Summary: The Prince’s story reinterpreted via yet another highly allegorical setting.  Draws inspiration from EP 16 and 34. Gives hints to what Akio did after Anthy left him.  Seinenverse, but can standalone.

The Tale of the Rose, Cattle-Remix

Utena characters belong to their various owners.

Warning: Umm . . . another writing assignment turned fanfic?   


There once was a practice called “rosing”, and it involved roses and cows.

It all began on a cattle farm out in the wilderness, one made famous by its production of fine beef.

The secret behind the farmed beef’s exquisite flavor was the use of rosing: where the cows got fed roses by day, and were given attar massages by night.

Success aside, the farm owner was an ailing man on his last legs; he worried for his two children’s ability to manage the farm after his death.
   
“Cows are worth naught but for their pricey meat,” he said to his son – then a kind and earnest young boy.  “Without their deaths, this farm cannot continue to run.  Your younger sister is a dreamy girl, and may not understand the need for slaughter.  You, a man, must accept how that sort of sacrifice is what is always demanded in this world.”  He died soon afterwards, leaving the farm to his orphaned children. 

The boy – needing to support himself and his sister, yet not wanting to kill the cattle as his father did - turned the cattle farm into a petting farm.

“I’ll find a way so that we and our cows can all live happily ever after,” he promised his sister – who admired his kindness and strength – while laboring on with single-minded sincerity.  From warding off wild animals with heroic valor, to managing visiting tours with business-like sharpness, the boy did it all, caring for the cows like they were heavenly creatures.  On top of the regular work, the rosing continued – not for favoring beef, but rather, to fragrance the cattle such and heighten their appeal to the paying visitors.   

The sister, clingy by nature, came to feel increasingly left out from her brother’s life.  Being delicate, she was incapable of aiding her brother in farm labor; nor was she worldly enough to help the business side of things.  Tasked with rose farming, the only moment of interaction she had with her brother was when he came to collect the reaped blooms for the rosing – an act that increasingly bothered her.

In her mind’s eye, she saw her brother intimately caressing the cows like they were precious princesses to his gallant prince, and herself an ordinary girl left forgotten by the wayside . . . . 

Eventually, the boy fell ill from over-exertion.  Remembering how her own father passed away from illness, the sister insisted that her brother stop working altogether, least he die too.  The cows’ beckoning moos, however, had the boy insisting he must persist on tending to their needs.  Frustrated, the sister kept the boy on his sickbed, headed out to the barns, and scolded the noisy creatures hoping to silence them. 

Not recognizing the girl – who grew them roses, yet never interacted with them directly – the cows reacted to the “stranger’s” anger by rushing and crumbling her in bestial violence.

None could recount what exactly happened afterwards.  By the time the sister came to, her brother had since treated and bandaged her injuries. The barns and surrounding areas were stained under bloody cow parts, and the gates and fences were torn off their hinges. The cows were gone. Their farm was in ruins. 

Her brother’s gaze, once soft with tenderness, now was hardened by something like cruelty.

Turned out the cows – the ones that survived the massacre - had strayed into the wilderness beyond the premises.  Working together, the siblings managed to recover maybe but two thirds of the sum; the rest they wrote off as having been lost to nature’s predators.

The siblings considered their options.

“With the losses and damages, the original petting farm idea has since become impractical.  We need to do something else with this place to generate enough profit for us to live off.  For that I need your help and understanding, Sister.”

“I understand.  From now on, you and I will help each other go on living.”

And so, the boy and his sister changed their farm into a venue for a spectator blood sport - one involving the cows charging the sister as a hateful target, and her brother slaying them while they were rage-distracted.  The rosing continued, though now the cow-massage became an exotic show the brother performed for those visitors with a taste for such things.

They lived like this for a very long time.

***

“You don’t know what happened, do you?”

To that, the young man gave his sister an uncomprehending stare.

“Fine.” Luggage in hand, the sister – a beautiful young woman marked by telltale scars - walked away from him and towards the farm’s exit.  “Please stay on at this sideshow farm forever.  But I must go.” 

“Go? But this dangerous wilderness--”

“There is a city beyond wilderness; the lost cows are likely there already at their shelter.”

She then disappeared into the wilderness encasing the farm like glair around yolk.

Her brother – handsome, albeit scarred worse than his sister – lingered by the exit.  Beyond the wilderness was the modern city neither siblings had ever been to.  Could his bumpkin sister be reborn as a chick out of its shell in that strange world?  Would she fly, or falter? 

Should he even care?

The lusty calls from the current visitors drew him back inside. 

But not before he picked a stray rose sprouting off the ground, devouring a petal off the flower to steal its fragrance.   

***

“Then, about that proposal to turn this place into a steakhouse resort . . . ”


Continued in Seinen Kakumei Utena