Urd listened carefully. She comforted Belldandy in all the right places and she applauded her daring and gave her the tacit approval she was looking for. And, when the subject that interrupted the conversation in such a dramatic way earlier came up again, she said, "Who cares?"
Belldandy's mouth opened, but nothing came out, so she shut it again. Urd waited, and it opened again, only to close without a sound. She really looked quite silly in Urd's opinion.
"Well? You love Keiichi, don't you, Bell?"
"Of course I do!" she responded fiercely, her eyes flaring with much the same determination that had kept the three Goddesses going during the long period of instability.
Urd smiled, the expression alleviating some of the weariness that rested behind her eyes. "Well, then what does it really matter if Keiichi is a girl? He, or she, is the same person where it really counts--" She reached out and rested her finger on the center of Belldandy's chest. "--in here."
Belldandy looked down, her hands playing with the quilt, and generally looking much more the unsure, younger sister Urd remembered from a few years back than the calm, collected woman she had matured into. "This will be good for her," Urd thought, "one way or another."
"What if he... doesn't want me, though?" Belldandy finally asked, her voice carefully controlled and her bangs masking her eyes. "I mean, it's not assured, I don't even know... I don't know if I even met him in this timeline."
Urd raised her hand again and carefully brushed aside the bangs hiding Belldandy's eyes. The blue depths shimmered with unshed tears as she looked up and Urd couldn't find it in herself to confirm them.
"Look at it this way, Bell," Urd finally said, "Keiichi wanted love and romance, right? And he wanted _you_ to be part of that, otherwise you wouldn't have been affected by the wish." A flash of guilt crossed Belldandy's face, and as she turned away, Urd wondered what her sister hadn't told her. It didn't matter right now though. "What I think, is that Keiichi, consciously or not, wants to be the prey, rather than the hunter."
This startled Belldandy enough that she turned back to Urd, her expression saying as much as her words. "Prey? What are you talking about, Urd?"
The older goddess grinned at her sister, a little, self-satisfied smirk that should have warned her away. "You, my dear sister, are going to need to be considerably more aggressive than you have in the past. This Keiichi wants to be won and wooed, courted and showered with attentions till he's so bedazzled he won't know what hit him! Err, her... whatever."
"But... I don't know how to do that." Belldandy looked a bit bedazzled herself, she might have to take this a bit more slowly.
Urd put her hand on Belldandy's as she nodded to herself. "That, is where I come in. You keep me filled in and I'll give you all the advice you need." She flipped her platinum hair over her shoulder, feeling a hundred percent better already. This was just what she needed, a project to keep her spirits up while her body recovered.
Her sister was looking a bit dubious still, though, so she dispensed her first advice. "First things first, why don't you go to Heaven and check on exactly what the wish did?" Urd nodded towards the bathroom and lowered herself into a prone position again. She was getting a bit tired after all this excitement. "If we know that, we can see where to go from there."
Belldandy gave her a brilliant smile and stood up from the bed, abruptly composed again. "And you can get some rest." She pulled the quilt up over Urd's shoulder and made sure she was comfortable, then leaned down. "Thank you, Urd," she whispered, "I don't know what I would do without you."
The "Goddess of Love" just smiled back and squeezed her sister's hand, fighting to keep her eyes open while Belldandy was still in the room and succeeding by only the slightest margin.
See other episodes by James M. Zema
(Posted Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:13)
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