Side note: please forgive me for what happened when I pasted this story from word.
A few snowflakes fell on Centehua's button nose. Her kimono's ends flowed and fluttered under the sky. It had a few morning shades of orange, overcast and almost with a shade of indigo. The tips of her long sleeves danced, as if it were the emerald wings of a swan-winged fairy.
'Such a beautiful morning...It's almost magical!' She said.
It was as if Centehua was no longer the caged, hold in closed, tight watch by former Ninjutsu masters...
« Ah… Sergeant Hamazaki… Meet my cousin: the sole Oni self-proclaimed
protector of Humans and South-eastern Bellanians and European settlers, none other than the Imperial Guard, the
influent Captain Kato Fayzl. » It was a young male voice, a soft tenor with a heavy western Kansai
accent.
Although Centehua barely knew Japanese, the basics were quite simple. Thus it was easy for
her to catch small pieces of the young man’s familiar, almost melodramatic
speech.
A small mirthless chuckle echoed around the snow covered gardens:
« I am the black sheep of the family aren’t I? »
The girl's startled eyes darted towards the source of the two male
voices.
The sixteen year old practically never went anywhere
without her elegant crocodile leathered purse.
The small bag had fallen on the snow, and she could not help to rustle a
little with her kimono’s silken obi
to pick up.
« Oh dear… »
Her two sepia photographs, wrapped in a small wallet, her father’s
Russian pattern wooden pipe, her book “Children’s Poem and Sayings Anthology”
in both Japanese and Northern Bellanian... They could have fallen into Tomoya
Hamazaki or into Shitanto's feet...
A happy little toddler wearing a pink and white hanbok. The sepia photograph's back had this phrase as its subtitle in Russian. Centehua was holding a balloon and a branch of peach blossoms. Her big almond-shaped eyes were framed in a soft brownish light by her dark blond curls. According to the subtitle, this little photo happened somewhere in 1926. Her mother was wearing a matching and more mature Bellanian hanbok.
The second photo presented a much older Centehua, feeding small crumbles of maize bread to pidgeons and exotic Northern Bellanian native birds in a majestic, magical garden near the Ku-min River Buddhist Temples... She was followed by her father, who was wearing a dark brown formal European suit. The photo was taken in the thirtieth fifth of March.
The second photo presented a much older Centehua, feeding small crumbles of maize bread to pidgeons and exotic Northern Bellanian native birds in a majestic, magical garden near the Ku-min River Buddhist Temples... She was followed by her father, who was wearing a dark brown formal European suit. The photo was taken in the thirtieth fifth of March.
Centehua always tried to keep these two photos in good conditions. Those little photos seemed to from a distant past... Now she was a prisoner in the Duke Von Tifon's golden cage.
In fact, the old wooden pipe could had broken into pieces had not been
by the enamel white outer layer and the refined mother-of-pearl piece
surrounded the mouthpiece. Centehua could perfectly see the year of 1750
written in Latin letters, despite a broken and cracked pipe’s head. Her father
was always a pipe smoker, and the same happened with his father and his
great-great-grandfather.
Centehua had practically lost the small wooden box which her grandfather
had used to clean the ash tobacco. In fact, she had seen her father clean and
lighting his old pipe she did not understood the difference between his clever
gestures and the ones the Duke did with his silvery pipe with a tiger
head-piece. All she did was that this small object, this old creaked pipe was
part of her father’s memory… When he was still mentally sane and happy he would
always tell her a story about the Mihailov warriors and how they had been given
this very same pipe by a well-respected member of the Imperial Court.
She recalled how her father said with a melodramatic pose: “this was
here when the ninja were the majority
of the people living in Shunamari.” Of course, the pipe also symbolized the
survival of the Mihailov, a bourgeois Russian family whose male members had
battled against many Japanese and Northern Bellanian soldiers. Her father practically
never went in an exaggerated narration of the facts. He simply “pinked and
painted with a soft-cloud description about Russian soldiers, depicting them as
utter heroes of the Bellanian Empire” as Xiang Di Quatl had remarked once.
He was a kindred spirit, whose only fault was to have a heavy Russian
accent whenever he spoke in Northern Bellanian. Although her father hardly was
with her, Centehua adored him for those rare moments. He never questioned her,
he never scolded her…Pavel Mihailov was a cheerful and playful “dad” who was a
fool for his daughter.
Pavel was practically clueless as to what meant to have a teenage
daughter. His supposedly “serious conversations” and his meaningless affections
were sometimes too smothering for a teenage daughter. And even sometimes, it was as if he thought he
always would have a child as a daughter. When she thought her father never talked to her as Master Hoitak – or rather,
Hibiki Kato – had talked to her, Centehua feared that tears would begin to
pressure out of her eyelids.
The small collection of poems and Northern Bellanian sayings was a book
Centehua had cherished since her eighth birthday. The greenish with the dark
blue hardcover spine, velvet-like texture and the italic golden characters in
simplified Northern Bellanian was one of the most refined and yet graceful
book-designs Centehua had seen in her life. It was a Bellanian book and at the
same time it had a European flair to it.
Within, there were a few simple poems both from Northern Bellanian as
from Japanese origin, dating back as far as the fourteenth century. The book
was on its fortieth and third edition and it was as common to be seen carried
by Northern Bellanian primary school-age children as the “Chronicles of Time
and Logic” be carried by fiftyish or sixtyish nostalgic women and men.
Centehua could not help to grasp tightly the leathered bag with this
book. It was the very first book she had managed to read in Northern Bellanian
and in Japanese. This was a much part of her life as the photos and the Russian
pipe were.
Taking a quick glance at the photos, Centehua felt foolish… How could
she ever think a man as optimist as her father and a woman as forceful as her
mother would ever be peaceful after nearly nine years of marriage?
