#I am really excited for Chibs to get the damn letter ahaha

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Silverleaf 9: Shadow Puppets

HEYO and welcome to your next edition of Silverleaf, GRACIOUSLY sponsored on my patreon by Benjamin! Please thank him for this series, it’s people like him that keep my bills paid and content coming! My patreon is HERE and my ko-fi is HERE, if you want to thank me or chip in! Also, i LOVE comments, so I would LOVE if you left one. The entire series is here. 

Her heels clicked against the marble of the entryway as her coat was taken from her, Michiru barely waiting long enough for the butler to remove it properly. She glared at the flowers on the side table, the way they were bright and cheap and inelegant and lovely, too lovely for a place like this. Too lovely for the cold, carved crystal of the vase in which they sat.

“Get rid of those.” She said to her butler dismissively, and he nodded, not bothering to ask why the bouquet she’d been so pleased with when Haruka had brought it was suddenly to be destroyed.

He had been with the family long enough.

Michiru clicked again, the tone changing as the floors changed from marble to the tile of the kitchen, the cook looking at her strangely but again, without question, as she clicked into the wine cellar and grabbed a bottle and a glass, gripping them firmly as she went toward her room.

“Miss Kaioh?” The cook asked for a moment.

“Yes?” Michiru stopped and looked at her, her hair winding around her face like a furious wave, eyes sharp, but mouth open slightly, like a rosebud, asking please. Please ask me what’s wrong.

“Have a good night, miss.”

No, of course she wouldn’t ask, because she was afraid, because Michiru was the queen, and to become the queen you must be fearsome, and you must prey.

She clicked down the hall from tile to marble to the wood of the family bedrooms, thinking over and over how Haruka hadn’t wanted her, how she had pressed herself upon Haruka and felt her recoil, and as she she shut her bedroom door behind her, the hot shame of it all gathered in her face, and she could feel the heat of her blush, so unfamiliar to her that it burned like hot embers under her skin.

She was not used to being refused, Michiru Kaioh. Women wanted her, she played their passions and affections as she did her own violin, and each piece, from the Paganinis to the folk songs, bent under her bow. To have a woman, a gym teacher no less, refuse her...it was a strange melange of shame and anger and confusion, and she did not appreciate the cocktail.

She pulled the cork from the wine, pouring it into the glass in front of her as she sat at her desk, looking out at the cool emotionless pale of the moon.

What did you want from Haruka? The wind seemed to ask as it bent the branches of the trees in the moonlight, writing the words in perfect script against the bright paper white.

“What a ridiculous question,” she took a sip of her wine, minorly embarrassed she had responded to the wind, but unwilling to retreat, “I believe I made it quite clear.”

But nothing Michiru ever did was clear, her emotions and motivations and desires all part of the crashing and churning sea that rested in her heart, and there were times that even she could not see the bottom, could not sense whether it was deep or shallow.

Did you desire to possess her? The unkind wind continued its manuscript. Did you wish to add her to the list of women who have loved you, the siren which calls them to the rocks?

Michiru picked up her glass, poured it to the top, and walked away from the window. Sirens were beautiful, in the modern day, weren’t they? It was a beautiful fiction, spinning monsters into mermaids, but Michiru knew the truth. It was only that sirens sounded beautiful, that the images they left in your mind’s eye were lovelier than any other, lovelier even than the will to live.

But sirens were ugly, when it mattered, and perhaps it was not so incorrect to call her a siren, lovely and pleading and full of desire from far away, but too ugly up close. Perhaps she had only wanted Haruka as she had wanted all those other women, something to place as a jewel in her hoard, something to own and destroy at her whims.

All of these things might have been true, and certainly they were true of the women she had known in the past, but a more horrifying thought nagged at her, one not carried by the wind she had heard in perfect script, the one that lived inside her head, the one she foolishly tried to escape by leaving the window.

No, this wind was simple, and quiet, and simply said:

Maybe you wanted her to love you. ‘

______

“Haruka you’re allowed to say no to sex, you know that, right?” Mina looked at her with a mix of irritation and disbelief. “I feel like I’m talking to one of my girls, here.”

Mina poured the noodles into a bowl, and put them in the microwave, leaning against the countertop as she looked over at the back of the couch.

“I know.”  Haruka lay on the couch, Mouse resting on her shoulder as she petted him softly.

Mina shook her head as the microwave’s timer beeped frantically, and pulled the noodles out of the microwave. Haruka was so simple that she occasionally made it all the way back to being hard. She was straightforward and easy to read, but the way she went about things was utterly confusing, the ways she seemed to think of how to present herself, her awkward fumbling when it came to her own emotions.

“You don’t ever have to have sex you don’t want to have.” she plopped across from Haruka and slung her legs up across the oversize chair.

“But I did--” She pushed back her hair and sighed heavily, “it’s just, I wanted other stuff, I just…” she closed her eyes. “I’m bad at this. I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. But like…” Mina thought carefully for a moment, twirling a noodle, “Ruka, what do you want?”

“I don’t know.” she shook her head, “I...I wanted to go on a date with her.”

Mouse headbutted her cheek, purring loudly.

Haruka looked over at Mina. “The problem is me. It’s been so long and I,” she nuzzled against Mouse, “I’m out of practice, I don’t know what to do anymore, and it was easier when I was younger, and I’d just stuff it all and do whatever and be the cool butch girl who just...did things.”

Mina slurped a noodle into her mouth. “Bud, you were never the cool butch girl who did things,” Haruka sat silent, “I’m teasing you. I know what you mean.”

“I want a relationship,” She dramatically slapped her forehead, and Mouse scowled at her, “UGH! I can’t believe I said that, I sound so pathetic.”

“You don’t have to be me, Haruka,” Mina set down her bowl and sat up, leaning toward her, “I don’t know why you think you have to be, but for a lot of people, liking someone is pretty strictly necessary to fucking them. I’m grateful we don’t have to wait til we’re fucking married anymore, but there’s nothing wrong with taking time to warm up, if you’re that kind of person, and you pretty clearly are.”

“I don’t want to be.”

Mina shook her head and shrugged. “Well.”

Haruka looked up at the ceiling, the plain white an open canvas for her thoughts. It was true, she supposed, that what she really wanted was love, and to know Michiru was invested, and to go to summer festivals and eat strawberries on a stick and sit under the flowering trees together. She wanted to snuggle up under her afghans and watch TV together, eating takeout between them. It was dumb, and every queer website she read led her to believe she should be having group bondage sex while doing a tarot reading or otherwise she was replicating heteronormative values within her life, and no matter how many times Mina told her to stop reading shit that made her feel bad for being herself, it was what she was supposed to do, wasn’t it?

“Can I ask you a question, Ru?” Mina said, interrupting Haruka’s disastrous line of thinking, peering at her as if she could read her mind.

“Sure.” Haruka glanced back over at her, giving a weak shrug.

“When has what other people wanted you to be ever helped you?” Mina leaned back in her chair, “When you tried to like dresses for you mom? When you tried to do track again for your dad? When you tried to be tough in college? When? When has it been good for you?”

Haruka didn’t say anything, just shrugged.

“If Michiru doesn’t like you for what you are, if she doesn’t want to date you the way you want it, then you’re gonna have to stop being so twitterpated and get over her.” Mina knelt down next to her and looked her in the eye “Haruka, you’re one of my favorite people on earth. But you get so caught up in the possibility of shit that you put everything into that one thing. And then it becomes a crushing blow every time it doesn’t work. Remember when you were trying to get an apartment near mine? Remember that debacle?”

Haruka looked away. “I get...into things...sometimes.”

“I know, and I know how emotional you are, and who you are is totally fine. But also, don’t hang everything on one date. You’re not stupid, you’re not wrong, you’re just you. This isn’t a crisis. You just want different things. Apparently. I guess. God forbid you two actually talk about expectations.”

Haruka scowled at her. “That’s not romantic!”

Mina stared at her. “You’re right. This is a way better option.”

Haruka held Mouse above her. “You’ll always love me, right Mousie?”

Mouse meowed in assent.

Mina stood up. “On the offchance you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with a cat, I think you should be more honest about what you want. Try going on some dates and learning how to talk to a girl. Forget Michiru, she’s this whole...thing. I’ve seen her chew girls up and spit them out, Haruka, she’s no good for you.”

Haruka toyed with Mouse’s collar. “Yeah?”

“Tell you what.” Mina smacked Haruka’s hip, and she scooted over so Mina could sit on the edge of the couch. “Let me set you up. Super low key, no pressure date, I promise. I know a girl who’s getting back into the game too, you two can just drink coffee and stare at each other like nerds.”

Haruka snorted. “That’s your answer? Go on awkward dates?”

“Training wheels!” She grinned, “Naw, it’ll be fine, I promise. And go someplace you feel comfortable, what the fuck do you know about tapas?”

“I thought it would be classy!” Haruka chuckled, “but I guess that proves your point.”

“Move over, Amazing Race is new on Hulu.” Mina nudged her, and she sat up, passing Mina a blanket.

“Thanks for coming over.” Haruka picked up the remote, passing it to Mina.

“Eh, my fridge was empty anyhow,” she smiled, “So what else was I gonna do, go to the grocery store?”

The wind carried a song, a word, a spoken poem, a call to love, a call to question, a call to know, in a foreign language no one knew, each only with their own piece of the Rosetta stone.

Across town, staring up at a mansion in the international district, where all the diplomats lived, Hotaru Tomoe held a letter in her hand, the wind whipping by her as she stared up at the lit house, in front of the mailbox reading “Serenity.”