@awesomefrauellauniverse You’ve probably forgotten you ever prompted me, and this isn’t very good but I was determined to do something with your prompt. So here it is! Just under 900 words, in an AU where Uranus and Neptune didn’t awaken.
The Opposite of Destiny
Haruka
shot up from her tangle of blankets. “What was that?”
“It’s just the wind, babe, come back to sleep.”
But the wind alone was never so compelling. It had a
partner, sometimes, who was swift and direct and impossible to ignore.
“I’m going for a run.”
“What? It’s…” Sleepy fumbling for a phone. “It’s not
even four.”
“I gotta. I’m sorry, I’ll try and be back.”
“Try? Haruka-!”
But Haruka was already pulling on shorts and bolting out
the door. She would not be back, she knew, not really. It was hard to stay
still, stay rooted, when it found her. She had to escape to find her
peace. It always took time to catch up to her again.
@awesomefrauellauniverse You’ve probably forgotten you ever prompted me, and this isn’t very good but I was determined to do something with your prompt. So here it is! Just under 900 words, in an AU where Uranus and Neptune didn’t awaken.
The Opposite of Destiny
Haruka
shot up from her tangle of blankets. “What was that?”
“It’s just the wind, babe, come back to sleep.”
But the wind alone was never so compelling. It had a
partner, sometimes, who was swift and direct and impossible to ignore.
“I’m going for a run.”
“What? It’s…” Sleepy fumbling for a phone. “It’s not
even four.”
“I gotta. I’m sorry, I’ll try and be back.”
“Try? Haruka-!”
But Haruka was already pulling on shorts and bolting out
the door. She would not be back, she knew, not really. It was hard to stay
still, stay rooted, when it found her. She had to escape to find her
peace. It always took time to catch up to her again.
Running
helped, when it was with her. Haruka figured it liked running too. She could
feel it beside her, keeping pace step for step. That was how she knew it to be
separate from the wind, although it seemed so similar. The wind did not have
feet. The wind came with her smooth and seamless. Its partner had a gait and a
pulse that matched Haruka’s.
“Maybe
I’ll tell her about you,” Haruka said a mile or so in. When she had a running partner,
she felt compelled to talk, even if she wasn’t sure how real it was. “Maybe I’ll
stay with her, with this job. What would you think of that?”
Her companion
said nothing, as always, but she could feel it calling her bluff. Sometimes she
moved on before it even found her.
“I’ve
always wanted to settle down with a woman, get married, the whole shindig. What
do you have against that?”
It was
not any of those things that it was against.
“One of
these days, you have to tell me why you’re here.”
But
that wasn’t fair. It tried. From the first moment she felt it, it had been
trying. Years and years of encounters, and it couldn’t get it across to her.
She felt the want, the compulsion to get her to somewhere, something, someone,
to make her understand. It needed something from her. When she was a young
teen, she’d fancied it a ghost, and in her secret heart of hearts, she’d hoped
the ghost was a girl who had fallen in love with her, wanted her, needed her.
The older she got, the more she knew that wasn’t right. It might be a ghost,
but not like that.
She let
it lead her today. The sun rose as they ran, through streets and parks and
trails. As much as she ran on her own, Haruka began to tire. Her partner slowed
for her, but drove her onwards. It had an urgency today. A hope. Haruka
wondered if it had figured out what to show her.
They
came upon a beach, and it let her walk. Haruka had always feared the water. She’d
had dreams of drowning as long as she could remember. If she wasn’t careful, one
day the water would swallow her up.
There
was only one other person on the beach this early. Haruka’s companion bid her
towards them.
Details
came into focus one by one. Long green hair, loose and frizzed in the sea
breeze. A canvas set up beside her, not yet painted on. A simple black dress.
Bare feet. The woman turned, then, and Haruka had the feeling they had met, but
she could not place her face.
“You’re…”
the woman started, but then frowned.
She had
something with her, too. Haruka could not say how she knew, but she’d never
encountered anyone like her before. “You have a ghost.” The words were out
before she could think of a better way to ask.
“Is that
what you call yours?” The woman looked out to the water. “I’ve always thought
of it as the spirit of the sea.”
“Mine’s
the wind, but also not.”
The
woman let out a low hum. She moved to the canvas and began to work.
“What
are you drawing?” Haruka asked, though she felt it was a stupid question.
“You
remind me of things I’ve seen in dreams.” The woman did not look away from her
paint. There were dark circles under her eyes, and wrinkles she hardly seemed
old enough for. “I dream often, and it’s always the same.” Her hands were
quick, the scene took shape on the canvas. Reds and blacks, a backdrop of
destruction, but in the foreground, a shining crystal cast light on what as
starting to take shape as a sword.
“Should
I let you be?”
The
woman hummed again. “The sea bid us to meet. It rarely asks more of me than to
paint.” She looked into Haruka’s eyes, then, sending a shiver down her spine. “Perhaps
you are the answer it can never give me.”
For the
first time, Haruka wondered if she wanted answers. She looked at the painting
again. Darkness. Death. A hope that hardly counted as such. She looked at the
woman. The sea.
The sea
would drown her, if she let it.
Haruka
turned and sprinted down the beach. She couldn’t face whatever the answer might
be. A life of wondering and wandering didn’t seem so bad anymore.
The
wind around her stilled as she ran. Uranus resigned herself to eternal sleep.
I get real tired of people getting mad at me because at work we only seat people who buy the book an event is for from our store (until right before start time when there are still empty seats).
And so I’m here to scream a very important message.
IT IS NOT INHERENTLY CLASSIST FOR A BUSINESS TO CHARGE YOU MONEY FOR A GOOD OR SERVICE.
Yes, my store is often not the cheapest place to get whatever book. But! We are the ones holding the event, and we treat the book purchase as a ticket because our company cannot hold events without a financial pay-off. Hosting events takes time and money (and time IS money, because the store pays staff (including me) for all the time spent setting up and running the event).
And the ideal is not not just cover costs, but exceed them, because otherwise there is no reason for the company to put resources towards events. A business exists to make profit. You can disagree with this capitalist model, I certainly do! But there’s little point in yelling over the small ways this effects you, and it’s CERTAINLY pointless to yell at underpaid workers who don’t make the policy in the first place.
This MIGHT be obnoxious, but my wife is doing a paper about stories of lgbt bullying, so if you’d like to anonymously share a story, feel free to use this link
These are some of MULTIPLE problems I have with HOF
THIS BECAME A LONG RANT WHOOPS
If I think about it too long I come to the conclusion that
it would WRECK Haruka in particular (Setsuna is Setsuna, I think she’d quietly
internalize it and it would be hard to see any difference, and Michiru can
compartmentalize, distance herself, and also I think she’d be the one who ends
up doing best by Hotaru, in that she asks for the least FROM Hotaru).
But like, let’s be generous and say Haruka is about 18 when
they get Hotaru. She’s still SO YOUNG, and while that works for some people, it
does not work for Haruka. We’re shown so much self-loathing on Haruka’s part,
and she hasn’t grown enough to be able to set it aside. She needs validation,
constantly. THIS IS THE WOMAN WHO HATES SEIYA (who comes in after Hotaru)
LARGELY BECAUSE SHE IS INSECURE AND AFRAID THAT SEIYA COULD TAKE EVERYTHING
(mostly Michiru, but also her place with all the other girls, because if you
don’t think Haruka feels she’s only interesting and attractive because she’s
butch and maybe the only butch the girls know you are w r o n g).
So you have Haruka NEEDING Hotaru to love her, because a
baby’s love is pure and good and if a baby loves her, she maybe has a chance at
being pure and good or at least WORTH something (even with Michiru, she has a
hard time feeling worth anything, because Michiru is rich and because Haruka
sees herself as replaceable, Michiru could love anyone who’d been in the same
circumstances). And I think while Hotaru is a real baby, it seems to be working
out great. Hotaru smiles at Haruka’s fun faces, she likes to be held to Haruka’s
chest, she falls asleep holding Haruka’s finger. But Hotaru isn’t a baby for
long, and Haruka can’t adjust, as much as she tries. The older Hotaru gets, the
harder time Haruka has. She tries desperately to connect with activities she
sees as wholesome—playing catch, cooking together, piggyback rides—but Hotaru
is perceptive, and as she sees it’s not for her benefit, she turns it down
every time.
And once she remembers her original life, her original
family (regardless of if this is anime canon where she’s stolen or not) she
outright hates Haruka in particular. She hates all of them, but Setsuna has a
weird relationship with humanity and so Hotaru hates her the same way she hates
the situation as a whole, as something awful but not quite unnecessary, and
Michiru is harder for Hotaru to deal with because it’s both that she’s part of
this messed up situation and shouldn’t be in Hotaru’s life at all, and that she
doesn’t love Hotaru enough (Hotaru would never want to admit it, but I imagine
she craves Michiru’s affection and approval). Haruka is uncomplicated to her.
Hotaru knows exactly what Haruka wanted from her, and has no problem telling
her so. She has no problem being angry, asking why Haruka couldn’t be less
self-absorbed, be more attentive to who Hotaru really is, why she had to be in
Hotaru’s life at all.
And that destroys Haruka. Not necessarily beyond recovery,
but the cycle of hating herself would go on much longer than it otherwise
would. (And this is Haruka, she might do really stupid shit as a result, I don’t
know if I have the guts to write it, but her breaking things off with Michiru
because of the spirals this would cause would be like, a good fic and something
I see as likely.)
I feel like, realistically, Setsuna, Haruka, and Michiru (the later of whom are teens if we take canon at its word) would be a huge mess, with the “division” something like
-Setsuna has had zero interaction with people in general for who knows how many thousand years, her one point of reference for children is ChibiUsa and she is secretly devastated when Hotaru doesn’t respond with the same affection over songs and stories.
-Haruka is constantly two steps behind Hotaru’s rapid and erratic aging, she tries so hard but Hotaru is now the equivalent of eight and does not want to watch Sesame Street with Papa. Haruka is outwardly devastated. But she tries to be ~the cool parent~ still and offers pizza and candy for dinner. Or anything Hotaru likes, she’ll learn to cook it JUST PLEASE LOVE HER.
-Michiru is calling in a nanny, and also funding the whole enterprise. Tragically, she’s the one Hotaru shows the most affection for.
SittingOverHereDreaming 