first steps of her final journey

xx2.

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:52:49 GMT

Seventeenth Day.

While I appreciate the water falling from the sky, I really, really dislike the rainbow plastic remainders left behind when they [a pause] pop. Those are like the bane of my job as a housekeeper. They get stuck in all the stupidest places, like on roofs and gutters, but I highly doubt they're environmentally friendly. That's why I'm cleaning them up anyway.

I hope I get paid extra for this.

If anyone else needs any help with damage around their house or was skipped over by housekeeping, feel free to let me know. I finished what I'd been assigned to help with, so I've got a little extra time on my hands before I go back to my usual cleaning schedule.

At least it isn't as hot as it was the other week. I had to keep drinking water to keep myself from melting. Now if I catch the plastic water things properly, I can at least drink for free.

xx1.

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:14:15 GMT

[Piece's handwriting is small and kind of bubbly but easy to read.]

Fifth Day.

I know that no one knows me yet. I'm called Piece, and this is my first time writing in this journal, even though I've been here for a few days already. I think I was 'finding my feet'. I know that I have to be dependable and find a job soon, and I was thinking of trying a cleaning job. If anyone has any information on cleaning jobs, please let me know.

But there's something that's been bothering me, aside from you know, the usual--the memory loss, the lack of gravity, etc.

There's [a long pause] a big warm ball in the sky. Is that [a longer pause]

a sun?

xx0. DREAM

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:44:26 GMT

Encased in a glass dome--no more than five feet in diameter and in height--she sat in the center, her teeth chattering and her breath issuing in small white clouds. The bitter cold licked at her bare feet, and she hugged herself into a ball, shivering pathetically. Tears welled up in her eyes--it hurt, the cold hurt so much. She even thought her tears might also freeze--she would die in this bitter cold, alone and miserable, and no one would ever find her frostbitten corpse.

The mere thought made her sob, and it was when she made to wipe her own overflowing tears that she finally noticed the pendant clutched in her right hand. Numbness had stolen away her sense of sensation--though she had grasped the small jewel so tightly it had begun to leave red welts on her skin, she hadn't even noticed it until then.

All I have left is this. This piece of me.

Beyond the dome, there was nothing but darkness. Inside the dome, there was nothing but herself and the promise of her own inevitable death. Holding the pendant out in front of her, she gazed upon its careful craftsmanship, thinking that at some time, it had been more than just a piece of herself. Something more, something important...

And then the dome opened up above her, revealing that it was not a dome but was, in fact, an hourglass. From right above her head, a sudden stream of heavy snow and hail rained down, knocking her face first into the ground and flinging the pendant from her open palms.

When she managed to dig herself out of the quickly piling snow, the darkness had dissipated, and a ball of brightness illuminated her predicament--her death sentence. Tears still streaming down her cheeks, she desperately scrambled through the snow, realizing that she had lost the pendant.

For some reason, finding the piece was more important than finding a way out of the hourglass that slowly snowed away the last moments of her life.

And then, she heard the laughter--mocking, jeering laughter from outside the hourglass. There were crowds of people, all dressed warmly, smiling, watching her misery as though it were a show.

"Good riddance. Honestly, the hitogata. It's better off dead," said an elderly woman with dark glasses.

"It's so disgusting, it can't even smile," said another, a young woman in a school uniform. A boy in similar uniform beside her echoed her statement, saying, "Can't even smile--never smiled in her life. Why, if she proved she were human by smiling now, maybe we might be moved to save her."

A boy in a cape, wearing a strange mask, chimed in, "There's no point in it now--it lost the piece. It's something even less than 'not human' now."

A smiling girl--her smile eerily blank--wearing a similar cape, at the side of the masked boy, laughed, "If you had just stayed still when I tried to kill you before, I would have made it painless for you."

She tried appealing to the people, desperately hoping they would pity her enough to save her. Maybe she wasn't human, maybe she couldn't smile--she tried, just now, but only more tears spilled from her eyes--and maybe she did lose her piece, and maybe that did make her less than human.

But if they were human, wouldn't they take pity on her? Would not a single soul cry for her, mourn for her?

No sound from her mouth, no reaction from the people except more laughter, more mockery. And finally, in the distance, near the glowing ball illuminating the whole scene--she at last saw someone who was not smiling.

A white haired boy with a hat that was shaped like a rabbit. His blank expression almost seemed sad, but somehow, it seemed more empty.

Finally, she heard her own voice, calling out desperately: "Shiro! Shiro, I'm your friend! Help me! Please!"

But Shiro turned to her, completely blank eyes gazing lifelessly, like a doll's.

"Who are you?" He asked, expression unchanging.

If she had one, her heart shattered into pieces, more pieces than she could ever recover. It shattered into her countless tears, streaming out of her, lost forever.

"Who am I?"

And then everything went silent. Drowning in the piling snow, she found herself asking herself the same thing.

Who am I? What am I? If I'm not human, what could I possibly be?

xxx. APPLICATION

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:42:57 GMT

NAME: Matcha.
AGE: 20.
LOCATION/TIME ZONE: EST.
CONTACT: Email/GChat=matchazuki@gmail.com / AIM=matcha chawan.
LJ: ochazuki

CHARACTER NAME: Princess Kamuy Poro Chise Icoro.
SERIES: Kimi no Kakera.
RESERVED: N.
WISHLIST: N.
PERSONALITY: Icoro is a 'hitogata'--a child lacking one of the four main humans emotions: 'joy, anger, pathos, humor'. In her case, she lacks 'joy'--Icoro has never smiled in her entire life. She is only able to express her deepest emotions--whether they be desperate fear or happiness--by crying. Because of this, she was mocked and called 'less than human' by people around her, though none of them could understand how desperately she wanted to be able to smile just like any other person.

Icoro is intelligent--even though she's only thirteen years old, she skipped six grade levels--and understands difficult concepts with ease. With the Bag of Everything She Would Ever Need to Survive™, given to her by her servant, Shah, Icoro has been able to make poultices that temporarily relieve cold rashes with minimal thought. However, even though she is very smart, Icoro is quick to cry and easily frightened, but prone to bouts of courage when she puts her mind to doing something she feels is right. She would throw herself in the line of fire to protect her younger brother or the people of her kingdom.

Perhaps it can be attributed to her lacking 'joy', but Icoro is quick to pity people, even those who seek to kill her. She can find something to cry about in everyone, and as such, she wants to find a sun for all these people--not just herself--because in the lies she tells her brother, the sun is able to make everyone happy.

BACKGROUND: Icoro is the princess of a dying kingdom--a frozen wasteland surrounded on on all sides by unscalable walls, trapped in a perpetual night and doomed by an unending snowstorm that threatens to bury the 'world' as they know it. The sun--a great ball of light and warmth that could melt the snow, save the country, and bring happiness to everyone--is a nothing more than a legend. Everyone lives their miserable lives, heavily segregated into tribes and forbidden to leave their own parts of the dying world, toiling away until their extinction.

In such a world, Icoro reigns in name alone. Her father--the king--disappeared during his research on restoring the sun, and her mother--the queen--was taken away by members of the Politick Tribe. Before her mother was taken away, she gave Icoro a pendant--a 'piece' passed down from generation to generation in the Royal Family. Pieces are proof of one's heritage and existence, and losing a piece is akin to losing one's right to be recognized as human. Icoro's younger brother--Mataku--is blind, and because of this, he is unable to realize the situation they now live in.

Despite being part of the Royal Family, Icoro and Mataku live in a shack and frequently go hungry. Even though she is a princess, Icoro is required to clean the houses and meeting places of politicians like a common servant. She supposedly lives off the taxes and good graces of the people, but in truth, taxes are taken by the politicians and used for their own gain. In her despair, Icoro still tries to give her brother hope by telling him stories of the legendary sun, knowing full well that such a thing doesn't exist and denying that she is the one who wants a sun most of all.

Her miserable life would have continued as such had an amnesiac boy she later named Shiro hadn't crashed through her ceiling. Together, Icoro and Shiro go on their final journey to find the sun while running from the Warmonger tribe--who are searching for a 'hitogata'--and finding themselves along the way.

TIMELINE: From the Chapter 7 Intermission "Friends". While Shiro holds Icoro's hand as they swing across a hole in the catfish, a girl notices that even though Icoro is crying, somehow it seems as though she is smiling.

DREAM:
Encased in a glass dome--no more than five feet in diameter and in height--she sat in the center, her teeth chattering and her breath issuing in small white clouds. The bitter cold licked at her bare feet, and she hugged herself into a ball, shivering pathetically. Tears welled up in her eyes--it hurt, the cold hurt so much. She even thought her tears might also freeze--she would die in this bitter cold, alone and miserable, and no one would ever find her frostbitten corpse.

The mere thought made her sob, and it was when she made to wipe her own overflowing tears that she finally noticed the pendant clutched in her right hand. Numbness had stolen away her sense of sensation--though she had grasped the small jewel so tightly it had begun to leave red welts on her skin, she hadn't even noticed it until then.

All I have left is this. This piece of me.

Beyond the dome, there was nothing but darkness. Inside the dome, there was nothing but herself and the promise of her own inevitable death. Holding the pendant out in front of her, she gazed upon its careful craftsmanship, thinking that at some time, it had been more than just a piece of herself. Something more, something important...

And then the dome opened up above her, revealing that it was not a dome but was, in fact, an hourglass. From right above her head, a sudden stream of heavy snow and hail rained down, knocking her face first into the ground and flinging the pendant from her open palms.

When she managed to dig herself out of the quickly piling snow, the darkness had dissipated, and a ball of brightness illuminated her predicament--her death sentence. Tears still streaming down her cheeks, she desperately scrambled through the snow, realizing that she had lost the pendant.

For some reason, finding the piece was more important than finding a way out of the hourglass that slowly snowed away the last moments of her life.

And then, she heard the laughter--mocking, jeering laughter from outside the hourglass. There were crowds of people, all dressed warmly, smiling, watching her misery as though it were a show.

"Good riddance. Honestly, the hitogata. It's better off dead," said an elderly woman with dark glasses.

"It's so disgusting, it can't even smile," said another, a young woman in a school uniform. A boy in similar uniform beside her echoed her statement, saying, "Can't even smile--never smiled in her life. Why, if she proved she were human by smiling now, maybe we might be moved to save her."

A boy in a cape, wearing a strange mask, chimed in, "There's no point in it now--it lost the piece. It's something even less than 'not human' now."

A smiling girl--her smile eerily blank--wearing a similar cape, at the side of the masked boy, laughed, "If you had just stayed still when I tried to kill you before, I would have made it painless for you."

She tried appealing to the people, desperately hoping they would pity her enough to save her. Maybe she wasn't human, maybe she couldn't smile--she tried, just now, but only more tears spilled from her eyes--and maybe she did lose her piece, and maybe that did make her less than human.

But if they were human, wouldn't they take pity on her? Would not a single soul cry for her, mourn for her?

No sound from her mouth, no reaction from the people except more laughter, more mockery. And finally, in the distance, near the glowing ball illuminating the whole scene--she at last saw someone who was not smiling.

A white haired boy with a hat that was shaped like a rabbit. His blank expression almost seemed sad, but somehow, it seemed more empty.

Finally, she heard her own voice, calling out desperately: "Shiro! Shiro, I'm your friend! Help me! Please!"

But Shiro turned to her, completely blank eyes gazing lifelessly, like a doll's.

"Who are you?" He asked, expression unchanging.

If she had one, her heart shattered into pieces, more pieces than she could ever recover. It shattered into her countless tears, streaming out of her, lost forever.

"Who am I?"

And then everything went silent. Drowning in the piling snow, she found herself asking herself the same thing.

Who am I? What am I? If I'm not human, what could I possibly be?

EDENSPHERE NAME: Piece.

BIRTHDAY LOG: I actually would like a birthday log for Icoro. XD

JOURNAL SAMPLE:
Journals that communicate to one another don't make sense. People might say I don't have a proper frame of reference to compare it to, and that might be true, but they still don't make sense. I just know it.

But I read through whatever's already written in here, and it looks like I wasn't lied to. So, hi to anyone who reads this. I decided to name myself Piece, after an important piece of jewelry in my dream. I hope that doesn't sound too stupid, but I didn't know what else to name myself.

I wonder if I can take this thing apart and find out how it works. I don't know. I want to try though.