The Sleeping Dragon Hills

I started writing this story with no direction.  Not something a writer should really do.  But this is an experiment and an outlet – writing for the sake of writing.  This is not a finished piece.  In fact, this is only the very beginning.  But I have already fallen in love with the characters.  I feel like this will be a much longer story than I am prepared to write at this particular moment.  Let’s see where it goes.

Haruki stood near the foot of the hill, far enough back to see his destination – the wisps of clouds curling from an unseen clearing about halfway up the forested slope – but close enough to see the wall of trees marking the start of the gentle mountains.

The hard lump of emotion swelling in this throat drew him toward the tree line.  He had always imagined it was a dragon, its emerald body curled in the secret clearing, smoke rising with each sleeping breath.  Just like the local name for the hills themselves.  No, Niichan had always argued, it was group of monks, their bald heads bowed, their moss robes splayed around their seated forms as they chanted in deep, comforting hums.  They were sitting in a tight circle, a fire of fragrant wood smoldering in their center. They were the guardians of the mountain, the ones who kept the dragons asleep. 

Growing up they had argued constantly over the strange and wonderful weather patterns that played out in the mountains rising just behind their home.  Niichan, two years older, with glasses that refused to stay on his nose and needed constant adjustment.  Calm, bookish, and pale like their mother.  Haruki, his knees and elbows perpetually scabbed, constantly in motion, with the crooked, roguish smile of their father.  Two brothers – inseparable, but who couldn’t be more different.  How many times had they taken off into the woods, scrambling up the mountain side, searching for the source of the clouds, each determined to prove his version correct, only to be thwarted by the mountain, or the sun, or Kachan calling them home for dinner.

He started his assent, passing between two ancient trees, a living shrine gate.  His twenty three year old legs ate up the distance quicker than he remembered.  He was also out of breath quicker than he remembered.  He wove his way around trees and crashed through the undergrowth.  His destination was obscured, but the direction was fixed in his mind.  Just up a little further.  What will be waiting at the foot of those strange clouds, rising like smoke from the dark green slopes?

* 

Jack dropped the last bag in the middle of the now cluttered living room.  With a heavy sigh, he flopped down onto the narrow space on the couch left between boxes and suitcases.  How could someone acquire so much crap?  He hadn’t realized how much there was until he started packing.  One suitcase turned to two.  Two to three.  A trip to the grocery store for some of their empty boxes.  Two years crammed into Kraft and Coca Cola.  Another sigh as he looked around the new apartment.

He couldn’t see it as her apartment.  Not yet.  The white walls, nondescript furniture that was about a decade out of style – it was the apartment for now.

Utilitarian – that’s the word his father would use.  He liked big words.  He thought they hid the fact he had barely made it out of high school.  He had used decidedly smaller words, most with only four or six letters, when Jack told him about Kate.

A lifetime ago.  But the pain still fresh.  He had needed a new start.  Had found it in a new apartment, a new job, and a new town.

He looked at the stacks of boxes – half the pieces of the puzzle that had been his life.  They wouldn’t unpack themselves.  But not tonight.

He pushed himself up from the couch.  Not tonight.  He scooped up his wallet from where he had dropped it by the door.  The keys to the apartment, still not attached to his key ring, fell to the floor.  With a sigh, he bent down.

He had passed a small restaurant on the drive over.  A hole in the wall.  But it looked respectable enough.  No need to drive, it was only a handful of blocks, so he could have a few more drinks than a guy spending his first night in a new town should.

The mountains looked black in the fading light.  More hills than mountains, really.  A thirty minute hike would get you to the top.  If you could find a way through the thick vegetation.  They surrounded the town on three sides, seeming to melt slowly into the back of the houses in the quite neighborhoods on the fringes of the city – neighborhoods like this one.