(This is ONLY A ROUGH DRAFT. I may edit this without warning)
"Do you hate me?"
Until now, Nozomi really did not know what she would say or what she would do, when she found Ryu. She only just begun to sort out the waves of conflicting feelings about him - confusion, hate, the wish for revenge and the wish to understand the heart of the dragon.
But did she hate him?
"What is hate?" Nozomi asked in answer, like a child.
The way young Nozomi thought partly returned to her when she once again stepped onto this land. Innocence took over madness. To her, hate was a monster that consumed a person alive. Like flames... except they burned from inside.
'I couldn't hate him,' she thought. 'I don't hate anyone. I hate hate itself. But him? After what he did? Do I hate him?'
"What is hate?" she repeated.
She tried not to look at his eyes. They were still too painful of a memory - bad memories should not return all at once...
Ryu stood, unmoving, unblinking, like an ancient statue. Then the statue came alive and did something else that caught Nozomi completely off guard.
A kiss was his answer.
Ryu stood on the wall of the city, silently watching the horizon, and the approaching boat. He did not know who was on it or why, but he felt that the boat was coming for him. But he knew he would be ready for any attack the humans threw at him - he was the dragon of fire, armed, armoured, and dangerous if need be. As the boat aproached, he saw one human figure on board - that of a young woman. It seemed strange to him that they would only send one person – just a girl…
Ryu’s eyes followed the girl as she left her boat and stood, unsure of where to go next. This was her city, yet she didn’t know what to do…
‘I see my own eyes reflected in this girl’s. She knows me. Should I remember her? Am I supposed to?’
He leapt down from the low wall and walked steadily toward the girl. He listened for the familiar, comforting clinking of the claw-sword against his armor.
‘She hates me. She must. That’s why she’s here.’
‘Why is she unarmed? Why isn’t she trying to hurt me, like everyone else?’
"Do you hate me?" was the most obvious, and most pressing, question to ask.
"What is hate?" she replied. Confused, but her question was sincere.
This was not the turn of events Ryu expected at all. ‘Who is this? She speaks like a child! …a child? She must be turned away', Ryu thought. 'If humans wanted to challenge me, they would not have sent her. She is a child. She must leave - or face the fire of the dragon. Like everyone else.'
Never, not for a moment, did Ryu dare to look closely into the clear, honest pools of blue that were the girl's eyes. He refused to try to understand the young soul - a soul confused, alone, only one lifetime younger than he. He would have seen bright hope being burnt down to silent, unheard tears shed over this lonely lifetime because of him. He would also have seen this girl's soul drowning in a whirlpool of conflicting emotions - but he would also have seen her sincere dream, almost obsession, to understand him. Instead, Ryu began to think of ways to drive the girl away.
Then something occurred to him - something he saw long ago, as a human hatchling. A quick, but intense memory flashed by - of waking up to keys opening in the door of his house, and seeing his parents come in. They were yelling at each other - again, he thought. Then his father did something strange - he held his mother, and pressed his lips against hers. Then his mother hit his father, and left. Ryu never saw her again.
'Maybe this will make her hate me and leave,' Ryu thought as he kissed Nozomi.
But instead, realization struck him like a stray flame against bare skin. He did know this girl, this child, more closely than he had known anyone else. This changed everything.
'From the dawn of the world... the Dance of Life's Morning...'
"Nozomi?" he said, as he released her.
Nozomi was torn between the tides of wanting to scream and run, and wanting to stay and somehow sort this madness out. She was trapped now, trapped in a storm by her own choosing. Her world suddenly shrank to a whirlpool of conflicting, confusing feelings centered somewhere in her rib-cage.
She was appalled, shocked into frozen stillness by Ryu's rather intimate gesture for a first meeting. Then she understood that he felt absolutely nothing, except a cold, determined wish to be left alone. Ryu was locking himself in a fiery cage - a cage of wanted misunderstanding and alienation... How strange it was that a gesture of love was the answer to a question of hate.
Then a word rang in her ears - the word of repressed memory, the word of a haunting ghost, the word of a lonely, misty beach in a dream world. The word of silently flapping dragon wings at the dawn of the universe, of dragons dancing before the young sun. The word of no turning back.
"Nozomi?"
She wanted to say something, anything, but words abandoned her. She suddenly wanted to say her name was Namida, has always been Namida... she glanced up at the sky in hope of seeing the friendly tears of the sky - surely they could prove she was Namida! They had always been with her, cried with her in lonely nights... But it was still not long after sunrise, and the Morning Star was fading from a clear sky tinted with the gentle rosy color of sakura blossoms.
"Take it back!" she heard herself yell. "Take it back! Take my name back!"
"I can't." Ryu's words rang as a death sentence to her, in the flowery morning that rose above the ruins. Ruins of her city, and of her life.
"Why?"
"You don't understand the Dance of Life's Morning. You keep the name you are given." Ryu said simply. Not coldly, like before, just...simply.
"No." Nozomi whispered. "No." She staggered, as if her world was crumbling around her, turning into ruins once again.
"No?" Ryu said, bewildered.
‘Why does she look so hurt? So desperate? I simply told her the truth. A name given in the Dance of Life’s Morning cannot be changed. How can something true be changed?’
Ryu was never confused about anything, and it angered him that he was confused now.
Finally, he looked into Nozomi’s eyes to find an answer.
He saw a reflection of himself, his dragon self, in the depths of the young woman’s eyes. He saw the old, primeval fire in his eyes again, he saw his own powerful wings sweeping the misty air in true flight, his claws glowing in the light of the sun that gave birth to him. For a moment, the human Ryu stared at the dragon Ryu across time, through the clear blue mirror of Nozomi’s eyes – which were widening in fear as Ryu kept gazing at them. But he couldn’t tear himself away from the memory that looked back at him so clearly…
‘How strange’, he thought, focusing back on Nozomi. ‘The first time I saw these blue eyes, they seemed happy…’
Ryu finally turned his gaze away, wondering why Nozomi remembered him so clearly.
Then it hit him. He was the cause of her sadness. He was the one who hurt her at the dawn of time.
‘But the name I gave her was the truth. Everyone’s name is their personal truth. How can truth hurt someone so much?’
Ryu was looking at her. Straight at her, with his eyes of fire… No, he was looking straight through her. She was frozen, unable to speak, unable to blink, unable to think. Suddenly, there was nothing left in the universe except fire, and her naked, helpless soul, and the deafening beating of a frightened heart.
Another second – and Nozomi would not have been able to take it anymore.
But luckily for her sanity, after an eternity, the dragon finally looked away.
Nozomi remained still as she was, trying to sort out what just happened. ‘What is he trying to do to me?’
After another eternity had passed in a matter of moments, she found herself suddenly lashing out at Ryu. It was as if her hand was moving on its own, controlled by the frightened part of her that wanted revenge, that wanted to hurt the dragon for everything he did to her. ‘What am I doing??’ she thought frantically. It seemed as if time suddenly slowed down, her angry hand was moving inch by inch, but her mind was running like the wind. She only had time to shut her eyes tightly, thinking about what was going to happen to her if she did hit Ryu.
"No!"
Nozomi heard her own voice ring moments before she felt her hand jerk and stop, being held firmly in place by another hand. Realizing that hand was Ryu’s, she still held her eyes shut. Her own hand was trapped in the confines of a dragon’s claw, a claw that would not let go. The bells of silence rang through her ears.
She was beyond understanding her own actions anymore. She slowly sank to her knees, her hand still held by the dragon. The only thing she understood now was that her eyes were welling up with tears. Afraid to move, she tried to hold still and contain the flood of emotions that flowed through her.
"I…I… Nozomi…" she heard herself whisper desperately.
After she believed that she would drown in an ocean of her own confusion, the warm tears flowing down her face were the only reminder that she was still real.
Suddenly, she felt something else touch her face. It was Ryu’s uncertain hand, brushing away a tear…
‘But why?…’
The link to his past - she was here, in the form of an innocent, naive girl. And yet Ryu realized with the intensity of glass breaking, that the link, even though it is so close - just across the span of a dream - was severed. Its beginning, and its end, lay in the blue depths of this girl's eyes.
For a moment, he wondered what Nozomi saw in his own eyes. Eyes, he heard, are the windows to the soul... what does this embodiment of innocence see in his soul? Judging from her reaction of fear... it could only be fire.
"No!"
Ryu had no problem anticipating and stopping the girl's hand from suddenly hitting him - his reflexes were still as sharp and quick as they were millennia ago. He wondered briefly what caused this outburst as he trapped and held the slender wrist tightly. 'I knew it...' he thought. 'She did want to hurt me.' However, it was nothing to him because his shields were always up and ready to reflect any threat thrown at him.
For a long moment, the girl and the reincarnated dragon remained perfectly still as the sun, having already risen and taken off its fragile rose veil of dawn, watched them with curiosity. The dragon of fire, standing still as a statue, his claw not letting go of the girl's angry hand, also watched Nozomi. He was not adept at guessing emotions just by the miniscule movements of facial muscles, so Nozomi's face - eyes shut tightly, lips pursed, her body trembling in fear - remained a complete mystery to him. Slowly, still gripping her wrist, he watched her sink down to her knees, fighting to contain tears.
The reactions Ryu caused in people, from as long ago as he could remember, were either of two things. Either anger, rage and insanity, followed by futile attempts to hurt or injure him, resulting in the instant death of the attacker. Or fear, terror and panicked running away - he let them run, knowing they would not run for long as his feline, snarling fire would catch up with them in the end. After all, it made no difference - everything will be reborn... But he never saw anyone cry because of him - cry and do absolutely nothing else. This girl made no attempt at running for her life - even though her boat to safety was still anchored only a few meters away. She did not try attacking anymore after he stopped her hand from hitting him. She simply sat on the ground, tears trickling down her pale face... It was as if she was hopelessly leaving herself completely to his mercy.
Ryu realized fully that he could have killed her that very instant. He knew so many ways of killing someone. However, never was it so hard for him to reach for his ever-present claw-sword, or to use his power of fire to swiftly end another life. He could not bring himself to hurt the one he named Nozomi - Hope - in the Dance of Life's Morning... He let go of her hand, and, for the first time not understanding his own actions, acting purely on impulse and not battle-calculations, he brought his hand to the girl's face and brushed away her tear, a tear he caused, as gently as he could with a hand that was most accustomed to holding a sword.
'I named you Nozomi... Hope. Your personal truth is to hope and believe. Then why are you crying?'
