[fanfic] [ranma] [alt:sosei] ranma.sosei.surface-tension

Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used here are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her assigns, and are used without their knowledge or permission. This is fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose.

Sosei: Surface Tension

-- siaru 01oct01/15oct01/07dec01

Her brush emerged from the depths of the water, paused to sully itself with mere hints of pigment, then ventured on, guided by her sure and expert hand, to apply the color like a wound to the pure white surface, leaving it glistening wet.

She remembered being a boy, nearly a man; in fact she would have been called a man in earlier times.

She had, of course, some experience. Her father had seen to that; it was a clan tradition. She remembered a night of getting far too drunk for a boy her age, being welcomed by the wise young woman, shown how to do things the manly way.

She could only dimly recall the moment when they had joined, though, the moment when she felt herself invading...

She dropped the brush as she flushed, then she blushed at feeling her female body respond to that memory in a way that she could never have felt back then, and firmly pushed those memories down, ashamed of all the other memories that went with them. That encounter had been volitional. What she had sought later, though, would not have been.

She leaned over, brushing her shoulder-length hair against the side of the easel as she reached to recapture the brush. She rinsed it in the bucket, purifying it and reshaping its disturbed tip back to a form suitable for the purpose.

Now she drew back from both men and women, reduced once more to virginity. But... what is a virgin?

She paused in applying a deft stroke of barely visible color to the paper, to wipe her eyes with the back of her free hand. This line of thought was getting wet; she had thought she was past that.

"I was raped by the act of making me a virgin. Now perhaps I am being purified further; perhaps that is also rape."

She hadn't meant to say it aloud. She looked around furtively. The various men in this corner of Macarthur Park were oblivious, intent on their own pursuits.

The thick rounded tip of the brush, having added its emission to the paper, went back to the water to be purified. She swirled it around a little in the bucket, brought it up, rolled it to refresh the tip, then picked up more pigment for another calligraphic stroke against the moist paper, where the vague outline of an insect was embryonic near the top of the outermost of the pad of slightly-wrinkled sheets.

Amenbo is the name of the water-strider, she thought. What is my name? What should it be? What name feels like me? What name would I like to be?

Tatewaki... brings a sword... that won't do anymore. I cannot be a Tatewaki; I no longer carry a sword. Besides, he asked me not to use that name anymore. Either of them. Told me not to use the one, and asked me not to use the other.

He took my sword away. No, they took my sword away; all he took away was its fossil remains, like a bone from a dead fish. How impure.

The brush stabbed the paper, leaving hints of ruddy spots on the developing body of the insect.

He told me I'll be paid to stay here, away from where I belonged. I used to be paid because I belonged; now I'm paid because I don't belong. What is the borderline? Not to be paid, I suppose. If I don't like borders, I'll have to pay my own way somehow.

Her thoughts were getting discomforting again. She looked up from the pad of paper bound to her easel and eyed those around her; she realized that she was surrounded by the homeless.

There, but for a clan's obligation, its embarrassment... its face... its surface... supported by the water even after I left it.

She shook her head, slowly so as not to dislodge the wetness she felt at the edges of her eyes.

When I was a man I had no depth, only skill with my weapon. Now I am a woman, weaponless, and depth is all I have.

Why does he care about the name? Why do I? Not even a name matters without other people. If no one ever wants to know your name, do you have one? If you have no family, do you need a family name?

Better to take a given name as a surname, then; at least it's there for the taking, unlike clan names, which are jealously guarded in clan registries to cast out the impure.

Amenbo is a given name; I can take it as a family-name. A family of the disowned, a clan of the clanless. No clan, no obligation... like escaping the water and living on its surface.

The parallel had appealed to her; it was why she was painting one now, from memory; memory of home. Memory of belonging. Memory of having to support the surface and hide the depths until they vanished.

Now that I have depth, my own is all I have. Do I want this? Any of it? Did I ever want to be touched like this?

But it was forced upon me... all of it. I had no choice. I suppose I gave that away in seeking to force another, to take away their choice. When I touched, I was touched. That's how the water works. To touch is to become involved, ensnared, wetted by another's life, colored by it. Now I'd rather not be touched; it has washed away too much already.

I am still being purified, then; and the only way to avoid being touched is to give way immediately. Have it your way, then, Lord Sosei.

She thought about that name, picking it apart and then putting it back together, both its meaning and its history, seeking its depth. Rebirth in abandonment? Sosei; it will do. Sosei Amenbo. Or Amenbo Sosei, depending on which side of the water I choose. As good a name as any when I don't want anyone to call.

She finished the area around the insect and brought up her ladle for some preliminary wetting of the lower part of the picture. It was an affectation: a ladle and bucket such as one used back home to purify, now used as part of a watercolor kit. She knew that it also represented the source of the water used to lock her.

Why not; irony is my only weapon lately. I am being blessed by the water, unburdened of everything I took for granted. I am being purified with therapy, too; the process is far from over, I can tell.

She put down the ladle and picked up the brush and used it to take up another taint of color. A few sure broad strokes with the brush delineated the barest hint of outline of the shape at the bottom of the paper.

She smirked and gestured grandly at the bucket with the brush. "The water is my weal and my bane..." She stopped herself short and looked anxiously skyward, half-expecting lightning from the dirty sky, no longer sure she was immune to its thrust. The Los Angeles summer sky was static, cloudless and uninhabited, like a painted backdrop in a movie about itself. It seemed to her to have no depth. She turned back to her work.

No, no more, none of that. That was part of my last life, when I acted out my part. Now I must live it, such as I have left. Such of it as has not yet been washed away.

She brought up the ladle to wash her brush free of pigment, allowing it to take another color, or just to sit, pure, idle and useless until next wetting, as she sat thinking for a moment.

She had been fascinated as a young boy by the seemingly magical insect, enough to study its methods, its vulnerabilities. The water-strider skated across the top of the water, living on whatever became ensnared on that plane and trapped by the stickiness of the water. The insect sensed everything that moved on the water's surface, listening with its feet to the surface-tension like a spider does to its web, but it was thereby deaf to what moved beneath or above the surface. Clinging to a plane, it could be captured from either volume which the plane separated.

She returned to motion, dipping her brush into the bucket water, and used it to apply more hints of color to the lower part of the picture. She worked steadily; this part of the picture was something she felt to be important, something that belonged in the final image, but she didn't like it. She had to be careful not to rush things. She distanced herself by deliberately thinking in a higher context.

I thought I could study theatre, but it puts one into the art; I would have drowned there.

If the arts are expressions of passion, one can teach the arts without feeling them, as long as one remembers how to feel them. The visual arts externalize passions into captive arenas, limiting their expression even as they enable them. I can deal with that. Barely. Some things are too deep for me right now.

I need something that's safe for someone who badly betrayed herself by giving herself to passion, and now must avoid it for the sake of sanity. While I am being washed, I must stay out of the water.

Her painting, deft and haunting and delicate, was finished. She stood up and stepped away, turned her back to the easel, fished out a cigarette from her purse and lit it. She took a long drag from it, expelled the colorless smoke onto the afternoon air, and only then turned to try to see her creation anew, to arrest it afresh in her sight and try it for impurity of purpose.

It was as perfect as she could make it from memory. Water-colored water-thin, water-born and water-borne, still buried beneath the surface-tension, the koi was in the start of the skyward leap which would put the insect lovingly and securely in its hungry mouth.

My thanks to Rakhal for prereading; and to Brian Randall, Don Granberry, finmagik and james for C&C.

C&C welcome: