where she’d slept. The girl whom he’d not likely ever see again on his life. Yet it must go on, though a bitter regret stung him.
‘Twas then more than a surprise when, some day after, he came home from work to see her on the porch. He could not help a smile upon her sight, but all she had for him was a serious stare and a request, “Teach me. How to dance.”
And so he did.
They trained, the two, long and hard, for moons two, and three, and more, ‘til both knew so much each other’s steps as they might dance in blindfold; and if one mis-stepped, the other at once was there to remedy the slip. The time of their being together drew close on to an end the more the girl learned, but the man had for her a last request.
“I pray you,” he said, “please, perform with me. A festival comes up. I’m to dance, but am in need of a partner. All village will watch. What say you?”
The girl did not answer.
Instead, she said, “Sorry,” and ran away.
They did not once again see one another, not even come the festal day.
There he stood on the stage, the crowd buzz without the curtain unknown to him as he readied himself for the most important solitary dance in his world. A dark thought swirled on his mind: that he’d failed, that after this he should abandon the dance; for he had made himself a promise he should find a partner before now, and had not. The thought was not the brightest perhaps, but this was who he was. I’ll not dance again, he swore inside, not on my life. He sucked in the thick air as they announced him outside. The crowd hushed. This was it. The last dance. He was prepared...
... but prepared not for came next. For there tapped on the scene bootied feet, and there silk-smooth hair glistened in the colour lamp-light, and a dress beautiful as the world rustled... when the girl hurried onto the stage red-faced, short of breath, and more lovely than he’d ever known her. She crashed in his arms, wordless, but blinking in apology. She’d come back to him at the last moment, dressed in jewels, and finer than ever before.
The curtain was lifted.
The audience rose a hum when they saw not one, but two persons on the stage; but the dancers never gave them mind.
They looked each other in the eye, nodded... then sprung to life.
It was not such a thing as had been ever seen before.
To call it a dance would be too little.
The sheer smoothness of the two’s motions took away the collective breath.
The mastery with which they spun in and out of each other’s embrace could mesmerise even the blind.
The two were not two, but one, one dancer indeed, and the stage was their world, and theirs to have, traverse, though they appeared to know it all already in the greatest detail.
It was... beautiful.
And as beautiful things all, before long it had to end.
The music died away with a trailing thrum of strings. The two dancers, exhausted, wheezing with effort, stood enveloped in each other’s arms, their eyes laughing at their success. A thundering applause erupted in the stands, but they were all but deaf to it. Unknowing, they drew even closer, drunk on the lights and each other’s warmth, smiling and gasping for air.
Then the girl raised her wide eyes, unable to find the words. The man looked down, on her. She gave a blushed nod. The audience cheered even louder.
And then...
The two...
You guessed it.
They kissed.
END
And since they did, I pose you a question:
Which character did you picture as the heroine?
Additionally, can you identify the author? This should be fun.