insincere | Bleach, "The Princess and the Weaver" (Orihime)

She can't quite remember how it went, but she knows that it's too important to lose.

Gen. Thoughts on Tanabata. Apparently was posted on my personal DW a long time ago and then never anywhere else, which is weird.

the princess and the weaver
Sora told her the story of the weaving princess Ori-hime when she was eight.

"Ori-hime was a beautiful princess who wove the most amazing cloth. Because her father, the king of Heaven, loved her cloth very much, she worked so hard to make it that she had no time to meet anyone or to fall in love. So Ori-hime was always sad," he said, his voice gentle and his hands soft as he stroked her hair. "So the king arranged for her to meet Hiko-boshi, a cowherd from the other side of the Heavenly River. And when they met, it was love at first sight."

Orihime loved this part of the story. She turned her head into his warm palm and chimed in, "And they got married!"

"Yes." She could never quite remember what his smiling face looked like. "But her love for Hiko-boshi was so great, Ori-hime neglected her weaving, and no more cloth was made; and Hiko-boshi was so in love with her that he neglected his cattle, and they wandered all over Heaven. So the king grew angry."

She loved this part, too. It was only right, only true, that they would be so in love that nothing else would matter to the princess. That was what real love was like, in all the TV dramas and the shoujo manga that were Orihime's only exposure to that world.

"And then he punished them!" Orihime enjoyed divine retribution in her fairy tales. Sora had always laughed at her enthusiasm. (But she couldn't remember his smiling face.)

"Yes. He separated the lovers, forcing them to stay on opposite sides of the Heavenly River. But Ori-hime despaired at the idea of never seeing her husband again, and she begged and pleaded with her father until he was so moved that he decided that they could reunite -- only for one day each year. On the seventh day of the seventh month each year, if Ori-hime had finished all her weaving, they would be allowed to meet."

Unless it's raining, she thought.

That was the part of the story she didn't love. She had always liked the rain -- being out in it, playing in it, making up stories about it. There was a unique kind of closed world created by the rain: on a sunny day, two people might pass each other on a street without so much as looking at each other, but when it rained, those two people coming closer and closer were connected, drawn together, and it seemed so natural that their eyes should meet, that for a brief moment they might be made to wonder about what could be.

The rain shouldn't drive people apart.

Orihime told Sora, "I don't think it ended right."

He said, "Oh, is that so?"

She shook her head, vigorously. "If she really wanted to see him, she would have found a way, even if it was raining and the birds wouldn't help her across the river."

"Like what?" Sora wanted to know, and she could hear that he was smiling, even if she couldn't envision it.

"Like -- she could've used her cloth to tie a rope to a tree and swung across! Or she could have held her weaving hostage unless her father fixed it. Or she could've built a weather-controlling machine. Or she could've become a pirate!"

"A pirate?" he echoed, laughing.

She was getting worked up, struggling upright out of her bundle of blankets, and Sora would firmly tuck her back in, wrapping the sheets snugly around her until she was gathered up tight like a mummy. She loved that feeling so much that she would lie still to keep from being tugged loose.

And then, lying still, she would grow sleepy. "It's just that if she only had one day each year to spend with her husband, it doesn't seem right that something random like weather should be able to stop her," she murmured, eyes heavy. She couldn't see him at all then, the memory so unclear and dark.

Sora whispered, "It's good enough for me to know that you'll be out there living a pirate's life instead of putting up with something that isn't right," and kissed her forehead.

Or maybe, "As long as my Ori-hime will be reunited with someone who can take care of her, that's the most important part of the story."

She couldn't quite remember. But the warm and kind brother in her memory would definitely have said something like that.

The brother who had died while she had been angry at him over something foolish -- just rain, driving them away when it should have been bringing them together.

So she wouldn't let him down, not again. She would never give up. She would let nothing keep her from the people she loved.

She would show the weaving princess how it was done.