"So...you're saying...I'm your best friend?" Ranma, though, didn't see how it's done. Akane picked up her broom and smoothed over the entire garden, of course in no small way irritating Ranma.

"What are you going to do for the temple?" he shrieked, her lengthening hair tied back with a cool ribbon. Akane turned with a jerk.

"S...sorry? Did you say you were sorry?"

"Yeah, sorry. What's the big deal? Ain't like I never said sorry before..."

Big rock is like the main drop. It absorbs and consumes the ripples that are created. It's just raking the garden for you, where everything goes exactly how it is supposed to be.

Ranma took the rake from Akane and followed the lines, capturing the eddies and the small rock. "What do you mean? It's you." Ranma took the rake from Akane and followed the lines, capturing the eddies and the ripples emanating between the large rock and the ripples of the smaller drops.

"What do you like about it?" It's...it is beautiful!"

"Why? It's just a bunch of sand and rocks!"

Akane muttered a disgusted "baka" and went back to a thousand years work.

"You know, perhaps..." the old man took a seat nearby.

I had no idea. I mean, I thought it was raked with flair, although Ranma didn't answer, but kept on looking at the grooves of the sand. Or the rocks, either.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, look here." (Akane's circles in the sand garden.)

"Your work is substandard!" says the priest, "Take pride in what you mean..."

"It's easier to see when you're busy making other plans."

"Where's that from?"

"From me."

"I overheard the priest to get back to work." Ranma looked down at her raking, but it was the same fish, although it has gotten fatter, and its scales have lost much of their luster.

"That's incredible."

The old man took a seat nearby. "I thought we might make tea for visitors."

Ranma gave Akane a that's-not-funny look.

Akane paused. "When I rake, I try to imagine that the fish could live so long, when you just take care in cleaning the pond. But I always see the fish at the pond."

"Those fish mean a great deal to you, then?" asked Ranma. The old man laughed.

"You'd be amazed at how quickly the years have passed," the old man insisted, "But yes, it was wide, overlooked an expansive garden."

Akane looked at Ranma and smiled. "Thanks, Ranma," turning back to work.

Ranma and Akane turned, startled. A priest stood behind the two.

"Perhaps" said Akane. "Perhaps they are nothing more than fish...but that does not mean they cannot survive." She pointed at the greenness of the smaller drops.

"What do you mean?"

"All of just us are fish," Akane explained.

"No," said Ranma, "It's you."

Ranma blushed and quickly clarified himself. "It's the person working in the barrel. Not just you. Everybody."

Akane had raked sand gardens a few times before, he knew, but that couldn't fully explain the ease and inevitability of her work. Ranma looked down at his legs, swinging them back and forth to make odd patterns swish around his kimono.

"What are you doing?!" yelled Akane, staring at the gradients. Ranma was sweating, and looked away.

Ranma and Akane were silent for a few minutes when she raised her rake and shouted harshly. "I don't see what you do! Take pride in your work! You're such a jerk!"

"'Take pride in what you do,' you say! Looks perfectly good to me."

"Are you blind? Look...see how the rocks are like drops in a pond!"

And he wasn't sure how she had done it, but he could see the fish live so long, and in the sand is a puddle of water, and the ripples emanating between the large rock and the boulders are drops, leaking into the water.

**

^_^

Well, if you read this far...This is a old story I wrote, but I couldn't decide what to do with it. And I've always thought this would be fun.

Kinda Burroughs-imitating.