I promis I will be here next weekend. Ill post this on the way to school tomorrow.
Love you
Your daughter
Ranma
Nodoka rubbed her eyes. There was no need for sadness at the simple message, but tears still threatened. She reread the last lines of her daughter’s letter, and slowly bent her thoughts to how to respond.
She had the Tendo’s telephone number; she could call ahead and make her plans with them, so there was no possibility of confusion. She could even call and speak to her daughter, if she wanted.
Her heart leapt momentarily at the notion, but she forced herself to consider it dispassionately. While she dearly wanted the contact – she hadn’t envisaged, ten years ago, just how badly the absence of her family would affect her – she knew there would be too much temptation to talk. If she and Ranma couldn’t find safe subjects to talk about, she would drift to anything so they didn’t stop, so she wouldn’t have to hang up; and some things, even now, were not safe to discuss over a telephone line. No, she had to speak to her child face-to-face, and take her somewhere where they could talk with a reasonable chance of no one eavesdropping. ‘Jack’s’, as her cousin had informed her, was one such place.
Having made that decision, she turned to the easier one of whether to warn them of her visit. It would be impolite to arrive without even trying warning any of them. Equally, the more warning they had, the more chance of something like her last attempt happening, for she was completely convinced that her husband had deliberately ensured Ranma wouldn’t be there to see her – although she couldn’t think why.
Of course, she did have Ranma’s promise to be at the dojo at the weekend, and her impression of Kasumi, at least, was that it would be difficult for her daughter to resist telling the eldest Tendo girl about the implied invitation. She suspected Nabiki would also weasel the knowledge from Ranma if she weren’t given it freely. The question was whether either girl would inform Tendo-san and her husband. Nabiki almost certainly wouldn’t, but Kasumi might, out of a sense of duty, unless specifically asked not to.
Considered in that light, it became not a decision about whether she should call ahead to arrange her visit, but whether and when she would call to accept Ranma’s invitation. Since Kasumi stuck her as a sensible young woman, inclined to make her decisions promptly and act on them, she would probably inform her father as soon as she knew Nodoka was planning to visit, if she were to inform him at all; and if Ranma was going to inform her of that line in her letter, she would probably have done so before posting it. Which meant that Kasumi either knew and had told her father, or wasn’t going to tell him at all.
In the one case, Tendo would tell Genma as soon as her husband returned. In the other, there was no chance of either of the men learning of the visit unless one of them answered the telephone when she called.
She sipped at the cup of tea that had sat cooling on the table while she read the letter. She wanted to see her daughter. She also wanted to – talk – to her husband. There were certain questions she wanted to put to him about some of the training Ranma’s letters had mentioned.
Genma shivered as a phantom icecube made its way down his spine.
He attributed it to the way he couldn’t close the pants on his guard’s uniform. Fortunately, the Tokyo subway system was as packed as normal (they were well into that portion of the day when the company employed men to push passengers into the already-full carriages) so everyone was too close to see exactly how badly his clothes fitted him, but he was uncomfortably aware that only his hands in his pockets prevented his trousers from falling down.
Yes, she would call, but late in the week – on Friday, perhaps.
Satisfied with the decision, she turned from the letter from Ranma to the rest of her mail. There were three that were either bills or junk mail, but the last had nearly tempted her to open it before the one with her child’s handwriting. The address was hand-written, and more curiously the stamp and postmark were Chinese.
Taking another sip of her tea, she slit open the envelope and unfolded the paper.
The Council House
Joketsuzoku
Quinghai Province
Dear Saotome-san
I hope you will forgive the impertinence of writing to you without introduction. I hope this letter reaches you in reasonable time, but the mail near my home is neither fast nor entirely reliable.
Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting your daughter and her father as they travelled through our area on their quest for training in the martial arts, and I learned your address from the letter she began to compose while in my home. Regrettably, after they departed, a somewhat foolish boy of my tribe managed to step on it and then tip my family’s lunch over it, but I enclose the remains.
Nodoka quickly checked the rest of the letter; sure enough, the last sheet was written in the familiar scrawl, creased, and bore a distinct bootprint and stains which smelled of a rather nice sweet-and-sour pork dish.
Unfortunately, your child and husband departed in haste and without notice. I had not finished teaching Ranma the techniques I wished to, and my Elder Lotion is somewhat insistent that your daughter needs to learn a great deal of lore we have accumulated over the centuries. While I fear my fellow elder has overstated the importance of much of what she wishes to pass on, I agree with her that some of it is vital for your daughter and, if I am not mistaken as to the origin of her special nature, yourself and your family as well.
Nodoka’s eyes widened. The implication was clear, and she berated herself for not recognising it when she read Ranma’s first letter from the Tendo home. These women in China obviously knew of lycanthropes, or of something very similar, and had recognised Ranma as one and deduced that she had not inherited that trait from her father.
Now, these women Nodoka had never met knew what she and her family were. Given the events that had driven her to permit her husband to take their only child away, that was not a good thing. She shuddered to think what the Alpha would say, and her grandmother would be even worse.
Briefly, she checked the top of the letter; it would be, at best, necessary to open communications. At worst, she and others of the clan might be sent to dissuade these people from acting on their knowledge.
However, while I would wish to seek out your child to further her lessons, I have other more pressing reasons to seek out your husband.
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(Posted Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:07)
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