"Crack the Sky"
An RG Veda Vignette
by E. Gray
____________________________________________________________________________________

I know.

I know you think no one understands what you are doing, Lord Yasha. But it may surprise you to know that I do.

Even if I don't know your reasons, your true reasons, I know. You have something you are protecting for a purpose. A promise to keep. A principle to uphold. Your unwavering guardianship to the deeply taboo, cursed child of Lord Ashura has a more profound purpose than is evident on the surface, and though you have not shared the details of your dedication with me, with any of us, it is clear that it runs deeper than simple promises and responsibility. I have heard the smiling man with violet eyes tell you over and over that the wheel of destiny has been set in motion, turned by the hands of that child and that child alone. Your thoughts on this, your plans, your fears…you have not shared those with me either.

But then, you never were a man of many words.

I understand. It's not a matter of loyalty. You have something to prove. To yourself, maybe. To someone who is no longer on this plane…far more likely.

Just as I do. My motivations are not secret. I have been all too clear on the events that have forced my hand to treason, and indeed, neither is it a mystery why you may be more than ever determined to see our treacherous God-King fall from his stolen perch. It was a tragic shock from one end of Tenkai to the other when the Yasha tribe was massacred by Bishamonten's army, leaving you, and only you, Lord Yasha.

While you may think I do not understand, let me assure you. I do. Now, more than ever.

I may have mentioned it to you before. Each of us in the Karura tribe shares our life. We are bound, spirit and heart, to a bird, from the moment of our birth. To connect us forever to our vast kingdom of the sky, that is one reason we do this. Another, though, is so that we always learn to think of the well being of another, even when we make choices that affect only ourselves. I am thus linked, inexorably, with my Garuda, and my precious Karyoubinga…I'm sure you know that as she fell dead on the floor at Taishakuten's sickening festival in celebration of his own sick tyranny, as she fell dead in front of my eyes, her delicate moonlight bird, as well, passed from this plane to accompany her to the next world.

And her last thoughts, they were thoughts of me. Her last wishes. For my freedom.

Lord Yasha, I do not have to tell you that in this life, there is no freedom under the rule of this sanguinary God. Only servitude and fear. Even for a Queen of the Sky, freedom is a pipe dream reserved for lunatics.

All of us here, we know this only too well. We all have our own reasons. Your tribes lost, you have forged ties to each other in place of those you once had by blood, ties now lost; blood forever soaked into the dry soil of Tenkai. Likewise, with my only family viciously sacrificed to the whims of a tyrannical king, my life thrown to the wind, I am now a part of your clan. Your tribe of mutinous kings and queens. Dark stars that will split the heavens. Dissenters that will crack the sky.

But Lord Yasha, let me tell you a story. While you think of yourself as a stray wolf with no pack; a king without a kingdom, let me tell you about a bird. A cuckoo bird, who lays her eggs in the nests of others, in hopes her children will be raised by others in its stead. And those birds, so often, they raise those cuckoo chicks as their own, never knowing or never taking the time to care. Often, it never even occurs to them that child isn't of their own blood.

Even though you are not of the Karura, regardless, your life is linked to this little bird dropped in your empty nest. I find you continually putting his well-being, whatever there is of it, above your own. I can only help but be reminded that you are raising this child amidst the roar of the flames of Hell that rise up to consume Tenkai in bloodbath and terror, and even as his tears over his sorrowful fate dry, they are not forgotten to either of you. And with the Yasha tribe laid to waste, believe me. I do understand. No matter how many disdainful and disgusted men have questioned you as to why you shield the cursed son, this child that should never have been born; you are stone. You are unyielding.

Oh, as I once was.

I swore for years that if only I still had my sister to protect, I could endure anything. Any injustice. Any cruelty. But my sweet, fragile Karyoubinga can sing no longer, and it is I now that am a bird without a flock. I can commit no sin or sedition by which the punishment I have already received could be offset. And it only now that I have lost everything that I am free to do anything. To persue what true freedom means.

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again. What is time but a snake that eats its own tail? This fate, as it was foretold, is written in the stars. This fate that governs us towards the inescapable battle; that crosses my path with yours over and over, like a hopelessly tangled thread of fate.

And I am resigned to it.

Daily as little Ashura grows taller and more gangly, as he smiles and laughs and reaches out so desperately for the companionship he's been denied as he lay in fitful, enforced silence for 300 years; through the rain of blood falling all around us and the flame of Mahyah he calls forth from his hands in his ever-failing effort to protect those he loves so fiercely, I see only a stray wolf and a cuckoo in the same nest, and can find no wrong with it. Indeed, despite the long-upheld taboo, my heart sings.

Because, you see, Lord Yasha?

The cuckoo…the cuckoo is a beautiful bird!