edit: Thank you to
>>113872.
As reference:
The hero’s dream –
>>97132 His sister speaks –
>>102905 Note: This is the update with vote added, among other things. ----------
“I mean no disrespect by this, O Queen,” is how you preface your reply; “but you would feel less disinclined towards my dream if you established a correlation with own life’s circumstances. But a short while ago, you related to me the regrettable rivalry that the exalted Emperor, your illustrious brother, has imposed on you; tell me, though you’ve grown alienated and well-apart from each other – can you say he hasn’t had an important impact in creating the noble Princess Royal with whom I’m conversing now?”
Until your mention of her brother, she seemed ready to set right something you said; now, however, the Princess Royal’s unexpectedly turned away from you. It’s after hiding her face in agitation and breathing in deeply that she starts detailing, downcast:
”For sweet spite’s fulfillment did my brother
Entreat the elders of our great bloodline
And secure an interested* marriage
For his uninterested big sister.
Then pious young woman and hopeful nun,**
Her dream was debased by his loathsome friend
The wastrel and pimp who claimed her as wife.” …The relationship she’s just reported is so far removed from your idea of love and family that you’ve difficulty comprehending –
accepting it. “So because he couldn’t forget about some petty grievances and imagined injuries,” you verify, “your brother conspired to force you into an abusive and loveless marriage?”
She nods.
“Noble Princess Royal?” Though you’re focusing intensely on the wall behind her, endeavoring earnestly at seeking solace in your training; you can’t help but show a scowl. “Your brother’s lucky that his sister’s as forgiving a person; Emperor or not, if my younger self had traded places with you, he wouldn’t have any second thoughts about roasting him alive with Fenghuang.”
“Pardon me…?” Surprise sounding sharply at what you’ve said, she’s suddenly staring at you – or rather, unmindful of that her exposed eyes are puffy, rimmed-red and damp, she’s staring at your black cassock.
“I have heard, O Queen,” you declare, divining her doubts, “that there exist in this world those born anointed with the Way of Heaven – the Sages, for whom all virtue and every excellence comes naturally.” Pausing, you send to the Princess Royal, as much with your face as with your words, a very pointed message.
“I was not born a Sage.”
While picking mechanically at your fingernails, you reminisce, reflecting on your past in an unhurried hush. “If today I’m a monk, I wasn’t always; opening my eyes to the Eightfold Path required that I labor long and hard at being able to see it. Even finding that first glimpse might have forever eluded me if it wasn’t for the scores of people who, at every stage of my life, helped steer my sight –my many mentors in the myriad mantras***, my old abbot, my mother and father; among all those to whom I’m indebted, they’re some of the biggest creditors. But none of these individual dues – actually, not even all of the others tabulated together, approach the amount of appreciation I owe
my sister.” You only saw it in its innocuous, vestigial semblance of ‘flirtatious boldness,’ noble Princess Royal,” informing your absorbed addressee, your gaze sinks down towards your lap; “but… I wasn’t a good person in my youth. If not violent or shameless or lewd, my younger self was uncouth, impulsive and vain; irresolute, ignorant of propriety and prone to indolence, I was often led to quarrel with my parents. …They were well-meaning, my mother and father, but austere, severe, demanding; I balked from their firmness and, in my callow stupidity, mistook as resentment their strict regard for my success, not at all recognizing how much they’d sacrificed in order that I should be reared without knowledge of want.”
…There’s a momentary pause as you dry your eyes on the ends of
her cloak, before continuing: “To my capricious young heart, only that beautiful girl who protected me from the worst of my parents’ outrage and who kissed away my pain after I’d suffered rebuke – only
Byakuren really loved me. And consequently,it was
Byakuren who became the chief object of my childhood affection and my truest, most faithful friend, concurrent with being my sister. Since we shared in the same strange powers,” you emphasize, pressing your pointer finger onto the periphery formed by the
Sublime Golden Light, “she
knew me. More than my father, more than my mother, more than anyone else in my hometown,
my sister was able to recognize the real reasons behind my bad actions, appreciating them with an accuracy available as a result of her personal familiarity with my mind.”
“…You respect your sister for her understanding?” Till now attending on your memories in voiceless vigilance, the Princess Royal’s revealed one of her soft white palms and raised her hand; compared with how your dream seemed received at the start, she’s more openly enthused in making certain this time – but only slightly.
“It was source of my early esteem and the sum of my sentiments as a boy – I’m not ashamed to say as much. If
my sister’s supreme sympathy was my sole reason for reverencing her, O Queen,” you resume your remembrances with an eye at wholly winning her over, “that would still be reason enough; but ultimately, she did far more than only understanding my feelings – she
used them. Being aware of how much I loved her,
my sister took advantage of that to direct my wayward behavior onto a course of wisdom, goodness and justice, channeling my emotions in a way as to encourage and positively reinforce me towards personal virtue.”
By the unmistakable advent of insight that’s appeared on her face, your august audience seems finally to have apprehended. “She was successful where your parents faltered?”
You solemnly nod. “I only realized it on our last afternoon together, O Queen, on the day before I was to be separated from her in becoming a Buddhist priest. …It’s been burned into my memory, that time. How despondent, hopeless and lost I felt, knowing that come tomorrow, I would be bereaved of all that I had known and cared about – the community in which I’d been raised, the friends I’d made, the parents with whom I’d finally started to connect and, most affecting of all, the sister who I loved as my better half. ...The sister who saved me.” Smiling as brilliantly through your tears as radiant Vairocana smiles to banish sorrow and rain, you’ve
her cloak clutched close around you. “
‘No matter our parting should be for a day, a year or a lifetime, Brother, I’ll never forget about you. So long as you don’t squander this chance in being mired down by the past and become in my stead the greatest person you can… I’ll always be here for you, waiting here for the time when you’re weary from your labors.’ Those words were what comforted me in the depths of my despair and inspired me to glory in everything that happened after; those words were
my sister’s pledge and her last gift to me. … Those words are why, noble Princess Royal,” voice choked by emotion, you restate, “I’m able to feel the pain of your estrangement; because, to be able to return home one day, to show
my sister that I’ve done all I promised and to have the chance of helping her care for our parents in their old age – that’s my dream.”
Pensive no longer, the Princess Royal slides beside you. “…I know,” she comforts you, resting a hand on your back and sings solemnly:
“The young hero who saved the sleeping maid
Became himself by his sister alone,
She is his inspiration and comfort
In achievement and hardship both – his dream.”
“It’s true,” you swallow with difficulty, fighting the feeling of fresh regrets rising in your throat, “I owe [i]my sister everything. …If… if I had been born alone; if
she had never graced my life, never set me on the right path, connected with me, demonstrated to me without any doubts that there was one in this world who loved me unconditionally, I…? What would I have become…?” Though you’ve unconsciously found yourself looking to the majestic matron who’s gently holding you, your question – it’s not at her. “...No matter the locale,” you’re murmuring, lost in your thoughts and meditating aloud; “I haven’t ever lacked for friends, have I? Even in this grey place…” An ironic laugh, as you shake your head. “I’ve really a talent for it – gathering people around me. ...A bandit, then? Would I have gathered similarly rapacious rapscallions around me, led them to victimize on the weak? Or would I perhaps have become a predator of a different profile, grown into the brazen guise of an abusive and unfeeling operator? …Of this at least, I’ve no doubts,” with a firm nod, you’re finally composed; “without
Byakuren, without her who was my sister, my teacher, my hero, my friend, my muse, my great hope, my divine dream – what an insignificant, iniquitous person I’d be!”
“…I know,” she reiterates, rubbing your back and considering you with caring eyes. “I know, because we are the same.” The subdued, stoic front worn by the Princess Royal all while you were gushing expressively about
her dissolves into an air bordering between apprehension and anticipation. “You are the first who has truthfully felt my secret wish and known my unusual dream, young hero. In the same way that your dream is your sister, my dream,” closing her eyes, she’s slipped a slender finger down the front of her robe, seemingly fishing for something,
shivers, flinching away from the furious voice – wound up, winded and wheezing – of ‘Miss Nightingale.’ In those silent seconds that follow, every instant in the stilled world is indistinguishable from eternity – no movement, no speech, no noise; there’s only the soundless exchange of your eyes, equally unsettled by stupefaction. …
You’re revived to recognition by a sound, coming from just outside and around the corner – a low rumbling. It’s nothing like the roar released by ‘Rumia’ for power or all-pervading presence, just a faint resonance echoing through the floor and white walls of the Princess Royal’s room. But, unusually – there’s regularity to it, periods of reverberation punctuated by pauses of rest. …Whatever could it be?
You:
[ ] Go out.
[ ] Don’t go out.
----------
*I know most of you can figure it out, but just so that no one misses it or is confused, the Princess Royal uses “interest” in this instance to mean something different from the one following.
**While men typically entered monasteries as children, women would usually join up in convents as adults. This is the reason why no one would have too much of a problem with Byakuren showing up out of nowhere in a wedding dress and, after showing her powers, asking that she be admitted.
*** The Shingon rituals mentioned in
>>113431 wouldn’t be learned by studying some sort of text – they’re passed on orally from teacher to student, elder to novice whenever said student/novice is ready to receive them. In most cases, (Myouren’s included) this comes only after diligently applying yourself to some other, less-than-interesting task for months/years (see: tending to a vegetable garden or having to daily sweep/clean some area of the monastery).
