"Why?" asked Ranma.
"Oh it was just one of those offhand comments taken out of context and they just had to make a big ritual out of it," complained Amaterasu. "Like that bit about Susano being my husband. Oy vey."
"Huh?" Ranma asked. "Oi what?"
"'Oy vey'," explained Amaterasu. "Yiddish. What - you think I've been stuck in a cave the past thousand years or something?"
Ranma thought about this, the images of Kuno being incinerated repeatedly being easily recalled. "Uhm, no?"
"Good boy, you've got a better learning curve than my brother," said Amaterasu, patting Ranma on the shoulder. "Let's see. Definitely a fixer upper. The temple I mean."
Ranma looked around. "I didn't know this place was here. Looks like its been abandoned for awhile."
Amaterasu looked at her fiancee, then around the place, and apparently came to a decision. "Ranma. Come over here and look at this."
Ranma followed nervously, wondering if this was some kind of test.
Amaterasu knelt on one knee and scraped dirt away from a stone in the yard. "What do you see here?"
"Uhm, it's a rock," said Ranma. "It's round kinda, and it's maybe three feet across."
"Look deeper," urged Amaterasu. "Look with more than your eyes. Look for the chi flow."
"Chi?" Ranma blinked. Rocks didn't have chi. That was a reason it was easy to smash 'em up with something like the breaking point.
"Ki flows through everything," instructed Amaterasu. "It flows along the dragon-lines, it burns brightly within living creatures. Japanese philosophy teaches this and that nature and life and human spirit are all inter-connected. Look deep within the stone."
Ranma continued to look as Amaterasu got up and grasped his shoulder. He was aware that the symbol on her forehead seemed to glow slightly.
Suddenly he saw it. Lines of ki burning everywhere around him. Air had the least amount of it, cool lines of blue and fragments like sakura petals drifting along. Golden brown lines of ki which knotted together in the stone and spread out in a spider's web tracerie that extended out beyond the temple. The stagnant pond had a few choked lines of ki showing, sullen and dirty.
Ranma closed his eyes and looked further with this new sight. Firefly glows of insects flitting around on their tasks. Slightly brighter glows from birds and a burrowing animal near the track of what had once been a garden.
He glimpsed the brilliance next to him and shied away. From that glimpse he could see the goddess as if a line drawing in ki, the brightest points being the three circles on her face.
"There is more than one way to see the world, and more than one philosophy to understand it," said Amaterasu, holding the mortal's hand while he was too stunned to protest. "This is but one view. The stone was placed here by followers of Zen aestheticism who would meditate upon it and seek the view you now experience. If you come here and do so daily, you'll find you can draw on the chi and learn more of it here."
Ranma's eyes shot open and the view of glowing lines vanished. Instead he focussed on his new fiancee. He'd wished for someone nice who could help him, and here he was already on the threshold of entirely new techniques on the Art?
Amaterasu smiled, nodded, and released his hand to go walk around the temple. Hmmm. That could be a nursery and a playground for the children. Over there the dojo. A garden would look especially nice over there. Hmmmm. So much to plan.
"Ya ain't going to do to me what you did to Kuno, are ya?" Ranma asked.
"When I arrived I maintained a direct connection to a power source that I would otherwise be cut off from on reaching Midgard," said the goddess, apparently inspecting a plot of land. "Based on my experience, a show of strength and the willingness to use it done right off the bat solves more problems than it causes."
"Uh," began Ranma.
"No," said Amaterasu simply. "I don't have any plans at least."
"Oh," said Ranma. "So what ya gonna do about this place? It's kinda run down."
"Hmmm," said Amaterasu. "Well, I could simply use my personal reserves in spellcasting. I could call a few goddesses I know over and we could make it a fun sort of project. I could try doing it in the mundane fashion. Building things can be fun. I could even call my dear relative, I think he could place a few calls and get some builders over here."
Ranma winced at the thought of meeting the Emperor and Court and all the problems that could cause.
Amaterasu had come to a decision apparently. "All right, I'll just
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(Posted Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:00)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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