Part  72  Finite Remordeum



     Awakening to the sheetpale light of an early dawn, I felt myself
blanketed by anguished remnants of nightmares recent, lingering in my
thoughts like mottled nondescript clouds.  Groping among noir-blurred
memories, I sensed an alarming absence of any ardent expectations.  My
innermost being seemed to cry out for sake of a voice...the sheer
weight of my compulsion fueling me towards craving *more*.
     Any sense of positive actuality, of eagerness towards my life and
existence, had been buried under the impact of the drugs setting my
guts afire.  My body felt like a haze; painful weights of flesh
experienced in legions...my joints floated distantly like barely
tethered balloons, noticeable only by tightening aches.
     I was engulfed by apathy.
     I had given up on myself, on life, on hope.  Any sense of power
had drifted away; my mind and body felt numb.  I knew that I had
picked up...that I had consciously decided to start using drugs again.
Conflicted, I viewed myself with an admixture of revulsion and
nonchalance.  I felt disintegrated.
     The alleyway was filthy and rat-infested.  The rats were blind to
my malaise, of course.  I wished I could become a rat...to squeak and
fight and die in a septic tank of appetitive oblivion.  My heart and
soul seemed to be leaking away like a rusty faucet...the dregs that
remained were poisoned.
     My life in the past several days had monolithed into a series of
tombstone-like disjunctions.  Having violated all that I held close
and dear to my heart, all that was precious to the reaches of my soul
that semble ethicities...I now felt totally disconnected from myself.
     My recovery had protected me from the ethnonarcissisms of a
society hell-bent on personal oppression via pseudo-sanctioned drug
use.  Over the years, it had been like a large shield, one that was
polished smooth with my efforts to stay clean.  But now, as I beheld
the interior of my 'shield', I was haunted by the reflection of
ugliness it yielded to my eyes.  I could no more than it aloft in
despair, mirrored into heartsickness.  I wanted to throw it away,
discard it.  If I relinquished all my defenses, all my shields...it
would just be easier to survive.
     Already, I could feel the drives firing themselves inside of me,
pistoning me with harsh drug cravings.  Any function of abstinence had
been lost, given away into the dark shadows of moments past.
     I banged the back of my head against the wall to punitively wake
myself even further into this nightmare.  A hand grabbed my shoulder
and shook it vigorously.  I looked over to see Mara...disheveled
source of my lustdrives...yelling at me to stop hurting myself.
     As if I could pile hurt upon hurt any more.
     Everything was an absurd nausea...incomplete in its wretchedness.
The piles of torn trashbags and heaps of urine-soaked cardboard boxes
reinforced my inner state.  My outsides were my insides.
     My insides were hurting for numb.
     "Do you...have any more?" I asked Mara in a dry-rasped voice that
was more a demand than a query.
     The Demoness looked at wide-eyed and shook her head "no".
     "Then let's stop screwing around and *get some*!" I shouted,
feeling the gnaw of the maw.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     Keiichi found himself getting comfortable with the language of
his desert tribal hostmen.  The terse voices with their throaty
inflections and gruff, clipped sentences assumed a verbal cadence as
natural as Japanese.  Some aspects of their speech especially reminded
Keiichi of Osaka accents.  At times, the men's rowdy voices reminded
him of yakuza, especially the growly trilling of certain consonants.
His benefactors seemed to enjoy yelling at each other.  At first the
candorous exchanges resembled the clamor of angry shoutings that
immediately precede a fistfight...but the inevitable chafe-brawls that
Keiichi expected never occurred.  He finally realized by assumption
that the shouts were possibly a form of friendly teasing.  The noisy
din of voices was sometimes punctuated by whooping yells originating
from outside of the tent...often after a prolonged drinking bout.
These people were very much unlike the Japanese; they possessed a
harsh majesty of demeanor that was both unreserved and impenetrable.
     Keiichi reasoned that the men had restrained him from freely
walking around the tent because they seemed to have a strict
prohibition on outsiders viewing their women.  He remembered watching
a NHK special on the religion of Islam, which emphasized the strict
regulation of intercourse between the sexes among the more
conservative sects.  In spite of this, Keiichi once caught a glimpse
of a woman bringing some food items into the men's tent.  She was
dressed in a long black dress with a brightly colored shawl, with a
black hood over her head and a doily-like veil covering her face below
her eyes.  The moment her eyes met his, he felt the passing of an
electrical spark of curious embarrassment...and then she hurried out,
harangued by the two elders.  Fortunately, it appeared that she had
been trying to surreptitiously catch of glimpse of *him*...otherwise,
he suspected that he would have been harshly reproved by his hosts.
     To his immense relief, Keiichi felt his strength returning,
little by slight.  The men seemed to cajole him into greater activity
as he became more and more alive; inviting him to eat with them and
offering him some liquor.  Their meals consisted of some roasted
meats, a sour gruel made from several blends of grains, various
semisweet melon fruits, and buttered dry bread.  Keiichi had no
dietary qualms about eating these unknown foods; yet it took him a
couple days before he could keep down any solid food with regularity.
The Arabic men didn't seem to mind his vomiting...in fact, they
anticipated it, leaving a metal bucket next to his bedding for just
that purpose.
     As the days stretched onward, there seemed to be a routine to the
men's activities.  Early in the morning, almost all the men would
disappear.  Keiichi had no idea of where they were going, or what they
did...but he did notice that several of them would grab rifles.  What
did they have to protect themselves against?   He could hear
hoovesound from time to time, and his imaginings told him that they
were departing on camelback.
     Each day, two of the most elderly of their number remained
behind.  Unlike the others, the two oldsters wore fezcaps instead of
the usual turbans, probably because they remained in the tent.
Keiichi esteemed that the turbans probably served a practical purpose,
offering protection from the harsh sun and desert winds.  The two
elders would then spend most of their free time talking, reading what
Keiichi assumed to be the Koran, and smoking hashish from a large
waterpipe.  Following on that first mistake with one of the female
nomads, whenever one of the women would enter the tent, the two old
men would shout at her while hustling Keiichi back to his 'tent within
a tent'.  After two days of this, Keiichi and the old desert stewards
reached an informal accord.  Now, all they had to do was wave to him
to "shoo" in the universal language of hand gestures and then he would
retreat to his 'room'.
     Despite his gradual regain of health, Keiichi still suffered many
bouts of weakness and dizzy spells.  The nomads had given him several
suits of their clothes, since his own clothes were battered beyond
repair by his trial in the desert.  Thus, he was dressed like his
hosts in a longshift shirt and a pair of loose trousers.  One day, he
examined his chest, and was both shocked and fascinated to see how
visible his ribcage was...his chest was stretched taunt over his ribs
and collarbones.  Happily, his body was starting to replenish itself;
the bleeding sores on his hands and feet were finally starting to scab
over.
     Keiichi wanted to talk to somebody...anybody...just to relieve
the tedium.  Bested by his restlessness, he would attempt to stand and
walk around the tent.  Many times, his feet would go out from under
him or his mind would get fuzzy, forcing him would lay down and wrap
himself in a blanket.  Mindful that he was still convalescing, he
nevertheless was possessed of a rankish whim to take up the old men
next time they proffered him a smoke from their hookah.
     It was either that, or take a swig of their liquor.
     Keiichi had experimented with marijuana like most Japanese middle
schoolers, but he didn't favor the mental fatigue that always
accompanied getting high.  But he had never smoked hashish...
     So one day, while he was sitting on the mound of blankets that
made up his 'bed', the two oldsters once again gestured to him with
the hookah...and he walked over and sat on an ornate stoolpillow and
grabbed the hose.
     The two nomadic grandpas looked at him cheerfully, appearing
every bit the sagacious hosts.  They demonstrated for him how to use
the woven tubes that were connected to the ornately worked metal
centerpiece.  Then they swapped old water for fresh and handed him one
of the snakelike tubes after wiping the end off with a damp cloth.
Nodding to them courteously, Keiichi inhaled vigorously and held his
breath for a few seconds.  Then the smoke seemed to claw its way out
his lungs like a prisoner on death row under the shadow of the
gallows.

     *Cough!  Chocgh!  Hackh!  Cough!*

     Bluish smoke spewed out of his lungs in gales as he coughed until
his eyes watered.  And then some.
     The two old men roared with mischievous laughter as this,
pointing at him and shouting "Kef!  Kef!", which Keiichi eventually
assumed was the word for hashish in their native tongue...not to
mention that it was a good onomatopoeism as well.  He smiled back at
them.  No doubt, his flushed face was doubly the result of
embarrassment coupled with lunguistic gymnastics.
     "What would Belldandy think about *this*?" he noted guiltily to
himself.  For a moment, he vividly recalled her vigorous
remonstrations with him regarding his smoking habit when he first met
her:
     "These are destroying your lungs...Can you read the warnings on
the packs, Keiichi?...Did you know that over half a million people die
each year from smoking these...I can smell that stinky smoke on your
breath again, Keiichi," Bell-chan would say.  Her litanies of censure
initially grated on his nerves and made him privately curse himself
for his wayward wish for her to remain by his side.  But eventually,
he found it within himself to try and quit cold turkey...and amazingly
enough, he succeeded.  Of course, this was after Urd had arrived.
Keiichi often suspected that Bell's older sister had done one of her
'somethings' to facilitate his quitting the smoking habit...as he
didn't experience any of the crazy straw-chewing psychological and
physical withdrawals that accompany an abrupt cessation of cigarette
smoking.
     One of the men covered Keiichi's shoulders with a woven woolen
cloak as his hacking and coughing slowed down.  The other man fetched
a turban, and then tied it around Keiichi's head.  Producing a mirror,
the man pointed it so Keiichi could see himself.  He was dressed just
like one of them!  This brought on another bout of laughter.  The men
seemed solicitous to the point of good-natured friendliness.  They
seemed to have a playful wink in their eyes as they handed him a tube
for another go, rubbing their grey-white beards as they observed him
with keen interest, perhaps to see what would happen if he tried to
smoke again out of the hookah.  Keiichi felt a smallkid impulse of
rebelliousness...a sense of willful vellity mixed with a defiant "look
what I'm getting away with!" attitude.
     This time, Keiichi drew on the pipe cautiously, feeling the
water-cooled smoke curl smoothly down his throat.  He barely succeeded
in avoiding coughing this time, which brought a sporadic series of
handclaps from his greybearded hosts.
     A short while later, Keiichi felt his senses smooth out into a
calming languor.  A tranquility seemed to infuse him as he noticed
little visual 'glitches' dancing in the periphery of his sight.  The
interior of the tent seemed to fade into a dreamy haze, partially
because it was filling up with hash smoke.  A sensuous intoxication
gradually descended on him, sweetening his mood and soothing the many
aches in his body.  The voices of the two men seemed to take on a
slight echoing quality.  His mind fogged, Keiichi felt like giggling
for no particular reason.
     This whole misadventure was so tripped out, so insane!  Here he
was in the middle of the Sahara desert, sharing a tent with a group of
nomadic tribesman who had probably never even seen a Japanese citizen
before, eating strange tasting melons...and smoking hashish!  Keiichi
was always one who only lightly veiled his individualistic
convictions.  His sense of identity only ran knots against the grain
in Japan, with its cultural emphasis on accommodation and conformity.
Thankfully, his parents were mostly liberal in outlook; they neither
encouraged or discouraged his independent character.  They just
accepted him as he was, for the most part.  Thus, his occasioned
antipathy towards conformity led him fit right in with the "misfits"
of the N.I.T. MCC, now the N.I.T. Unified Club.  Cevn's arrival at
their temple home only served to push Keiichi further in the direction
of liberated individualism, enabling Keiichi to experience firsthand
the contempt for convention as behaved by a gaijin that he respected.
And his younger sister Megs was just as free-thinking as he, in her
own way.
     In his own way, Keiichi knew he was just as skewed as Tamiya or
Ootaki...
     "This stuff is *powerful*!" he observed to himself, feeling the
hashish intoxicate his mind towards fatigue.  "I wonder what my senpai
would do if they were in my shoes?"
     And still, the old men kept offering him more hashish.  Keiichi
sensed that these two grandmen of the desert were greatly amused by
the break in the routine.  It was quite possible that these two men
had shared the pipe and each other's chitchat for decades.  It seemed
to Keiichi that these two deans of the desert were delighted by the
opportunity to share their smoke with a young foreigner, vicariously
indulging in the fact that he was probably breaking a few personal
taboos by smoking hashish with them.
     "I'm an all purpose cultural egotist...and we're the three Wise
Men!" Keiichi shouted to the men in a delightful burst of manic cheer.
Despite their inability to understand a single word Keiichi had said,
the old men could sense the spirit of his words, the core of his
feeling.  The two elders donned their desert turbans and attempted
mock-dignified poses.  Soon, all three were gripped by cheerful rib-
splitting laughter.
     For the next few hours, Keiichi found himself engaged in stoned
hand-charades with the two oldsters.  Using gestures, Keiichi was able
to describe Belldandy...and when he moved his hands in a curving
motion to indicate his fiancee, the two old men whooped and clapped in
sparkly delight.  He tapped his chest and pointed at his hand, trying
to indicate that they were getting married.  Then he pointed at the
sky, and them himself.  One of the old men said "astronaut" in a
distorted pronunciation, causing Keiichi to giggle.  Keiichi guessed
that he was trying to 'say' that Bell-chan had come from the sky.
Keiichi eventually made it known that he had a younger sister, and
that he had several friends.  For Tamiya, Keiichi beat his chest like
a gorilla...and for Ootaki, he messed his hair up to emulated Ootaki's
moussed spikes.  The men responded in like by charading the habits of
the men of the tribe, and describing one elderly woman with less than
decorous intent.  Keiichi learned that they had both fallen for the
same woman in their youth...and she had spurned them for a third man,
now deceased.  Decades later, it was all a big joke to the two elderly
friends.
     Their carefree cheer was all fun...and it allowed Keiichi a brief
reprieve from the weightier concerns of regaining his health and
resuming his quest for the Key to his Beloved's Heart.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     The idea wasn't as simple as it initially seemed.  I had to
consider the nature of crime in Japan, a country that tightly
regulated the possession of hand arms.  Of course, there were cleverly
faked handarms, but most shopowners would be astute enough to
disregard an armed robbery.  I thought about getting a knife, but I
questioned whether I could go through with a robbery at knifepoint.
Marital arts weapons were out, since my martial arts experience was
limited to TaiQi...and Japanese culture glorified the martial arts.
The last thing I needed was to encounter a judo expert when I was
robbing his liquor store.  Then, there was the mysterious yakuza to
add another element into the criminal mix.  I used to always carry a
gun with me during the last few years of my active addiction, for
protection and to obtain money for drugs.
     "My active addiction?" I observed to myself with a shrug of my
shoulders.  What a lamentable, laughable irony!  Part of me was still
the recovering addict...still caught in the past...still thinking from
a clean perspective.  But this shell of my being was being pecked at
from within by the emergent cravings of my drug addiction.  I
reluctantly admitted to myself that I no longer *was* a drug
addict...that I *am now* a drug addict.
     The Demoness wasn't any help.  She wouldn't conjure up any
cocaine, and she wouldn't participate in any robberies.  I suggested
that she use some of her arcane powers to create a diversion...which
she ixnayed with visible contempt.
     "I'm not going to let you use me for parlor tricks so you can
feed your habit!" she had barked back with an angry distemper.
     So I was on my own.  No place to roam, except all of Kabuki-
cho...the seedier sections of Tokyo.
     I had to adjust to the nightlife here.
     If Kabuki-cho was rife with hostess bars and whores, this meant
that someone was fueling the whole enterprise with a lot of drugs.  So
there was a source, somewhere.  And sex bars also meant drunk
salarymen...easy pickings.  So there was a source for money to get
drugs.
     Frustrated, I decided to sleep it off until the twilight neon
hours.  Amazingly, there were winos sleeping in cardboard boxes in the
alleys.  I learned the hard way when I spotted a large refrigerator
box and tried to haul off with it.  Its inhabitant rustled around
inside, then emerged brandishing a metal baseball bat.
     I wanted to destroy myself...which almost led me to challenge the
drunk until my Demoness companion pulled me away.  She thought this
incident was highly amusing, if I were to judge by her raucous
laughter.  Fed up with her, I told her to get the fuck away from me
and she snapped back that she "couldn't" leave me.  She added that she
had to guardian me for my own good.
     So why couldn't she "guardian" me with a key of coke?
     I finally snuck a bottle of rice wine out from under the nose of
an elderly convenience shop owner.  Proud that my thieving skills had
somehow kept their polish, I decided to drain off the bottle I had
just boosted, and then 'force' myself to sleep during the daytime in a
drunken stupor.
     Note to myself: keep plying the Demoness with hootch and she may
come around and be of some service to me.
     The Demoness did make an interesting remark to me before I passed
out.  At least she was an amiable drunk, even if she bitched most of
the time when she was sober.
     And then she asked me if I had ever read the autobiography of a
spring flower...

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     Belldandy's hurried packing grated steadily on Skuld's nerves.
Her older sister was piling stuff haphazardly into her luggage
bags...her usual sense of preparation and organization was totally
lacking.  In contrast, Skuld was packing her suitcases with care,
neatly arranging every item.  It was as if she and Elder Sister had
exchanged roles; now she was the neat freak and Belldandy was
childishly messy!
     Belldandy finished stuffing her suitcase and sat down on it,
trying to pack it all down.  A few stray garments seemed to peek out
between the edges of the suitcase, causing her to sigh in frustration.
     "I just want to be finished with all this, and then leave *now*!"
she shouted, jumping up and down on the suitcase, causing her sister
to glare at her.  Belldandy glared back at the teenage Skuld, until
her senses returned and she realized that she was behaving rather
poorly.
     Since things weren't going her way with the suitcase, Belldandy
decided that it was time to talk to Urd again, giving herself a
reprieve from the chore of packing.  Each day that passed become
increasingly a source of frustration!  She was losing her patience
with having to do *everything* in mortal fashion, even down to such
matters as packing her clothes and toiletries.  And to make matters
worse, Skuld seemed to be coping much better than she!  Somehow, her
younger sister was keeping her cool, which aroused a bright glimmer of
jealousy in Belldandy.
     After going through the usual call routing at Sysop Central,
Belldandy found herself talking to Urd about going to Africa.  She
noted a hint of the maudlin in Urd's voice...a barely sensed edge of
sadness.
     "So...you really think Keiichi is in Algeria?" Urd finally asked
after Belldandy finished her tale of the oracular.
     "Yes!  I'm sure of it!  We leave tonight by plane..."
     "I'll make sure to schedule safe weather conditions with the
Yggdrasil Mainframe for your flight," Urd quipped.
     "Urd!  That's not very funny!  It's been totally unhappy
chore...having to do everything like the Earthrealm mortals do.  I
haven't used my powers in over a *week*!  I feel as if I was a
blindfolded Earthrealm mortal without my powers," Belldandy
complained.
     Belldandy could almost sense Urd's frown over the phoneline.
     "So what's the problem?  Y'know, Bell...there are over a million
blind Earthrealm mortals that seem to do just fine.  In fact, many of
them function really well.  So consider this...you're going to be
marrying an Earthrealm mortal next year.  Which means that you'll have
to make a lot of sacrifices on your part.  Over the past few years,
you've been able to refrain from using your Goddess powers quite
often...on your own initiative.
     "So?"
     "Up until now, you've had to practice restraint on using your
powers out of necessity, in order to protect Keiichi.  Or because you
*enjoy* doing certain things in the mortal way, like cooking and
baking.  Several times, you've even followed along when he asked you
not to use your powers, Belldandy.  Like in that recent Le Mans race a
few months ago.  But now, all of a sudden, your choice to keep from
using your powers is causing you all sorts of discomfort.  Once you
*have* to keep from using them...it's become a major league hassle.
It's no longer fun for you, is it?" Urd explained.
     "Life isn't always supposed to be fun..." Belldandy hurriedly
answered.
     "Yes, but what I want to know is...*why*?  Why is it all of a
sudden such a hassle for you when you can't use your powers?" Urd
asked in a sharp voice.  Belldandy felt her confidence empty out,
shuddering at the implication in Urd's words.  She didn't understand
why this self-imposed prohibition on her Goddess powers had seemed to
grow a life of its own.  To become such an irritant.  She had been so
caught up in wanting to find Keiichi and seeing her lack of ability to
apply her awesome Goddess powers to do so...that she hadn't noticed
that she was slipping away.
     Quite often over her years with Keiichi, Belldandy found herself
performing daily household tasks because she enjoyed it; a fact she
had reminded Urd and Skuld of numerous times.  This inclination
towards householding had spurred some good natured teasing from
Keiichi's younger sister at first.  But now that some outside agency
was forcing her to relinquish her gifts, she had to admit that it was
*more* than merely irritating.  It was utterly disconcerting.
     Belldandy examined her inner state again, to calmly reflect upon
the source of her discomforts, but returned time and again to the
horrid awareness that she felt *crippled*.  After a few moments, she
sighed to herself.  She couldn't even use her Goddess abilities to
discern the answer.
     "I really don't know why, Urd," she finally responded, truthful
to Urd's question.  "I sense that being here on the Earthrealm so long
has thrown my equilibrium off a little bit.  Perhaps I need to join
you in Yggdrasil, to take a break from this place.  Back home, a week
without using my Goddess powers would pass in an eyeblink.  And
then..."
     "And you don't think *this* is a *huge* problem?" Urd
interrupted.  "You're supposed to be looking for Keiichi...and now you
want to return to Yggdrasil to 'take a break'?!  There's going to be
*no* breaks when you marry Keiichi!  The Earthrealm is going to be
your home.  Not here!  Have you considered the fact that he's already
lived a full third of his life?  Are you going to age along with him?
How are you going to deal with living in the perspective of mortal
time?  You know that time passes much slower for us when we're on the
Earthrealm.  How can you manage to call his life *your home* when you
have Yggdrasil to return to, dear sister?
     Belldandy swallowed hard as Urd's words hammered at her.
     "On another note...does Keiichi even know about the inevitable
problem you're going to run into concerning family matters?  The one
that fills the room like a dread giant crow!  I don't mean to put
doubts in your head, Belldandy...and perhaps I'm merely reiterating
concerns that we both know are quite valid...but if a week without
using your powers is overwhelming you, what about a mortal lifespan?
The friends you have now, like Megumi, Sora, Sayoko, Tamiya, Ootaki,
Toshiyuki...they're going to have kids and grandkids.  Which means
that you're going to *have* to remain discrete about your powers a lot
more in the future!  It's going to be so much different than it is
now, once you're married to Keiichi.  Marriage means *life together*;
there's no going back on it once you say 'yes'!  I can run off to
Yggdrasil because I'm no longer attached to Cevn...but you don't have
the same luxury to come here and take a 'vacation' every time the
going gets tough down there!" Urd said roughly, every bit the rough
and tumble anegohada-type older sister.
     Belldandy almost dropped the phone.  Her legs felt weak
underneath her, just like they did when she sensed Keiichi in that
poster last weekend.  She found the nearest futon and quickly sat
down.
     "Urd, stop picking on her, for Almighty's sake!  Can't you see
that Elder Sister is under a lot of stress?  Besides, you were in love
with a mortal once!  And don't give me any BS about you not having to
worry about all this stuff too!  And what's this about you not being
involved with Cevn any more?" Belldandy heard Skuld counter argue.
Skuld must have picked up the other line to listen in on the call.
     "I...I don't want to talk about this any more!" Belldandy
stammered weakly.  "I just want to be back together with my dear
Keiichi!  NOW!!!"
     The phone went silent, and Belldandy thought she heard sobbing on
the other end of the phone.  Once again, she was frustrated that she
couldn't see her sister, back on Yggdrasil.  Another stupid limitation
of being here on the Earthrealm.
     Receding, plagued with doubts, Belldandy shivered in fear at the
onus of her thoughts.  All of a sudden, so many things about the
Earthrealm seemed to be limitations, rather than liberations.  Her
sense of wonder at living here on the Earthrealm was rapidly evolving
into alienation and homesickness.
     Could it be...that her decision to marry Keiichi...to bind her
future to his future...was a mistake?
     Was an impossibility?
     The silence of her heart drew her in...Urd's soft sobbing on the
phone was echoed by her own gentle unteared sadness.
     "Urd, could it be possible that our sister may be having these
problems because the main source of her presence on this Earthrealm
isn't part of her life at the moment?  I know this sounds
obvious...but think about it!  Sis and Keiichi are bound together by
the Ultimate Force.  That's one thing.  But they're also bound
together by love for each other, and I think it's absolutely possible
that she's feeling loveless.  A..and this is reflecting on
*everything*, especially how she views life here on the Earthrealm!
It'd be as if I was here, but I didn't have all my wonderful machines
and computers to play with.  If that were the case, life on the
Earthrealm would completely suck eels!  Without Keiichi, all the
allure and joy that sis feels about her life here on the
Earthrealm...has drained away.  That's gotta be why she's so upset
with the fact that she can't use her Goddess powers!  And what's
really weird is the fact that she's freaking about it...while at the
same time, not using any Goddess powers doesn't bother me all that
much!  Me...the young girl who couldn't even ride a bicycle a couple
of years ago!  It would make sense to assume that *I'd* be a basket
case under these circumstances...but I'm not.  I'm frustrated a bit
because of this totally uncool situation, but it's not all that bad.
And I believe that I feel this way because the people that I love are
here with me!  Elder Sister, Banpei and Sigel...they're here!  But her
main connection with life and love here...is *gone*.  Can you even
begin to imagine how heartsick she must feel?" Skuld explained.
     Belldandy was stunned as she listened to her younger sister's
viewpoint.  She felt a heartdeep fluttering of shock, amazed at how
perspicacious her younger sister could be.  In a nutshell, Skuld's
crack analysis of her malady of discontent was surgically accurate.
Of course she felt like all the ardor that accompanied life on the
Earthrealm had been stolen away when Keiichi was abdu..had
disappeared!
     "Skuld...did you really say what you just said?" Urd finally
asked in a voice filled with wonderment.
     "Yep!  That was all me!" she heard Skuld's voice chime with
pride.
     "I think she's right!  I've been feeling really groundless since
my fiance has gone missing.  Perhaps this easelessness has somehow
been accompanied by a disenchantment with life here.  The virtues of
this wonderful Earthrealm that allow me to cheerfully relinquish my
Goddess powers...seem to be little more than prosaic shadows without
my beloved Keiichi!" Belldandy declared with a start.
     "Yes!" she heard Skuld exclaim in affirmation.
     "I remember how you, Big Sister, seemed to *light up* once you
fell in love with Cevn.  I wasn't here when Elder Sister first fell in
love with Keiichi...so I don't know whether it was the same for her.
But you were, sorta.  Could it be that the three of us are here on the
Earthrealm, not just because of Keiichi's wish...but because we're
part of some higher agenda?  Neither one of us are GRO Agents, like
our sister.  Yet you were called upon to grant a wish for Cevn, and I
was transferred here as an Earthrealm Trainee.  Maybe we're here to
learn *how to love*..."
     Skuld felt a flush of embarrassment as she clipped her sentence
short.  She was about to suggest that all three sisters were supposed
to fall in love with Earthrealm mortals!  Elder Sister...well, her
situation was obvious.  Keiichi's wish was an unstated declaration of
love, which had later blossomed into mutual affection between sis and
he.  Big Sister Urd...well, her situation was unexpected.  The last
thing Skuld had ever expected was for her to fall for Cevn.  But Big
Sister had *also* granted a mortal's wish...and just like Belldandy
and Keiichi, she hooked up with the mortal whose wish she granted.
But as for herself, Skuld didn't know.  If she was here to experience
love with a guy from the Earthrealm...how come it wasn't obvious *who*
that guy was?  Who was she supposed to fall in love with?  Would the
phone ring in an hour and she would be dispatched somewhere to grant a
wish for a mortal man; a man she would later fall in love with?  Could
this be why she was going with Belldandy to Algeria?  The thought of
traveling to the desert for the purpose of finding a young man to fall
in love with upset her greatly.
     Skuld noticed she was covering her mouth with a gloved hand.
     "Why am I so reluctant to go to Algeria to fall in love with
someone?" she said to herself.
     Unfortunately, neither the telephone nor her hand covering her
mouth tuned out her words...
     "What are you talking about, Skuld?" Belldandy asked, her voice
peaked with curiosity.
     "Yeah, what do you mean 'fall in love with someone'?" Urd added,
a teasing tartness to her voice.
     Hung by her tongue, Skuld could only blurt out an apology...which
ended up being more of a clumsy admission.
     "So, you think that you're going to meet a man there, then be
asked to grant his wish, and then you and he will *fall in love*?!
That's utterly ridiculous!" she heard Urd's near shouting voice.
     "If it's so ridiculous, then how is it that *you* fell in love
with Cevn, when the Ultimate Force and your status as Norn of the Past
supposedly made it impossible for you to ever experience romantic love
again, Urd?" Belldandy asked, rescuing Skuld.  Besides, she was dying
to find out how her sister was coping with Cevn going out on a date
with Mara.  And never returning because Mara had kidnapped him.
     Urd *had* to know about what had happened...and now was the time
to talk about it!
     "I don't feel anything for him any more.  End of discussion!" Urd
replied with crisp irritation.
     "So you say.  But what do you think about Mara's kidnapping him?
Doesn't it bother you at all?  Skuld and I can't use our Goddess
powers to get him...doesn't that make you want to come back and fetch
him away from her?" Belldandy challenged her older sister.
     "How do you know that he hasn't *chosen* to stay with Mara?" Urd
shouted back angrily.
     Skuld was stunned by Urd's assertion.  Or was it an accusation?
Belldandy heard sobs through the silence of the phone as she attempted
to disbelieve what Urd was implying.
     "Urd...how could you even say such a thing?  What do you know
that we don't know?" Belldandy asked gently.
     "Why don't you both just leave me alone and go rescue your future
husband!  It can't be helped!" the voice shouted over the phone.
     After her embarrassed flush faded down, Skuld had walked into the
dining room to be with Belldandy.  She stopped in midpace as she heard
those words again over the phone.
     It can't be helped.
     "*What* can't be helped, Big Sister?" she asked.
     "Skuld, if you only knew...  Yes, I miss him!  Yes, I'm here
because of him!  Yes, there is something really big going on that I
can't...that I *won't* talk about!  And there's a reason why he's with
Mara at the moment!  Don't bother asking me why, because I'm not going
to explain it to either of you!  It's already painful enough!" Urd
answered.
     Belldandy frowned at this.  Urd was rarely this reserved and
dodgy, unless she had done something wrong.  And if she had done
something wrong to cause her to be *this* reticent about letting her
sisters in on whatever was going on...it must be a problem of cosmic
proportions!
     "So what are you trying to cover up, Urd?  A mistake's only a
mistake.  But it can turn into a disaster if one makes the error of
downplaying it.  If you talk about your problems with us, perhaps we
could undo what has been done..." Belldandy encouraged.
     "I don't have *any* problems!  And I didn't do anything wrong!
You're the ones who should be worried about what's wrong!  It's right
under your noses!" she heard Urd burst with frustration.
     "Does it have anything to do with Keiichi?" Belldandy asked.
     "Why do you think that *everything* have something to do with
Keiichi?!  I'm surprised that neither of you have figured out why
Mother and Father dropped him in the middle of a desert in Africa!
It's been emotionally taxing all the way around, but you both have to
hang in there!  Now, back to you, Belldandy...why don't you just say
'screw it' and use your powers to go fetch him?" Urd asked evasively.
     Belldandy shook her head at Urd's lameling attempt at evading the
topic.  She willed herself to surrender to the hope that Urd's motives
in concealing this mysterious 'project' she was working on...were
realmed in the good.  But she was still reeling from Urd's pointed
questions about the wisdom of her upcoming marriage to Keiichi...Urd's
words of warning had tolled out bells of disillusionment and doubt
deep within her heart.  Belldandy wanted to recoil from the notion
that a marriage to Keiichi might create more harm than good.  But then
there was the matter of her recent frustration towards Earthrealm ways
of living.  And if she could become so conflicted towards this
upcoming marriage because of a few searching questions from her older
sister, then she had to find out what was causing her to react with
such mortification to her inability to use her Goddess powers!  It was
something inside her...something that she couldn't sense clearly.
     Skuld clearly sensed the deep inner turmoil of both her sisters,
which only served to deeply disturb her.  Urd had actually cried on
the phone; her frustration and sadness pulled on Skuld's heartstrings.
Skuld felt a surge of malice towards Mara well up in her breast.  And
Belldandy was acting like she had experienced an earthquake of the
soul.  She was visibly shaking, her fingers jittering as she poured
herself a cup of tea after they got off the phone.
     Two days from now, they would be in Africa.
     *That* thought scared Skuld!
     Without the use of their Goddess powers, they would be like any
other tourists.  And what if someone in that far off land tried to
prey on two innocent young women?  In such a situation...if Skuld
found herself having to resort to her technical prowess to protect
herself, would such an action somehow screw up Belldandy's chances of
ever reuniting with Keiichi?
     Then Skuld noticed her own hands trembling with nervousness.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     Still life with Demoness.
     My idea about hanging around the seedier sex bars was shot like
knee plays and mesons.  No amount of chemical courage could get me
into one of those clubs.  I was transfixed between disgust and fear
and delight.  Worse of all, my fear of women had resurged, crucifying
my aspirations to go in to a club and scam over the unsuspecting hoi
polloi drunkmen.
     It was as if I was trying to elude the watchful eyes of my past
and my conscience...which only resulted in wet palms and conflicting
emotions.  In my efforts to swallow down my fears, my lusts...all I
could see was the vanities of the world.  A package wrapping of abuse,
exploitation, poserism, sex slavery, dishonesty, perversion,
humanimalism.  My soul was so darkened by the drugs, these things
rendered themselves romantically beautiful in their degrees of
nothingness.
     While I had been roasting a passout, the Demoness had changed
back into her regular Vanagdrasil garb, which passed for an only
slightly unusual chic look in this area of Tokyo.  Then she tried to
drag me into a strip club, and then chided me when I turned pale at
the door.
     Some wino peed on my pants while I was hanging loose in an alley
trying to figure out a way to score a drop on some dope.  Just came
up, whipped it out, and pissed on my knee.  I wanted to punch him, but
the Demoness zapped him with some kind of mojo, which caused him to
run away in fear.  The shocked expressions of the OLs as he
sprintstumbled by them made it clear that he was still indecent.
     The Demoness was at least was decent enough to snap her fingers
and put me into some clean clothes.  I wanded with shame wondering if
she saw my nakedness in between nanoseconds.
     So we trudged around the glitter and crowds of Kabuki-cho's
nightlife like two silent ghosts.  The evidence of white slavery was
abundant, as I overheard a number of the whores talking in idiomatic
Russian about how lecherous the Tokyo businessmen were.  Touts robed
in cheap garish yukata barked out descriptions of pleasures "just
inside the door" as we walked down towards Yasukuni-dori, the main
boulevard that separates Kabuki-cho from the rest of Shinjuku.  I was
bent on finding Golden-gai, a maze-like section of small godowns often
frequented by yakuza.  There, I might find some leads where to find
some dope.
     "I can't go back!" I heard myself suddenly announce.  Seeing the
emptiness outside only served to spotlight the emptiness inside.  And
in an instant, it had blown up on me like a late autumn gust full of
hands of dead leaves.
     "What do you mean?" the Demoness asked gruffly.
     "I blew it!!!  I can't go back to the temple, to my job, to my
friends.  What do I tell them?  What possible excuse do I have for
myself?  That I came, I saw, and I used?  That I choose to hang out
with you?  That I bailed on all of my principles?  That I started
using drugs again?" I boiled out guiltily.
     "So what?  People make mistakes.  *We* make sure of that!" the
Demoness answered back with a wink.
     "So...if you Demons make people screw up...doesn't that imply
that you have to at least consider the potential that the screw ups
can be rectified?  And then account for that too?  Otherwise all your
hard-earned acts of destruction are for naught, eh?"
     "Philosopher, huh?  I'll tell you this free of charge, Cevn.
*You chose this*!  You could have tormented yourself even worse at the
girly bar back there.  But you didn't.  So part of you is evil and
self-destructive, but that doesn't mean that *all* of you is.  Have
you ever considered that the only true confidant of your life is the
silence of your heart?  Each time your heart stirs, does it not bring
only unrealized passions...the chill echoes of the past, and years of
frustrated ambitions?  But when your heart is silent, then aren't your
losses are also silent?  Only in that quietude can you find
fulfillment..."
     "Forget that!  This is so messed up...you lecturing me!  I don't
believe in silence!  I believe in noise!  Angst!  Havoc!  I feel split
right down the middle by the war-axes of tragedy and self-denial...and
that division is tearing me apart.  Maybe my sorrow *is* my temple,
not some bullshit silence you're talking about!  Are you trying to
turn me into a Demon?"
     The Demoness only shook her head and giggled at my discomfort.  I
held out a brief hope that she *was* turning me into a Demon.  That
would explain everything, would lend a meaning to my descent.  Then, I
wouldn't have to wonder about why I fell from grace...into this
cesspool of schizothyme disillusionment.  Somehow, I knew that my
future was in the hands of this Demoness, which made her my
adjudicator-juror.  For a moment, I envisioned Mara in the regalia of
the judiciary, complete with an Old Highgate wig and a long black
magistrate's robe...
     "Your Honoress, in the court of common pleas, I prithee tell me
why is it such that I remain bound to the sensation that every part of
my being is slowly disintegrating?" I asked in a bare-face imitation
of an English barrister.
     The Demoness regarded me with an expression of haughty disdain
and curiosity.
     "What is the matter with you?" she enquired.
     "Nothing's the matter...because nothing is right with me!  I
don't care if I get high...but I need some heroin really soon.  Where
can I find it, oh Demonic Magistrate?" I said, trying to mock the
Demoness into a bout of frustration.
     "You're totally hidebound, you know that?" she replied.  "Let's
go somewhere...I want you to meet somebody."
     And that's how I got to meet the Otaku Professor.

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     After crossing the Mediterranean, they flew over huge expanses of
sand, mountains and saltbed lakes, which appeared as tan-rust gouges
and yellow-gray ripples from their aerial perspective.  As their plane
circled towards the Tindouf airport, the ground that met them was
spare of vegetation and cracked with erosion.  During the landing,
Belldandy caught a brief glimpse of a grove of trees near the center
of town that marked the local oasis.
     The first impressions she upon their arrival were how *dry*
everything was...and that Keiichi wasn't here.  She couldn't sense him
anywhere.
     Disappointed, she debarked off the plane, noticing that the sky
wasn't a clear blue like it was back home.  It seemed a dreary grayish
blue, almost overcast.  As the aridity gripped her, Belldandy surveyed
the airport and the nearby city. As a GRO Agent, she had been in this
vicinity hundreds of times on assignment, most recently in the waning
years of the 1970s, where she fulfilled the wish of a woman who sought
permission from her tribe's marabout to marry a goat herder from
another tribe.  The sheikh had been easy to convince, but the hard
part was making both tribes live with their marriage.  Belldandy
wondered to herself if the couple was still alive as she and Skuld
entered the small airport terminal.
      Standing in the ramshackle airport 'lobby', she could sense the
eyes of several men greedily probing her for any signs of fragility.
She reminded herself that the gender roles of men and women were much
different here than in Japan.  In essence, women in this culture were
often polarized as either viragos or virtuettes, with little room
between.  Foreign women would always be regarded as infidel; their
independent nature quite possibly being viewed as threatening to male
sensitivities.
     The sense of danger was palpable to her.
     Belldandy knew that she would need to hire a khodja...an
interpreter...forthwith, so that she and Skuld could make their way
around town and go about the business of locating Keiichi.  She hailed
a taxi to go to the single hotel with any decent accommodations.
     The town of Tindouf was drab and linear...and flat as a parking
lot.  Besides the lowrise hotel and an 'office building' of four
floors, the only other structures that cut above the one and two
storey dwellings were the minarets of the muezzin and the capital
domes of the mosques.  Many of the dwellings were built of the typical
sunbleached yellow mud style more typical of the Sudanese.
     A wide main avenue extended the length of the city, fronted by
stores and some of the wealthier merchant homes.  A number of signs,
most of them handpainted in sloppy Maghrebian Arabic, poled out from
the dirtbrick buildings on weather-beaten clapboards.  To the west was
a tent city, filled with families displaced by the various civil wars
and the border wars ranging nearby between Algeria and Morocco.
     She noticed some of the buildings dated from the colonial days,
when Algeria was a French "protectorate".  In truth, the Frenchmen had
brutally oppressed the Algerians by means of enforced servitude,
economic deprivation via oppressive taxation, and cultural
amalgamation.  It was more of a military occupation than anything that
resembled an altruistic "enlightening" of the Algerians.  Rather than
aiding the Algerians, the French occupiers simply tried to Gallicize
them.  In addition to the stealing of land and the strategic value of
occupying a large part of the southern Mediterranean, the conquest of
Algeria allowed France to presume a maintenance of its claim to the
Napoleonic grandeur of earlier generations.
     Other buildings maintained their Arabic-Berber architecture,
looking as if they had been transplanted from centuries past.  White
painted plasterwork juxtaposed with intricate decorative carvings and
mosaics, creating a raucous virility of design.  Belldandy had a
fondness for the arabesques of the Islamic culture; their attempts at
geometric abstraction were as close as the mortals had ever approached
to capturing the artistic essences of one of the major Yggdrasil
schools of art.  She was often amused by the reactions of first-time
visitors to their temple home when they first encountered the huge
Arabic carpet that served as a centerpiece in the middle of her living
room.  Accustomed to simple tatami flooring, the visitors to her
temple home usually "ooohed" and "ahhhed" at the centuries-old carpet.
It was the product of a peasant guild, whose single wish was to be
selected as court carpetiers by the King.  She granted that wish,
heightening their weaving and design skill beyond that of their peers.
Consequently, they 'won' the competition and were housed in luxury for
the rest of their lives.  The guildmaster who created the rug
dedicated it to "the Lady of the wishing veils"...namely, Belldandy.
When the kingdom fell to the Crusaders, she couldn't stand by and
leave it to the vandals...they would have simply burned it along with
all the other "heathenish relics."  So she rescued the woven carpet,
magically restoring it to its former luster.  She kept it at home in
Yggdrasil for a few centuries, and then removed it to her new home
here on the Earthrealm.
     She knew that Skuld shared her fascination with Arabic art,
especially from a mathematical standpoint.  As they entered the hotel,
they were greeted by a modern rehearsal of the best of Maghrebian
Islamic mosaic art.  Belldandy immediately felt comfortable in her
surroundings, relieved that the hotel would serve as a safe haven
until she found Keiichi.
     Once she and Skuld secured a room, they returned to the hotel
lobby and sought out an interpreter.  Belldandy knew every language
and dialect ever developed by the mortals or any other sentient
species on the Earthrealm...but she was lucidly aware that she would
have to use an interpreter.  Since her linguistic abilities were
definitely due to her divine origin, she couldn't employ them here.
     She learned from the khodja that Tindouf was really five cities:
the refugee tent city, a ward of rather conservative Chaamba Arabs, a
small ward of expatriate Continentals from France and Spain, Haratine
and Malian Black Africans, and a mercantile ward which served as a
waypoint for receiving nomads who were transporting goods across the
desert on camelback.  There was a small hospital, staffed by a mix of
Red Cross volunteers and Algiers-trained physicians.  The city was
rarely visited by Westerners, except for the annual charity marathons
and several tour groups of European anthropology students during the
summers.  It was also the headquarters of an underground militia that
fought for political autonomy for all of Western Algeria.
     "Tindouf has a pretty active nightlife," she observed as darkness
befell the village-city.  At night, illuminated strings of lightbulbs
would cast a glow on outdoor poolhalls and eateries in open lots
fronting the main street.  Unlike most citizens of the modern world,
these people were gregarious and boisterous; possessed of a candor and
charm that was almost festive in nature.
     Exhausted after her long flight, she soon fell asleep after the
muezzin sang out his last call to Allah...

          *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

     When he woke up, Keiichi immediately sensed the shift in the
routine.  Instead of taking off early in the morning, the men were
busy packing.  The boister of their conversations chattered even
louder than usual.  Once in a while, one of the two elders would bark
a set of instructions to several of the younger men.
     After breakfast, one of the men brought Keiichi a new set of
clothes and a pair of sunglasses.  As he dressed, he noticed that
these clothes were woven more densely...they rested much heavier on
his body.  And the sunglasses...what where they for?
     Unexpectedly, the two old men tried to press a cake of hashish on
him, which Keiichi politely refused.  Once was enough, thank you very
much!  Keiichi hoped that his refusal wouldn't be viewed as an insult,
especially to gifts offered by the respected elders of the tribe.  He
had read about many tribal cultures who were very touchy about gift
giving...far more so than the Japanese.  When the two desert elders
realized that he wasn't going to accept their gift of hashish, they
nodded and smiled at him good-naturedly.  After a brief conversation,
one of the old men opened a wooden case and pulled out a long curved
blade in a scabbard.  Keiichi started at this, until the oldster
extended the knife out to him in with open hands, in a giving gesture.
Keiichi felt his face flush with embarrassment as he regarded the
gift.  The black knife sheath was studded with gems, silver leafing,
and delicately worked geometric Arabic cloissone designs.  There were
several roped silken tassels hung from the hilt of the scabbard, plus
a drawstring threaded through grommets at the base and top of the
knife sheath, evidently for the purpose of securing the knife to the
wearer's waist.  The blade itself was curved like a traditional Arabic
scimitar; it appeared to be 300 to 350cm long.  The handle grip was
handworn, but otherwise the knife looked brand new.  Keiichi's eyes
grew wide when he noticed that the knifeguard at the base of the hilt
appeared to be gold!
     One of the oldsters smiled and pulled a melon from a nearby
basket.  Almost effortlessly, he sliced through a thick melon with a
single stroke, demonstrating the cutting ability of the knife.
Keiichi sensed quiet in the tent; when he looked around, he saw all of
the men were watching this interaction with keen interest.
     This was one gift he had better not refuse.
     Smiling and bowing deeply, he accepted the gift.  The two old men
clapped him on the shoulders, while the other's laughed and clapped
their hands.
     It suddenly dawned on Keiichi that this was a parting gift.
     He felt a momentary wave of sadness as he realized that he was
leaving here...leaving these very men who had brought him back to the
brink of life after he was rescued by his Angel.  For a short two
weeks, this tent had become familiar to him.  It was a home away from
home.  These fierce-looking men, whose harsh bearing made yakuza
appear tame...had gently and patiently nursed him back to health.
Evidently, they were going to caravansary...and they had waited until
he was healthy enough to make the trip.
     Keiichi put on the sunglasses and emerged from the tent.  After
being inside for several weeks, the outdoors sun was *harsh*!  He
blinked his eyes, unable to move a step until his vision got used to
the brightness.  For the first time, he could see his environs.
Several long black tents were pitched next to a large body of water
surrounded by numerous trees of a like he had never seen before.  It
was beautiful!  He walked over to the water and splashed his face.
     Cool.
     In the distance, he could see distinct groves of different kinds
of trees planted nearby the oasis.  Several other camps of tents were
near the lake; evidently other nomads who were sharing the oasis with
his benefactors.  He could see small herds of camels tethered next to
each group of tents.
     He felt a slap on his back, and a tall bearded man gestured to a
camel.
     They wanted him to ride somewhere on camelback!
     Three men mounted camels, waiting for Keiichi to climb on the
back of his own camel.  He struggled to clamber on to his camel
unsuccessfully, and then one of the three men dismounted and helped
him up.  The camel stank, even in the dry desert air.  But once he was
saddled on the beast, Keiichi felt the familiar sensation of *riding*
something.  If he could just try and mentally conjure up the image
that this beast of burden was a form of transportation like his trust
BMW...he could probably survive the experience.
     The saddle was plush, with a backrest he could lean against as he
rode.  Several bladderbags of water and a rifle were provisioned on
each camel, along with satchels of dried fruit and breads.
     Evidently, he wasn't going to travel with the group of nomads.
Instead, three of their number were going to take him on a trek across
the desert to...somewhere.
     Somewhere else.
     For a moment, Keiichi panicked when he realized that he was going
to travel the desert once more.  He had nearly died out there...he
wasn't too keen on returning to the sand.  He felt himself gasping
deep breaths that were fueled by his near terror at the thought.
Grasping the bridle with a tight grip, he swallowed down his fears
with a game effort.
     Reality was...he couldn't remain here at the oasis forever.
     And leaving here would only bring him one step closer to finding
the Key to Belldandy's Heart.