Furitsu's "Whispers"
In the cool of the morning, the garden lay heavy with the fecundity of humus and the cyclic decay of life. Crisp spicy fragrances danced from the foliage in the heavy air, and were stirred into eddies as the gardener trod a path through the laburnums and lilacs. His walking among the trees and flowers renewed the bond between his humanity and his natural environment, and the source of life itself wrapped around him in the stillness.
Roundabout the songs of birds erupted from the leafy canopy above, where wingless wild things roused from sleep or returned from nocturnal travels. The glory-fire of dawn began to set alight the tips of the tallest trees, while in the shadows beneath, innumerable creatures welcomed a new day.
In the delicate peace of the waking world, he now heard hushed voices; two children eager to be part of the dawn, yet knowing their place was not to herald the breaking of day but to partake of it. He watched them through the broad splashes of a pomegranate tree, as he would a deer suckling its fawn, or the amorous union of buck and hind. Such moments possessed a sacredness which was not his to disturb.
The children danced and whispered, intent on their game, and he observed their limbs darting and caressing as they formed an intricate weaving of grasses and leaves. Between their hands formed a sculpture the like of which he had not seen before, even in the works of the insects, the designs wrought by trees, or the handiwork evident in the rocks themselves. Woven of fibres, there existed a form not unlike his own, yet different enough to awake in him the familiar yearning.
In the curve of the gazelle’s hindquarters his eye found delight; in the gravid form of the ripe papaya was pleasure to be found; and yet none satisfied. When his reflection gazed back at him in the stillness of a pond, it painted him alone against the canvas of a garden in which every creature had its mate, and there was room even in paradise for this quiet grief.
He watched, entranced, as the twins laboured at their game. The soft folds of a manufactured skin took shape in their hands; an approximation of his own nakedness crafted from the stuff of the earth. Its proportions pleased him, and he found the gazelle and the papaya combined to stir him more deeply than had ever the creature or the fruit.
The childish hands slowed in their task, and it became apparent that their work was complete. And yet they observed the finished garment with obvious disappointment. They circled it, whispered to it in the dawn light, and there was no response. They tugged at its sleeves only to have them fall limp. It was a shell of a being; an empty husk only. It spectacularly described the perimeter of what could be but was not.
He felt again the ache of his own solitary reflection.
Stumbling through the boughs, he entered the domain of the weavers, and yet they showed no sign of being surprised by his sudden appearance. Indeed, it was as though they expected him. They smiled and continued their dance into the woods, laughing, as though an unheard voice called them home. And he was alone with the form they had made; the empty design of nothing.
His being cried out to life itself, from which he yet knew no division. He groaned aloud the desires birthed within him for a creature which would be his own reflection, yet more than that: a completion and a counterpart.
The life moved upon him and he slept, and his yearning ribs gave of themselves to fill the crafted template. The elegance of the creatures and the promise of the fruits combined in flesh form and took breath. She wriggled from the cloth sheath as though from a cocoon, and stood radiant in the morning air. Its purpose served, the garment withered to the ground at her feet, and she took her first steps towards her waking lover as the world conspired around them and the dawn ended.