Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I traveled round the world
Looking for a home
I found myself in crowded rooms
Feeling so alone...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A figure caught her eye as she was turning back to the counter.
For a second she caught her breath, hope springing up unbidden, but
she was to be disappointed once again when the woman turned. The skin
was far too dark...the hair was similar, but not quite the right shade.
She was not the one.

Sakura was about to turn away again when she realized that the
woman was also looking at her. Looking at her with raised eyebrows
and a startled expression that quickly transformed to disappointment as
she watched.

Then green eyes met green.

Something passed between them. A sense of kinship, a recognition
of some kind. She made as if to rise but the other woman gestured for
her to remain seated and approached her instead.

She felt a lump in her throat. The young woman moved with the
unconscious grace of a true lady. She might have been a princess, she
moved with such fluidity...it was a joy to watch her. Her hair flowed
down her back in soft waves.

For the life of her, Sakura couldn't help but be reminded of
someone else.

"Are you...waiting for someone?" asked the woman a little hesitantly.

"Well...not exactly," said Sakura. She smiled a little. "Would you
care to join me?"

"Thank you." Her voice was low and well-modulated, a lovely voice.
She spoke with formal politeness, reinforcing the image of a princess
in Sakura's head. Still, she thought, I prefer higher voices. High,
sweet, voices... She cut off the thought cleanly and sharply, as one
who has had much practice might do.

The door opened and Sakura looked up quickly, a reaction that had
become almost as instinctive as breathing.

And perhaps almost as necessary.

Strangely, the other woman looked up simultaneously, with a movement
almost identical to Sakura's. The two of them squinted at the figure
outlined in the doorway, and then each turned away with a sigh.
Then their eyes met again and they smiled ruefully at each other.

"Have you always worn your hair long?" the woman asked. The question
was sudden, but somehow neither abrupt nor jarring. It seemed like the
most natural question in the world.

Sakura put her hand self-consciously to the hair that fell down her
back in a straight auburn curtain. "No," she said quietly. I used to
wear it in a short, pixie cut all through school. But I haven't cut it
in a long time. Someday, I'll cut it short again."

"Someday, when you find...her?" The questioning inflection was
slight but unmistakable.

Sakura nodded slowly. "Does...she have long hair?" she asked.

After a pause, the other woman nodded in turn. "She...did...the last
time I saw her, anyway. Long and straight, like yours. But hers was
lighter than yours."

"You move with the same unconscious, gentle, grace that she did,"
said Sakura. "You don't really look like her, though her hair was long
and wavy like yours, but you...you *feel* a little like her, somehow."

The woman nodded again, as slowly as Sakura had. "I'll bet you were
athletic in school," she said.

Sakura smiled a little. "Does it show?"

"Oh, in the way you move, in the way you carry yourself...the
little things."

"She was always very observant, too. She used to amaze us all.
Sometimes it seemed like she knew everything," Sakura said reminiscently.
The door opened again and once again both women looked up in unison.
"I guess I've become the observant one, now." A thread of irony edged
her tone. "I certainly wasn't then, and I paid for it." A sigh escaped
her lips.

"Why is it that we truly don't appreciate the most wonderful
things in our lives until they're gone?"

The woman's hand covered hers comfortingly, her skin dark against
Sakura's comparative paleness. "I don't know," she said sorrowfully.
"I don't know."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sakura pulled closer to her in the darkness, running her fingers
through the long, soft hair. "I'm afraid," she whispered.

"Of what?"

"Of finding her. What if..." It was hard to say. "What if she's
found happiness with someone else? It was so long ago. I've changed.
I'm not the same person I was then...and she won't be either." A tear
escaped from her eye and ran sideways down her face to hide itself in the
pillow. All of her fears were pouring out of her now. "Why have I spent
my life chasing a dream? What if...what if she doesn't love me anymore?
What if I only disrupt her life and make her unhappy by finding her?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"What if...what if I never find her at all?"

The arms around her tightened, and she felt as though they were the
only things holding her together. Without them, she thought, she would
shatter into a million pieces.

The low voice hovered in the darkness. "I know," it said softly.
"I know."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lyrics at the beginning are from Madonna's "Substitute For Love", from
her CD, "Ray of Light".


---------------------------------------------------------------------------