𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐄'𝐒 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐌 | Oda Sakunosuke

The Crane's Loom: Olive Silk

A/N: I've read a brief paragraph on the real Oda's 'Flawless', and he writes in long, long sentences, so I will be emulating that.

XX

How strange it is, that pleasure should sound like an animal in distress.

He covers her mouth with his hand after the ritual of shedding each others clothes are complete; he covers her mouth with his own as though drinking them all in, her sounds like the heavenly trumpets of apoplectic red cheeked cherubs in Renaissance pieces; sweat pearls on her forehead like a diamenté, moissanite in sparkle as she claws his back: the bridges of her doubts are burning from the heat of her face, and she knows that when he is inside, it will be the point of no return: she would not be able to survive without him.

He would die without her. He could feel life returning to him like a crane returning to the plume of its mate; her kiss is sweet, needing of an anchor; what lies behind her domed forehead he knows is of nightmares of her profession, of her facade; he dismantles it slowly like a cat taking apart a ball of yarn: expertly and with claws, desperate to get to her core.

He splits her open and goes inside and searches for imperfections; there's nothing but silken warmness. He is the knife and he parts her flesh like meat, but without the roughness of her customers; he treats this meat with care, with loyalty, with dignity. And after that is all done, he retrieves the ashtray from the living room and into her bedroom, lighting a cigarette for her as they relish in each other's company.

The drapes match the bedspread: they're of heavy silk, olive coloured, over wispy under-curtains; so thin that it felt more like air than fabric.

Should I continue the story? He asks, gently laving a hand over her head. She curls into his warmth and nods into his collarbone, her words echoing through the flesh and into the marrow: an act of deliberate intimacy; woven into her disposition. A long chain of events has tipped over, like a trail of dominoes, and has landed into a room where the smell of sex still lingers.

Yes please.

Alright. After they have committed their act of extinction, the men don't look back after they have shot down the crane, their tails between their legs, whimpering and whining against the sting of their eyes: the snow has punished them for their deeds. They are Dracula disguised; they suck the emphatic red out the crane and leave it dead against the snow.

Dracula disguised. I like that, she says. She runs a hand over his chest; the flesh is so condensed, littered with hair; there is not a single blemish, not a single scar: she's seen wood carvings less smooth than his skin.

Do you? I'll make sure to make references to Western literature more, then. The crane is tired, near death; it's tired of wolves and their fangs, their litheness, their camoflauge, their glutton, their viperish eyes. In her is a sense of despair; despair that there should be something as cruel as wolves who are hungry to kill each and every single one of her until they're a species gone extinct. She croons quietly against the ground, looking at the moon and singing a song of death.

She's accepted her fate?

Not yet. Singing is an instrument of a name that opens up a door; a passageway. And through that passageway comes a man. He is of humble descent, he is poor, and he sells lumber and he works tediously throughout the harsh winter days and nights with a thin yukata. He comes to her through sound; through her music which vibrates her sternum, excites his heart; it comes through the drum of her own, the whistle, the call, and the cry that exonerates the wolves: A dying breath. It comes through the written and spoken word; sometimes a word, a sentence of a poem of despair, and it is so resonant, so right, it causes him to include it within his schema of winter. To be in winter is to hear the cry of the crane. To hear the cry of the crane is to be in winter. And this crane is a creature that lives at the end of time, the creature who lives at the edge of the world.

Poor thing, she says.

Indeed. He finds her hidden amongst the swell of snow and rescues her, gently cradling her back to his home, and unbeknownst to him, he is bringing a maiden home, a crane maiden, a crane wife. He aids her in her time of need; he wipes the sweat off her red brow and gently avoids her snapping beak when he applies ointment to her bullet wound, and carefully bandages it up with deft fingers; tough, tough fingers that are capable of splitting oak in half. He is of a stone in water, and lets the wispy feathers pass through him.

You surprise me, she says.

Do I? he says. Why? He's smoking a cigarette with steady hands, his story pouring out of his mouth like the white smoke.

You're a jaded man, of mafioso history, and you're telling a romance story—not realistic, bourgeois superstition, rotten at the core, sickly sentimental, a high-flown Victorian "To death do us apart" excuse for honest carnality. Going soft on me now?

I've grown on you, he says. You've made me soft. I became soft anyways. Romance is a sticky thing; it's best to approach it delicately.

Of course you've chosen the Crane story; the man approaches the crane delicately: he approaches the love of his life delicately.

Exactly. He blows a cloud of smoke. But there's no time for poetry when he's bandaging her wounds; he could roll around in his heroism—live in the moment, burn the candle, drain the cup, shout at the moon. Time was running out for them. He had nothing to lose for saving a crane, but he is of humble descent, and has no time for that folly nonsense.

He does though. He loses the crane.

He doesn't know the crane is mystic. He could have let it die.

She pouts. That's too gruesome. Especially when the story sounds like ours.

I know.

I'm the one with nothing to lose, she says. A lowly prostitute. Hah. She takes the cigarette from his hand after he offers. He looks at her and blinks.

But you've got me. I'm not nothing.