Dreamweaver
Prompt: Culture | AO3 link here | Connect with me on Twitter. (Belated) Happy SS Month everyone! 🌸🍅🥗 @ssskmonth | This is quite long so please bear with me.
“What are your dreams like these days?” her mother asks as they removed the stripped abaca fibers from a bamboo beam beside their house after days of drying. Already separated by their thickness, the mother and daughter start to rub the strands with their hands to make them more pliant and softer for weaving, much like washing clothes on a sunny day beside the blue green waters of Lake Sebu.
Sakura looks around and finds all other women in their tribe busy with the same motions. Their small units of conversations are enough to drown her reply. “Foggy. Like the lake at four in the morning.” Sakura resumes rubbing the fibers and sets the thinner batch beside her to be reserved as lengthwise threads. “I always walk on water. But I can’t find her.”
“Perhaps, it isn’t your time yet,” her mother gives her a reassuring smile and finishes rolling her batch into balls of fibers to be used for crosswise threads. “Maybe she’ll visit me, or your grandmother. Now be a dear and get the last batch from your aunt’s house.”
Sakura explicitly grimaced at the request. Her aunt’s house is located on the completely opposite side of their place, a thirty-minute walk that ends with a clear view of the lake and clumps of water lilies.
“Don’t you want to see the flowers?”
“Nay, you know they only bloom at dawn.” But she sets off anyway with nothing but the hard ground, the flattened grass, and the flowering weeds. She arrives at the house after a sweltering walk of some twenty minutes or so (because she wants to go home quickly and eat dinner and entirely avoid her father).
Begrudgingly, she takes off the fibers from the house beams and ties them neatly stacked on each other. She almost sets off again without taking a break, but the sun has begun to set and its golden rays start to cast off an ephemeral play on the reflection of the lake. As her eyes follow the myriad of the show, she is disappointed by the break of the owong, a small dugout canoe, against the water, the lapping of waves sending the flickering sunshine into disarray.
Her eyebrows furrow but gone too soon when she sees a pair of onyx eyes stare back at her on the canoe. He mirrors her shock ever so slightly, and he starts to look away, gesturing to his companion to turn around. His fingers course through the strands of his hair, absent of the usual striped tricolored bandana of red, black, and white hues.
Sakura almost tethers over the edge, summoned by an overwhelming feeling of curiosity, and her mouth opens in a wordless no. Her stomach lurches when he glances back in time with a stare that lingered for a minute too long.
She is quite certain she’ll see him again.
She comes home just before the sun fully dappled their place in purple and pink tones, and she gets an earful from her mother who grew impatient of waiting to finish the day’s weaving tasks. This she doesn’t mind as her thoughts conjure up his face, his eyes, and his smile just before he truly looked away for the last time.
Over dinner, however, her thoughts start to fray.
“Sakura, I have found a good match for you.” Her father devours the grilled tilapia on his plate, a portion from his harvest earlier this day. “They are a big tribe at the opposite side of the lake. But they have a sizeable dowry, the only remaining eligible son has handsome features, and you’ll marry into a great clan.”
She finds the morsel of food difficult to swallow, but she nods anyway because this means her marriage will rid both clans potential land conflicts. She agrees because this is her duty as the T’boli chieftain’s daughter.
Over the years, their tribe has grown smaller from internal clan wars, a fight over resources, and, more often than before, outside developments. She must do what she can within her capabilities to ensure her tribe’s survival. Her mother gives her a comforting smile across the table as if this would be enough compensation for the realized burden on her barely-out-of-puberty shoulders. Shy a month from nineteen, she has been passed another great mantle of responsibility.
But filial duties aside, maybe she can learn to love her husband the way her mother loved hers.
That night, she stands atop the same ground she was on this afternoon. She finds the same owong in the middle of a still Lake Sebu, its blue green waters deathly silent, and its surrounding land rid of lamps and candles, and while it is midnight, the water lilies are in full bloom with the bright moon on top of a starless night sky. Dreams suspend realities and so she jumps off the cliff and walks towards the waters, her bare feet almost touching the lily pads but never creating ripples on the surface.
The owong is empty, much to her dismay. She climbs on it, settling on the middle where he stood, and tries to take his remnants in – maybe he left his smell, his footprints, or strands of his hair, and maybe she’ll carry parts of him in her new life.
She wanted to know him – how foolish! A stranger meeting her eyes and yet she feels remorseful. Nonetheless, she sobs, unwilling to accept her fate, especially when she hasn’t met her yet, her first great responsibility.
While time is suspended in this dimension, she raises her head, aware that she will wake up very soon, and takes in the last vestiges of her dreamlike memory. On the other end of the lake, she sees her, a tall woman with her hair curled into a high bun, face framed with strings of beads, arms raised to her sides like an embrace, the sleeves open and dancing with the wind Sakura cannot see, the long tubular skirt molded in between the waters and her ankles. For a split second, she almost hears her voice.
“Fu Dalu!” Sakura yells as she sits up on her bed. Her heart is beating fast, and she’s barely breathing. So this is what it feels like.
The name she called out she triggers a morning audience in her quarters, her mother beside her, brushing her untangled rose strands intending to make her calm. The other female tribe members sit near the door, awaiting instructions for weaving.
“Has the goddess of weaving talked to you?”
Sakura glances at each face of her family before she rests on her mother’s expectant expression. She really couldn’t blame them. The dreamweaver before her met Fu Dalu when she turned thirteen and made tens of weaving designs before she got married off with a childhood friend. Her mother started when she was eight and was pursued by her father when she was of marriageable age. And here she was, already considered too old to be married, and still no dreams with the goddess of weaving.
She shakes her head and focuses her sight instead on her hands which are tired of drying abaca, tired of separating fibers, tired of dyeing them, amid the sighs of her fellow clan people. She wants to spin the threads, but she is devoid of this blessing.
Her face is still regretful when she is called to welcome the man arranged for her. Color her surprised when the same pair of onyx eyes stared at her when they disembarked on the shore.
“Datu Kizashi, this is Uchiha Sasuke, our second born, and Sakura’s betrothed.”
His eyes leave hers for a few seconds to shake hands with her father, and then he finds her again, a smirk playing on the ends of his lips. She doesn’t withhold her smile, but she hopes they will see it as nothing more than a courteous response to their guests. Internally, different kinds of somersaults have taken place; not at all liberating, just a fluttering sensation that threatens to overwhelm. Would this still be called a responsibility when she is literally engaged to the stranger she wanted at first sight?
They discuss her dowry over at lunch amid the feast of steamed crabs, shrimps, grilled fishes, and sauteed water spinach. Five whole roasted pigs have been brought in separate three separate canoes as an offer to the tribe. Sakura is barely listening, too distracted by his undivided attention on her, and the clarity of his voice.
“I agree with my father that we should do a moninum,” Sasuke says.
“But that will extend your preparation by two years,” Kizashi starts to protest. Sakura feels the weird pain that comes from the implication she, a dreamless weaver, is being quickly discarded.
“And two years I will commit to her devotion,” the raven-haired man replies. “I hope your daughter accepts me fit for her hand in marriage.”
“Fit for you? Oh even the Bathala knows you are far more deserving. We are happy to oblige.” Her father’s words change direction. Sakura knows he knows it isn’t worth to complain against a bigger clan like the Uchihas.
As they prepare to leave, Sasuke stays behind with the silent instruction for his men to go back first to their canoes. Sakura’s family respectfully gives them space albeit not alone together but enough distance for them to not overhear their conversation.
In hushed tones he says hello. “I was spying yesterday.”
“Did you like what you see?” she asks, avoiding his gaze.
“I like her better at this distance.” His fast hands slip her a gold bangle with engraved looping lines, and he gives her a smile only her eyes can see.
And off he goes, back to the other side of the lake.
Sakura wears the bangle on her left wrist as she sleeps that night. And Fu Dalu finally reveals herself. She is covered in moonshine, her eyes twinkling as if all the stars are gathered there. Sakura stands upright in the owong in the middle of the lake. The goddess places both of her arms in front of her, revealing the colored threads that connect to Sakura. They shimmer under the night sky but soon disconnect from her body to spun into an intricate pattern in shapes of diamonds and stars in shades of reds and whites.
This is her first weaving design – that of the afternoon sun when they first met each other.
The houses come alive in a flurry the next morning, and for the first time in a long while. Sakura allows herself to hum as she threads the pattern on the legogong, a backstrap loom, the bangle still on her wrist, regardless of its weight on her weaving hands.
The first of the six feasts to be done over the course of two years is arranged a fortnight later, the second on the following two months, and every time, without fail, he goes to her side to engage her in conversation. He shows her his sword, a work of his own, and the handle which he personally engraved with a clan seal. In turn, she discusses her weaving design and the night Fu Dalu came to her.
“Will it be all right to ask something so obvious?” she asks.
He angles his head to her so his full attention is on her, and he urges her silently with his eyes.
“Will you take another wife?” She expects him to cast his stare down, but he doesn’t. After all, he is from a wealthy clan, and the number of wives dictate how rich a household is. Surely, he is one to display his abundance.
Instead, he smirks, and his arm moves but stops in the middle of the space between them. “I am not bound by the rules expected of my older brother. I am a second born with the sole duty to marry good and defend my family. Unless you would want me to?”
“It is your right, I suppose.”
“And my right to choose to refuse.”
The t’nalak piece has been completed within those two months, thanks to the hardworking hands of the women in her community. The last part is the semaki, a process where a cowrie shell is rubbed against the fabric to condition its threads and dyes and add the completed look of a sheen. Sakura takes a cowrie shell from a basket and gives it to the youngest daughter of her aunt to make the first motion. Elated from the distinction, the girl starts the burnishing motion and eventually followed by the hands along the length of the fabric.
Fu Dalu appears to Sakura the second time in the same place, but the sky is completely devoid of a moon, the usually still lake is laden with waves, and the goddess herself is weary.
The threads still move across space to connect to Sakura’s body, but they are slowed down with a combustion of flames around the lake. Surrounded with blazing fire and angry waters, Sakura tries to keep steadfast inside the confines of the owong, trusting her connection to Fu Dalu, and the fact that this is but a dream.
But she wonders if it is still a suspended dimension when she hears the trill of muhen amid the cackling of fire and the swell of the waves, the god of fate whose sound signals an imminent omen. A bird suddenly swoops down in her owong, temporarily fraying the threads that connect her to the weaving goddess, and she wakes up with the last burning image of an eagle’s eye.
She calls for her mother in the loudest voice she can muster. Notwithstanding her unkept appearance, she goes out of her quarters and calls for her family, anyone, but she finds them gone. A good half hour transpired before they come back to her, seemingly distraught, and once they see her out and about, they advertently avoid her questioning gaze.
“Sakura.” Her mother comes to her with her hands on her shoulders. Sakura is not sure whether the action is to steady her daughter or herself. “The Uchiha clan is at war.”
Her father explains the repercussions to her when he arrives that afternoon from hunting. “We might have to suspend your moninum with Sasuke. The clan at the lower mountains contested the land since they’ve been displaced by a plantation. If their clan doesn’t win this, we might need to prepare for the worst.”
“What’s the worst thing, Tay?” Her voice is trembling.
“We might leave this place and seek refuge somewhere. I’ll find a son to marry you with, Sakura. The next worst thing above that is if we stand our ground and fight and fall to our deaths.” Silence befalls their household.
Sakura forces in the whimper that threatens to escape her lips. She must not show fragility at these crucial moments. She is the datu’s daughter. She must remain brave.
“I apologize, inday. I should have married you off earlier to a good family, and you could have escaped this misery that awaits us.” Overt fatherly affection is rarely experienced, particularly from a chieftain, and to be the recipient of that in public, that actually meant something.
So Sakura didn’t have to hold back the sobs anymore. She is afraid, not of death, but of the possibility that she will marry someone else other than Sasuke only to find he survived. Must fate tempt them like this?
However, she is now a dreamweaver, and it is her role to weave into life Fu Dalu’s images. With a heavy heart, she resumes her position on the legogong and draws the eagle’s eyes over the threads. Black, deadly, nothingness.
The day the emissary delivered the message, Sakura found no strength to continue the weaving. The t’nalak is halfway done with the pattern clear enough to be replicated so her mother takes over the finishing process. Her daughter, wanting to be rid of grief, travels to her aunt house to look over the lake where they first met.
The Uchihas won, but they couldn’t find Sasuke. He hasn’t returned the night after the war’s conclusion.
The emissary still delivers the same message the following week and the next. Sakura drags herself to finish the t’nalak eagle piece with semaki, the gold bangle on her wrist heavy like lead as she rubs the cowrie shell against the fabric.
She hopes she doesn’t dream of Fu Dalu again.
As if it is spite, the goddess reveals herself to her again in the same place but different entirely. There is no more chaos, but it is the lake teeming with life. Rays of sunshine abound the horizon, the birds fly out and about in teams, and ripples form on the surface. Somewhere, Sakura hears the sound of families rising to another day of life.
But she cries and covers her face with her callused fingers, not wanting to see the threads that connect her to the goddess’ hands and the images they conjure for her to spin and thread and weave.
She hopes for the fire and the storm to swallow her, for the muhen to trill and signal her own death, but it doesn’t come.
Nor do the threads.
Only then does Sakura realize she is not standing on the owong, but on the lake itself, and there are no threads spinning in front of her with Fu Dalu at a distance but that the goddess herself is sitting beside her, her eyes the same onyx color like Sasuke’s.
Fu Dalu’s hands, callused and wounded all the same, hold a single stalk of a water lily bloom.
When Sakura wakes up, it is still four in the morning. She hastily dresses herself in awkward silence and slips out of their house to go to her aunt’s place. It is empty right now as her aunt’s family paid visit to a relative on the adjacent town. She arrives just in time for the dawn to break.
Cold to her bones, Sakura waits amid the fog. For what, she doesn’t know, but the water lilies have started to open their bulbs one by one, sharing their full unabashed beauty to the ones who rose the earliest.
“What are you trying to tell me, Fu Dalu? What do I need to do?” Sakura asks herself.
The fog clears up a bit, and she catches her breath. An owong starts to make its way across the waters with the same passenger but a slightly different countenance. A scar has carved across his right brow down to his left jaw, and while fortunate of having this shallow cut, he casts her an apologetic look as he rolls his sleeve up. A bandaged stump has replaced his left arm.
But the only thing she sees clearly, and the only thing that matters really, is his onyx eyes against the backdrop of the blooming water lilies just as her sight starts to blur with tears.
TECHNICAL NOTES:
T’bolis are indigenous peoples who reside in the mountains of Cotabato in the Philippines. Their cultural centers and dwellings are usually situated in three major lakes, one of which is Lake Sebu. Apart from being a source of their fishing economic activity, the lake and its naturally blooming water lilies akin to lotus flowers have become a tourist attraction in Mindanao. The pink water lilies, dubbed as sunrise flowers, only bloom from five to nine in the morning, then close up in the afternoon.
Datu – the highest position in a community held by a male household head. But a T’boli society will have one or more datus with varying degrees of authority, wealth, and status.
Marriage – Polygamy is allowed in a T’boli society; the number of wives gives a distinction to the abundance of resource a man has. Arranged marriage is also the norm, with the process starting even from childhood, puberty, and adolescence. Once married, a celebration called moninum can be optionally conducted which is a series of six feasts done alternately by the families. Did a little creative license here where the six feasts should ALL be completed before being considered as fully married.
Dreamweavers – Only the females in a T’boli community can be weavers, and they can only weave once they are visited by the goddess Fu Dalu. It is a spiritual undertaking as much as a community work. This results to a highly prized cloth called t’nalak, often worn in important life events (e.g. birth, wedding, death).
Muhen – bird god of fate whose trill signals imminent misfortune
Owong – dugout canoe which the T’bolis use for fishing and transportation. It can hold up to three people
T’boli and the rest of indigenous peoples in the Philippines face multiple challenges in today’s society. They are consistently displaced in their ancestral domains by government-directed developments (e.g. land conversion, mining agreements, forest management agreements), militarization, and illegal economic activities (illegal logging and quarrying by large corporations). This also exacerbates the already existing internal land-grabbing and resource conflicts, and clan enmities within the communities.
As their culture is rooted in their environment, they find it difficult to maintain, nurture, and practice their cultural identity. In this context, dreamweavers cannot focus on months’ work of weaving if they are running away from military operations every other day.
Further, commercialization of these products has cheapened the value of their own craft. There are instances where these designs are stolen by profit-oriented entrepreneurs and sold without the knowledge and consent of the tribe. Another case is an unfair agreement where weavers are contracted to make the t’nalak but are not given the commensurate money for it. They fail to have leverage against these exploiters since they are not educated in the ways of our society. They have a different worldview and orientation, one which we may struggle to accept if we continue to perceive them through our lenses.
