Five Crossover Encounters During Anthy's Search - Part Five
Storyteller
Christy is browsing the book store's occult section, an old favorite where the fluffy New Age books make an appearance but don't outnumber the good stuff, when he sees the row start. As far as he can tell, it began with a woman asking one of the clerks a question. He doesn't overhear, but whatever it is she asked clearly ticks off the clerk, who starts yelling at her. Christy would interfere, but the woman seems to be holding her own and more than. Finally, the clerk stomps off, a "fuck you, asshole" chasing his heels. The woman sinks back against the shelves, looking exhausted, the second he's out of sight.
Now Christy is concerned. She glares at him as he makes his way over. "What do you want?" Clearly, she expects nothing good.
"Are you all right," he asks. She looks pale and wobbly, like someone used to strength whose legs are no longer properly holding her up. There's something young-looking about her, belied by the whiting streaks in her dyed pink hair; the fine lines etching her forehead and the corners of her eyes. She reminds him of Jilly, those terrible months after the accident: someone vibrant and strong made weak against her own will.
And then, some of the stubborn lines fall away and she shakes her head. "You're odd," she says, a light accent slipping through. So English isn't her first language.
That's when the other woman approaches. Her expression is even, but Christy can tell she is watching him. Any hostile move on his part will be met and eradicated with extreme prejudice. This hypothesis is confirmed by the way she gracefully interposes herself between Christy and her friend? Lover? They're unlikely to be related: the pink haired woman he met first looks Japanese whereas the newcomer is clearly Indian, down to the bindi on her forehead.
Christy holds out his hands, hoping to pacify without the appearance of condescension, which he's not feeling in the least. "Um," he says, like the eloquent, erudite writer he is. "I just wanted to make sure. You looked like you'd collapsed there."
"I'm fine," the pink haired woman says. Her companion looks like she might not agree with that statement, but she lets it go.
There's something about her that pokes at the back of Christy's mind, like an itch in the back of your throat which you can't actually scratch. She's familiar somehow. There's Jilly, of course, but it's not just Jilly. Then, he remembers the first time he saw Saskia...
"Excuse me," he says to the two of them, "but I'm about to ask something potentially touchy. What you said to that clerk was completely inoffensive, wasn't it?"
"I asked him where I could find a copy of Tuchman dealing with the French Revolution. Unless one of his ancestors had a disagreement with Madame Guillotine..."
"He's Guatemalan, so I doubt it." Moreover, he's been an easygoing sort of guy, as long as Christy has known him.
"It may not have been the book," he says. "Or anything else you might have said to him for that matter."
She rolls her eyes - he notes they're slightly bloodshot. "No shit."
"Wait. Hear me out. There's someone very close to me who gets the same reaction whenever she goes. Not from everyone, but. She's a wonderful woman. For all that I'm biased, I can't imagine anyone not loving her. The thing is, though, they don't. Or they do, until they meet her. There's something about Saskia they can't fit into their everyday comprehension of the world at it drives them mad."
The darker woman's eyes are boring into him. "You know Saskia?"
He nods. "She's my girlfriend."
"Ah, then you must be her Christy."
He grins at that. "Yeah, that'd be me."
"In that case, it's considerably more of a pleasure to meet you than I might have otherwise believed. I'm Anthy Himemiya."
"Tenjou Utena," offers her companion. "Err, Utena Tenjou. Still not that used to it."
"That's ok," he says. "Feel free to keep using the original order." It feels more natural that way, anyway.
"To elaborate," Anthy says, "what's going on with Utena is not dissimilar to Saskia's situation, albeit further complicated."
They wind up moving to a cafe next door and over the course of the next several hours, the two women tell Christy their story. Anthy remains somewhat reserved - Christy suspects that's simply her way - but Utena effortlessly fills in the silence, eager, Christy thinks, to finally share with someone other than Anthy. This is a role he sometimes enjoys even more than he does being a storyteller. When someone has a story, he's the one who listens to it and hears and believes; the one who records it even if it's never going to be read by anyone else.
Today, he listens as they tell him about Ohtori; about a Prince who became a fallen angel, a Witch who could never become a princess and the girl who shattered both their shackles and prisons, leaving one in the dust and the other one free. He learns about the Swords of Hate and how the girl who would be a Prince took them from the Witch. Those Swords were what kept her broken and in pain now; would kill her if in taking she was not rendered immortal: the true embodiment of the Prince. Something flashes in Anthy's eyes when Utena tells this part of the story, but she doesn't elaborate and he doesn't pursue.
Today, Christy has stumbled on something truly magical, and he hangs on every word of the story. Tonight, he would take out a notebook and write it all down.
That will require mucho editing when I'm less dead. Meanwhile, sponsors are lovely.