[fic] Other Perspectives
From: ambientlight
To: volta_arovet
Rating: G
Prompt: "3.) Characters: Ginko, Natsume
Genre: crossover
Crossover with Natsume Yuujinchou. I don't care how the AU works, I just think Ginko would be a very good person for poor Natsume to talk with."
Other Perspectives
"They tell me," Ginko said, "that there is a boy in this town who sees things which others can't."
Said boy -- Ginko was fairly sure he'd found the right one -- just frowned back at him, guardedly.
"And if he can, that'll be a great help," Ginko offered. Mushi were far fewer now than they had been in earlier centuries, or so the records suggested. Mushishi, too, had become thin on the ground. In the absence of a local expert, one worked with what one had.
The boy seemed to exchange a cautious glance with the cat in his arms. "Can you... see them too?"
There was a guarded hopefulness to the tone which Ginko recognised, if only abstractly. "Yes. I'm looking for the lord of this forest -- ah, sorry, you might not know the term. This forest's lord is a fox, or so I'm told. You can tell them by the plants--"
"A fox?" The boy looked puzzled; his fat cat had a distinctly un-feline expression of amused scorn. (In the back of his mind, Ginko started going down the list of animal-infecting mushi.) "Do you mean Lord Riou? I've met him, and he wasn't anything like one..."
Some clarification, Ginko decided, was in order.
---
They ended up sitting in the shade of a tree, once a rudimentary understanding had been reached. Ginko watched a lone tree-climbing mushi scale the lower branches of a nearby maple, as Natsume conferred with his ugly cat. Despite Natsume's initial explanation, Ginko had still blown cigarette smoke in the cat's direction, discreetly; only the apparent lack of effect convinced him that something altogether different was at work. While Ginko was no stranger to disbelief, he was far more accustomed to being on the receiving end of it. And there were, after all, mushi which encouraged strange delusions.
"Could you tell me more?" Natsume said abruptly, looking up from his cat at last. "Can these... I mean, are they..."
"I wouldn't keep one as a pet, if that's what you're getting at," Ginko said. (The cat bristled, squirming in Natsume's grasp.) "Most of them aren't the sort of thing one bargains with. So while run-ins with them are seldom pleasant, there's no point in attributing human motives to them, let alone malice. You might as well blame a wolf for hunting, a weed for trying to grow -- what's so funny?"
Natsume shook his head, still smiling. "Sorry, I just-- the youkai I've met aren't really that different from humans."
"Hah! Don't lump us together, you fool!"
Ginko gaped.
Then he picked up his dropped cigarette, made some quick mental adjustments, and looked back at Natsume. "Yes, I think I see."
---
A few days (and more explanations) later:
"Will you ever come by again?"
"It's possible. Don't take this the wrong way, kid. It's disruptive to be a mushi-attracting person in a world with so few mushi, that's all -- wouldn't want to alter their natural distribution. I never stay very long."
Natsume looked like there was something he badly wanted to say. Ginko could guess at its outlines. The sadness in the kid's eyes had the familiarity of a half-remembered fact, or an anecdote someone else had related.
"Hey. Don't worry about it. Like you said: ours are different worlds."
His thoughts turned to the future once he started off onto the road again. There was a lot of work ahead: the mushishi community would be intrigued by this, to put it lightly, but he would have to find some alternative sources. And perhaps some light could be shed on that suspicious mushishi clan -- what was it called, again? The Matoba clan? Isaza, with all his wandering, might have some leads. In any case, there was no reason to disturb the boy and his negotiated peace. A place to call home, a companion who understood the other world, a circle of knowing and unknowing friends -- those were desires Ginko had often read in the wistful prose and distracted gazes of other mushishi. Seeing them in practice was something else.
When Ginko turned back at the far end of the bridge, Natsume was still there, offering a shy wave.
Ginko waved back, imagining the spirit cat's grumbling at the delay.
Then he walked on. The world was waiting.
---
Notes: I'm sorry! I tried to run with the original prompts, but couldn't get away from the sense that Mushishi is, despite its supernatural label, essentially scientific in its philosophy - quite unlike the world of youkai. And Ginko, for all his easygoing well-adjustedness, strikes me as fundamentally different from Natsume in how he relates to the human world...
To: volta_arovet
Rating: G
Prompt: "3.) Characters: Ginko, Natsume
Genre: crossover
Crossover with Natsume Yuujinchou. I don't care how the AU works, I just think Ginko would be a very good person for poor Natsume to talk with."
Other Perspectives
"They tell me," Ginko said, "that there is a boy in this town who sees things which others can't."
Said boy -- Ginko was fairly sure he'd found the right one -- just frowned back at him, guardedly.
"And if he can, that'll be a great help," Ginko offered. Mushi were far fewer now than they had been in earlier centuries, or so the records suggested. Mushishi, too, had become thin on the ground. In the absence of a local expert, one worked with what one had.
The boy seemed to exchange a cautious glance with the cat in his arms. "Can you... see them too?"
There was a guarded hopefulness to the tone which Ginko recognised, if only abstractly. "Yes. I'm looking for the lord of this forest -- ah, sorry, you might not know the term. This forest's lord is a fox, or so I'm told. You can tell them by the plants--"
"A fox?" The boy looked puzzled; his fat cat had a distinctly un-feline expression of amused scorn. (In the back of his mind, Ginko started going down the list of animal-infecting mushi.) "Do you mean Lord Riou? I've met him, and he wasn't anything like one..."
Some clarification, Ginko decided, was in order.
---
They ended up sitting in the shade of a tree, once a rudimentary understanding had been reached. Ginko watched a lone tree-climbing mushi scale the lower branches of a nearby maple, as Natsume conferred with his ugly cat. Despite Natsume's initial explanation, Ginko had still blown cigarette smoke in the cat's direction, discreetly; only the apparent lack of effect convinced him that something altogether different was at work. While Ginko was no stranger to disbelief, he was far more accustomed to being on the receiving end of it. And there were, after all, mushi which encouraged strange delusions.
"Could you tell me more?" Natsume said abruptly, looking up from his cat at last. "Can these... I mean, are they..."
"I wouldn't keep one as a pet, if that's what you're getting at," Ginko said. (The cat bristled, squirming in Natsume's grasp.) "Most of them aren't the sort of thing one bargains with. So while run-ins with them are seldom pleasant, there's no point in attributing human motives to them, let alone malice. You might as well blame a wolf for hunting, a weed for trying to grow -- what's so funny?"
Natsume shook his head, still smiling. "Sorry, I just-- the youkai I've met aren't really that different from humans."
"Hah! Don't lump us together, you fool!"
Ginko gaped.
Then he picked up his dropped cigarette, made some quick mental adjustments, and looked back at Natsume. "Yes, I think I see."
---
A few days (and more explanations) later:
"Will you ever come by again?"
"It's possible. Don't take this the wrong way, kid. It's disruptive to be a mushi-attracting person in a world with so few mushi, that's all -- wouldn't want to alter their natural distribution. I never stay very long."
Natsume looked like there was something he badly wanted to say. Ginko could guess at its outlines. The sadness in the kid's eyes had the familiarity of a half-remembered fact, or an anecdote someone else had related.
"Hey. Don't worry about it. Like you said: ours are different worlds."
His thoughts turned to the future once he started off onto the road again. There was a lot of work ahead: the mushishi community would be intrigued by this, to put it lightly, but he would have to find some alternative sources. And perhaps some light could be shed on that suspicious mushishi clan -- what was it called, again? The Matoba clan? Isaza, with all his wandering, might have some leads. In any case, there was no reason to disturb the boy and his negotiated peace. A place to call home, a companion who understood the other world, a circle of knowing and unknowing friends -- those were desires Ginko had often read in the wistful prose and distracted gazes of other mushishi. Seeing them in practice was something else.
When Ginko turned back at the far end of the bridge, Natsume was still there, offering a shy wave.
Ginko waved back, imagining the spirit cat's grumbling at the delay.
Then he walked on. The world was waiting.
---
Notes: I'm sorry! I tried to run with the original prompts, but couldn't get away from the sense that Mushishi is, despite its supernatural label, essentially scientific in its philosophy - quite unlike the world of youkai. And Ginko, for all his easygoing well-adjustedness, strikes me as fundamentally different from Natsume in how he relates to the human world...