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.