[fanfic][ranma] ranma.presence-after-christmas

Disclaimer: All Ranma-1/2 characters and plot elements used here are in fact the property of Rumiko Takahashi and her assigns, and are used without their knowledge or permission. This is fan-fiction: an open fan letter in prose.

Fresh from the bath and still in her yukata, she looked around the tea room and announced, "I need to attend to something; don't wait for me."

Akane nodded equably from the comfort of her companion's arms. Soun looked around, nodded, then went back to what he was doing. The others were around the house somewhere; this would do.

And that was it. She went up to her room to get ready. She had to get out.

While the others were wandering off to their rooms to get into their kimonos, she was putting on the lacy black slip. Then it was time for her to fumble deep within the closet, searching more by touch than sight, to bring out her secret treasure, this red dress. She slipped it on and inspected herself in the mirror. It came down barely below the knee to expose shapely legs in black pantyhose, with a square cut front that showed perhaps a hint of the abbreviated bra and a little cleavage.

While others were fastening their obis, she was tying a red ribbon in her hair, much as she'd once seen Ukyo wear to such effect. She paused at the mirror to dab on quick touches of makeup, as much as anything to prove that she knew how.

Well before the others slipped their tabi socks into their zori, she had seized her purse and was down the stairs and out the front door, still slipping her feet securely into the heeled shoes. Then she shrugged her coat tighter around her against the bleak cold and bitter encroaching darkness and walked out the gate and down the street.

The wind caught her hair immediately, sending it in streams across her face. She turned to face the wind, letting it put her hair back into place, and looked around. The streets behind her were all but deserted, still: she had escaped in time.

She smoothed her hair down into her coat, tightened the red ribbon, then turned and walked on with the wind at her back, taking a long stride to work off the cold, even though she teetered occasionally on the rough ice in her high heels. Her movements were restless in desperation, with no more patience for patience; the shoes would have to deal with the sidewalk, because she wasn't going back just now.

She bitterly thought to herself, 'Happy New Year, Kasumi. You're one year older now.' And what did I do to deserve that, she dully wondered, other than to survive?

When a bus paused to let a passenger out at the front just as she arrived at the bus stop, she stepped up in the back and let it carry her away from her life.

She looked around: the bus was nearly empty as it resumed its journey towards the great city's heart. She took a seat and stared out the window, idly watching the lights of the city slip by, until the inevitable darkness of closed shops and quiet houses beyond the window made her face her reflection once more.

The reflection in the window showed a woman in her late twenties, a woman of beauty. Yes, beautiful, she could see that, but she had domesticated that beauty, plowed it under for the sake of her precious calm and harmony and stability. It was all she had then; it was all she had now, and it wasn't enough.

Now that she thought about it, it hadn't been enough even then. Though the people around her, driven to change and grow out of necessity, might wonder what was being done to them by rude circumstance, she didn't have to think about that then. She had her work. The work did not change and neither did she. It was a simple form of stabilization... of protection... of self-imprisonment. She had done this to herself, she knew. Others had helped, but it had really been Kasumi who had shackled herself to the mundane until it was too late for the unusual to successfully catch her up and carry her away into her dreams.

It was well after Christmas for her; the present she had was what she could expect from the future, unless she was willing to bargain. Out here on this night there must be someone equally at a loss for a family within which to fit. Someone, anyone would do, as long as he was warm.

If she met a man now and he took her only for the night and then threw her away, she would at least have that private memory to warm the rest of her nights spent with no one; she would have at least had that, which was more than she had now.

Eventually, her bus reached the end of its route. She had hoped to reach the bustling heart of Tokyo, but that was too lengthy a journey for one bus to make with her aboard. Rather than transfer to another seat with another reflection beside it, she decided to walk.

She soon realized that it had been a mistake. The streets were just as cold, just as near-deserted except near the shrines, and there was no place warm and inviting where she could fend off some of this chill with a cup of hot tea. The storefronts here all had their festive lights lit, but nothing was open.

She halted, stunned, as she realized that, then grimly went on anyway. She hadn't expected this in her haste to get away. There must be someplace that was open, someplace where there might be other people, people other than her family. She didn't want to spend this evening alone by herself, but she didn't want to spend it alone with them either.

The pointed high heel of one shoe skidded on ice, then she slipped on the snow and went down, somehow remembering enough of her early training to avoid coming down on her knees and running her hosiery.

Sprawled on her side, feeling the barely-melted snow seeping into her dress, she shuddered, then artlessly raised herself to her feet. There were no strong hands come to help her up.

She had been the strong hands in her family for so long; when was it her turn? Did the world expect her to somehow provide that service for herself as well?

Didn't she, though? Where had her dashing hero gone, after all? She didn't need to ask why he had never arrived: he had arrived, and she had rejected him as too much work on top of the work she had already assigned herself.

'Too boring'; what a laugh. If there was one thing Ranma Saotome was not, it was boring. But he wasn't perfect, either, and she'd been wishing and praying for a handsome prince to rescue her from her life.

Fixated on that mythical perfection, she wasn't willing to accept a prince who was a part-time princess with a guttersnipe mouth and feral ways, someone with rough edges to be smoothed before he'd be ready for that princely role, and she'd fended him off toward Akane. She'd known within a week that she'd made a mistake, but she didn't ever realize the magnitude of her error until... Until he was gone for good, though nobody knew it at the time.

She looked down at herself and something, an imperfection, caught her eye. Her fall had somehow torn open the hem of her dress a little ways. It was like a final gesture of condemnation, labeling her as unfit even for this much festivity. Hesitantly, she worked at the frayed seam, finally bringing away the obvious offender, a long red thread. She idly wound that around her finger as she trudged on, unwilling to let it go for fear that the illusion of beauty she had wrapped around herself would fall apart if she discarded it.

She turned the next corner, and leaked misty breath up through her grateful smile. There was someplace open, a Macudonarudo. It would have to do. While her family was gaily traipsing up the streets to the red torii of the shrines to be blessed, for those who felt unworthy or who resented the emptiness of the purity and peace that was offered, there was this shrine of the mundane with its golden arches, and its blessing, empty food. She reached the door and stepped in, already eyeing the numbered meals.

As she sat down with her meal, she noticed a small woman with long black hair who was seated facing out the storefront window several tables away. On the other side of the dining area, a rough-dressed man was sitting at a counter and staring at the wall. They were the only other diners.

The man was in his early or mid thirties. She eyed him speculatively, taking in his sturdy build, his stoic expression, his large hand that seemed to envelop the small hamburger, and his posture which showed fatigue but not defeat. He looked like a physical laborer or someone who worked with his hands. Perhaps that strong rough hand could be gentle at times, such as when it touched her.

Then the other hand came up to help dip his food in sauce, and she noticed a plain gold band on one finger. Disappointed, she turned her attention to her meal.

The small, almost tasteless meat in the bun was hard to swallow, just like her life now. There was almost nothing there. The meat of it was missing; or easily missed, it was so bland. But that was what the sticky-sweet bubbly drink was for: to wash it down. Just like her smile.

She hated her involuntary smile by now, her practiced smile that denied everything, forgave everything and betrayed nothing except everything. It was all she had, though, really, except for this unpleasant food. This was palatable food to some people, she knew, but, having cooked for others, she knew better.

Even as she reached into the little bag to pull out another tasteless limp stick of deep-fried potato, idly wondering what part of her life that symbolized, she paused to look at her fingers. They were a woman's fingers, tapered and graceful and delicate in shape. Callused as they were by work, though, were these the hands of an attractive woman, now, or something less? Were these strong hands rough? Who cared, though? If nobody else did, she could not afford to.

She pulled her fingers back and wiped them on the paper napkin. She'd reached the end of her tolerance for the meal anyway. It was as tasteless as Akane's current cooking had been for a long time, she noted with a bitter little laugh, and so much better than what Akane had cooked before, before it was too late.

She'd seen it coming, too. She'd come out of her damaged kitchen just in time to see Ranma, rather greenish and holding his stomach, gasp out, "That's it, Akane. Next time you do this -- Parley De Foie Gras. You have been warned."

He'd done it, too. The next time Akane got creative in the kitchen, everything she put on his plate ended up in her mouth. Soun came home furious from seeing Akane admitted to the hospital for systemic shock and internal burns after her stomach was pumped in ER.

That it was Akane's own cooking, intended for Ranma's consumption, made no difference: Soun and Nabiki had driven Ranma out of the house, while Genma softly grunted his animal noises as he rearranged the shogi board. Soun had meant it to be for a short while, just to 'teach Ranma a lesson'... but the lesson must have been learned all too well. Ranma never returned and was never found no matter how many resources Nabiki put into it.

And Kasumi had had her chance to intervene and had done nothing, cowed by the limits of her own role. Now all she could do, once Akane was discharged and plaintively asking her to teach her to cook, was to grimly take her sister step by step through basic cooking procedures, now that she was willing to learn at last, and keep her own tears locked up in her bedroom. She couldn't even display her anger and grief: she knew from listening that, many nights, she and Akane cried a duet into their respective pillows.

And now, seven years later, the strain of keeping it all in was again more than Kasumi could bear. She huddled over the last of her fried potato sticks, letting her hair drape to hide her face, trying to sniffle silently and letting her tears wash away the caked salt beneath them. She clenched her hands in silent anguish, then noticed that something was missing from one of them.

The red thread had loosened from her finger and slipped to the floor. Hastily, Kasumi leaned down, wiping her eyes to spy it out among the black lines of the tiling and pick it back up; it would not do to leave it lying around.

As she straightened up, she noticed a hint of red in what had been her periphery. How odd -- the woman a few tables away had red roots in her glossy black hair. They were just beginning to show: the woman would need to touch things up soon.

Kasumi idly surveyed the woman, who was calmly and obliviously eating a hamburger. She had on a thick practical coat, but Kasumi could pick out hints of an office-lady's outfit. The hemline was right, anyway.

The woman had her purse slung under her shoulder by its strap, clenched tight by her elbow, but Kasumi could see, peeking from the top of the purse, a sports bottle, which was curious in itself: why would a working woman carry water in the dead of winter?

She idly took in the woman's face, with its pert nose, its stubborn chin, its thick lashes with, from this angle, hints of red among the mascara...

Shaking, Kasumi stood, clumsily grasping her purse as she rose, and went around the tables to look at the woman more closely. If she was wrong about this, it would be an unacceptable intrusion on another's privacy, but at this moment she couldn't care.

The woman was sipping at her drink, now, while her free hand toyed with something wrapped around her finger. It was a red hair. She might have plucked it on noticing that it had escaped dyeing. That shade of red...

Kasumi bowed and half-whispered, "I beg your pardon... Saotome-san?"

Badly startled, the woman cringed, then visibly steeled herself, looking up, saying, "Ain't no Saotome--" She caught sight of Kasumi and froze with a stunned look, then slumped and finished, "--here." Then she just stared up as if at her doom.

Kasumi looked at her for long moments, trying to make sense out of this event now that it was upon her, then, as if with the last of her breath, whispered, "Ran...ko?"

She didn't realize that she was faint until the woman was up and at her side, helping her into a facing chair. As Kasumi recovered her wits, she felt a strong hand ease away from her arm; then the woman was once more seated, openly watching her.

As Kasumi realized that her purse was now in her lap and glanced down at it, the woman nodded once, then pulled out a small cellphone from her purse and dialed a number. Kasumi heard tones give way to the garbled insect buzz of voice in the tiny speaker, then the woman spoke: "Hi, I'm uh, not gonna be able to make it tonight."

The woman listened to the buzz, then scowled. "Yeah, well, something important came up."

The scowl gave way to a too-familiar smirk. "Can't tell ya."

Then, suddenly irate and a little hurt, the woman said edgily, "No, it's not another guy!"

The buzz responded and her expression visibly relaxed into something halfway between wistful and sardonic. "Yeah, have fun!"

She rolled her eyes and drummed quick rolls of her fingertips on the tabletop. Her painted tapered fingernails made it sound like a tiny machine gun duet with the buzz. Finally she jerked her hand up, reaching for the phone as she said, "Okay, bye."

Grimacing, the woman thumbed the cellphone, then folded it up and put it away again in her purse. She looked up at Kasumi a little bit defensively and drawled, "Yeah, that was a guy, okay? My boyfriend, kinda."

Kasumi hesitantly found her voice again, aided by the woman's pungent informality. "Kind of?"

The look she got was somewhere between disappointment and deadpan as the woman said, "Yeah, he's good for fun and giggles and that's pretty much it. As far as I know, that's what he thinks of me, so we're even, but we keep each other from getting lonely sometimes."

Kasumi colored and looked down, willing away the image of this woman in the same bargain of intimacy that she'd set out from Nerima to find, then focused on those blue eyes instead, seeking where a man must still be hiding. "Ranma."

The woman shook her head, causing her straight black hair to shimmer. "Ranko. You got it right the first time: I go by Ranko now, and I'm not a Saotome anymore."

Then Ranko settled back to look at her evenly, shifting her head to the side from time to time to take in something she evidently saw in Kasumi's face or eyes. It was impossible for Kasumi to make out what was in her own expression, though, because Ranko's was so guarded. Finally she whispered, "What do you see, Ranko?"

For a long time Ranko still stared back at her in silence, her eyes flickering over Kasumi's face and occasionally dipping to take in her figure under the coat, and, Kasumi could tell, the hint of cleavage. Finally she blushed and lowered her eyes, and, in an unwilling tone, said, "I, um... I see somebody I usedta care about back when I was a guy."

Kasumi started, swallowed against the painful lump in her throat and half-whispered, "Why didn't you say something?"

Ranko tensed and looked up at that, fresh hurt in her eyes, and answered, "Well, you kinda made it clear that first day, din'cha? 'Oh, he wants Akane'. 'You're in luck, Akane, 'cuz he's only half a man'. Well, now I ain't even that." She stared out past Kasumi and shrugged, and her expression took on a bitter fatalistic calm. "I crossed over, Kasumi, I'm registered as a girl now. It took some doing, but I got that, same time as I got my new name. Ranko ain't even my name anymore, it's just a nickname I use." A grim little smirk came and went. "Heh. Like it always was."

Now feeling stung as well made Kasumi's voice perhaps a little sharp in her turn as she asked, "Why are you here tonight, then? Why are you not with your boyfriend? It is a special time, after all."

"Because..." Ranko broke off, visibly tensed, and then stared straight ahead as she spoke in a dry voice, steeled to forbid emotion: "Because I have to. Because I owe ya. Because you're somebody I never got a chance to say thank you, or I love you, or anything like that, back when it mattered. So I'm saying it now. Back when I was Ranma, I loved you. And, thank you, for all the things you did for me back then when you didn't hafta, when I was just a burden. Thank you."

For Kasumi, it seemed that the world once again reeled in shock around her. She dryly swallowed and managed to say, "You loved me?"

Red-faced, Ranko stared down at her empty bags of empty food and slowly nodded, and murmured, "Yeah... I did, really. I didn't think I should say anything about it, 'cuz of Akane, so I didn't, but..."

Now Kasumi was fighting tears. "Ranma, I loved you--"

Ranko grimaced and waved her off and growled, "You're better off. I'm... I'm a killer, Kasumi. I had to kill someone in China to save Akane. And now I don't trust myself anymore. I didn't then, that's one reason I left."

She leaned forward with her elbows on the table and looked up at Kasumi, with utter conviction in her gaze and helpless anxiety in her hand movements. "I put Akane in the hospital with her own food. I nearly put Ryoga in the morgue when he found out about it and came after me. I just... got fed up. With all of it. I couldn't go back. Not to more of the same. It woulda just got worse and worse until I did kill someone I cared about, and I couldn't stand that."

Her voice got softer and smaller as she finished, "That's a big reason why I'm a girl now: so people won't make me kill 'em. 'Cuz it'd be just too easy for me, even now, even like this." She dropped her chin into her hands.

"So you're never going back." It was a finality that Kasumi didn't want to hear, much less speak, but it had to be asked and answered. Back to what, was understood.

Ranko showed a lost look. "I can't, Kasumi." The one supporting hand now gripped her long hair tight, while the other was on the table. She looked down and started tapping emphasis of her points on the tabletop with a fingernail. "If I went back to being a guy, it'd all start all over again. I'd be having to be a 'man among men', and I'd get judged on that.

"I'd be expected to marry a Tendo, and unite the two schools, and take over the dojo.

"I'd have Akane pissed at me again because they'd be shoving her at me trying to make us get married because she's the martial artist.

"I'd have Nabiki pissed at me again because she wouldn't be in charge of the dojo anymore, I would be, and she can do a better job of running a business like that and I know it as well as she does.

"I'd have Ryoga jumping me all the time trying to prove himself by beating me, or to get revenge for whatever I've done to upset him now, or... whatever.

"I'd have fighters showing up just cuz they heard about the big bad Ranma Saotome and wanted to prove themselves against me, and if I didn't wanna fight they'd find some way to make me fight, like Pantyhose did.

"It'd all be just... No way. I ain't gonna go back to being a guy, even if I can, which I don't admit. While I'm like this, I own myself, and if I went back to being a guy I wouldn't own myself anymore." She drew back in her seat and folded her arms tightly across her chest.

Wincing at the vehemence, Kasumi quietly asked, "I notice you didn't include any of your other suitors in your list. What about Ukyo?"

Ranko squinted at recollection, then answered in an offhand but clipped manner. "We're friends. We don't talk much, but we're friends. She was at a dead-end anyway because of her father. She couldn't marry me when I was a guy, because legally she was one. Now that I'm a girl all the time, she doesn't want to marry a girl."

"Shampoo?"

Ranko shared a conspiratorial smile as she leaned in a little and raspily whispered, "I beat her ass real good, gave her back that Kiss of Death..." She grinned again as she straightened and continued in a clear voice, "And it turns out that's what I shoulda done right back at the beginning, in her village. She got some of her honor back, anyway, so she went home."

Kasumi looked at her a moment, then said, "So... You already know what I do, but what do you do these days?"

"You're still at the house, right?"

Kasumi silently nodded, praying inside for this moment of casual intimacy to continue. She had so missed this relief from formality and the crushing weight of tradition, of just conversing without caring about their respective roles. And Ranma.

"Well... At first it was real hard. I couldn't teach, couldn't go to school, couldn't get much of any job, 'cuz I didn't wanna be a guy anymore and I didn't have any papers for this form. I woulda died, maybe, but some people took me in."

Kasumi looked carefully at the woman in front of her. There were fatigue lines under the makeup, chap lines under the lipstick, and all of the baby-fat padding had disappeared from that lean and hardened face. Even allowing for her now being in her mid-twenties, whatever Ranko had gone through, it had not been easy.

"Then I took some courses. It was a struggle, but I made it: I'm a secretary. For a few years that was my big ambition, y'know. I had to stop sponging off other people before I did anything else." She looked at Kasumi and laughed. "And hey, I can type real fast!"

There was an impish grin, then, a flicker of the Ranma she had come to stealthily admire, and then Kasumi inwardly flinched at the thought of what Cologne's reaction might be to seeing the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken being applied to something so subservient by a woman.

The grin faded back into evident fatigue, and Kasumi watched it and ached inside as she thought about the greatest martial artist of a generation being reduced by circumstance and her own inaction to someone whose greatest ambition was to be a typist and tea-lackey... a role all too close to her own. What had she done to her prince? She whispered, "And now?"

Ranko slumped a little and said, "I dunno. Haven't really had time to think it out, y'know? Working takes up a lot of time, and then I gotta get some workout so all this doesn't go to fat like a certain panda that I could name... so that's as far as I've got so far."

"How did men come into it?"

Ranko waved in an offhand way as if declaring the subject of no great import. "Well, after a coupla years of living this way, I stopped lying to myself. I'm still a guy inside, but I'm a girl too. And I'm a girl on the outside, so I checked out that side of myself, and, yeah, I like it. I know a few guys that I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life with. They don't know I used to be a guy, so I don't push it, 'cuz I'm not about to tell them that... But it's enough just for me to know that I can handle that. Makes it all a whole lot easier."

"And if a girl wanted to be with you? How would you respond to that?"

Ranko shrugged. "I dunno. The ones that knew me before don't wanna be stuck with me if I'm stuck this way. The ones that know me now don't wanna get close 'cuz we're both girls. Well, most of 'em, and the others I don't care for."

"Are you stuck?"

"Well..." Ranko visibly considered the thought, then leaned forward a little and, in a confidential voice, said, "Nahh, not really. I use the soap a lot, but... Jusenkyo musta given up on me, I guess, once I decided to be a girl. It doesn't throw hot water at me anymore, anyways. So nobody knows I can still change. They think I'm locked and that suits me fine."

She gave Kasumi a long warm smile, sharing the little joke with her, and Kasumi warmed inside, surging with a sad sort of hope at how easy it was to feel the connection once more. She cocked her head and smiled warmly back as she thought.

To make conversation, Kasumi said, "Akane is seeing that Kuno boy now."

Ranko snorted a laugh. "Yeah, I know. I heard. They might even be good for each other. They're sure a lot alike." She elaborately shrugged, stretched, and closed her eyes. "They'll fight a lot, and she'll always win because he'll always hold back. Maybe I shoulda never got in their way." She looked up and leaned forward, grasping the table, suddenly concerned. "She didn't feed him any of her cooking yet, did she? Well, you said she's seeing him, so he's still alive..."

"Actually, Akane's cooking is quite bland now. Rather tasteless, but healthy."

"So... Well, maybe that's one thing I did right..." She pursed her lips, staring down at the wilted lettuce which was the remains of her meal, as she rested her chin on her palm, lost in thought.

Kasumi watched the play of emotions across Ranko's face. None of them were guarded, and it was almost a mimed recounting of the last days of Ranma Saotome. But the fact that it was open...

The caring was in the air. In this somber harmony, now, of two, Kasumi could feel it deep within her center. The caring was still there, the caring that they had shared but never dared to express: old coals, banked low, now perhaps blown alight by the draft of their chance meeting.

Ranko looked up at her from time to time as she thought, not so much monitoring as checking to be sure that Kasumi was still there, still open herself, and a little half-smile came and went each time she did so. Then her gaze went back to that bit of lettuce, now idly cupped almost protectively by her other hand.

Ranma had never been this open with strangers; something was still between them, and it wasn't their old roles of older woman and younger boy. Time had erased the time between them; could Ranma see that? Or did Ranko even see that it might matter anymore?

"In this body... how do you feel... about women?" The question had already been answered, inferred, anyway, but Kasumi needed a more explicit answer before she could summon her audacity.

Ranko looked thoughtfully at the red hair around her finger and frowned a little. "I, uhh... I like 'em okay."

The other diner had long since left. Now the store manager was turning off the front lights one by one, making the clack of the switches echo around the empty dining area. Kasumi knew that they would have to leave soon... and, as things stood, that was likely to be that. She had no way to make contact again, not even a name to search for; they had each brought their own half of a broken thread. There was only now, and beyond that the silence of a lifetime.

Somehow there was enough courage born of desperation for Kasumi to make that small move which put her own hand lightly on the other woman's. Ranko looked up, her blue eyes again warily neutral, and Kasumi forbade herself not to meet her gaze while she sought within herself for guidance.

If this was as close as she could ever get to having her own man, the man of her dreams, it would have to do. She would have to learn to like it, to see past the body to the soul inside as Akane had done in her time without ever admitting it, to make herself want this woman in front of her for the sake of the man which she had almost managed to remain. For the sake of the one that got away because Kasumi let him have to get away.

Kasumi knew better than to spurn this obvious divine response to her inner cry. The kami did not give second chances lightly and they always made you work harder for them. So it would be for Kasumi. If she could make that desperate leap from her self-inflicted stasis, that is, because from Ranko's caution her actions so far were not explicit enough.

"Ranko..."

Kasumi stood and took the startled smaller woman in her arms, pulling her up from her seat, and looked deep once more, then closed her eyes as she leaned in for a kiss. For a moment those chapped lips resisted, but then they softened and Ranko returned the kiss, gently, desperately unsure. Perhaps as desperately unsure as Kasumi, who was now savoring the soft strangeness of the kiss and thinking that, if this was how it would be, it would have to do.

She eased back and opened her eyes. Ranko looked up at her from within her arms, her stormy blue eyes wide, with unshed tears glistening at the edges. Hesitantly, she whispered, "You're sure..."

Not trusting herself to speak over the knot in her throat, Kasumi nodded, then found her voice and tremulously added, "I'm sure."

Ranko's face eased into a wry crooked smile which ignored the tears now starting to flow, unremarked, down her face. She nodded a little, and roughly said, "Then... Okay, I guess I can be a guy for you sometimes when no one's looking."

Kasumi looked over Ranko's shoulder, to see the manager now standing crossarmed, patently impatient for them to take their public display of lesbian affection elsewhere. Ranko turned, saw, nodded, and picked up Kasumi's purse from the table and handed it to her. Taking her other hand in her small one, she led Kasumi out through the door into the cold night, then started to pull her along with her in a new direction.

This story was sent to FFML with the title "Well After Christmas"; since then, I found the title I had been groping for. It was influenced substantially by Brian Randall's "Again We Meet" and Ucchan's "This is How the Millenium Ends", though at the time of writing I could only remember the threads and textures, not the names. My thanks to both writers for their inspiration.

My thanks to Rakhal Stormwarden of the Penultimate Ranma Fanfic Index (http://www.rakhal.com/ranmalst.html) for alpha prereading and a sanity check. My thanks also go to Don Granberry, Ucchan, Angus MacSpon, Brian Randall, Anand Chelian and David Gao for some excellent C&C.

This came to me over time and asked to be expressed. I'm dealing with writer's block and writers's growing pains on the stories to which I'm committed, so even though it's a lot like Sosei I decided to let it out. It gets to make its own way in the world; I got to reassure myself that I can still write.

C&C welcome: siaru@stormbringer.org