Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction ❯ Trial By Tenderness ❯ Part 20 - Communion of Senses ( Chapter 20 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Part 20 Communion of Senses



Keiichi awoke to the sound of brashing wind whistling against the glass he was resting his head on. He looked out the window of the Shinkansen as the Japanese landscape blurred past him in a pastiche of green and brown. They had just passed the outer edges of the Osaka metroplex and were finally viewing some countryside. The cabin indicator said that the train was riding the rails at 252 kph. The marvels of the Shinkansen always fascinated the engineer in Keiichi. "Maybe someday I can design the next generation of bullet trains!" he fantasized briefly. He looked over to see Belldandy *still* engrossed in studying the guides to Western Honshu and Kyushu, trying to memorize everything about the places they were going to travel in their search for Urd.
Their plan was to debark at Okayama, then rent a car and check out Kinkazun and Washuzun, then travel west to Hiroshima. Megumi had recuperated somewhat over the weekend, despite the frequent bouts of nausea that accompanied her concussion. Keiichi smiled to himself as he remembered how Genji had diligently watched over her, providing her with clean bedpans whenever she got sick to her stomach.
"What a thing to have to go through so early in a relationship!" he mused.
It had become apparent to him in the past few days that Megumi and Genji were now more than 'just friends'. Genji had tended to Megumi's every need as best he could: bringing her soft food to eat; reading parts of the newspaper to her; installing the small TV from the spare room into her bedroom so she could watch; playing cards and mahjongg with her and changing her bandages.
"Sis, you really know how to pick 'em," he admitted respectfully in a whisper.
"Huh...Keiichi, you're awake," Belldandy said. Her grief for Urd had diminished greatly, transforming into a gritty determination. The search for Urd had become a deep-rooted ambition for her. Although her intuition informed her that Urd was not in Japan, she felt as though the *act* of searching for her older sister would somehow *bring* her older sister back home. Belldandy definitely sensed a coherence with the energies that linked her and Urd, even if she didn't know where Urd was.
Her brittle heart was cheered somewhat by the changes between Megumi and Genji. She could easily see the look of love in each of their eyes when they were together. They reminded Belldandy of her and Keiichi.
"Genji is a good young man," she had decided after being especially impressed with the patience he employed as he took care of Megumi after her accident. Belldandy had talked to him several times; he seemed to possess some of the same attributes that she found admirable in Keiichi. This buoyed her spirits immensely...it was nice to have *two* gentlemen in the house. She noticed that her Keiichi was also bonding with Genji...an able demonstration of Keiichi's surrender of his possessive/protective vigilance towards his younger sister.
Genji had told her everything about his sister Sayoko and her dreadful decline into drug abuse over the past year. Belldandy was saddened; her heart was touched by his account of how life with Sayoko had become unbearable for months. She felt a surge of radiant joy when she thought of how auspicious it was that Megumi was becoming his girlfriend. This young mortal man certainly was in need of the kind of loving support that was part of Megumi's nature...the patience and kindness she was bound to share with him.
Their romantic love had blossomed many good and humorous memories of her and Keiichi when they were in the early, awkward days of their relationship. Belldandy reluctantly pushed those pleasant thoughts aside...the task at hand was too urgent.
"Uh...oh, sorry I dozed off, Bell-chan!" Keiichi replied sheepishly. He had promised to keep her company during the long train ride to Okayama.
"That's okay. One must balance their life with the proper amount of rest, otherwise one's fatigue prevents the enjoyment of each moment of happiness," she responded in her lecturing voice.
Keiichi was happy to see some of the old Belldandy returning. He had been gripped by apprehension, worried that she would continue to withdraw into a permanent pensiveness. But the day after he promised that together they would find Urd, she started to regain some of her former self. He reached a comforting hand out and held her hand warmly, their fingers interlacing as the landscape sped by.

* * * * * * * *

I treated myself to a frivolous camel ride before my second daylong excursion into the caves of Dunhuang. One good thing about China...life was always unhurried, even in the hectic 21st Century. In China, a natural unhastened pace of life allured me towards even greater observation of my own mental activity. Thus, a singular reflectiveness emerged, one that seemed to accord with a tetralemmic approach to what seems to be "fact". The camel even seemed to be in a meditative trance as it wound a path between small groves of poplar trees.
My first day at Dunhuang was mostly concerned with orienting myself to the 1000+ plus caves. A volcanic range which formed foothills along the South Mountains stretched westward through the desert. Eventually, the sand dunes yielded to a low ridge of conglomerate composition. As the bus approached the caves, the wide plain dissolved into a series of ridged escarpments and cliffs, the road flanked by an uncompromising sterility. Finally, the road paralleled a small stream which led into a spare grove of tender foliage and poplars, fed by well-tended irrigation. Turning northward for a kilometer, the bus halted at the wide dust-covered cement parking lot. From the lot, I recognized the familiar grand facade of the Thousand Buddha Caves of Dunhuang.
There were several different sections of the caves and grottoes. The central section was the tourist portion, with three large Buddhas enclosed inside of a cave network and a series of walkways attached to the face of the cliffside, connecting the caves. Wooden doors had been built over the entrances of many of the caves; these served to shield out the ever-present sand.
My memory traveled back to the first time I beheld those three enormous carved statues. Two of them were fully 20 meters high; the central one was over 30 meters tall. I snuck a photo of one of them and was promptly scolded by the tour guide and the Red Guard escort. Now, I felt a strong inclination to see them again.
I strolled over and joined a tourist group from Germany who were touring the main cave ruins. After viewing the central caves with the tourists, I examined several of the secondary caves with my personal guide. The painted cave interiors were still spectacular. Inside the caves, the temperature was at least 5 degrees C cooler than the outside. Some of the caves had their own unique acoustic properties, a fact that I didn't notice the first time I toured the caves. This time, the only other person that would accompany me was Peng, an assistant curator of the facility.
The Dunhuang caves are overwhelming in many ways. First, there are *so many* of them. Approaching from a distance, one first notices hundreds of holes puncturing a kilometer-long stretch of the cliff face with complete irregularity. The openings often had 3 to 5 tiers; the upper caves were spared the protection of wooden doors. Many of the caves were framed with small niches filled with carved statues. Second, the interiors of many caves possessed an ornate decor. Even the smallest cellas were fully frescoed. Once inside one of the better-preserved caves, the cavewalls seemed capture the spirit of an art school that seamlessly blended centuries together in aesthetic representations of sacerdotal images. Third, many of the caves are enigmatic. Some caves have hundreds of eyeless faces; the eyes were scraped off by a later culture that believed that the ghosts of the departed still watched from the painted eyes. The sheer variety of images in the caves seemed to artistically argue for the complementarity of the many religions of mankind. Finally, the mix of theological and philosophical elements was superb; many caves blended early Chinese Buddhism with Gupta-era Indian art motifs while incorporating Taoist esoteric symbols and Nestorian cherubs. Images possessing a strong soteriological import were juxtapositioned with paintings depicting men bound to the realms of material cravings.
For some reason, I was drawn to the north end of the caves, far away from the tourist set. Peng informed me that there was little interest in these caves because of their relative lack of art or statuary. These caves were decidedly inaccessible, which further contributed to their neglect. I was drawn somehow to Cave 948, which was on the 'outskirts' of the cave system. There were no stairs, so we had to make a rugged 40-meter climb up a steeply graded cliff face. Peng got about 2/3 of the way up and admitted that he was suffering from a bout of acrophobia. He gallantly attempted to climb another few meters but his face belied the panic that was escalating with each upward step. He asked me if he could dismiss himself from the climb and apologized profusely when I assured him that it was not a problem.
I grappled up to the entrance to the cave; the rocks, hollowed by centuries of erosional sandblasts, crunched fragile under my Nikes. Leaning over the cave entrance, I pulling myself up and inside. I wished I had worn an overshirt, because my T-shirt was dirty and torn as I pulled myself chest-level over the edge of the cave entrance. I had to rest for a few minutes, as the ascent had been quite an exertion. Here I was, catching my breath while wedged in the crawlway of a cave that looked like a harmless hole in the cliff wall.
Grabbing my flashlight, I surveyed the cramped interior of the cave entrance. I was in a small anteroom, scoured by the elements. The whole chamber was barely large enough to accommodate my upright stance. There was no indication that there had ever been any artwork or frescoes adorning the walls. In the rear was a recess, a small darkness figured against the dark brown interior of the entry chamber.
I choked down my fear of dark, cramped places and shuffled on my hands and knees for about 10 meters, my flashlight playing all around the walls of the tight passageway. The end of the small tunnel suspended a meter above the ground of the inner chamber; thus my arrival at the end was punctuated by a frightening tumble downward into the dark. For a moment, I thought that I would fall to my death in some cleverly designed pit that was intended to eliminate those who would desecrate the sanctity of the cave. But my fall was quickly checked by a smooth hard rock surface. Disoriented, I emerged into the cave proper. Grateful that the interior space allowed me to stand up, I flashed the beam of light on the floor, to assure myself that there would be no more sudden 'steps'. I noticed an absence of the layer of fine sand that had filled the lip of the cave and the antechamber. The sound of the desert wind was stilled. As I used the flashlight to survey around the cave, I noticed that the rearward wall was smoothed.
There were three timeworn painted images that resembled arhats or devas with flying long sleeves and angelic wings. I couldn't make out their faces because of the centuries of clinging dust and damp. In fact, I couldn't make out any details other than barely discernable scant outlines. They all seemed to be painted on the wall at odd angles, lacking any usual sense of artistic perspective. I hoped that the painted images weren't irrevocably faded from centuries of exposure to the elements.
I pulled off my shirt, momentarily embarrassed that someone might observe me. The fears rushed back to me for a moment and I felt my breathing become rapid-fire as I recalled the incidents of abuse. I pulled down my fear and buried it in my heart.
"Why do I get so upset simply because I took off my shirt?" I reflected with some resentment and frustration. I knew the answer. The abuse had made me ashamed of my being, my body. Here, in an empty cave in the middle of China, it *still* gripped me, much to my malediction. I didn't want anyone to see me in any stage of undress...but no one would in this case. Here, in the depths of an isolated cave in Dunhuang...I was safe.
My tensions eased.
After my panic attack subsided, I used my shirt to wipe the silty grime off the painted face of one of the divas. The sullied colors of her face took on a new brightness of hue and tone, even under the bleak illumination of my flashlight. Her eyes were brown, inset gently under her dainty eyebrows. Something about this painted figure looked familiar...it struck a chord of recognition deep in my soul. I couldn't see all of her at once because of the large size of the image and the narrow beam of my flashlight. If only I could brighten the interior of the cave...
A plan flashed in my mind. If I arranged a series of tinfoil strips at the entrance, alternating with the ceiling of the narrow entryway, and finally set them in the corners of the cave, I would be able to illuminate the cave with a measure of reflected sunlight. But this would have to wait until tomorrow, as the sun was already starting to set. I looked at the painted face of the deva once more, then crawled back out of the cave and descended the cliffside.

* * * * * * * *

"Bell-chan, this is the *fifth* place we've visited today! Can't we take a break?"
"No, Keiichi-san! We must keep looking! We *have* to find her, or at least some clue that can lead us to her!" she said resolvedly.
"Bell...we've been to the police station, a private detective agency, the municipal authorities, the Prefectural office and the Fire Dept. What more can we do here?" he said, his voice tinged with resignation.
"We still haven't been to Kurashiki. We need to at least go there before the end of the day. And I won't take 'no' for an answer!" she demanded.
Keiichi looked in her eyes for that beseeching look that always melted his heart and bent him to her will. Instead, in its place was an almost cold look of determination and...anger? He was a little afraid of the intensity of her eyes.
"Where is the soft and gentle Belldandy I know?" he wondered. He felt a shade of intimidation when he looked at her. She was staring out of the rental car like a hawk looking for a mouse.
After they reached Kurashiki, which was practically the neighbor city of Okayama, they went to the local police station and then drove to the municipal hall. But the municipal hall was closed by the time they arrived at its parking garage. Keiichi looked over at his divine girlfriend; she was clenching her fists in frustration.
This was no longer fun, or an adventure. Any wanderlust that was incited by their touring of Japan was quelled by the ferocity of her expression. He felt like he was an unwilling passenger in Belldandy's quest to find Urd. For the first time in a while, he felt afraid of her. Not afraid of her power; this was grounds enough for fear. But her attitude was overwhelming. It made the car feel thick with tension.
"She's *too* into this!" he thought as he heard her pound the dashboard with her fists.
"Belldandy! That's it...we're going back to the hotel right now!" he announced.
"But Keiichi-san..." she complained.
"Look, I don't like the way you're acting right now...you've become overzealous in this attempt to find Urd. I'm finding it really hard to be here with you when you're like this; you seem to be losing yourself in what you're trying to do."
"Keiichi!" she replied angrily, "you *promised* that you would do anything in your power to help find Urd! Now you're going back on your word. HOW COULD YOU?" Keiichi raised his hands to his ears as the sheer volume of her yelling peeled a few layers off of his eardrums.
"Dammit, Belldandy, I'm not a Goddess like you!" he said, then realized that they were in the middle of their first fight in a long time. She looked at him, her reddening face resembling her older sister.
"Keiichi, I...am really disappointed in you!" she said icily in a clipped voice. Then she abruptly turned her head away from him and looked out the passenger window. Keiichi recognized the "Madoka move" as he termed it as a kid, watching Kimagure Orange Road. But he never expected Belldandy to pick it up, let alone use it on *him*.
"How could he be so contrary? Doesn't he know how important it is to me to find my sister? Why can't he understand me?" Belldandy asked herself. She didn't want Keiichi to see the angry expression on her face or the hot tears forming around her blue eyes. Thoughts and questions rapid-fired through her consciousness as she felt her anger level off at near-rage proportions.
Keiichi felt torn between his own frustrations and Bell-chan's hurt feelings. Her last statement was like a dart to the heart.
"Yes, she had every right to say that about me," he thought. "She must really think I'm impossible!" Jarred by her near explosion of temper, he examined the changes in her mood during the past few days.
"Could it be that somehow Belldandy's sadness has turned into desperation? A desperation that was possibly fueling her frustration, her anger?" he wondered, trying to make sense of her moodiness. This burst of anger was a side of his girlfriend that he was ill-equipped to deal with. A humorous interjection here might make things worse.
"She must feel betrayed, but I'm exhausted. What can I do?" he said to himself.
They drove back to the Okayama hotel in silence.

* * * * * * * *

As they drove up into the hotel lot, Belldandy felt her anger subside somewhat. She started to feel pangs of guilt at the way she had yelled at Keiichi. In the enclosed space of a car, too.
"His poor ears must be ringing," she thought with a sliver of guilt. Her feelings were conflicted: she felt angry at Urd, at Keiichi, at herself. Yet, she felt like she *had* to do something to try and find her older sister.
"Why does it always fall to me to do what's right," she asked herself. Keiichi stole a glance at her...it was almost as if he had heard her last thought.

* * * * * * * *

Back in their hotel room, Keiichi filled the basin and took his bath, while Belldandy waited to take hers. Wordlessly, they passed each other like strangers. The silence roared sheerly in his mind. Keiichi felt clumsier with each passing moment of their impasse.
"This could get really awkward, especially with the sleeping arrangements. They only had one bed in the room. What if she wants it for herself? She *could* be that angry," he reflected while he was in the bath. He got out, toweled himself dry and walked back out, half-expecting Belldandy to broach a conversation with him.
Belldandy still didn't feel like talking to Keiichi. She caught his eyes briefly as she walked past him towards the bathroom. She could see the concern and hurt in his eyes. She felt it too. But she was still frustrated by his seeming disinterest in the task of finding Urd.
"If we keep *this* up, we'll be at each other's throats by the time we get to Hiroshima. How could we make a determined effort to find Urd when we're like this? What is wrong with me?" Belldandy asked herself as she soaked in the tub. She stood up, ran her fingers through her wet-dry hair, then smoothed it out with a brush. Looking in the mirror, she almost didn't recognize herself...her face was tense with anxiety.
"It shouldn't be this way! Keiichi and I...we should be acting in concord in our efforts to find Urd. We should be in harmony, not conflict..." she said to herself softly. She wrapped her hair in a towel and put on her pajamas and her evening robe. As she walked out into the room she saw Keiichi in a chair, sulking.
"I must have really upset him," she observed, momentarily ruing his sensitive feelings.
"Bell-chan, we need to talk," Keiichi said in a quiet voice.
"Yes we do, Keiichi-san. How can we sort all of this out? You must think horribly about me after what I said," she admitted.
"Well, yes, it really hurt me. It hurt all the more because you rarely ever say anything mean to anyone, let alone me. I was really surprised! I don't think that I'm doing anything different...anything that could upset you *that* much. I'm frustrated too that we can't find anything that can lead us to Urd, don't you understand?" he explained. Belldandy knit her brows in deep thought.
"Could *I* be the one who's changing?" she asked herself. She took a moment to look over Keiichi's actions in the past few days. As she reviewed his behavior, she had to admit that he had been steadfast in his efforts to find her sister.
He was right! He *had* been the same.
"So maybe what Keiichi-san is saying...is true. Maybe it's me that is causing our problems," she reflected. She sat in silent thought.
The loss of Urd came rushing back to her. Urd, one of the most important people in her life. The older sister she could always rely on. Urd, who had helped her so many times in her relationship with Keiichi. Urd, who had even helped Keiichi learn how to love a Goddess, albeit sometimes indirectly as the result of her own selfish, capricious motives.
"What if I lose someone else besides Urd? Each moment of life is precious...it is a grave task to live our lives the way they were meant to be lived," she remembered her own words.
Each moment is irreplaceable.
She made her mind up. She *was* too involved in finding Urd. What was it Cevn said...something about strength coming from admitting weakness?
"Keiichi...I'm *really* sorry," she acknowledged. Sensing an apology, Keiichi started to dismiss it politely...but she waved him off.
"Keiichi, please listen and try to understand. I was so upset at the disappearance of my older sister at first. B..but now I've become accustomed to Urd not being here with me. The fact that I can feel *that way*...totally frightens me, because Urd and I have been so close...for so long. Then I started getting more and more intent on finding her, so I wouldn't have to face the fact...snff..snff...that she may never come back...and that I *could*, if necessary, go on living without her," she explained, holding her hands to her face as she cried into them, feeling all alone in the world. She had just admitted the unspeakable; that she could go on living with the expectation...no...with the reality that Urd was gone.
She felt a strong arm reach around her shoulders and gently pull her. She fell into Keiichi's embrace and cried on his neck, her wet tears once more tracing onto his shirt.
"Keiichi...what if...snff...what if it was *you* that was gone?" she asked in a shaky voice. If Urd could disappear, then Keiichi could too. Even Skuld, for that matter. One fear led into a forest of apprehension.
"That's a funny thing to think of right now, Belldandy," she heard him say, his raised eyebrows casting him in a mystified expression.
"I'm right here..." he said in a consoling voice.
"But I never could have imagined that Urd would just disappear. She's not in Yggdrasil, she's not here, she's nowhere...wherever we look, we can't find her," Belldandy speeched her anxiety with a rapidclip voice.
"I'm not like Urd...I would never just take up and run away without telling you. Don't you trust me more than that?" he said as he gently combed through her long tresses with his fingers, trying to soothe her.
"Yes...yes I trust you implicitly, Keiichi. But something could *still* happen," she countered with a bit of realism.
"Belldandy, you yourself said that one must not avoid getting caught up in fearing sorrow, otherwise one will not be able to love at all. Now you're doing the same thing you caution all of us against," Keiichi said kindly, but confrontively.
Belldandy felt a chill run down her spine. Keiichi knew her so well! That's why he was worried. She had lost perspective on her life, going into an emotional tailspin that was pushing away those who were dearest to her. And Keiichi had been perspicacious enough to see it...and then explain it simply to her. She hugged onto him tightly.
"Oh Keiichi! I love you so much! No one else in the whole universe could sense what's going on inside of my heart as well as you do! No one else could have made me open my eyes to the pathways of my own frustration," she said happily as she kissed him on the cheek.
"I love you too, Belldandy! You are the most important person in my life. I don't ever want to lose you! If I did...I just couldn't go on," he replied with a smile.
Keiichi got up and walked over to the small refrigerator and returned with a can of juice for himself and canned green tea for Belldandy. She had seated herself in the other chair; he sat on the floor in front of her and leaned back against her knees, resting his arms on her legs while he drank his juice. His mind was racing...her fearful thoughts earlier had sparked his own set of concerns.
"What if Bell-chan somehow disappeared out of my life?" he echoed her worrisome voice. They had had several close calls over the past several years.
He felt fingers lacing through his spiky hair, massaging his scalp. He breathed an audible sigh of relaxed enjoyment to show Belldandy that he was sensuously basking in her massage. Her hands went to work on his neck and shoulders, punching deeply into his skin to release the accumulated tension of the past few days. As his stiff muscles were kneaded into tingly soft puddles of joy, he questioned what he had done to deserve the special massage Bell-chan was giving him.
"Bell-chan, that feels soooo good. Another few minutes and I might doze off right here and now."
"And I would stay here all night, so you wouldn't fall over in your sleep," she sweetly answered. She loved giving Keiichi massages...and loved receiving them as well. Massages were one of the pleasant surprises that accompanied taking on the mortal frame for her beloved.
Belldandy reviewed the several years they had spent together... Their first meeting was rocky, Keiichi being scared out of his wits and she trying to calm him. She initially was disappointed in his attitude, his smoking, his friends and his lack of self-respect. Then he flippantly made a wish that he wanted to be with a girl like her...forever. She knew in an instant that the Relief Goddess Office had constructed a daunting challenge for her in this Morisato Keiichi mortal.
Immediately after his wish was granted, she was in a state of shock. Never did Belldandy imagine that she would be attached by a wish to a human being. The humans evoked a variety of responses from the many Gods and Goddesses of Yggdrasil, varying from mirth to derision. At that time, she was worried that she would have to spend an indeterminate amount of time in a close relationship with one. She felt so ill attributed for the task.
But Keiichi made her feel like she was performing wonderfully in her role. As she got to know him better, his attitude softened, he stopped smoking, his friends revealed themselves to be light-hearted goofs and his esteem improved. She realized that she had been cast to fit in a part of his life that had been unanswered for years.
Then the coquettish Urd and curmudgeonly Skuld had appeared on the scene. But by that time, she had realized that not only was she to play a part in Keiichi's life...she was aware that he was playing a part in *hers* as well! In Yggdrasil, she had been courted by many Gods who wanted to receive the boon of her love. But there was always something amiss...an intuitive profundity. But, ironically, a mortal who wasn't even trying to court her, who simply lived with her and offered her his respect and kindness...was the one who received her heart.
"And my wonderful Keiichi *has* received my heart," she concluded. "He received my love so naturally that it almost seemed predestined."
Belldandy remembered all the times she was sorely tempted to ask Skuld to use her dawning precognitive powers to peer into the future and see what would become of her love. But Skuld hadn't developed that far yet in her capacity as Norn of the Future. Skuld could ferret out the Future, but she lacked the intuition to interpret it. Belldandy realized that she would have to wait for a glimpse into the future...perhaps forever, if Skuld's suspension remained in effect.
It was so funny how it had all happened. She wasn't even looking to fall in love with anyone...and then Keiichi had become her mirror-Soul. Like the mortal saying goes: when you're not looking for love, love is looking for you. She giggled gently to herself...it was so nice to be in harmony with Keiichi again. She looked down and noticed that he had fallen asleep. She gingerly patted him on shoulder to wake him up and suggested that they go to bed.

* * * * * * * *

Peng and I started out early on the third day of my weeklong stay at Dunhuang. This time, I had come prepared with the essentials for exploring the painted images I had found in Cave 948: hand mirror, a box of tinfoil, fastener clips, thread and rope and a second flashlight. I planned to place the tinfoil in an alternating pattern on the floor and ceiling of the crawlway; the light would reflect up and down in an elongated 'v' pattern until it reached the interior of the cave. From there, the reflected light would strike the mirror and fan out to the tinfoil 'panels' I planned to erect in each corner of the cave. This setup was nothing innovative; the many cultures had relied on reflected light to decorate the interiors of caves and mausoleums. The Dead must have their light...
As before, I climbed the cliff face, noting the various geomorphic geological feature as I made my way up. There was an absence of talas skirting, the usual result of windborne erosional agents. This indicated that the sheer cliff grade consisted of a composite of mineral, rather than geomorphic layers which lent themselves well to basal accumulation of granularity...
My mind was distracting itself again.
I scuttled into the cave, then turned around and began to build my tinfoil 'tunnel'. On my back, I finished with the last piece in the entryway, fastening it to the roof of the crawlway and forming a semiconical funnel to 'aim' the light at the mirror. The mirror would then light up the central area, and then I could put up the vertical tinfoil strips on the sides of the rounded interior.
Anticipation gripped me as I finished with the illumination project. I felt like I was recapitulating the techniques of the Silla cave artists who sculpted so many beautiful cave-enclosed Buddhas at Kyong-Ju in Korea. I remembered from my Coptic Art studies that the interiors of the pyramids were painted using directed sunlight beams thousands of years ago.
I finished with the work and looked to see the images. There were definitely three devas. I dampened a rag with some water from my water bottle and gingerly rubbed the mold and dust off of the face of one of the images. My initial cleaning yesterday had revealed a partial set of features, but today's wet cleaning would remove the mold and carbonate sediments.
As I cleaned the painted face, a pair of brown eyes were revealed. The facial proportions were all wrong...obviously the artist had taken some license in his interpretation of this deva. She had a small mouth and an understated nose, with a face that was rounded rather than oblong. Her eyes were narrow, in the Six Dynasties fashion of painting which blended Iranian elements with late Han motifs. As I rubbed her forehead, a faded blue splotch emerged.
"This is insane...there must have been some bad paint mixed in with the flesh tones," I observed to myself at the mote which besmirched an otherwise beautiful representation. As I cleaned the sides of her painted face, a light blue splotch appeared on each cheek.
The cleaning process was very tedious.
"Peng'll kill me if he found out that I was actually trying to clean one of the painted images!" I mused. I had spent at least an hour meticulously following the contours of the rock, being careful not to chip or peel the paint. I stepped back to take a break....
"No way!" a voiced echoed inside the chamber-like cave.
It seemed like my words had come from somewhere else, as if someone else was there in the cave speaking in my tone of voice. I was just too...awed to do anything but stand and visually stammer at the sight greeting my eyes. It was frightening...the implications of what I beheld overwhelmed my sense of proportion and finity.
The image that I beheld in amazement was a distinctly Chinese representation of Skuld's face.

* * * * * * * *

Keiichi woke up in bed with Belldandy still asleep next to him. He could barely remember how he had gotten in bed last night. As wakefulness emerged, he recalled how he and Bell-chan had fought yesterday. Belldandy had been borderline-obsessed with their search for Urd...to the point where she was losing her grip on reality. Keiichi knew that she had become angrier with him than ever before in the three and a half years they had been together.
"Frustrated at times, yes...but livid, never," he thought. The search for Urd had been exhausting and frustrating for him; he never expected it to take such a powerful emotional toll on Bell-chan.
Even while angry, she was beautiful. He was so grateful to the powers-that-be for sending him his own personal angel. Almost every minute with her had been bliss. She was everything a guy could want in a girlfriend. Friendly confidant. A wonderful cook. A shoulder to lean on. Honest and faithful. Someone whose feelings he could empathize with. A woman who made him feel like a man...a gentleman. "All these things and so much more," he thought to himself.
Then a disturbing thought flashed through his consciousness, unfinished from last night.
"What if Bell-chan was taken away or decided to leave like Urd did?" he asked himself, a hungry ocean of fear welling up inside of his heart.
"After all, she *is* a Goddess...who had assumed human traits because of her love for me," he countered his increasing distrust. But she has feelings, sometimes intense feelings as he found out yesterday. He reflected upon Urd's mysterious disappearance. Urd wouldn't disappear out of their lives because of some frivolity. Something must have really gotten to her...disturbed her so intensely that she felt she had no alternative but to abandon her life and her sisters.
Keiichi had noticed before how Urd, who was routinely rambunctious and animated, would occasionally slip into an emotional state that resembled abject despair. Her face would lose most of its mirth and freshness...and she would get a far-away, melancholy look in her eyes. As if she was seeing some tragic truth just over the horizon of her soul. Then she would gather herself and sigh, smiling slightly, smiling inwardly as if to say "I have to accept it, so I might as well not dwell on it."
He had noticed that she tended to swing into this particular mood more frequently once Cevn-san arrived. Somehow, the effort of having to oversee a mortal charge was different for Urd than it was for Bell-chan. Besides, Urd wasn't in love with her mortal.
"But what if something caused Belldandy to sever her attachment to me?" he whispered to himself, returning to his anxiety.
"Keiichi, that will never happen!" a sleepy voice said gently.

* * * * * * * *

Belldandy woke up and rolled onto her side to see Keiichi sitting in bed, looking like he was deeply absorbed in thought. She could clearly see the shifts in his aura as flashes of rumination illuminated his mind. She was worried that he had somehow become confused about her feelings for him after her defective association with him yesterday.
"What if I pushed him so hard that he is contemplating ending our love?" she thought with a flash of panic. "I didn't mean to mistreat him yesterday...but I did. Does he still feel forsakened?" she wondered. Just then, she heard Keiichi's whispered fears and knew that somehow, they were both facing the fear of losing each other. She looked to see Keiichi flash one of his shy-yet-shining smiles at her.
"Bell-chan, I will never leave your side, either. You're too much a part of me, now."
She pondered over what he meant by this.
"How can I be part of him when I'm me and he's Keiichi?" she asked herself. She sat up next to him and played nervously with a thick strand of hair. For a mortal, he was so insightful...and still mysterious after all the time they had spent together.
"What do you mean, my love?" she asked.
"I mean that you've become a big part of my life. An irreplaceable part. I've let you become closer to me than anyone ever has been," he answered. It was an obvious answer...but there was something *different* about the way he said it this time. She brushed a few stray locks of brown hair from her forehead and smiled at him.
"Does that mean that I can't get any closer to you? How can I get closer? What if I *want* to get closer?" she asked him, piling wonderings upon themselves.
Keiichi chuckled at her queries. For a Goddess who was supposed to know most of the universe's mysteries, she could sure be dense sometimes. Then he reflected on her question, suddenly aware of its underlying serious intent.
"How could *I* get closer to her? We've done everything a guy and a gal could do," he noted. But a few seconds later, he thought of the one thing that he and Bell-chan had never done. Suddenly, his pleasant mood became shaded with apprehension.
"What the hell, I might as well say it," he challenged himself.
"Bell-chan, the only thing we haven't done is make love to each other," he acknowledged. Keiichi almost flinched once he said it. He half-expected her to become wide-eyed at his remark, then get out of bed and call him a pervert...or smile at him as if he was joking around. Instead, she fixed her azure eyes on his with a new look that he had never noticed before.
"Keiichi, we talked about this in the past and decided that we would wait until the time was right. I know that we have to agree on this, but right now with Urd gone and Skuld so depressed...I need you more than ever. How can we *ever* know if the time is right? Does this need that I feel for you right now...could it be the time? Could *this* be the time? What would you do if I told you that *I'm* ready? That I want you. Inside of me," she asked intently." she asked intently.
It was Keiichi's turn to get wide-eyed. It took a supreme effort to keep from choking on his breath. They had talked about sex dozens of times in the past, but neither one had ever volunteered that they thought the time was right for them to make love together.
"Why do they call it 'make love'?" he wondered. Is adding an intimate physical dimension to their relationship 'making' it any different? He and Bell-chan had fallen in love unexpectedly, but *this* would be totally deliberate. And Belldandy had just made her intentions known.
Directly.
He returned her soft gaze and then roamed his eyes over her pajama-clad body.
"She is soooo beautiful," he marveled again. He saw the curves of her shoulders and bosom draw against the top of her pajamas, her slender neck with its raiment of soft brown hair draped over her shoulders...and he was lost again.
"This is it...this is the time!" a small voice kept nagging him in the back of his mind. He tried to stifle it so he could think rationally.
"I don't want to get carried away by the moment," he forced himself. He thought about how she said she needed him more than ever. "Could I refuse her? But she is the Goddess of the Present. Of the now..."
Then a sudden insight unfolded, flashing on his conscience.
"She needs me...and I need *that*. I need *her need* as much as I need to be with her more than ever. Besides, how could I know whether I'm ready or not if there is no past or future, only the now?" he thought, echoing something Cevn had discussed with him once.
Unnoticed by either, they had been moving ever closer, their eyes locked in a visual embrace. Scant inches from each other's face, Keiichi and Belldandy just stared at each other in love and admiration. Belldandy wondered once more what it was...this *thing* inside her that caused her to become so absorbed by simply looking at Keiichi's eyes. It was like a dormant part of her was gently being brought into consciousness.
"Bell-chan...there's nothing more I want in the world in this moment than to be with you. To *be* with you," Keiichi said in a low quiet voice. He saw the orbs of her eyes windowing into her soul...and there was nothing there elsewise but her willingness to love him.
Belldandy could feel Keiichi's breath gently brushing against her mouth. She looked at his face, seeing the glow of love and something radiantly pure. An expression of desire, just ever so slightly distinct than the lovestruck visage that Keiichi expressed at their closest moments.
"Is this what a mortal looks like when they want someone sexually?" she wondered as Keiichi brushed her cheeks with both hands and leaned forward to kiss her.
She sensed a pent-up electricity inside of her that was released by his touch, tingling her lips and all through her body as their lips met. Keiichi's eyes shone forth with gentleness and apprehension. She parted her mouth and explored his with her tongue as he pulled her to his chest, naturally...gently.
Keiichi felt a tingle as he kissed Belldandy. He stroked her silken mane of light brown hair and framed her face with his hands. They kissed lazily, languidly, feeling no compulsion to go further or to rush. Keiichi ran his hands down her neck and began to unbutton her pajama top. He could feel her hands gently rubbing up and down his chest, lightly skimming over his shoulders.
He half expected to fumble at unbuttoning her top, but he finished the bottom button. Belldandy reached down to the bottom of his T-shirt and lifted it up. Keiichi smiled at her and raised his arms as she pulled it off. It felt so...wonderful to have someone undress him. No ones ever done that before, except my parents when I was really young, he thought. The gesture excited him even more...it meant that Belldandy trusted herself and *wanted* him, sexually.
Keiichi then returned the favor and opened Belldandy's top; with her help he pulled it off of her. Instead of greedily eyeing her features, he just sat in the bed, transfixed by her soft skin and the beauty of her womanhood.
Belldandy relished in the attention that Keiichi was giving her with his eyes.
"He admires me so much...and he's so patient," she told herself. She smiled softly at him and reached behind her back to undo her bra. She unfastened the snap and pulled it off of her, pulling it free of her breasts. A quick glance down her front and she could see that she was excited in the mortal sense. She returned to Keiichi's eyes and saw a softness in his expression. He didn't have a trace of the animal-like lust that inhabited so many mortal men. There was a certain joy that struck a deep chord in her when she realized that her mortal body was arousing his interest.
"As it should," she noted to herself with a lyrical joy.
Keiichi saw Belldandy undo her bra and pull it off. He saw her breasts, gently curving and firm, with their red nipples. He was stunned by the contours of her bosom...he glanced at her eyes and saw a deep expression of appreciation...and a willfulness to share in the pleasures of the flesh with him. He wanted this moment to last forever.
Belldandy felt Keiichi tentatively massage her, avoiding her breasts. Then he brushed up against one and then the other. She felt another surge of energy as he kneaded her breasts with his fingers...she reached up and covered his hands with hers as if to say "you can touch me there, my love...don't be afraid." His hands were shaking slightly while she held them; she knew that he was getting nervous and afraid.
She looked at him, trying to signal with her eyes that "it's okay" to him, only to see his eyes beaming her the same assurance. He looked at her face, then he smiled sheepishly.
"You're...so incredibly beautiful, Bell-chan. I'm just a little scared by how lovely you are, that we're touching like this," he admitted to her.
"I shouldn't be afraid of the one I love...doing this with her, an act of giving and sharing," Keiichi thought. He was mostly afraid of the stigma of sex and his lack of experience.
"I'm mostly afraid because this is so...new. I..I don't want to disappoint you," he admitted to Belldandy.
"It's new for me too, Keiichi. But together we can share our fears and confidences and love..." she said while pulling him closer to her. They kissed again, Keiichi's chest pressing up against her breasts. She could feel the sensation of his heartbeat lightly thumping against her flesh...it was exhilarating. Her senses reeled as Keiichi slowly cradled her back and gently laid her back onto the futon.
Keiichi felt his fear diminish as he saw the love in Belldandy's eyes. The electric shock of her breasts against his chest diffused all through his body. He knew that he was fully aroused; he could feel his blood pounding a rhythm through his ears. He was laying on top of Belldandy, just like he had dreamed on countless occasions. Only this was real...this was the product of their deep love...but it was also an expression of love. Everywhere he touched her with his hands, he felt a soft, almost milky silken sensation. Her skin was the smoothest thing he had ever touched.
He felt his hand roaming to remove her pajama bottoms. There was no resistance as he reached inside the waistband and shimmied them down. He could feel her silk panties as he pushed her pants down partway...then Belldandy squirmed to pull one leg out, then the other.
Belldandy felt so excited! This was something that she had dreaded and desired for the almost four years she had lived on the Earthrealm. She wanted to do the right things, to be *just right* for Keiichi. It was hard for her to resist employing magical means to intensify an already powerfully sensual experience. Part of her wanted to simply dissolve her and Keiichi's clothes on the spot. Or maybe render them both weightless, so they could be floating in mid-air. But she realized, if this was the most intimate physical union that a mortal male and female could have...then she needed to be *fully mortal*.
When Belldandy looked up into his admiring eyes, she realized that nothing she could do physically would be wrong. With this insight, she wanted to give herself to him fully...and wanted all of him. She ran her hands up and down his chest and hips, exploring his mortal bodyframe leisurely and happily. Keiichi smiled at her as she tentatively touched him all over, his smile an act of encouragement.
Keiichi felt Belldandy reach down his back and pull his shorts down, then he rolled off and helped her remove them. He felt a thrill as he realized that he was nude. A brief moment of apprehension gripped him, but his insecurities fled when he saw the gentle smile of admiration on her face. Almost a minute later, he had eased her silk panties down her legs.
They lay on their sides, facing each other. Belldandy was exhilarated as she saw Keiichi naked for the first time. This was the first time she had ever seen a naked mortal man since she had taken on a mortal form herself. He was slender and sinuous...and handsome. He was perfect.
"She's so perfect!" Keiichi announced to himself in his mind. His eyes saw her...but she was so beautiful that he couldn't absorb the depths of how lovely her body was. He pulled Belldandy close to him, feeling the skinmask contact of a woman's body for the first time. They lay there together, body pressed against body for a long time, simply smiling and gazing at each other. His arm, tucked underneath her, was starting to fall asleep.
"Are you ready, Belldandy?" he asked in a gentle whispery voice.
"Yes...I want you, Keiichi. More than ever," she replied in a soft whisper.
Belldandy felt him gently ease her on her back. She felt his body resting on hers then she wrapped her legs along the sides of his hips.
Keiichi felt himself poised, and another surge of energy shot through his being. Belldandy had opened herself up, inviting him to make love to her.
"Bell...I love you," he said as he pushed up against her.
Belldandy felt a filling sensation and sighed with pleasure while she looked at Keiichi's kind eyes.
"He's inside of me, inside of my mortal body!" she thought within a pulse of pleasure. "It's like...we've become one being!"
Strangely, her thoughts flashed on Urd...how her older sister had been pestering her to be 'sexy' with Keiichi for years.
"This feels so good! Urd *must* have known, somehow," she thought. "It's like all of Keiichi's love is inside of me." She heard him sigh deeply and knew that he was feeling her around him. It almost felt like they were one body...yet she was tingling with pleasure all over herself. It was almost like they were creating a whole universe in their joining.
"Keiichi...I love you. I can feel you inside of me," she said softly, then reached behind his head and pulled him down to kiss him.
"I can feel...all of you, Bell-chan," he said between kisses.
After a few moments of kissing, they both felt an intense rising of sensual pleasure through their bodies. Gasping together, they looked deep into each other's eyes as waves of bodyjoy filled them both.
Keiichi held Belldandy tight against him as he felt an explosion of tingly mystery. Belldandy grabbed Keiichi tight as she shuddered with a surge of pleasure.
Belldandy had felt everything suddenly become clear at first, then it felt like her body was on a wave...or actually *was* the wave, feeling herself lifted up higher and higher. She felt cradled in the air as an almost ticklish sensation filled her, then went beyond ticklish to grip her tightly with molten energy. Then everything went fuzzy as her whole body was filled with an energy. She returned to consciousness to see Keiichi looking in her eyes...she could tell that he had felt the same energy as well.
Keiichi felt a roaring in his ears and his vision went fuzzy for a few seconds as he released himself. His whole body shook with a new sensation...then he came to as Belldandy was gently rocking him with her body. He looked in her eyes and saw that she was still in some mystical zone of joy...her whole face was radiant with happiness.
"Keiichi...that was more than I ever expected. More than I ever dreamed," she whispered to him. Keiichi kissed her forehead and then kissed her on the lips, gently lacing his fingers with her hair.
"Bell-chan...you guided me to a place I've never been before," he said gratefully. They rested together. Keiichi noticed how sweaty he and Bell-chan had become from their exertions. He reluctantly pushed himself off her...but then she rolled on top of him, resting her chin on his chest and smiling at him.
"Let's just stay this way for the rest of the day, my dear Keiichi. We can afford to take a day off," she whispered, smiling at him with inviting eyes. Keiichi hugged her close to him and stroked her soft hair.
"Belldandy...as usual you're right. I love you so much, my Goddess."
They talked about the mansions of love they had built with each other. Keiichi sang her a nonsense song that he made up in his childhood and Belldandy told him stories of her life in Yggdrasil...until both became sleepy. Keiichi wrapped his arms around Belldandy right before she fell asleep.
Soon, he fell asleep as well...the last thing he saw before his dreams was a glowing smile on his ladylove's that mirrored the blissful sheltering of his heart that he was feeling. For he was the sundial, and she was sun...and she had illuminated his life while pointing him towards Love.

* * * * * * * *

"Skuld! Here?" I said aloud, as if someone else was in earshot.
It was incredible. Somehow the Norn of the Future had visited Dunhuang and ended up being remembranced by a portrait. Her face was given a Chinese cast by the artist...she resembled the hundreds of painted devas all over Dunhuang. Except for the distinctive markings on her face. No one could have recognized those marks.
If this was Skuld, then it was possible that the other two were Belldandy and Urd. The realization gave me a bout of homesickness. I *missed* my new family in Japan. In the wake of Urd's betrayal, I was shocked that I could feel anything but resentment and grief; yet here I was feeling wistful. This had been the first time my anger towards Urd hadn't sublimated my feelings of loss.
I continued to wash the accumulated detritus and debris off of the two remaining portraits. Eventually, Belldandy's face emerged from the centuries of confinement. The tan of her hair has faded almost to nothing, but most of her face was still preserved...I could make out the marks on her forehead and each cheek.
Urd's portrait had aged as well. The white coloring of her hair had faded to a dark yellow while the brown of her face had disappeared completely. Evidently, the brown pigments used in the paints were too delicate to withstand the ages. I felt a fleeting whimsy to spit on it, but then my higher self got a hold of me as I realized I'd be desecrating a sacred treasure. On the tails of that thought was another flow...it flew by my like a leaf in a downriver rapids. For all her fucked up traits, Urd *was* a sacred treasure.
My mind returned to more cogent concerns as I wondered about the history of these paintings. Did the Goddesses come here, or were the images translated or transported from another location? My metallect said "both" and I almost jumped at its sudden appearance. This extra part of my intelligence had led me here in the first place...now it was filling my mind with ideas and suppositions.
Truths.
I stepped back to behold the grouping of three goddess-devas. Belldandy was in the middle, flanked by Urd and Skuld. Then it struck me that all three were pointing. The ribbon-like long sleeves that extended well beyond their hands spun airborne paisley circles, but I could make out where their hands were inside. I looked closer, but it seemed that they were all pointing in different directions. Why couldn't they all be pointing at the same location? I chuckled to myself, realizing the irony of it.
"So typical of these three, each pointing in her own direction," I said with a laugh of relief. The Norse legends had Urd and Verdandi weaving the web of Fate, while Skuld continually confounded their efforts. But the reality is...each Goddess is her *own* Goddess.
"They must be depicted as pointing for a *reason*," I convinced myself. "But...at what?"
This was confusing. I pulled out a piece of paper and folded it to make a plane of reference. Using the plane, I aligned it with each Goddess's pointing hand. I still didn't find a point where each imaginary line trisects. They just crossed each other haphazardly.
What if they just traversed under the physical constraints that a handball might have? In other words, what if they just bounced within the walls of the cave. I tried to employ this type of reasoning by measuring each line as it 'bounced' within the cave. After six mentally constructed rebounds, my mind became strained. It was difficult to mentally project linear geometries on the inside of a cave!
But at the ninth set of 'bounces', the three lines converged!
"Duh!" I admonished myself, for I had nearly abandoned the mental exercise. Three times three. The union of each Goddess's seemingly randomly pointed lines. At the trisect, there was a small rock that slightly protruded beyond the others. It was incredible, as I had mentally employed a theoretical geometry to find the intersect. No wonder no one could make sense of this. But it *made* sense! Yggdrasil had nine planes of existence, as I recalled from reading the Enigma Book. But there was more...
Yggdrasil was often defined by nine internal psychological divisions, which corresponded to the tripartite levels of consciousness formulated by Carl Jung. The ancient Norse texts of "Voluspa" and "Havamal" had alluded to the fact that Yggdrasil had nine divisions, or 'realms'. Not to mention the prose Edda, with its numerous references.
This Chinese painting...employed an obvious Yggdrasilian geometric logic. Even the word "Yggdrasil" itself had a recessive etymology.
*Gallows*. The elder Norse culture had identified the astral realm of Yggdrasil by using a term that was closely associated with death. Death, the veil by which all mortals need pass in order to realize the secrets of the 'Other'. The Way, the Tao, the Divine Countenance, the Delog Realms, the Great Beyond...
"Death is life?" I asked the painted images. I began to wonder if the Goddesses had somehow supervised the creation of this painting, so that it would remain a puzzle through the centuries. I felt a little thrill of pride as I realized that I had solved it.
What about the protruding rock? It was at least 20 feet up in the air, well out of reach. An Indiana Jones-type notion crossed my mind.
"Well, why not?" I said to myself as I removed my left shoe.
I threw the shoe at the rock, hitting it on the first try. Almost instantly, I heard deep grinding sounds. It flashed through my mind that I tripped a booby-trap. My mind mentally flashed upon a newspaper headline: "Dead student explorer found in collapsed Dunhuang cave."
I frantically looked around me to see what was happening. Then I noticed a square portion of the floor gradually sloping downwards.
After a few minutes, the stone cantilevering stopped. I looked down to see that a portion of the floor was now a diagonal slab which sloped downward into a chamber underneath...below and behind the wall that the three Goddess were painted upon.
The floorway descended about three meters. As I walked downwards, I could see a corridor, which was illuminated somehow, as I could see a brighter room or cave in the distance. I walked into the room, then gasped with shock or excitement.
The room had three statues of the goddesses, complete with wings, bathed in a light from overhead. They were carved in a very archaic style, resembling the early Hsia dynasty artifacts...with an Egyptian motif. The walls had carvings...hundreds of carvings.
"Those aren't carvings...those carvings are words!" I said in astonishment.
There were nine walls; each wall containing a series of carvings in a distinctive script. The walls were huge, covered with thousands of carved pictographs, ideographs, hieroglyphs, dots...
I recognized the proto-Classical Chinese graphs and the pre-Egyptian glyphs, plus the ancient Syriac/Semitic scripts. Another wall possessed carved letters that resembled the hypothesized pre-Linear Class B language group, or possibly had elements of Linear Class A. One script looked like ancient Olmec Culture hieroglyphs. One wall was replete with carved images of painted animals, greatly resembling those found in the Lascaux group in France.
Yet, there were three walls that bore little resemblance to any of the archaic languages that I had encountered.
"Why would all of these ancient languages be here?" I wondered. I read the first line of the proto-Chinese...it was a series of numbers up to one thousand. Then I read the others with growing excitement. I walked through the chamber from wall to wall, reading lines engraved on each. I stopped at a wall with an unknown set of complex scratchings.
"Teldoric," my metallect informed me. The engravings appeared as lines, dots and various curls, mixed into nine sections. Like tic-tac-toe, only each nonedrant had a selection of up to nine dots, curls and slashes. Then I read the next line, which conjugated the copular verbs and their negations.
"To be, or not to be," I joked with myself.
I stopped in mid-sentence as I realized the gravity of what I had just found. This is some kind of Chinese Rosetta Stone. *The* 'Rosetta Stone'. Instead of linking three languages, this cave had nine. All of them undiscovered, more or less. Several of them possessed attributes cognate with the earliest extant forms of several branches of the linguistic 'family tree'.
The Teldoric, Xinthaic, Gokjash and Paludorian languages represented cultures that had been extinct so long that archeologists had nothing to verify their existence. Each language group had a map...which could lead to their discovery...
"This is nothing less...than an index of all the world's earliest languages," I concluded with feverish excitement. I reached in my bag for my camera...and realized I had left it at the hotel.
"Shit!"