2016-10-25: Twain

[Bob Schroeck]

Twain
A "KanriKyara" Story
by Brent Laabs

Penguin Park, Tomoeda, Japan
March 29, 1998¹
9:15 PM Japan Time

Beneath the stars and under the branches of the cherry blossom trees, the people of Tomoeda Town had strung paper lanterns, illuminating the delicate blossoms above.  The whole park glowed with the pale pink light of the sakura blossoms, as dozens of the town's residents soaked up the spectacle and partied with sake and sweets.  This was Penguin Park's annual Flower Viewing festival — or Hanami — but it was the first time a particular group of sixth-graders got to stay up late for the yozakura.

This group had set up an elegant red and violet print curtain² behind them to block out the sound of the street, along with a bento five boxes high full of various sweets atop a blanket on the grass.  The setup was the envy of all of Penguin Park, but nothing less could be expected from the rich girl of the group, Tomoyo Daidouji, who would give nothing less for her priceless friends.

Still, it was getting kind of late for kids that age to stay out, especially as the adult parties around them began to increase in volume and decrease in sobriety.  Looking at her namesake flower, Sakura Kinomoto was still in reverie when Naoko and Rika excused themselves.  Yamazaki was in the middle of a fascinating history of the hanami curtain until Chiharu made him walk her home right in the middle.³

And so it was that the group was down to three young people, Sakura and her Chinese boyfriend Shaoran Li, and Tomoyo.  Make that four, as Sakura's backpack flipped open and a yellow stuffed-animal said, "Ah, finally!  I get to see the flowers!"  He was not a real stuffed animal, but Sakura's familiar and Beast of the Seal, Kerberos.  Kero had managed to sneak out a cup of amazake to enjoy with his new view.

Sakura said, "I still don't know why you wanted to be inside my bag the whole time, Kero-chan."

"Oh, that's easy," Tomoyo explained, "He's another example of 'dango before flowers'."⁴

"I think he had a whole tray of dango!" Shaoran complained.  "I kept seeing that toothpick poking out of the bag to fish for sweets."

"Don't worry, I budgeted for Kero-chan."

Sakura said cheerfully, "This is great being out here with you all.  It's so nice just to take a break and look at the beauty of the world.  And all of the flowers."

"Sakura is so beautiful." Shaoran said.

Sakura replied, "Thank you!"

"I mean, the flowers, I mean… I didn't…" Shaoran turned beet red.

Sakura laughed, and kissed him on the cheek.

Tomoyo said, "It is a nice day to relax, under the trees.  Now that you've captured all of the Clow Cards, and made them your very own Sakura Cards, we don't have to go out at night so much."  She paused for a moment, and watched a sakura petal tumble to the ground.  "I wonder what the future holds for us now."

A light went off in Sakura's head, "Ah!  Maybe I could try a divination again!"

"With all the cards, Sakura will be super-accurate now!"  Kero said.  "Especially on a night like tonight."

"Let's give it a try," Shaoran agreed, "and find out more about our future."

Before taking out her magical cards, Sakura did a quick look around.  Most of the adults still relaxing around the park were too involved in their friends and their sake to notice much of anything, so she proceeded to withdraw an arcane deck of 53 cards from her bag. 

Kneeling on the blanket, she brushed away the sakura petals in a flat section of fabric to make room for her divination. Sakura shuffled her cards three times, thought for a moment, cut the deck, and gave it one final shuffle. 

She dealt a spread of seven cards, three in the middle row first, then two below, and finally two above.

She turned over the first card on the left, "This is my past, Woody."

"That means that you've grown a lot, Sakura-han!"

Tomoyo added, "I thought the same, Kero-chan, she's like a budding flower starting to bloom."

"Hoe?"  Sakura uttered, but then turned to the middle card. "This is the present:" she flipped, then named, "Time, inverted."

"That feels wrong," Shaoran shuddered.

"Something in our time is broken," Sakura divined.  She moved forward to the rightmost card.  "Our future is: Twin."

"So, we have a choice of two different paths," Kero explained.

"I don't... somehow I don't think so."  She moved to the bottom right card, and flipped two cards over.  "Hooeeee?"  She pushed at the remaining cards, and sure enough, each of them were now a stack of two cards.  "I tried to deal it right," she apologized.

"I think the cards are revealing two different destinies, Sakura-chan," Shaoran offered.⁵

"Oh, okay.  So the top card is Erase, and the bottom card is Jump.  These cards are supposed to be the obstacles in my path.  Maybe it would make more sense if think about the top cards all together, if they represent different paths of fate."

"The first path will clear something important to me."  She moved to the top left card, and flipped it.  "And I will be aided by Change, something that has a different form.  What is hidden from me" — the bottom right card — "is the Shadow, someone that wished to remain cloaked.  Finally, my goal will be, Create, to make new what has been taken from me."

"You're uh, getting good at fortune telling, Sakura-chan," Shaoran said.

"Thank you, Shaoran-kun!" Sakura said with a smile, which caused the heat to rise in Shaoran's cheeks, just a little.  "And for the other path," she continued, "Jump, a sudden movement to a new place, will block me.  I will be helped by — Watery, which maybe means I need to go with the flow.  What's hidden from me is: Return, inverted."

Kero explained, "That means that if you go down that path, you can never come back.  Be careful, Sakura."

"Thank you, Kero," she nodded. She flipped the final card in the top right position, "Sand.  Huh."⁶

"Is that a trap?" Shaoran asked.

"Nuh-uh," she shook her head.  "If it was in the the bottom row, it would be a trap, but up here, it represents the infinite.  Grains of sand are like the stars in the sky."

"Water and sand remind me of the beach," Tomoyo said.

"I could use another beach trip!" Kero declared.  "I need to work on my tan."

And out of nowhere, Shaoran yelled, "Sakura, the magic!"

"I feel it!"  She jumped up, and went into an alert pose.  Two of the cards on the blanket in front of them began to move of their own volition, Through and Time.  But only one of them activated.  "What's ha — "

---

Venice, California, USA
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
8:15AM PT

The next thing Sakura knew, it was morning.  Sakura saw everyone else still sleeping on the floor of Tomoyo's limousine — Shaoran, Kero, Tomoyo, Nii-san, Papa, Yukito, Sonomi-oba-san...

"HOOEEEEEEEE!?!?!"⁷

It didn't take long for everyone to wake up.

---

1. BL: Since Touya was born on February 29 and cell phones were still rare, and Touya is age 18 in my story, mathematically it could only be 1998.
   
2. BL: Traditionally you'd get something more like a kouhaku maku — a red and white striped curtain — at a Hanami.  Tomoyo has to go above and beyond in anything fabric, so her display is inspired by the red and purple curtain of the hanafuda deck, in the sakura suit of cards.
   
3. RK: But I wanted to know how they stitched the flower petals together without tearing them... 
   
4. BL: Some of you may recognize the phrase Tomoyo uses here through the manga Hana yori Dango — like Rob — but I'm hardly the first to give it its literal meaning.
   
5. BL: Twain is a card that doubles the hex in a card game called Hex Hex, which IIRC sends a hex both directions around the table.  One path leads to the Clear Card arc, the other leads to our story.  Just be happy I didn't name it "Arc Twain".
   
6. BL: If you got lost, the spread of Sakura cards was:
   
       Aid      Goal
   Past    Present    Future
      Obstacle    Hidden
   
      WATERY/CHANGE  SAND/CREATE
   WOODY      ^TIME          TWIN
      JUMP/ERASE  ^RETURN/SHADOW
   
   After a little bit of research on Tarot fortune-telling and card spreads, I'm convinced that it's entirely junk.  Most of the advice is to do whatever feels right at the time, and while I'm as big of a fan of thelema as the average guy, it's just weaksauce here.  Learning what the cards mean to you personally totally prevents exploiting research on Jungian archetypes, I mean, like, come on!
   
7. BL: Just a reminder to those who haven't watched Cardcaptor Sakura that Sakura is not talking about the garden tool.  Both the "O" and "E" are pronounced in "hoe", with no dipthong.  It is one of her peculiarities, and Tomoyo thinks it makes Sakura extra-cute!