A peach colored day

A day for just us girls with all of our worries and concerns packed carefully away in a little ornate black box and hidden away until next week or until Pandora passes by and lets all the evils out into the world once more. Didn't she learn her lesson?

We had planned for a day out with some of our friends and met them at the train station and journeyed to Atami.
This is a great little coast town just outside Tokyo and only an hour on the fast train. It seems secluded because it is surrounded by an ancient volcano wall on three sides and the town was built in the crater. There is a great castle there to the south but it is a fake and was only built during my parents early years. It never saw the old Lords plotting for power. It only saw the actors and the children acting out the parts.
No gardens or waterfront or even the hot springs for us, just the coffee shop, the shopping mall and fresh sea restaurant.

Nothing past the hills and the blue horizon existed while we were together with smiles and the joy of good companionship. Every single one of us came here as a child and we all have memories of here from long ago. Misato is only 25 and so when she described her earliest memory of Atami being a small shop owned by a kind man with a small white beard it was not so surprising to find it and he still here selling his candies.
The importance of this day was more than childhood memories. It was even more than sharing our day with good friends. It was the most important thing for me that we built for ourselves a fortress of good feelings and kept back the dark worries that have lay siege to us during these last three weeks.
It matters not that these worries will attack us again and again repeatedly. What matters is that for one day we relaxed, we breathed without a care and we smiled not only for that but smiled because we enjoyed the smiles of our friends too
I feel that I have carried many heavy chests along with me as if I am chained to them and even if they were each filled with great treasures, to walk free of them for one weekend is more valuable still.

One thing I do know is that now that I have tasted the flavor of this peace to my soul and mind, I know I must drink of it again. It is the shelter from the typhoon that would wash me away indiscriminately. It is the shield to halt the flight of arrows before they piece my heart. It is the warm safe place we all seek when we would lay battered upon the rocky reefs below the cliffs.

I have become tired
I have become forgetful
Desire and want seep from me like the blood of the wounded warrior.
The resignation of my destiny as I cast it into the raging river of randomness.
I want to rest my head and see stars instead of the city reflected upon the mirrored sky.
I want to dream again.

And now the moment arrives for a little Momo music...

Matsuura Aya sings Momoiro Kataomoi

Take this song, two crazy girls, a few drinks and a quiet karaoke bar and you'll wonder how we don't give PuffyAmiYumi some competition! ha ha