Tanabata (The Festival of the Stars)

Inuyasha copyright Rumiko Takahashi.

*Spoilers for volume 14 of the manga.

Draft: November 27, 2002

It was the seventh night of the seventh month, and it was a night among nights, it was a night of love, it was a night of stars.

It was a night when love walked on the stars, she decided. Her bed lay very close to the open window, and she could gaze straight at her own romantic apostrophes, what were after all verbal doublings of an indivisible image that she could not help multiplying ceaselessly in her heart, in her mind.

It will only happen for one night, one last night, and I do not care if I have to repeat memories. After tonight, there will be nothing else to repeat.

The great sweep of the heavenly river seemed to rise up, crash down, foaming at the edges that touched the forest skyline that the lovers may well tremble, anguished and loving and very brave, on their celestial shores. All day long, the village children have prayed for benevolent weather that the Princess and her Cowherd would fly on the wings of their magpies towards each other's embrace. But though everything about her was completely silent and serene now, the stars in the skies seemed to speak of a great tremendous roaring in a song not much louder than the beat of her heart. This was to be no ritualistic crossing, where eyes and hands and lips would touch as if perfect exemplaries of the classical legends. The stars were brilliant and blazing and they burned to the slightest sensation. The Heavenly Lovers would have to shine brightly, too, and blaze, and burn.

Perhaps love does not walk as on calm waters. Perhaps it drowns instead.

She would never know. Very soon, she would be as frail night mist among the stars in such a still evening as this one, but there would be no one above the clouds to embrace her, no face on the far shore that would dare kiss and transform dust to beloved.

It was then that she heard the singing. It was a very soft, preternatural song, no stronger than her own heart, but she recognized it instantly, and her heart struggled to break free of her breast like the beating of wings suddenly failing, falling suddenly headlong from soaring flight.

In another time, in another night, she would have sprung up from her bed and sped to meet him, faster than any Princess, on a path surer than any created by the gods.

Instead, she lay silently, and she listened to him sing, to the beat of his heart, and she thought: This, surely, is a memory that will never end.

Sasa no ha sara-sara.
Nokiba ni yureru.
Ohoshi-sama kirakira, kingin sunago.

Bamboo tree dancing under the eaves.
The stars are shining, silver and gold sprinkles on the paper.

He was quiet and very thorough. As soon as he entered the room, he bade her sit up on the bed. He sat beside her and, cupping the back of her head gently with a strong hand, supported her as she obediently sipped the medicine he had brought.

"The ones they give you are not doing you any good at all," he said implacably.

"That criticism is far too severe," she said, smiling after she had swallowed. "You see, I feel better now than I have in weeks."

"That is because of /my/ medicine," he said in his cold voice. His hand slipped to rest on the pale skin of her nape, bare where she had drawn her hair over her shoulder. His touch tickled her, and she squirmed, laughing a little, though she didn't move away.

"You do seem to be better," he said.

"I told you," she answered. "Come back and see me in two weeks' time and I shall be harvesting the rice."

"Don't be impudent," he said.

She only smiled more; though he couldn't see it, he must have felt it, because this time he tickled her quite deliberately. She tried to wrest away from his hold, giggling for real and somewhat frantically, but he had placed an arm around her shoulders and had drawn her close to him, as he used to when she was a child and she had no one else to go to when the night was cold and she was afraid.

"How is Jaken-sama?" she said, when her laughter had subsided and she was resting her head on his shoulder.

"Dead, I hope."

"Sesshoumaru-samaaaaa."

"What do you think?"

Her thin shoulders quaked under his arm, and he watched her bemusedly, thinking for a moment that she was laughing again, when he saw that she was holding a white cloth to her face and she was coughing blood. He held her silently while he looked at the stars.

"I'm sorry," she whispered after a while. Her voice trembled and she was shivering in his embrace.

He did not reply because, unlike her, he did not know how to remonstrate with someone he did not want to hurt, he did not know how to reassure someone he had hurt.

He only knew that she hurt. He knew her illness as he knew a hateful enemy that had won from the very beginning, from the very moment he saw her tiny and bloodied body in that long-ago twilight, and he had known she was dead.

They were silent for a time.

Finally, he said: "If you had stayed with me, this would never have happened."

She smiled sadly. "Sesshoumaru-sama," she said, "being with you has been the greatest joy of my life."

"Why did you leave?"

"I never left."

"You will leave me now."

The sickness rose up again, choking her, and she felt as if she were drowning. Through the haze of her tears, the unending pain, her life rose up to meet her in a vague skyline of blood-red stars, never shinining, dead, mortal transmutations into inevitable darkness.

She shook her head weakly. "You cannot--you cannot--bring me to life for ever, Sesshoumaru-sama." She laughed. It came out as a sob.

He didn't reply, only picked her up carefully, stood up from the bed. His distinctive scent, of sharp mysterious spices that were also incandescent, as if they burned where they disappeared into his skin, was a small comfort. She tried not to cling to him, but it was just so impossible.

"There are some things that have to end." She was dying, slowly, and quietly, and she wished he would put her down, and leave her, because she had known from the very beginning, when she had opened her eyes and had seen him bending over her, his own eyes cold as death, brilliant as any star, that she could not stay with him. Her life since then was only a repeated memory of that instant of realization, of love.

She could not endure another repetition.

"Even the stars are terrified of endings," he said, so softly, in a voice she had never heard before.

"Won't you be brave for me one last time, Rin?"

Even the stars would not let go.

In another sky, a young girl laughed joyously and swung her beloved's hand as they walked on the stars. They existed in a memory that began and ended for ever when they saw each other's face, when eyes lips hands hearts touched, burned, lived.

Perhaps everything else was an untruth.

And together they sang a song.

Goshiki no tanzaku, watashi ga kaita.
Ohoshi-sama kirakira, sora kara miteru.

Colorful papers, I wrote on them.
The stars are shining, looking down from the sky.

END

Notes: So this is my version of uh straightforward Sesshoumaru/Rin waff _ Because there won't be so many fangirl opportunities in "Out of Darkness" -- in fact, none at all.

I spoke of beginnings -- Rin saw Sesshoumaru first when he was all screwed up after being beaten big-time by Inuyasha + Tetsusaiga and he saw her first when she tried to help him though she woulnd't/couldn't speak (after watching her entire family die). Still, I guess what I was trying to say is that it was after Sesshoumaru brought her back from the dead with Tenseiga that their connection really began.

The Tanabata festival (or Hoshi matsuri) derives from a Chinese legend and was introduced in Japan during the middle of the 7th century. Very briefly, the festival is about the story of two lovers -- Ori Hime (daughter of the Divine Emperor Tantei, known in astronomical incarnations as Vega), who wove beautiful celestial fabrics of which the heavenly skies were only a reflection, and a poor cowherd Kengyu (Altair), whom Ori Hime met on earth and fell in love with. According to one version of the story, the Emperor, upon learning of his daughter's decision to stay with Kengyu, was enraged and ordered her brought back to the celestial realms. The Cowherd pursued his Weaver but the Emperor's wife appeared and she created a strong, flowing river that blocked his way. The two lovers refused to leave the opposite sides of the river bank, so the Emperor made a concession: they would be allowed to meet once a year, during the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, and the celestial magpies would form the bridge across the river (or the Milky Way -- Ama no Gawa) where they would renew their pledge of love.

Another more charming (though less convenient and less sparklish XD) version of the story features the Cowherd himself as being of divine provenance, though considered of lowly birth in the celestial hierarchy. Nevertheless, the Emperor let him marry his daughter. However, because the lovers were so enamored of each other, they neglected their duties -- the Weaver did not weave the cloth and the Cowherd did not tend the heavenly pastures. Enraged, the Emperor ordered their separation -- they were to live on opposite sides of the Milky Way, only to meet once a year during Tanabata.

The song is an actual Tanabata song XD It refers to the customary practice of writing poems on colorful strips of Japanese paper (tanzaku) expressing the writer's aspirations in love, which were then hung on decorated bamboo branches.

Some information from: http://imperial-park.org