[fic] orthography/cartography
Title: orthography/cartography
Subject: Ginko, Tanyuu
Note: written for 30_friends; the section breaks are the relevant themes.


(comfortable silence)

When one's duty is tied inextricably to words, one soon learns to appreciate their absence. Not that Ginko's visits are quite the same as those of other mushishi -- Tanyuu enjoys his stories, even if they bring her no closer to completing her work. Yet there is still something to be said for the quiet moments between his tales, when the air in the room is flavoured with smoke a shade sweeter than that from Ginko's cigarettes. Or when they are outside, and the texture of their silence is softer, less anticipatory; patient as the wide grasslands waiting for the rains.

 

(lunchtime)

"Actually," Ginko says, not looking up from his bowl of rice, "I could tell more useful stories. You only use a handful of mine, but that's probably because I leave out those that might help the most with your work. So if--"

Tanyuu laughs. Ginko glances at her, surprised, and his chopsticks lose their hold on a slice of pickled radish.

"It's kind of you to offer," she says. "But not everything is about necessity. If stories of death are the staple of my days, then yours--"

"I hope you're not going to compare my stories to tsukemono."

 

(the third wheel)

Tanyuu is different when she is around Kumado. Ginko sips his tea and wonders: is it that she smiles more readily, or that she feels a greater need to smile? He is better at reading nature’s language than he is at reading people, but the latter seems more plausible. The only problem is how it contradicts Tanyuu’s hopeful laugh and the way Kumado looks out across the fields, towards the horizon; here there is a shared history that Ginko cannot hope to understand.

Or perhaps he does not need to. The tea is refreshingly bitter. He drinks; it is enough.

 

(argument)

He can give her lists of reasons for pessimism, or at least for something other than hope. There are stories enough to fill someone else’s library: stories in which the victor is not the mushishi, and sometimes not even the mushi, but instead nature in its purest and most unconcerned form. Yet what can he tell her that she does not already know? She says: I know the hazards of your job, even if my knowledge is second-hand. And I have learnt this, as you must also have done: that life of all sorts can find a way to endure.

 

(friends forever)

Ginko doesn't like the idea of 'forever'. It's unachievable for humans, and the eternal shadow-life of a mushi doesn't seem worth living. When he was younger -- his lack of a past means he can never be sure of his age, but since he no longer counts the years, it doesn't matter -- 'forever' might have been a word that he used; now it seems naïve, if not deceitful.

Yet Tanyuu still speaks of the future, her optimism warm as the sun-touched fields they rest in -- and even if autumn is already in the air, the moment feels almost like a promise.