Fic: Telling Stories
Dec. 31st, 2005 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaFandom: CardCaptor Sakura (anime continuity - I haven't read the manga)
Rating: G/PG
Ships: Assume all canon ones are implied
Spoilers: everything up to the second movie
Disclaimer: They're CLAMP's, not mine
Second draft, slightly cleaned up. This will probably get heavily revised later.
I guess I was really young when it first happened. At least, the first time I remember. It was cold, and I was trying to keep up with Mother as she hurried home from shopping.
There was a boy, older than me, running the other way on the other side of the street. He was glowing. Not much - just a gentle golden light behind the shoulders that shone around his head and through his eyes. It made him look handsome, maybe even important.
I wanted to look like that.
I tugged on Mother's sleeve. "Look, that boy over there's glowing. How do I get to glow like that? Is it a light in his skin?"
Mother looked down at me before she ever looked at the boy. Then she looked at him, but just a glance, more like she was checking something than actually seeing him. Then she looked back at me, looked at me like I'd done something wrong.
"Don't tell stories like that." She tugged my arm and we pushed forward, and the boy and his light slipped out of sight.
--
By the time I was five, I knew what sort of reaction I'd get when I mentioned things like that. Sometimes it was things I saw, sometimes things I'd read about. Why I didn't learn to keep my mouth shut, I don't know. Somehow it was too difficult for me to not say anything; I kept blurting things out. "In the park, today, there was an old woman I couldn't see. I could hear her voice, though. She was looking for her dog." "Hush. Don't tell such stories, especially in front of other people."
That was when I started making things up, too. The first time, it was out of spite, I think. If they were going to accuse me of lying all the time, I might as well lie. Then it became a cover-up. If I really was telling stories all the time, then when I blurted out something strange that was real, or something that I'd read that sounded crazy to them, then I could pretend that it was just another story.
I could lie to myself.
Somehow that made it feel better, made it feel like I could split off the part of me that noticed things that no one else seemed to see or hear or feel. I could make it a story, and then I controlled it, like I controlled the stories. Then I didn't have to worry about it spinning out of control, or scaring me, or affecting my life. Everyone wants to be normal. I wasn't going to quite get that, but I could make the crazy part something that amused people.
--
I really liked school as soon as it started. History and math were both easy for me, and I could read better than most of my class. At first, gym class was hard, but once I put my heart into it I did well at that, too.
My classmates were impressed by the stories for a few months. I was really proud of some of them - the story about how school bells were descendants of temple bells and were originally intended to drive off the monsters so that people could study in peace was really good, if I do say so myself. Naoko-chan used to ask me to retell that one long after everyone decided I was lying. For a while, I thought she believed me. Maybe she did at first, until Chiharu explained that I was a liar to everyone. Chiharu saw right through me from the very beginning, could tell one of the stories from the start. And right then, I had convinced myself that they were all just my stories, even the ones I could really see, like the kind ghost woman who visited the school late in our first grade year. That was the first time I actually saw the ghost, instead of just hearing its voice or feeling it.
That was also when she showed up. When she was first introduced to our class, at the very beginning of the last trimester of first grade, I noticed that she had just a tiny, tiny bit of that glow. Not much. Not nearly as much as that boy had, the first time. But a little. And Sakura-chan had a cheerful, sparkling personality to go with that glow, too.
I told her that she glowed. For a minute she looked like she believed me. Then Chiharu came up, and introduced herself, and explained to Sakura-chan that everything I ever said was a lie.
Fortunately, Sakura-chan is so cheerful that she stayed friends with me anyway.
--
A year later, I just wasn't seeing, or hearing, or feeling things any more. I wondered if I was growing out of them, if I didn't need those fantasies now that I was older. I think I would have truly believed that if I hadn't seen that little tiny bit of glow around Sakura-chan, almost every school day. She wasn't in my class in second grade, but she was still friends with Chiharu, so I still saw her on frequent occasions.
When we were practicing for our class's song-and-dance routine for the cultural festival that year, her class was practicing for a play. Naoko-chan was in her class, and as our class was leaving the stage and they were getting ready, she asked me for a ghost story. It wasn't very good - it was sort of based on some stuff about Macbeth that I had read, about a cursed play and a ghost - but poor Sakura-chan was so scared that she burst into tears. When Tomoyo-chan asked her why, she explained that her brother could see ghosts, and they would talk to him, and he had always scared her by telling her about them.
I wondered whether he was like me. I wondered whether he was a liar. I wondered whether those two were the same thing.
Fortunately, I got my answer - or at least, one good enough for me - the next Tuesday, when I waited around the front of the school for Sakura-chan's brother to drop her off, him on that bike, her on her skates. His glow was muted, close to his body, almost like he was holding on to it with his willpower, trying to keep it from being seen. It was also a different color. Sakura-chan and the boy way back when were both gold, like late afternoon sunlight; her brother was coppery red, like the last strong beams of sunset.
I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask how this all worked, whether he needed to lie about it too or whether people believed him as easily as his trusting little sister did, whether the reason I didn't see or hear many spirits these days was because he was doing something about them. If he would teach me how to do this better. If I glowed, too.
I didn't say anything. He probably wouldn't have believed me.
He never even looked at me.
--
The other older boy, the one Sakura-chan sometimes went on about like she was talking about a hero in a book, I got a good look at one morning near the end of third grade the same way. He was a bright silvery-blue, as strong as Sakura-chan's brother and almost as tightly controlled; if the brother was sunset, he was the strongest moonlight.
I stopped trying to tell anyone the real stories, finally. There were better ones than I could tell around; how could I compete with that?
"Yeah, yeah."
--
Sakura-chan's glow had been getting brighter, bit by bit, for two weeks or so when the new boy showed up. I don't think he was as gullible as everyone assumed; I think his Japanese just wasn't good enough to tell when I was lying. It was kind of nice for someone other than Sakura-chan and occasionally Naoko-chan to be fooled, really. It made me feel stronger, more powerful. I did wonder, briefly, why the two people who glowed the strongest in the class were the ones who believed me. I hoped, maybe, that it meant that I really was like them somehow, that when they looked at me they saw a little bit of a glow. But if they did, they never said it.
Li-kun's glow was bright green, like morning sunlight through early summer leaves.
--
Meilin-chan didn't glow at all. That was disappointing. I never could tell whether she even understood the stories well enough to be fooled; her Japanese was even worse than Li-kun's.
Mizuki-sensei glowed the same way Sakura-chan's crush did, silvery. I was wondering why all these people who had that light were showing up so rapidly when they'd been so rare before. I knew that something had to be going on, but - whatever it was I had, it wasn't enough. It wasn't strong enough to play a role in what was going on. I was only vaguely aware of it, beams and streamers of barely visible light flaring around us - at the aquarium, the park, the beach, the school, even the field trip to the strawberry field. Whatever I might have had, I couldn't help. I tried to cover up, once in a while, and the stories got more outlandish.
--
I enjoyed playing the queen, honestly; it gave me a chance to overact. Besides, it gave us all a chance to watch Li-kun be awkward, Meilin-chan channel her anger into an outstanding performance, and Sakura-chan try her hardest at something she's not good at by nature, like she is so many other things. (Oh, and to see Tomoyo-chan sew her heart into things.)
When the lights went out, I felt the darkness roll through like a velvet tide, swallowing everything. I managed to stay awake for a few seconds before my consciousness slipped into the blackness, and I thought I could hear a few voices calling - Sakura-chan, her brother, her crush, Li-kun.
They had more light than I had, if they could resist the darkness. But I had managed for a few seconds. Did I dare hope that that meant I had some light of my own?
I asked Chiharu later if she remembered the blackout. She barely remembered the lights blinking. Suddenly, I couldn't help myself; I was a kid again, desperately trying to explain things to my mother so she would understand. "No, the lights went out, and there wasn't any light coming in from the windows, either," and it was like I was hearing myself from a thousand miles away as I slipped into the too-familiar cadence, "and there was a thick mist of darkness that filled the entire auditorium, like sea mist on a cold night . . ."
"Yeah, yeah."
--
The night of the earthquake was awful. It was as if I could see the explosions from huge fireworks very far away, and feel the waves of heat from them somehow, but I couldn't hear them. Just something sort of like heat and sort of like pressure - and the intermittent bursts of light. Maybe "bombs" would be better than "fireworks," except that I don't think bombs are made to throw off sparks.
I hid in the closet. My parents didn't say anything. I think they thought I was afraid there would be another aftershock. It helped as long as I kept my eyes open, saw the shirts and pants and my two good kimonos and the summer yukata and the badly painted inside of the closet door - but if I closed my eyes, if I even blinked, the real world winked out and all I could see was the faraway, far too bright, sparks and bursts and explosions of light.
This wasn't my story. I wasn't in control anymore. I couldn't even pretend.
--
By the time Eriol-kun walked into the classroom, I was pretty much expecting another glower. His was like Sakura-chan's, in that it was very open (and hers had become much brighter recently), and like her brother's, in that it was strong and red. It didn't remind me of sunlight or moonlight, though - his was deep red with hints of purple, entirely his own. He made a beeline for Sakura-chan and Li-kun, and that wasn't surprising either.
I was surprised when he joined in on the calendar story. No one had ever done that before, not even Naoko-chan. I wondered - I hoped? - that that might mean that he was like me, at least a little bit, that he had secrets he had to hide, that he made up ruses and tales to hide the scary truths from other people.
I'm pretty sure I was right about the secrets, anyway.
He never started a story on his own, except for the snow-fairy tale at the ski lodge, and that was for Naoko-chan. I tried to prompt him into it a couple of times, but he always threw the ball back to me, and then embellished and embroidered what I said. Probably he was too busy with whatever it was he and his light were doing to figure out what sorts of lies he could get away with, as opposed to which ones were necessary. He needed lies more than I did, I think.
Chiharu blamed me for Eriol-kun's telling stories. I think it was a disappointment for her for me to have company. Maybe it made me less unique, in her eyes, or maybe she was just hoping for more from Eriol-kun.
--
I knew he was leaving before anyone else did, I think. Well, other than maybe Sakura-chan and Li-kun. He'd been wrapping things up, finishing projects early, cleaning things out of his locker. Sakura-chan had been glowing more and more brightly - it was hard for me to ignore now - and, suddenly, her brother's glow was reduced to something even tinier than Sakura-chan's had been, back before any of the strange lights had started.
I was sitting on one of the benches, trying to think what to say to the only person who had ever helped me make up a story, when he appeared behind me. I don't know if he'd been moving so quietly that I hadn't seen him, or if he really (as I suspected, as I wanted somehow to be true) just appeared out of nowhere. He sat down beside me without saying anything, and I was too absorbed in my own thoughts and worries to break the silence. For once, I wanted to be serious, to speak the truth - but even if I did . . .
Would he believe me? If I asked him a question, would he take me seriously?
He looked at me, and suddenly smiled, a smile that said he already knew everything I could ever ask, and that he wasn't about to tell me, either.
"Most of what you're wondering, you'll have to find out for yourself," he said, in a much lower voice than I had ever heard him use before. "Considering everything that's happened, I don't think you'll have any problems finding out, if you really want to. But I did want to tell you three things: first, that yes, you should have asked him, and that you still can, if you want; secondly, that he doesn't know he still has anything of his own left, and you should tell him, but not yet; and third -"
Eriol met my eyes, and suddenly I was frightened, as I hadn't been since the earthquake; there was too much light behind those eyes, it burned -
"Third - yours is blue. Soft, like the afternoon sky in late summer. It's not very bright, but yes, I can see it." His voice lowered further, to almost a whisper, and his hand closed on mine. "I wish I had the time to train you, too. You could be . . . very useful. But keep your eyes open. You have plenty of chances to learn the truth."
He let go of my hand and stood up, still smiling. "And in some ways you're freer than Sakura-chan and Toya-kun are. You can't be found out. It's your blessing and your curse . . ."
I looked at the ground. "No one will ever believe me."
He looked serious again. "You're right. But I know when you speak the truth; it's rare - and precious." He held out his hand again, and I shook it. For an instant, I thought I saw his vivid red-violet glow, and a much fainter, soft sky-blue glow crossing it - mine?
He smiled. "I look forward to meeting you again." And then he was gone.
I rubbed at my eyes and looked at my hand again. Without his for contrast, I couldn't see anything. But it was there.
I had my own light. It wasn't a lack of anything I was pulling curtains over and hiding under mounds of words; there was something there after all.
I had a Story, too, a real one. Maybe some day I might actually get to act in it.
Rating: G/PG
Ships: Assume all canon ones are implied
Spoilers: everything up to the second movie
Disclaimer: They're CLAMP's, not mine
Second draft, slightly cleaned up. This will probably get heavily revised later.
I guess I was really young when it first happened. At least, the first time I remember. It was cold, and I was trying to keep up with Mother as she hurried home from shopping.
There was a boy, older than me, running the other way on the other side of the street. He was glowing. Not much - just a gentle golden light behind the shoulders that shone around his head and through his eyes. It made him look handsome, maybe even important.
I wanted to look like that.
I tugged on Mother's sleeve. "Look, that boy over there's glowing. How do I get to glow like that? Is it a light in his skin?"
Mother looked down at me before she ever looked at the boy. Then she looked at him, but just a glance, more like she was checking something than actually seeing him. Then she looked back at me, looked at me like I'd done something wrong.
"Don't tell stories like that." She tugged my arm and we pushed forward, and the boy and his light slipped out of sight.
--
By the time I was five, I knew what sort of reaction I'd get when I mentioned things like that. Sometimes it was things I saw, sometimes things I'd read about. Why I didn't learn to keep my mouth shut, I don't know. Somehow it was too difficult for me to not say anything; I kept blurting things out. "In the park, today, there was an old woman I couldn't see. I could hear her voice, though. She was looking for her dog." "Hush. Don't tell such stories, especially in front of other people."
That was when I started making things up, too. The first time, it was out of spite, I think. If they were going to accuse me of lying all the time, I might as well lie. Then it became a cover-up. If I really was telling stories all the time, then when I blurted out something strange that was real, or something that I'd read that sounded crazy to them, then I could pretend that it was just another story.
I could lie to myself.
Somehow that made it feel better, made it feel like I could split off the part of me that noticed things that no one else seemed to see or hear or feel. I could make it a story, and then I controlled it, like I controlled the stories. Then I didn't have to worry about it spinning out of control, or scaring me, or affecting my life. Everyone wants to be normal. I wasn't going to quite get that, but I could make the crazy part something that amused people.
--
I really liked school as soon as it started. History and math were both easy for me, and I could read better than most of my class. At first, gym class was hard, but once I put my heart into it I did well at that, too.
My classmates were impressed by the stories for a few months. I was really proud of some of them - the story about how school bells were descendants of temple bells and were originally intended to drive off the monsters so that people could study in peace was really good, if I do say so myself. Naoko-chan used to ask me to retell that one long after everyone decided I was lying. For a while, I thought she believed me. Maybe she did at first, until Chiharu explained that I was a liar to everyone. Chiharu saw right through me from the very beginning, could tell one of the stories from the start. And right then, I had convinced myself that they were all just my stories, even the ones I could really see, like the kind ghost woman who visited the school late in our first grade year. That was the first time I actually saw the ghost, instead of just hearing its voice or feeling it.
That was also when she showed up. When she was first introduced to our class, at the very beginning of the last trimester of first grade, I noticed that she had just a tiny, tiny bit of that glow. Not much. Not nearly as much as that boy had, the first time. But a little. And Sakura-chan had a cheerful, sparkling personality to go with that glow, too.
I told her that she glowed. For a minute she looked like she believed me. Then Chiharu came up, and introduced herself, and explained to Sakura-chan that everything I ever said was a lie.
Fortunately, Sakura-chan is so cheerful that she stayed friends with me anyway.
--
A year later, I just wasn't seeing, or hearing, or feeling things any more. I wondered if I was growing out of them, if I didn't need those fantasies now that I was older. I think I would have truly believed that if I hadn't seen that little tiny bit of glow around Sakura-chan, almost every school day. She wasn't in my class in second grade, but she was still friends with Chiharu, so I still saw her on frequent occasions.
When we were practicing for our class's song-and-dance routine for the cultural festival that year, her class was practicing for a play. Naoko-chan was in her class, and as our class was leaving the stage and they were getting ready, she asked me for a ghost story. It wasn't very good - it was sort of based on some stuff about Macbeth that I had read, about a cursed play and a ghost - but poor Sakura-chan was so scared that she burst into tears. When Tomoyo-chan asked her why, she explained that her brother could see ghosts, and they would talk to him, and he had always scared her by telling her about them.
I wondered whether he was like me. I wondered whether he was a liar. I wondered whether those two were the same thing.
Fortunately, I got my answer - or at least, one good enough for me - the next Tuesday, when I waited around the front of the school for Sakura-chan's brother to drop her off, him on that bike, her on her skates. His glow was muted, close to his body, almost like he was holding on to it with his willpower, trying to keep it from being seen. It was also a different color. Sakura-chan and the boy way back when were both gold, like late afternoon sunlight; her brother was coppery red, like the last strong beams of sunset.
I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask how this all worked, whether he needed to lie about it too or whether people believed him as easily as his trusting little sister did, whether the reason I didn't see or hear many spirits these days was because he was doing something about them. If he would teach me how to do this better. If I glowed, too.
I didn't say anything. He probably wouldn't have believed me.
He never even looked at me.
--
The other older boy, the one Sakura-chan sometimes went on about like she was talking about a hero in a book, I got a good look at one morning near the end of third grade the same way. He was a bright silvery-blue, as strong as Sakura-chan's brother and almost as tightly controlled; if the brother was sunset, he was the strongest moonlight.
I stopped trying to tell anyone the real stories, finally. There were better ones than I could tell around; how could I compete with that?
"Yeah, yeah."
--
Sakura-chan's glow had been getting brighter, bit by bit, for two weeks or so when the new boy showed up. I don't think he was as gullible as everyone assumed; I think his Japanese just wasn't good enough to tell when I was lying. It was kind of nice for someone other than Sakura-chan and occasionally Naoko-chan to be fooled, really. It made me feel stronger, more powerful. I did wonder, briefly, why the two people who glowed the strongest in the class were the ones who believed me. I hoped, maybe, that it meant that I really was like them somehow, that when they looked at me they saw a little bit of a glow. But if they did, they never said it.
Li-kun's glow was bright green, like morning sunlight through early summer leaves.
--
Meilin-chan didn't glow at all. That was disappointing. I never could tell whether she even understood the stories well enough to be fooled; her Japanese was even worse than Li-kun's.
Mizuki-sensei glowed the same way Sakura-chan's crush did, silvery. I was wondering why all these people who had that light were showing up so rapidly when they'd been so rare before. I knew that something had to be going on, but - whatever it was I had, it wasn't enough. It wasn't strong enough to play a role in what was going on. I was only vaguely aware of it, beams and streamers of barely visible light flaring around us - at the aquarium, the park, the beach, the school, even the field trip to the strawberry field. Whatever I might have had, I couldn't help. I tried to cover up, once in a while, and the stories got more outlandish.
--
I enjoyed playing the queen, honestly; it gave me a chance to overact. Besides, it gave us all a chance to watch Li-kun be awkward, Meilin-chan channel her anger into an outstanding performance, and Sakura-chan try her hardest at something she's not good at by nature, like she is so many other things. (Oh, and to see Tomoyo-chan sew her heart into things.)
When the lights went out, I felt the darkness roll through like a velvet tide, swallowing everything. I managed to stay awake for a few seconds before my consciousness slipped into the blackness, and I thought I could hear a few voices calling - Sakura-chan, her brother, her crush, Li-kun.
They had more light than I had, if they could resist the darkness. But I had managed for a few seconds. Did I dare hope that that meant I had some light of my own?
I asked Chiharu later if she remembered the blackout. She barely remembered the lights blinking. Suddenly, I couldn't help myself; I was a kid again, desperately trying to explain things to my mother so she would understand. "No, the lights went out, and there wasn't any light coming in from the windows, either," and it was like I was hearing myself from a thousand miles away as I slipped into the too-familiar cadence, "and there was a thick mist of darkness that filled the entire auditorium, like sea mist on a cold night . . ."
"Yeah, yeah."
--
The night of the earthquake was awful. It was as if I could see the explosions from huge fireworks very far away, and feel the waves of heat from them somehow, but I couldn't hear them. Just something sort of like heat and sort of like pressure - and the intermittent bursts of light. Maybe "bombs" would be better than "fireworks," except that I don't think bombs are made to throw off sparks.
I hid in the closet. My parents didn't say anything. I think they thought I was afraid there would be another aftershock. It helped as long as I kept my eyes open, saw the shirts and pants and my two good kimonos and the summer yukata and the badly painted inside of the closet door - but if I closed my eyes, if I even blinked, the real world winked out and all I could see was the faraway, far too bright, sparks and bursts and explosions of light.
This wasn't my story. I wasn't in control anymore. I couldn't even pretend.
--
By the time Eriol-kun walked into the classroom, I was pretty much expecting another glower. His was like Sakura-chan's, in that it was very open (and hers had become much brighter recently), and like her brother's, in that it was strong and red. It didn't remind me of sunlight or moonlight, though - his was deep red with hints of purple, entirely his own. He made a beeline for Sakura-chan and Li-kun, and that wasn't surprising either.
I was surprised when he joined in on the calendar story. No one had ever done that before, not even Naoko-chan. I wondered - I hoped? - that that might mean that he was like me, at least a little bit, that he had secrets he had to hide, that he made up ruses and tales to hide the scary truths from other people.
I'm pretty sure I was right about the secrets, anyway.
He never started a story on his own, except for the snow-fairy tale at the ski lodge, and that was for Naoko-chan. I tried to prompt him into it a couple of times, but he always threw the ball back to me, and then embellished and embroidered what I said. Probably he was too busy with whatever it was he and his light were doing to figure out what sorts of lies he could get away with, as opposed to which ones were necessary. He needed lies more than I did, I think.
Chiharu blamed me for Eriol-kun's telling stories. I think it was a disappointment for her for me to have company. Maybe it made me less unique, in her eyes, or maybe she was just hoping for more from Eriol-kun.
--
I knew he was leaving before anyone else did, I think. Well, other than maybe Sakura-chan and Li-kun. He'd been wrapping things up, finishing projects early, cleaning things out of his locker. Sakura-chan had been glowing more and more brightly - it was hard for me to ignore now - and, suddenly, her brother's glow was reduced to something even tinier than Sakura-chan's had been, back before any of the strange lights had started.
I was sitting on one of the benches, trying to think what to say to the only person who had ever helped me make up a story, when he appeared behind me. I don't know if he'd been moving so quietly that I hadn't seen him, or if he really (as I suspected, as I wanted somehow to be true) just appeared out of nowhere. He sat down beside me without saying anything, and I was too absorbed in my own thoughts and worries to break the silence. For once, I wanted to be serious, to speak the truth - but even if I did . . .
Would he believe me? If I asked him a question, would he take me seriously?
He looked at me, and suddenly smiled, a smile that said he already knew everything I could ever ask, and that he wasn't about to tell me, either.
"Most of what you're wondering, you'll have to find out for yourself," he said, in a much lower voice than I had ever heard him use before. "Considering everything that's happened, I don't think you'll have any problems finding out, if you really want to. But I did want to tell you three things: first, that yes, you should have asked him, and that you still can, if you want; secondly, that he doesn't know he still has anything of his own left, and you should tell him, but not yet; and third -"
Eriol met my eyes, and suddenly I was frightened, as I hadn't been since the earthquake; there was too much light behind those eyes, it burned -
"Third - yours is blue. Soft, like the afternoon sky in late summer. It's not very bright, but yes, I can see it." His voice lowered further, to almost a whisper, and his hand closed on mine. "I wish I had the time to train you, too. You could be . . . very useful. But keep your eyes open. You have plenty of chances to learn the truth."
He let go of my hand and stood up, still smiling. "And in some ways you're freer than Sakura-chan and Toya-kun are. You can't be found out. It's your blessing and your curse . . ."
I looked at the ground. "No one will ever believe me."
He looked serious again. "You're right. But I know when you speak the truth; it's rare - and precious." He held out his hand again, and I shook it. For an instant, I thought I saw his vivid red-violet glow, and a much fainter, soft sky-blue glow crossing it - mine?
He smiled. "I look forward to meeting you again." And then he was gone.
I rubbed at my eyes and looked at my hand again. Without his for contrast, I couldn't see anything. But it was there.
I had my own light. It wasn't a lack of anything I was pulling curtains over and hiding under mounds of words; there was something there after all.
I had a Story, too, a real one. Maybe some day I might actually get to act in it.
