The ghosts in Agaepsonia made Ise long for the emptiness of the Tower of Rebirth, so warm and inviting compared to the graven chill that kept her from restful sleep, waking every hour to the dark emptiness of the barracks, to a ceiling so distant it scarcely felt as though she was indoors.
They were not ghosts, not truly. They were only drafts whistling by and echoing, close enough to whispers that Ise was tempted to try and identify the words brushing past her ears, the voices that Yawen claimed to be the lingering knells of her fallen bloom-sisters. In the dark Ise wondered if she could hear her own sisters.
Would Nanase be proud of me? She did not commonly have gentle, kind words, not to Ise, to herself, to anyone. As a child, Ise had been terrified of her severe nature, and would cling to Kasumi for safety, though all that did was earn both of them reprimands from their eldest for whatever faults they last displayed which were so unbecoming of a daughter of Ubami. But stern as her words were, she was a good teacher, and her presence was steady, unyielding, safe. Mother had her very young, Ise recalled, and Nanase too had her daughter at an early age. For a Blossom may always die in the midst of duty, so each Ubami scion must have a daughter to succeed her, as soon as possible. Nanase was much older than her sisters, so there was always a distance, but that did not ease the agony of her absence. I am a scion of Ubami, now, Ise thought. She preferred not to dwell on the implications.
Haruna would have been proud. Hers was the warmth that Ise never received from Nanase. Born after Mother had ceased her activities within the Order, Haruna was much closer to her siblings’ ages, but Ise only ever recalled looking up to her, in a literal sense as well as a figure. Ise had always dreamt of fighting alongside Haruna, someday, an honor that Kirari and Kasumi often bragged about, but Haruna would always console the youngest with a kiss to the forehead and loving words. Come your Efflorescence, what do you say we leave on a mission together, the two of us alone, any mission? It doesn’t matter which, for, my sweetest Ise, I’ve always known you to be a brave and dutiful child, someone I’d entrust with my life. An Ubami.
The softest winds could have been Mother’s whispers. She had been a woman to measure her every word, and those were never numerous. And like these winds she was subtle and distant, barely ever there, only briefly, and then she was gone. Ise knew shamefully little of her own mother. Lady Ubami was always kept occupied and absent by her many duties, even after she ceased her active obligations under the Ruby Blossom. Some years before Ise’s birth, it was said, Mother had actually focused on her family, but Ise never knew that woman. Kasumi and Kirari scarcely remembered her, either, such was their youth, but Haruna swore that Mother loved them, cared about them… She just never showed it, and when they were together it was always under the weight of formality and propriety, never basking in the warmth of affection. Love, this of all of Mother’s lessons Ise remembered best of all, for it had been the earliest, harshest, most strictly repeated, love is an amusement you can ill afford when you bear the fate of the world on your shoulders. Ise had seen Mother for the first time in a year, and in her childish sadness asked if she even loved her daughters. A mother provides for her children, whom she burdened with life, and you are not ordinary children but daughters of House Ubami, so strength must be cultivated within you, and love would weaken you, doom you. Ise had been six, and not forgotten the lesson, and found it illuminating enough to know better than to ask for the whereabouts of her father.
Father lives, she recalled the gentleness in Kirari’s voice. Harsh as Mother was on Ise, Kirari had been far more rigidly disciplined, but somehow that austerity had not hardened her but blossomed her into kindness. Father is not allowed to see us, but he lives. Our uncles, our brothers… They are kept apart from us, though they live within the same estate, across the river… Ise had never seen his face, so she knew not what to imagine when she thought of him, and did not know his voice, his touch, his name. He had fathered Kirari and Kasumi as well, but existed only in whispers so hushed they were less than wind. Did it matter to him that Mother was gone, did he care for her? For their daughters? Kirari and Kasumi were both dead, and Ise wondered if there was anyone left but herself to mourn them. They were children of a dispassionate union, born of the need to expand the female line of House Ubami and to continue producing Blossoms to carry on their proud legacy… Only other Blossoms had ever been close to them, and they all died together.
So you’ll be one of us, Kirari whispered in the wind. Ise begged for the draft not to pass her, to linger where she could hear its words, this ghost, this sister. Small wonder Yawen was half-mad. Ise was mad, too. Kasumi and I have invited Haruna and Nanase to celebrate. Mother sends her regards. Kirari had given Ise the news herself, that she had been selected, a foregone conclusion for a daughter of Ubami but nevertheless a great honor, a privilege, something that gave Ise’s sisters a reason to be proud of her beyond mere birth. Kirari had never been one to conceal her tears, and so she wept openly as she clutched her sister against her chest. Ise couldn’t remember that feeling anymore. That embrace was now a memory that she never even noticed fade to nothing.
When the wind spoke in Kasumi’s voice, Ise could no longer bear it. The floor beneath her feet was cold and dusty, but by her second step she was mantled, cape shifting behind her, black boots silent on the tiles beneath, the medal on her chest gleaming a gentle pink that illuminated the endless dark. The other Blossoms were asleep, though far apart from one another that Ise could see only Millicent and Erika beneath her pale light. Urgency guided her towards the outside, to the door out of the barracks, but in its emptiness Agaepsonia’s barracks felt as expansive as the world outside, the ceilings beyond her sight, beyond her reach as the moon would be to her.
It was brighter underneath its nightly pallor than inside the fortress. Only moonlight pierced the clouds, a nebulous shimmering like reflections on a lake’s placid waters. Lucent memories swam past and whirled beyond recollection, as fleeting, as immaterial as the winds that bid her haunt the ruins. Do you know these stars? Kasumi had asked on a star-bright noon of night in a lifetime past, time and again sharing tales of constellations and moon-gardens, of men driven to drown chasing lunar kami into the Lacustrine Mirrors of Reifurushima, whose waters spilled over to vomit their souls. Her sister taught her constellations great and small, and wherever Ise ran, she could not escape the memories, the voices, her sister’s and her own.
The Dove does not look like a dove, Kasumi remarked, her easy laughter resounding within Ise’s skull. But, Sister, none of the constellations resemble their names, so the Dove is no different. Did the Old Folk live in the midst of fog in those ancient days or were they just stupid? Laughter. Ise was free to speak so openly with Kirari, with Kasumi, with Haruna… They did not demand her to be proper, did not expect her to be anyone but Ise, just Ise, nothing more than Ise…
The clouds lingered. There were no starpaths to see, and the memory of beautiful nights spent in Kyusaushiro quickly turned to haze and fading echoes, glimpses deprived of context. But the winds still whispered, and Ise could not escape the memory of her sister.
“You asked me once why there are so many myths about people becoming stars, about men and women seeing their beloveds depart to dwell forever in the moon,” Kasumi had said, some two years ago, “and I didn’t have a good answer for you at the time. I have given it some thought in the past week. There is one universal experience that is the birthright of all men, and that is the grief and longing which we all drown in. Deaths and partings alike, but also other pains, other bereavements that needn’t the soil of death to bloom. The end of love, the loss of a limb, the distancing of youth day by day by day…”
“So these myths are trying to explain this sorrow?” Ise asked.
“Explain? Not quite,” Kasumi braided Ise’s hair, which back then had been so soft, a pink so bright… “It well could be that a child would ask why the world has claimed their aging father, or a mother question why fate would have her birth a child doomed to a painful, early death. But it is more than explanations which we need. For the reasons we understand, however much we refrain from looking at the truth. Fate is capricious, indifferent, mindless, and needs no purpose to cull the innocent by the thousands and to let life sprout to be extinguished shortly thereafter. We all know this. We need more, however. The why is not the sort of understanding that we desire. So these myths instead convey feelings which our words fail to express. If we could not weave all our countless strands of agony into poems and paintings and dirges sung in many voices, we would have all cut short the threads of our lives long ago.”
“But why the moon? Why stars?”
“What could be more distant?” Kasumi looked upwards. “What else is so far beyond our reach that it rivals death? There is more beauty in that fabled parting than there is in the sight of a body given to the earth or to the flames, to the waters or the beasts. It lets us ease our hearts, comforting them that no farewell is ever absolute, that all the distance cannot extinguish the bonds we forged. And those bonds can be painful indeed, but even that can be a comfort sometimes.”
“How can pain be comfortable?”
“It is proof that it happened,” she had said. Ise failed to understand the meaning at the time. “All of it. All of our loves and all of our meetings and all of our time spent together with loved ones who have left us or who have ceased to love us… The pain binds us together, pulls and tightens and crushes, full of the promise of meaning. That is why the most miserable paupers, nameless to the histories, and the most exalted emperors can both look up to the moon and shed tears. Only the moon and stars are large enough to bear all our longing. For they are always with us, always, yet never will we reach them again as we once did, or feel the same comfort that we once shared, or hear their voices…”
Ise felt a cold tear. She hadn’t realized she was starting to weep. When did she start crying…? She wondered, and then she knew. I started crying the moment my sister’s voice became my own, speaking to myself. Now the wind was only wind, a hissing that said nothing. Moonlight reached down towards Ise, but she did not look up again, instead retreating back inside the barracks, towards her bed. Candlelight illuminated the bed right beside hers, and the girl sitting upon it, pink hair untidy and untamed.
“Hi,” Triella said. Ise nodded politely. She was glad she had stopped herself from crying any longer. She did not wish to share her tears with anyone. “Difficult night?”
“What is it to you?” Ise asked, more harshly than she intended- and she intended a good deal of harshness.
“The wind here troubles me,” she said. “Not only because of the cold, but because… It makes me think of what Yawen said. That this castle might be haunted…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ise. “We cannot sleep because this place is cold and terribly uncomfortable and because we are wracked with concerns. No more.”
“You may be right,” Triella admitted. “Still, I worried. I haven’t gotten one second of sleep tonight, so when I heard your hurried footsteps I presumed I wasn’t the only one. Oh, but I didn’t follow you or anything.”
“Instead you’re sitting next to my bed, waiting for me,” said Ise. “What for?”
“If you need help, company, anything…”
“Thank you, but I am fine,” she said in a voice burdened with distaste. “We should just keep trying to fall asleep. Duty awaits us tomorrow.”
“I know, I know,” Triella said. Something troubled her. Her fingers were fidgety, her feet bobbing erratically. “I hope I didn’t bother you. I only wanted you to know that you can rely on me. On your bloom-sister.”
Had she said anything else at all, Ise would have held her tongue and dismissed her coldly but politely. Had she said anything else, Ise would have swallowed her annoyance in silent. Had she said anything else…
“Don’t call me your bloom-sister ever again,” Ise snarled. “You are not my sister. You are not even my equal. I don’t even know what it was that the Rose saw in you to welcome you into our ranks. You’re not even charming enough to pity, so that can’t be it. Now leave me be. Bloom-sister… What a fucking mockery.”
Wordlessly, Triella did as she was bid. Ise did not look at her face. She didn’t have to, and did not want to. I am not so weak as to succumb to guilt. Watching Triella snuff out her candle and walk away, Ise felt the taste of her poison on her tongue, heavy and thick and repulsive.
The Rose's Torn Petals 