It Means "Dragon To Be" Ch. 02

** Just a reminder that this story is already in the can and each of the chapters has already been posted.

I hope that it's enjoyed. 0_o

---------------

To recap, these are some moments of Silke's recollection as she's docking one of her designs.

---------------

It had been perhaps the bleakest winter of her life, though there was the dim glow of a little bit of promise on the horizon by late spring. Silke at twenty-five years of age and she felt as though the world had kicked her in the gut. Two years before, she finally had her degree, and though she'd had a falling out with her father over his lifelong need to micromanage and second-guess her, she'd done perhaps the best thing and left the family business.

She'd been snapped up in an instant by another shipbuilding firm which liked her designs. More importantly, their insanely wealthy clientele loved them and clamored for her to design their yachts for them. Her signing bonus alone paid off almost all of her student loans and she and Karl-Heinz could actually eat a decent meal fairly regularly. She became something of a minor-league celebrity whose looks drew almost as many customers as her work. The gorgeous young Teutonic ship designer was very much sought after and her employers had been forced to put in another slip and set of ways to keep up with the demand which her success had brought to them.

She dove straight into her job and cranked out one design after another. She always had her nose in her sketchpad, and armed with those sketches and with her knowledge; she could lay out the designs in Autocad before turning the preliminary designs over to her team of Autocad minions. The amazing thing was that her placement of the bulkheads and other structural features was always within perhaps 10 centimeters of where they ended up in the final drawings, and she had a flair for knowing almost intuitively the type and horsepower rating for the engines which would be required for optimal performance, given the shape of the desired hull.

There was actually a three month period where she had no less than four yachts being built and she oversaw the construction and testing of each hull. Things such as these got her noticed very quickly and two of those designs won her rather prestigious awards within the industry.

And then she found herself alone.

All of their debts were paid. They had the house that she'd dreamed of and a pair of Mercedes; a sedan and a coupe. Everything was finally coming to pass for her. But it all came with an added feature that she'd never seen coming – her divorce.

Karl-Heinz told her next to nothing of his reasons – nothing which made any sense to her, at any rate. He wanted nothing of what they now had, he'd said, he only wanted out. Silke had to assume that there was another woman, but he denied it vehemently, all while giving her nothing else as the cause. It was the only time that he'd ever gotten really angry with her, when she'd said that there must be someone else. He'd looked really hurt when she'd said it.

"If that is what you believe," he'd said quietly the day that he'd come to hand her his keys, looking as though he wanted to cry – something that she'd never seen in him before. He looked as though he'd been shot through the chest and hadn't had the thought to lie down and die yet.

"If that is what you see, then you truly are an idiot, Silke."

He'd walked out then, not even closing the door after himself. She'd watched him walk away, his hands in his pockets looking down at the sidewalk. He was walking away from her, back to what he'd been before they'd met. She stared, looking at him walking voluntarily back to near-poverty, choosing that above life with her.

What was there that would make a man choose that? What had she done to him to cause him to desire it over her? She'd stood there, hearing nothing but his final words over and over as her tears began again. She'd slammed the door to cut the connection, but she could still hear his sad voice saying the words as she fell to her knees weeping.

She'd even had a private investigative service on his tail for a time, but after four months and a huge bill, all that she learned was that he now lived alone, working shit jobs as he always had. He went nowhere and did little. He didn't date at all and had no one close to him in his life, though after a time she learned that he'd sought counseling for his depression. All that there was to know was that Karl-Heinz was a very unhappy man growing bitter all alone.

Silke threw herself deeper into her work, but there came a time when the hollowness inside of her caught up to her, no matter how hard she tried to outrun or forestall it. The emptiness just took the wind out of her sails.

She kept up to her schedules and cranked out more designs, but nothing gave her any satisfaction anymore. She was only going through the motions and she knew it. Though the men around her – colleagues and customers alike, did their very best to woo her, she wanted none of it.

Try as she might, Silke felt like an empty failure and nothing could fix that. After all of her dating back in the past, she'd found the man for her. Handsome, thoughtful, strong, and completely dedicated to her, quietly intelligent Karl-Heinz had been the love of her life and now she'd lost that love. She couldn't even say that she knew when it had happened. She stopped designing, finished up the last of her projects and gave her employers notice. She didn't want to do much of anything anymore.

As luck would have it, Leopold Kriechbaum called up his daughter with an offer. He was careful to point out that he was not acting as her father in this, but rather he was coming to her as the representative of a shipbuilding firm who needed her abilities.

And so she'd accepted the lucrative offer to head up the design of something much different. She had nothing on the go, and little to feel useful about, so she decided to take up the challenge. And while the building and facilities that she would require were being upgraded and modernized by a small army of some three hundred and sixty workers and tradespersons from the small and little-used light freighter overhaul yard into something where her dreams could take on the mantle of reality, Silke took the summer off to research and prepare. Even she knew that she needed to take a long overdue vacation.

There were things which she needed to do, and things which she had always wanted to do. Years before, she'd been impressed by a picture of a nude woman with a tattoo which ran from her thigh up her back, over her shoulder and back down to her thigh. The scenes portrayed there amazed her, and so she found an artist whose work she could admire and commissioned a tattoo something like that for herself.

The work took over a fortnight in sections so that as one section healed, another could be begun. Then it began all over again as the coloring and shading was added. She now wore fronds of green grasses and shoots of bamboo which stood close to pools where Koi swam and a crane stood watching. As the last of it was healing, she booked her flight.

That brought her to Japan. She'd always admired the culture and history and so she went. It was as much a need to get clean away from industrialized Europe as it was to immerse herself in something as different as day and night, once she was away from the industrial centers. She got the sightseeing out of the way, traveling to see the things which she had always wanted to see, and after that, she just began to wander.

She'd taken up residence in a little inn smack in the middle of the plains of Iga and she fell into just hiking through the countryside. She had no plan anymore other than the vaguest sense that she was searching for something. She only had a few weeks of time during which she tramped all over with her knapsack and her camera. She felt refreshed and invigorated – almost completely healed, she told herself, but though her heart thrilled at the things that she saw and the simple pleasures of her walks, she knew that the darkness inside her was only minimized. But it was the best that she could do and so she just accepted that it would likely always be that way for her.

She'd sometimes sit in the dining room with local maps stretched out over the table, poring over the local features and landmarks as she picked at her meal. That was how she came to the attention of one of the staff, a young woman named Riko. Silke asked for a little help, and after smiling and indicating that she'd be back in a minute or so, Riko returned and did her best to help. Silke struggled to frame her questions, and seeing this, Riko offered a small smiling laugh, "Do you speak English?"

Silke stared for a moment and nodded, laughing herself, "Yes," she chuckled, "I can manage that a little better." She asked Riko to sit, and since there were no other guests in the room, they spent the next while together with Riko asking where her guest might wish to go and offering suggestions and the best walking routes. It turned into the beginning of a friendship with Silke doing the hiking and returning to the dining room most evenings to report to Riko on how it had gone.

Riko was impressed with what Silke knew of the country's history – even a little of the region's, and so she did her best to think of new places which might be strung together to create interesting and informative hikes. She even tagged along twice and became an informal guide on a couple of days where she had nothing else planned. She was happy to give up a little of her own time for the chance to get to know Silke better.

One of those ambling solitary walks led Silke into the forested mountains which surrounded the plain, and cresting a small rise, Silke stopped to find herself looking at a very small clearing. Even getting here had been a bit of a problem. She'd seen one mountainside which looked to offer the best view, though it was heavily wooded and looked to be a fair walk. She'd mentioned it to Riko twice before, but that particular mountain had always been overlooked and forgotten in the discussion somehow. Silke didn't realize it at first, but her friend was actually steering her away from there as she offered other places to go and sites to look at and enjoy.

On a Friday evening with almost all of the guests having signed out and oddly, no new ones booked to arrive for a few days, Riko had suggested to her friend that she might like to take advantage of the availability of the inn's large bath. Silke countered by asking when Riko was off-duty, and said that she'd try it if they could just make an evening of it and if she paid for dinner at a good restaurant in the area as some compensation for Riko's help. "I'd never have found and seen a quarter of the things and places that I've been without your help, and if you have no objections to it, this is what I'd very much like to do this evening as my way of thanking you."

Riko stared for a moment and then quickly agreed and it became a girl's night out with Riko guiding Silke around. Before they left, Riko hastily added a personal touch by arranging for a masseuse before the bath.

They had a great time together and ended up back at the inn later, talking over a little more wine.

"I wish to ask a question," Silke began, "but I don't know how to ask it because I don't wish to offend you."

"Ask me anything," Riko giggled, as she poured them each a little more wine, "A question by itself is useless. One learns from the answer alone."

Silke pulled her map out and unfolding it, she pointed to the one hillside which had eluded her to this point. "I've asked about this one twice, and we always end up with another route which does not go here. I only wish to know if there is a rationale or explanation for that. Is it because it's forbidden or anything like that? It's fine with me if that's the way that it is, Riko. I was only wondering."

Riko held up her hand for a moment while she looked at that one place on the map. She was considering several things, but finally she leaned forward and spoke quietly.

"I know that you have an interest in history," she said. "The mountainside that you ask about is quite close to an old place of death. There is a ruin there, the scene of a siege and much killing. This area is a little famous in a quiet way for some of the local history regarding some of the families who lived here then. Some of them are still here. Do you know any of this from your studies?"

"No," Silke replied, "Can't I walk there or something?"

Riko looked at her friend and decided she'd come to like her a great deal in the short time that they'd known each other. She considered what she knew of the woman and then weighed a few risks. At last, she shrugged with a smile, "You can go there. I just didn't know if you would want to. I once went to see the battlefield at Gettysburg."

"You have been to America?" Silke asked.

"Yes," Riko replied, "I have family there, not far from Baltimore. Anyway, I didn't think anything of it at the time, I was only interested in the history of the American Civil War, so I went. What I found was that I almost couldn't stand there. Perhaps I am only sensitive to death," she lied, "but I had to leave not long after arriving. I didn't want you to tramp all of the way there only to experience a similar feeling. I found it most unpleasant. Of course, if you are only interested in the scenic view of the valley from there, then you only have to remain below the top of the ridge and turn around. You'll find the view very pleasing from there."

Silke awoke early and set off in the dim light of the dawn. It took her almost two hours to reach the bottom of the slope and begin her trek up the hillside. The day to this point had given her many reasons to stop and admire the scenery from the wooded hillsides as she hiked. But this was different to her for two reasons. The first was that she'd wanted to go here, and she felt as though she'd won a small victory. She wasn't sure about Riko's reluctance to lay the route out for her, but here she was in any event, nearing the place where she'd wanted to be.

The second reason was even less definite for her and it was why she'd wanted to come so much in the first place. She had no idea really, other than she'd wanted to and she could find no reason for even that.

As she neared the top, she was surprised to find the slight depression which she'd had no warning of as she'd gotten near. She walked up a small rim and found a little dell. It was just another little place, much like many others that she'd seen on her way up, but the scenery in this one so close to the top took her breath as she seemed to be catapulted into a separate space.

Silke was quite aware of everything, the sunlight through the leaves, the gentle breeze up the mountain through the trees, everything. It just seemed to her that time had expanded, that was all. It was still a series of finite moments, but the length of the moments seemed to stretch somehow as she stared at the scene before her.

There was a man.

She had to look carefully for several minutes to be certain that he was actually a man and not some realistically modeled statue. He was sitting, quite naked, on a blanket and looked to be meditating. Back in university, the strain of her studies caused her to have severe headaches until a friend suggested Taoism and though she wasn't very well-versed in any of the doctrines, she found that the meditation helped once she'd gotten some instruction from the monks at the small shrine in Kiel, she so she still practiced it.

Silke had no idea what the man was doing here, other than obviously meditating. And she had determined that this was a living man – as obvious a conclusion as that was to draw here. It had taken her several minutes to determine that he actually was breathing.

She felt drawn to him out of curiosity and a deep sense of peace, and – she admitted it to herself openly – the wonder of him. She walked slowly and carefully around him as quietly as she could manage from a distance of maybe thirty feet, completing her circumnavigation in about fifteen minutes because she had to stop and look every now and then at some part of him which caught her eye. He wasn't a bodybuilder type; that much was certain, but he was muscular. His body spoke to her of power, though not of brawn, necessarily. If some god or goddess had a thought one day to create Silke's personal ideal of the human male in one living example, well, this was what she was looking at now.

He was perfect.

She'd never seen anyone like this before in her life.

He might have been thirty years old but it was hard to tell. He might just as well have been twenty-two or thirty-seven, for all that she could determine. His face was another enigma. He had features which spoke to her of Oriental origins, though she was almost certain that she could see Caucasian features as well. It confused the heck out of her. His handsome face wore a mask of absolute serenity. His limbs were long and well-shaped, and the small amount of body fat which was distributed over him did little to hide the tendons and sinews which told her of an active life.

She wanted so badly to turn on her camera, so that she might capture something of this human wonder. But she didn't, knowing that it would be rude. She felt badly enough for intruding like this in the first place. She almost didn't dare to breathe. In fact, there were a few moments when she had to remind herself that she was a mere mortal and it was required of all mortals to respirate now and then and she'd had to force herself to let out her breath as silently as possible and inhale again. She found that in order to do that, she had to open her mouth slightly.

His long hair was another mystery which added to her confusion over his apparent age – or lack of it. He was blonde, though the texture of his hair was the same thick fullness of many Japanese. It was tied back loosely, though he had long bangs which had escaped the tie. She didn't know what to make of him, other than she couldn't pull her eyes from him for very long.

The tattoos on him would have been worth the photos by themselves. Though she had a small beginning ability to read the characters, what she was looking at confounded her. They looked as though they had no pattern to them, and were only single characters or patterns, but if one looked at the whole, what was there augmented his form, each being placed perfectly.

She stepped a little closer as she came around to the front of him and she saw that there was little pubic hair to be seen, though what was there told her that his was not blonde. Other than that, from this angle, he looked like a normal man, complete with the normal male genitals. She took a long look and stepped to the side of him. He sat completely naked – no clothing, no rings or other jewelery of any kind. The single item on him which could be said to be not a part of him was the tie in his hair.

She looked down and noticed that he sat at one end of the blanket, the rest of it lay before him. Silke wondered about even that. Why? She reasoned that if it were her here doing this, she'd have seated herself in the middle of it. She stepped away a little and turned back to look again. That was when she'd come to her first decision.

She decided to remain here. She'd stay for as long as it took, but she was determined now to at least try to make this man's acquaintance, though the introduction might be a little awkward, given his state of dress, her poor skills at Japanese and his probable lack of another language which might be common to them both. It didn't matter, she thought. She'd be respectful about it, but she had to meet him. She took her knapsack from her shoulders and set it down. A moment later, she was sitting on the ground in front of him about ten feet away.