Disclaimer: "Shoujo Kakumei Utena" belongs to Chiho Saito and Be-Papas, as well as associated copyright holders. I only own this piece of fan fiction in the most unthreatening way possible. Rating: PG Warnings: SPOILERS for the end of the TV series. Overwrought metaphors and imagery. Implied shoujo-ai of the Utena/Anthy kind if you squint really hard. Set several years in the future. ------------------------------- Amaranth by Yasmin M. _The End_ Her coffee is cold, its steam long since converted to the afternoon heat. The air stands still and sweats around her on the pavement, broken only by the occasional humid gust as a car rumbles by on the tar. She breaks the white skin congealing at the surface of the coffee, and orders another one -- hot. The waiter stares at her, dark patches on his white shirt, smelling of astringent pine deodorant. She knows that the seam under his armpit will be stained yellow. He eventually takes her order, meeting the eyes of a waitress inside the cafe and twitching an eyebrow. She never drinks iced coffee, no matter how hot it gets. Ice makes the scar on her belly itch. She never drinks tea either, hot or cold, but she doesn't know why. The formica table gives up the skin of her forearms with a moist, velcro-like sound. Its swirls of green only makes the whiteness of the papers on it looks even more stark. Empty. She wants to fill the paper with the bold sweeps and curls of her characters, but when she takes out her pen she finds that she had automatically reached out for the red pen. Blues and blacks are the preferred colours of submissions. She touches the whiteness, and feels that it should be softer. Low on her back, her spine tells her that she should want the jerky dance of pen on paper, pressing her forefinger into a lopsided point. She knows she should want the pale light of a tubular sun, hanging over a measured voice humdrummed into her head. There are solemn gauntlets to be faced there, flanked by books bearing sigils of numbers and faded red dots. She knows she can make a life among photocopy machines and graffiti on study desks, then emerge from a pupae of subway trains into a hothouse of aluminium glass. Her fingers, though, crave the scour of bark and pockmarked bricks. Her feet desires to learn the difference between cobblestones and marble, and trip on steps worn uneven by millions of feet before her instead of marching on concrete clones. Her eyes long for lightning storms over red deserts, splitting the sky with electric rainbow, and the mercurial glimmer of snake-like rivers. Her ears lust for drums and indecipherable laughter and the discordant orchestras of cities whose names she could barely pronounce. She knows what she *should* want, and what she *wants*. She wonders why this seems so familiar. Folding the mass of paper brings a bitter lump in throat, coiling up from the pit of her stomach. She drops them with a grimace, only to feel her heart jump as they fall against a pot of globe amaranths on the table. Her papers are safe, though -- the water dish under the pot is bone- dry, the flowers' magenta petals cooking in the heat. She leans back with her eyes closed and hates how lucky she feels. Something skitters under her chair. She looks down at two blue beads set into a ball, flanked by saucers. It takes her almost half a minute before she realizes there is a body attached to the ball, outrageously small in comparison, covered with mangy indigo fur. Head bumping against her ankle, the animal grasps her right shoe with an asthmatic squeal. "I'm sorry, he's been waiting to see you. Mice don't live very long." The girl before her is slender and chocolate- skinned, a honeysuckle vine caught in long purple hair. She stands (why?) and gently (she must be gentle, she knows, but why?) detaches the vine (all this, why?). Their eyes meet and for moment she thinks the girl's green eyes should be obscured by the gleam of glass, her hair constrained into a crown instead of flowing down the graceful carriage of her back. She breathes into the afternoon. The mirage fades and she only sees a young woman in a white skirt and a striped lavender-and-white blouse. Her dress is fashionable, her hat is not: a shabby, light purple beret. She wonders. "I know you... don't I?" A smile rises like dawn on the girl's face, now eye-level with hers. "Not yet, but you will." She doesn't know why Anthy laughs, but she wants to. _The Beginning_