From my reparenting series "Living Ghosts." In which a trans lesbian combat doll, reunited with and reparenting her younger self, takes the girl to her home shrine, and talks about belonging, liberation, and finding her place in the world. Because she was a blessing from the start, the girl receives a nickname with a powerful meaning.
A story:
The girl looked up at the tall stone torii with its dimmed scars of long-ago wartime fires. In the shadow of the cryptomeria trees and the mighty weeping-cherry with its broad branches, her eyes were wide, mouth agape in stunned silence.
Beside her, the middle-aged cyborg she would become, smiled knowingly. "You feel it, don't you?"
The girl nodded. "What...what is it?"
"What you always knew was missing, all those years in church."
"It's just....here," the girl gasped, gesturing with a sweep of the hand. "It's here. It's now. I feel it. I didn't...I didn't have to force it!"
"It's a relief, isn't it?" the combat doll replied. "Like..."
"...coming home."
"Exactly. And it changed everything, when I came here the first time, all those years ago." She gestured up the hill, up the long, steep rise of stone steps. "C'mon, kiddo. Let's start heading up."
Under the weeping-cherry, over the bridge, they started up the ancient steps worn with weather and war and time. The cyborg slowed her stride. Here, and with her younger self, a slower pace was preferable.
"The...the grade of the hill, um...it makes me think of that time in the Sea of Marmara," the girl observed, gesturing up to the hill's apex. "You remember, right?"
The combat doll chuckled. "Oh yeah. The sudden donkeys. That and the smell."
"Oh, the smell that day..."
"Don't worry, though," the combat doll reassured the girl. "There aren't going to be any sudden donkeys this time. This isn't the ass end of nowhere on an island without paved roads."
Little by little, the city's sounds grew distant. In the trees that surrounded the stone steps, there came the chirr of crickets and the sounds of birdsong.
For awhile, they walked in silence. The moment, the steps, the sacred quiet. It was enough.
"Can you...can you tell me more about this place?"
"This is a shrine to the kami of battle," the combat doll gestured. "This is my home shrine, but it was at another shrine to her that...I found what I...we...were looking for. Well, one thing we were looking for."
"...she?" asked the girl, perking up.
"It's...complicated. But yes. To me, she's a mother figure. And a reminder that my gods are my neighbors. So if my gods are my neighbors, and the kami of battle exhorts me to get back up and keep caring for my community-- keep fighting for it-- then that means I need to be more mindful of my place in the world and how interconnected I am with everyone and everything else."
They paused to wash at the purification basin, just under the apex of the hill, in sight of the upper torii and the stone cat guardians that flanked the path.
"That's...good..." the girl offered, lips pursed in contemplation. "But it sounds like you feel as small as I do sometimes."
"I guess that's true, honey," the cyborg admitted, setting the freshly rinsed wooden ladle back in place. "But you know how that feeling, especially in church, always seems like you're a fuckup to the community and its god?"
The girl frowned a little. "Yeah?"
"That's less the case for me. I may be small in the grand scheme of things, but I have my place in it. I...we...have our place, and our gods share this world with us, they laugh and cry and drink and shit and fight and dream just like us. It's not lonely at all. It's like coming home. And then when I'm done here, I go back out into the world, and my faith is my own damn business and I don't have to put on a show of devotion for anyone." She paused, nodded slowly. "It's...a blessing."
"Wow..."
The cyborg contemplated the once invisible girl she'd been, now so much more confident in herself, standing in the sunshine filtering through the trees. The half-unzipped hoodie she wore surmounted a now well-worn tank top and skirt, chosen rather than imposed. All in all, the girl carried herself more proudly, more freely. It had been a strange journey, but a welcome one that had benefited them both.
"Hey, kiddo?"
"Yeah?"
"I asked awhile back, but...how're you feeling about a nickname?"
"I'm okay with it, coming from you," the girl blushed. "...did you have one in mind?"
"Well, this is Kameoka Hachiman Shrine-- "Turtle Hill" Hachiman-- and there's a very old phrase from the days of turtle shell divination that goes 'Toho Kami Emi Tame.' There isn't an agreed upon translation, because it's so old, but one of the common ones goes 'May the distant gods bless us.' You're a blessing and you always were, even if the people who should've understood that first, failed you so profoundly. So how would you feel about the nickname Emi-- "blessing"?"
"...whoa...isn't that the chant from Ghost in the Shell?"
"...kid, I'm trying to have a moment with you here," the cyborg laughed. "But yes, that's the same phrase."
The girl thought about it, glancing up the remaining steps to the shrine hall. "I like it. You...you sure make me feel like a blessing, Mom."
The cyborg who after everything had become another mother to her younger self across the decades, nodded in approval. Her eyes were cloudy with tears.
"C'mon. Let's pay our respects to Hachiman-sama, and I can tell you all about this place."
//end//