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Work & Family

Is work really work when it's a dream? When it's friends and family and everything you ever wanted, rolled up into one Pure, Proper, and Beautiful package?

They call it the Takarazuka no Yume for a reason after all.

The stage was my dream from the time I saw my first production at the tender age of seven. I... can not remember what show it was. Then again, I no longer remember any name but the one I took for the stage.

My kind quite often have trouble with the line between dream and waking. And I was dreaming before I was changed. Perhaps that is why I have handled that part of this new existence better. Or not.

Feh, I promised myself I wouldn't talk about such things.

Takarazuka no Yume - The romantic dream.

That magical world created under the lights, the feather and sparkles where Romance is played out in all its glories. Where the women are sweet and innocent and graceful. And the men are dashing, suave and charming. Romantic figures, so much more sensitive and perfect than any real men. Because those of us who play them are women.

My parents supported me getting into the music school, but once in it was my batchmates that were my family. No one else could really understand that burning drive, that pressure, and the hell we went through except those who'd gone through it too. Then that family broke up as we were sorted into troupes and the troupes became our families.

I started in Flower Troupe, one of a number of 'babies', each fiercely competitive for all too rare stage time, for recognition, for that one chance to prove ourselves. Some never make it past that point. For some the pressure outweighed the dream. Those of us who made it were stronger. And closer. We bonded with the upperclassmen and they became our older sisters. The Senka girls were our mothers and aunts.

I was moved to Moon Troupe after a few years, and the first few days I cried. I felt like I'd been ripped out of my house and home, thrown in a whole new world. All I wanted was to go back to Flower, to my family there. But eventually Moon became my family, and Tai-san took me under her wing.

Oh Tai-san... You were big sister and mother and everything. You taught me everything I needed to know to become a top star. I remember with nearly painful clarity the first show when I stood next to you on the silver bridge wearing nibante feathers. And you bowed to me and gave me that small wink and smile. It was exactly like a dream.

Takarazuka no Yume

The shining, brightly colored dream. Shimmering, shining and dancing - a whirl of amazingly over-the-top colors and feathers. Always the feathers.

I still go see shows sometimes, using glamours to cloud my features. Not Moon shows. Never Moon shows.

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prompt: 30 cold

Week 30 - Cold

Ice cold.

Winter cold.

A time of hiding, of making safe nests and hiding and sleeping until the spring comes.

Humans try to pretend they don’t do this. They are lying to themselves. Winter reaction is hard coded into their very bones. Into all creatures’ bones I think. Humans just lie to themselves, and then wonder why the cold makes them sleepy. Sleepy and scared.

Because winter is a time of hunger, a time where the predators are desperate for food, and chance prey they would not otherwise tackle. The vicious winter wolf. The snarling, pouncing cat. Humans may now live in cities, surround themselves with glass and concrete, but their bones remember the caves. Remember when fire was their only hope of survival. And it is easy, all too easy for those of my Court to twist a little bit of glamour, to dredge up those fears. Some of my kind do so out of spite, out of that cycle of abuse that makes the abused abuse others in return since they (we) can not strike back against our abusers. Some do it because it is easier to rip the dream stuff we need from nightmares. And some of us try to use the glamours to teach, to warn the blind humans that there is danger out there in the world. Dangers as primal as any bone-deep ancestral memory of life in the caves.

I was taken in the winter. And while now I have a fine coat of fur than insulates against the chill of winter winds, it does little to warm the chill in my soul. So I follow my animal nature and try to make a safe nest, try to hide. But I am no more wholly animal than I am wholly human. I can not hibernate, or even just hide the season away. The fountain of dreams sings its addictive song. I try to master my fears, try to move past instinct to engage with people, with humans. To build and maintain those connections that let me siphon off dream energy from good dreams, pleasant dreams.

But nightmares are so much easier… So easy, so tempting to just use that little twist of power, plunge some poor unsuspecting fool into a waking nightmare and take my fill. And dangerously easy to justify doing so as teaching the human to be more careful, to trust less. To say I do it for their own good.

But isn’t that what the abuser always says to the abused?

I pray for the return of warmth, the return of Spring.

Prompt 37: Homecoming

I heard someone once say that all homecomings are bittersweet. After all, home is suppose to be a good place, a place where you can feel safe.

~~not safe never safe hide stay small can't find you can't drag you back not safe~~

*shakes self*

Pardon me. As I was saying, homecomings are bittersweet, because the reality never quite matches up to the memories.

I tried to go home after... everything. That went about as well as you might expect, considering as far as my parents knew I'd never been missing, and was quite obviously in Tokyo, since they'd just watched "me" in a press conference on TV... They thought I was some sort of con artist, some criminal, especially since I couldn't remember my birth name. I've never tried to go back since. I don't need to experience that again.

Sometimes, homecomings are just bitter.

Strangely enough, this place is starting to be far more of a home than the place I had back in Osaka...

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prompt: 14 melville quote

Prompt 14: Hideous or Handsome?

"I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge." -- Herman Melville

An interesting quote, all things considered. So few see me as I am; the Mask hides my true mein from most folk. Which is a good thing, I suppose, as I would be labeled a monster or a freak at the very least. They see the mortal mask, the woman I was, not the... creature I have become. It is a blessing I suppose, but when I look in the mirror, I can only see my true form. While I am not hideous, I am most definatly not human, and that loss pains me every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection.

I was once... I would not say beautiful. I was handsome, and I worked hard at looking so. Even now, I find that old otokoyaku training hard to shake. I keep my hair cut short, I rarely wear dresses or skirts, I aim for a far more 'masculine' appearance than is customary. Grandfather would scoff and make some sort of cutting remark about how any grandchild of his should know her place better, but he never did understand anything about my life. I wonder what he'd think if he could see my true mein.

I... or at least my Mask did not age while I was Her pet. But the time I was gone was not long enough to have really made that much of a difference. Still, I look at my feitch, and I see the subtle marks of age and maturity. And thin-ness. As bitter as such things make me, there's also a part of me that worries that Hankyu is working her... it, too hard, that it isn't eating enough. Which is stupid. It stole my dream out from under me, why should I have concern for it?

I do not know what I meant to say when I started writing this. Still writing out my thoughts makes it easier to think through them.

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Starting Over

It is true that all... such as I have to start over. We escape back into our world, thinking we've finally escaped the nightmare only to find things changed. More or less time has passed than we think. Some have families who thought they had died. They're the lucky ones. The rest of us return to find... something has been living our lives for us.

When I escaped the Hedge, all I was thinking about was getting away. That thought, that conscious human though had dragged me out of the seductive animal Now. But once I was back in the so-called 'real' world other thoughts, other desires came back. Old dreams, long buried under the crushing weight of Now.

But even in my freedom, I was still subject to Her whims. For she had replaced me with one of those... things. A feitch. And it had lived my life for me. Some others have killed their feitchs, but I couldn't. It... She had reached the dream I had once had before I was taken. I saw my... her face on the show posters, now a grand Top Star. And I knew I had to leave.

Leave Takarazuka. Leave Japan. Leave everything I've ever known. Only then may I try to build something new.

I curse Her for what She took from me. All of them take our lives. She took my dreams as well. But I will not let Her take me back. No. I will start over, if it kills me.