This piece is to accompany this, as a birthday tribute to Rich:
Toshi stood rigidly beside his father, paint box in hand. He was supposed to be concentrating on the brush strokes, watching the careful form of the trees, the sweeping kimono of women, all captured in perfect balance with coloured dyes.
They were not his colours.
When he was alone, his eyes could see. They saw the world as it had become. Alone, the colours of the garden muddied, the kimonos aged and faded, and the trees, burned. At night, his haunts were ravaged by Akuma, rising from the lake, tearing up the roots of his people. At night, Toshi cried.
But today, as all days, the colours brightened, for Japan remembered the world as it should be. The women floated along the water’s edge, the trees rustled alongside the calming ripple of the crystal waters, and all was well.
