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rainbowfic2025-05-19 03:32 pm
verylongfarewell) wrote in rainbowfic2025-05-19 03:32 pm
jasper #3; cattleya #1; calcite #20 | the dog that waited; adazakura
Name: The Dog That Waited - Letters to Natsu
Story: Adazakura
Colors: Jasper, calcite, cattleya
Supplies and Styles: Plein-air, silhouette, life drawing
Word Count: ~1800
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mention of childbirth, parenting
____________________
THE DOG THAT WAITED
In my new home, there’s a dog. A young stud, only recently outgrown puppyhood. His coat is extremely soft, and he lets me pet him without showing his teeth.
Don’t you remember old Taro from my father’s house, he would have never allowed such a thing as hugs and excessive stroking of his fur, but Kumo does. That is the name I have given him, this fluffy-looking dog with a coat that mimics clouds at sunrise, the same kind of deep, golden shading.
Saburo-sama calls him Ken, but it seems a cold name to give any creature, only to identify them by species or purpose. Along that vein, what would I be called now? Wife.
I don’t want wife to be my name, I never wanted wife to be part of any description of me at all, but there are both greater and lesser evils in this world, and one must always choose, Natsu-chan. I was hoping, even if you wouldn’t forgive me, that you would manage the consequences of my weakness better than my father and my family could be expected to do. Unlike you, they cannot travel halfway across Japan, sleep under the stars and call it a safe roof above their heads. They cannot process the world in the strokes of a writing brush.
My father works with cypress, not with poetry.
Every morning, when I let Kumo out into the yard, I wonder what words you would choose, if you had to describe him. And what words you would choose to describe me, in the same sitting.
Remember, some choices, Natsu-chan, can never satisfy anyone. Some choices make losers of us all before the beginning has even begun.
~
My father, too, is a craftsman, I am used to the early workhours, sleeping through the planing of hardwood, the shrill song of saws, yet after moving here, I simply cannot sleep in, although Saburo-sama never deliberately wakes me, when he rises.
I keep my back on him, when he dresses, prepares for the day, and only once I hear the large gates to the garden fall shut behind him as he leaves for this construction site or that, do I also get up.
It is becoming a more and more laborious process, however, my belly requires that I do not tighten my obi too much any longer. If they haven’t always, at this point my circumstances are truly showing.
Embarrassing as this is to say, painful as this is to admit, I am glad that you’re away and unable to see me in this state. Seemingly, I can bear a child, but that shame I wouldn’t want to bear, your sharp gaze piercing me, to my innermost, to all the things I am hiding and holding inside.
Kumo never stays inside with me, once Saburo-sama has gone to work. He shoots out the door like my soul ripped from my body and then, proceeds to sit by the gates for the first many hours of the morning, not moving until the midday sun chases him gasping and panting into the shade. Never looking anywhere but at those gates that separate him from his master. As if by staring at them, he can will them to disappear.
Dear Kumo, I think, listen to Older Sister.
It won’t work.
~
She is no weight whatsoever in my arms.
Yet, she chains me to the earth on which I stand, I couldn’t move from this spot, from this house, from this proud city anymore, if doing so were ever an option for me. Rather, I question whether someone such as I can want anything else. Than to always stay, to grow old, a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother, the name on the lips of my descendants. A prayer whispered by the very daughter who can currently do little else but blabber indistinctly and tug on strands of my hair, resting securely in the crook of my elbow, her cheek against my right breast. What more could I possibly wish to be?
There is no answer that I know how to pronounce, because pronouncing it would work like a curse, and this spot would be engulfed in shadow, this house would crumble from the foundation up and the city… The city would have to say goodbye to its walls, for once spoken, those words and the one who spoke them cannot be confined any longer.
I think of this, as I let my infant daughter grasp my finger in her little fist with no strength yet. I hope she will grow up to be stronger than her mother.
To that end, I have named her Fude, Natsu-chan. Like the tool of your trade, I wanted her to be something you could use rather than abandon. I wanted her to be something, you would rather turn around for, even after the third of a day’s journey, than to leave behind in the dust. Perhaps I was hoping, if not for me, then you would come back for her sake.
Selfishly.
The draw of her, little Fude, is strong enough that Kumo, always so devoted to the gates, does not leave the entrance to the bedroom now. He doesn’t enter, but he lies watch at the door, observing us silently with that dark, unreadable gaze of dogs.
Yes, who knows what goes on inside a dog’s mind, really? Who knows.
~
Each day is chiselled into her features, she is like a time-telling thing.
The months have gone by so fast, it feels as if it were spring only a single morning ago, but now the maple leaf season has started, and our next celebratory event will be the shaping and presenting of Fude’s one-year rice cake. Isn’t it strange, Natsu-chan? Usually, I will count time in my own years, summers, falls, but from hence forward, it will be measured in hers. Her birthdays. Her steps. Her words.
Her healthy growth.
Have I truly disappeared so much? It is my body she is feeding from, after all. At this rate, will there be anything left of me, when you finally return to Kyoto? Will you visit what is there? Do you promise?
We fed her the first meal a handful of weeks ago, and she ate quietly and happily what we offered. Saburo-sama smiled so widely, pleased to know she wouldn’t come to want throughout her life. That he would not let her down in providing.
I thanked him for always taking care of my family.
He thanked me for having given him one.
We give, and that is how we lose, I wanted to remind him but felt it would bring bad luck to our daughter with a shrivelled plum between her little fingers, munching at it without making a sound. What a contented child she is. So unlike her mother.
Kumo never sits by the gates anymore, he doesn’t leave the child’s side. Only I look towards the borders of the city now, knowing in which direction the main road runs and running along it for miles, before my mind is called back to the present.
I know the way to you, Natsu-chan, but I do not know how to take it.
~
Why is love so lonely?
Two days ago, I was sick in the morning for the first time again. Pushing my untouched breakfast away, I promised myself, if it is another girl, I will call her Poetry to make you come back to me and claim her for yourself, Natsu-chan but even so, let it be a son this time, since Saburo-sama, without saying so, he is too self-contained, wants a boy to name his heir. I owe him that much, don’t I?
Could my debt be repaid in seven pounds of pale baby flesh, then I might finally be lightweight enough to walk out the gates, away. Having given Saburo-sama half of myself, surely he has no claim to me any longer. It should be all the permit I need to travel to wherever you are.
Where are you right now, Natsu-chan? I hope, nowhere near. I don’t want you to see me in this state, but I cannot bear being parted from you either. It has been enough time. The entire life of my daughter, it has been. In the meantime, Kumo has grown big and bulky and strong, and he stays by my right hip constantly, so going beyond the garden is impossible, he guards my place in this house like the soul guards the body.
Fruitlessly, for the body will change, it will shrivel, the way a firm, juicy plum does, and it will die. The way we all do.
And at my grave, will Kumo keep watch, so even my soul can never go looking for you, once freed? Will the spirit of me continue to hold the rest back, even in death?
Ah! How lonely love is.
~
Saburo-sama had his son. We held the naming ceremony last week, and he named the boy Yoshitaro. I was still too weak to partake, but I heard, he carried him around so very proudly, like I had born him a great treasure of lacquered woods or gold-mended porcelain. The baby has a good disposition, he cries only little and falls asleep at an appropriate time, when drinking from my breast. I feed him, and he sleeps. I sleep, and he doesn’t cry.
What can I say, he is a blessing.
Yet, another and even greater blessing, Natsu-chan, was your latest letter, I don’t know how long it has been underway, but you wrote that you are headed back to Kyoto. You didn’t say how far along you were on your journey. Neither did you say forever, but when have we ever promised each other such a thing anyway? I will simply be happy to see you again, well and alive. Undoubtedly not my old Natsu-chan from childhood, that girl is long gone, isn’t she? Just as the Inu-chan from those years has grown into a woman, you might not even recognise her, but promise me, Natsu-chan… Promise me, you will look for her regardless. Promise me, how she has aged won’t frighten or repulse you.
Underneath, Inu is Inu. For you, Inu will always be Inu.
I will always be the one who takes the dog to the gates, staring towards the boundaries of the city, hoping for a glimpse of an approaching traveller in the shape of you. As a child I waited by the window of my father’s shop for you to arrive, every morning of every day. As a woman, I wait by the closest vantage point available to me, late afternoon into evening, until it is time to prepare dinner.
The point remains, I wait, Natsu-chan. I never stopped waiting.
Please don’t stop either. Hurry home.
Hurry.
Story: Adazakura
Colors: Jasper, calcite, cattleya
Supplies and Styles: Plein-air, silhouette, life drawing
Word Count: ~1800
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mention of childbirth, parenting
____________________
In my new home, there’s a dog. A young stud, only recently outgrown puppyhood. His coat is extremely soft, and he lets me pet him without showing his teeth.
Don’t you remember old Taro from my father’s house, he would have never allowed such a thing as hugs and excessive stroking of his fur, but Kumo does. That is the name I have given him, this fluffy-looking dog with a coat that mimics clouds at sunrise, the same kind of deep, golden shading.
Saburo-sama calls him Ken, but it seems a cold name to give any creature, only to identify them by species or purpose. Along that vein, what would I be called now? Wife.
I don’t want wife to be my name, I never wanted wife to be part of any description of me at all, but there are both greater and lesser evils in this world, and one must always choose, Natsu-chan. I was hoping, even if you wouldn’t forgive me, that you would manage the consequences of my weakness better than my father and my family could be expected to do. Unlike you, they cannot travel halfway across Japan, sleep under the stars and call it a safe roof above their heads. They cannot process the world in the strokes of a writing brush.
My father works with cypress, not with poetry.
Every morning, when I let Kumo out into the yard, I wonder what words you would choose, if you had to describe him. And what words you would choose to describe me, in the same sitting.
Remember, some choices, Natsu-chan, can never satisfy anyone. Some choices make losers of us all before the beginning has even begun.
My father, too, is a craftsman, I am used to the early workhours, sleeping through the planing of hardwood, the shrill song of saws, yet after moving here, I simply cannot sleep in, although Saburo-sama never deliberately wakes me, when he rises.
I keep my back on him, when he dresses, prepares for the day, and only once I hear the large gates to the garden fall shut behind him as he leaves for this construction site or that, do I also get up.
It is becoming a more and more laborious process, however, my belly requires that I do not tighten my obi too much any longer. If they haven’t always, at this point my circumstances are truly showing.
Embarrassing as this is to say, painful as this is to admit, I am glad that you’re away and unable to see me in this state. Seemingly, I can bear a child, but that shame I wouldn’t want to bear, your sharp gaze piercing me, to my innermost, to all the things I am hiding and holding inside.
Kumo never stays inside with me, once Saburo-sama has gone to work. He shoots out the door like my soul ripped from my body and then, proceeds to sit by the gates for the first many hours of the morning, not moving until the midday sun chases him gasping and panting into the shade. Never looking anywhere but at those gates that separate him from his master. As if by staring at them, he can will them to disappear.
Dear Kumo, I think, listen to Older Sister.
It won’t work.
She is no weight whatsoever in my arms.
Yet, she chains me to the earth on which I stand, I couldn’t move from this spot, from this house, from this proud city anymore, if doing so were ever an option for me. Rather, I question whether someone such as I can want anything else. Than to always stay, to grow old, a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother, the name on the lips of my descendants. A prayer whispered by the very daughter who can currently do little else but blabber indistinctly and tug on strands of my hair, resting securely in the crook of my elbow, her cheek against my right breast. What more could I possibly wish to be?
There is no answer that I know how to pronounce, because pronouncing it would work like a curse, and this spot would be engulfed in shadow, this house would crumble from the foundation up and the city… The city would have to say goodbye to its walls, for once spoken, those words and the one who spoke them cannot be confined any longer.
I think of this, as I let my infant daughter grasp my finger in her little fist with no strength yet. I hope she will grow up to be stronger than her mother.
To that end, I have named her Fude, Natsu-chan. Like the tool of your trade, I wanted her to be something you could use rather than abandon. I wanted her to be something, you would rather turn around for, even after the third of a day’s journey, than to leave behind in the dust. Perhaps I was hoping, if not for me, then you would come back for her sake.
Selfishly.
The draw of her, little Fude, is strong enough that Kumo, always so devoted to the gates, does not leave the entrance to the bedroom now. He doesn’t enter, but he lies watch at the door, observing us silently with that dark, unreadable gaze of dogs.
Yes, who knows what goes on inside a dog’s mind, really? Who knows.
Each day is chiselled into her features, she is like a time-telling thing.
The months have gone by so fast, it feels as if it were spring only a single morning ago, but now the maple leaf season has started, and our next celebratory event will be the shaping and presenting of Fude’s one-year rice cake. Isn’t it strange, Natsu-chan? Usually, I will count time in my own years, summers, falls, but from hence forward, it will be measured in hers. Her birthdays. Her steps. Her words.
Her healthy growth.
Have I truly disappeared so much? It is my body she is feeding from, after all. At this rate, will there be anything left of me, when you finally return to Kyoto? Will you visit what is there? Do you promise?
We fed her the first meal a handful of weeks ago, and she ate quietly and happily what we offered. Saburo-sama smiled so widely, pleased to know she wouldn’t come to want throughout her life. That he would not let her down in providing.
I thanked him for always taking care of my family.
He thanked me for having given him one.
We give, and that is how we lose, I wanted to remind him but felt it would bring bad luck to our daughter with a shrivelled plum between her little fingers, munching at it without making a sound. What a contented child she is. So unlike her mother.
Kumo never sits by the gates anymore, he doesn’t leave the child’s side. Only I look towards the borders of the city now, knowing in which direction the main road runs and running along it for miles, before my mind is called back to the present.
I know the way to you, Natsu-chan, but I do not know how to take it.
Why is love so lonely?
Two days ago, I was sick in the morning for the first time again. Pushing my untouched breakfast away, I promised myself, if it is another girl, I will call her Poetry to make you come back to me and claim her for yourself, Natsu-chan but even so, let it be a son this time, since Saburo-sama, without saying so, he is too self-contained, wants a boy to name his heir. I owe him that much, don’t I?
Could my debt be repaid in seven pounds of pale baby flesh, then I might finally be lightweight enough to walk out the gates, away. Having given Saburo-sama half of myself, surely he has no claim to me any longer. It should be all the permit I need to travel to wherever you are.
Where are you right now, Natsu-chan? I hope, nowhere near. I don’t want you to see me in this state, but I cannot bear being parted from you either. It has been enough time. The entire life of my daughter, it has been. In the meantime, Kumo has grown big and bulky and strong, and he stays by my right hip constantly, so going beyond the garden is impossible, he guards my place in this house like the soul guards the body.
Fruitlessly, for the body will change, it will shrivel, the way a firm, juicy plum does, and it will die. The way we all do.
And at my grave, will Kumo keep watch, so even my soul can never go looking for you, once freed? Will the spirit of me continue to hold the rest back, even in death?
Ah! How lonely love is.
Saburo-sama had his son. We held the naming ceremony last week, and he named the boy Yoshitaro. I was still too weak to partake, but I heard, he carried him around so very proudly, like I had born him a great treasure of lacquered woods or gold-mended porcelain. The baby has a good disposition, he cries only little and falls asleep at an appropriate time, when drinking from my breast. I feed him, and he sleeps. I sleep, and he doesn’t cry.
What can I say, he is a blessing.
Yet, another and even greater blessing, Natsu-chan, was your latest letter, I don’t know how long it has been underway, but you wrote that you are headed back to Kyoto. You didn’t say how far along you were on your journey. Neither did you say forever, but when have we ever promised each other such a thing anyway? I will simply be happy to see you again, well and alive. Undoubtedly not my old Natsu-chan from childhood, that girl is long gone, isn’t she? Just as the Inu-chan from those years has grown into a woman, you might not even recognise her, but promise me, Natsu-chan… Promise me, you will look for her regardless. Promise me, how she has aged won’t frighten or repulse you.
Underneath, Inu is Inu. For you, Inu will always be Inu.
I will always be the one who takes the dog to the gates, staring towards the boundaries of the city, hoping for a glimpse of an approaching traveller in the shape of you. As a child I waited by the window of my father’s shop for you to arrive, every morning of every day. As a woman, I wait by the closest vantage point available to me, late afternoon into evening, until it is time to prepare dinner.
The point remains, I wait, Natsu-chan. I never stopped waiting.
Please don’t stop either. Hurry home.
Hurry.
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Ahh, this is so sad and sweet, there is a really lovely wistful feeling to this.
"Saburo-sama calls him Ken, but it seems a cold name to give any creature, only to identify them by species or purpose."
I'm curious what the intended meaning of the name Ken is, here? I looked it up, but it seems like it can mean potentially a lot of different things depending on what kanji is used.
no subject
I'm not a fluent Japanese-speaker, so this is only what I could gather from my own research, but according to that, Ken is a pretty normal name to give your dog - and in that context, it simply means 'dog'.
no subject
Ahh, so it's sort of like "Fido" or "Rex" in English? Interesting, I didn't know that!
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