Kodokuna Hōrō-sha (Solo)

[Lillith]

Kodokuna Hōrō-sha (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl4Sw5qJBgE)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rMR2RCSeJ1w/T2AO9IJ90bI/AAAAAAAABzE/rpZDTCiLt3I/s1600/Japan_Concept_Art.jpg

[Lillith]

“Gorou Otsuka.”

“Pardon me?”

Lillith sighed. Consternation forced her hand far too early. She sat at the table defeated.

“My father’s name. It was Gorou Otsuka.”

Arden Janelle, long-suffering but eternally supportive brother of the Lady Lillith Kazumi froze. He set the knife down slowly, abandoning the basil and thyme sprigs. Come early morning the house would be full of much missed friends. His frown reflected the pressing need to chop, not chatter.

“Is it wise to tell me this now?”

Since the Komodo’s fall, his line of thought had turned to the past. He had enquired one sultry and overbearingly hot evening. She spoke briefly of the times before Duffy made them Remember, but put the matter to rest with another half bottle of Doragun sake and too much Dango. He had been unable to convince her to consume them with green tea, as was tradition. Sugar and solitude were ill-advised companions for siblings in grieving.

“I had not planned to do so,” she sharply replied. Her own knife stilled, blade inwards to the table atop a cutting block six inches thick. Scarred countless times with tomato juice, spices, and imported wine. “This just reminded me of a time before.”

“-before…what?” he erred, weary of her emotions. He turned back to the herbs and continued preparations for the feast.

“Before Duffy. Before Ruby. Before I came to Scara Brae.” She narrowed her gaze and pinched the bridge of her nose. A tension migraine struck her like an unwelcome visitor.

[Lillith]

“You recall this over horseradish?” Arden asked, half-smiling, half-frowning. “The things we’ve seen and things we’ve done should not be remembered over salad and sashimi.” He dragged the knife over the board and scraped thyme into a porcelain bowl. Its decorated rim, depicting carp, creed, and jasmine, spoke of yesterday.

“Laugh all you want. This is the life I lead before the debutante ball.” She inferred she was once a servant.

Before Scara Brae, there was a village. She not once forgot its name, though her place in it and the people become foggy simulacrum: ghostly edifices left in time’s wake.

“Tell me about it, then.” He turned. He prodded the knife’s tip at his sister’s temple. “But for Thayne’s sake, chop.” Like an old wife, the blood mage commanded the spirit warder to resume her duties. Sashimi slices and cod roe udon were their only priority.

“Alright, damn you.” She straightened herself on the stool. They had been preparing the food for the day’s festivities since long before dawn.

In the Akashiman calendar, it was the first day of the tenth month. This marked, as every year, the passing of the First Shogun. In a past life, she had lived in the village of Tokyun, fourteen leagues east near the sea. It was a fishing village she shared with her ‘mother and father’, mere fragments of memories given life, but loved all the same.

“I went once to Tokyun Shrine. It was sixth name day of my fifth life.”

[Lillith]

“Every morning in the week we fished. We caught fish. We skinned them. We sold the scales to the doctor, kept enough meat to survive, and bartered the rest as a fishmonger in the village flea market.” Those days were lean. Those days were hard. Those days made Lilith the stern woman she was today.

“I can imagine you in a river.” Arden pictured the black bangs and grubby knees that marred both their formative years as people of the ‘mysterious kingdom’.

“I had no trouble picturing you as a blacksmith’s minarai.” Lilith smiled for the first time since Arden dropped the eggs at dawn. “At least until I saw you at the forge in Gehenna.”

“What was different about that day, then?” In all their years, he had never asked her about the times before the war.

“Absolutely everything was wrong.” She picked up an onion and made light work of its layers. She moved on to a courgette before she continued her tale.

“Go on…”

“I was allowed to forgo chores on my birthday on one condition. I had to visit the temple. I had to pray to the Kami of the village as our family was one of the last to worship the old ways in the rise of the Shogun’s ‘democracy’.” Paper and pestle had replaced piety and pragmatism in central Akashiman. “Tokyun was a last bastion of reverence.”

“Given the proximity to the Jurugumo, it was a wise superstition.”

“You’d have thought so,” she sighed.

[Lillith]

Vivid memories swirled like petals in steaming bathhouse waters. Lillith swooned, her chopping and clarity disturbed by momentary feebleness. Arden turned, but did not make to help his sister.

“You’re succumbing to them again…” Rhetoric brought the assassin’s senses to sharpness.

“None of your concern,” she snapped. Her eyes glowed with a purple allure and dangerous zeal. She could not be sure if he was correct, or the mention of the Elder Oni’s name caused her vigilance to wain and her inner demons to seize an opportunity.

“Since the Great Oni war ended,” the swordsman turned back to the next vegetable seeking attention, “you are my only concern.” He chopped. The razor edge of the knife served as musical end stop to his point.

“When I got to the shrine,” she rasped. Arden knew she was in pain and hiding it, but did not let the fact slip. “The night sky engulfed the plateau.”

Given it was daylight; Lillith should have stayed clear away. Her heart longed to climb. Her feet did not. She remembered floating up the path, crumbling edifice to piety and time backdrop to her transgressions. Sun faded from memory. Light faded from view.

“You…,” Arden gave up and whirled about to stare at her intently. “You went near the temple in transit?”

In transit, a Kami’s shrine was a portal. The veil between worlds was weakest during that time, breakable at the slightest stress.

“My childish curiosity set the Greater Oni free, brother. I am responsible.”

[Lillith]

Outside in the shade dogs yapped and rolled in the dust. The path leading down into the valley brought guests ahead of schedule through ardour and sweat. Through crevice and bamboo tunnel, they became increasingly determined to reach journey’s end. Clouds roiled around cliffs. Dew laden trees shed their moisture to dance in the rising wind.

“You cannot blame yourself for the inevitable.” Arden set the knife down. He sat at the table, opposite his sister, and leant forwards on folded arms. “We made a mistake centuries ago. That guaranteed their Rise one day in the future. That day, wherever it was the day you climbed to the Shrine, or yesterday…it has been and gone.”

He took a deep breath, a sigh wistful and poignant, and felt his stomach knots ease off in favour of passing wind and a sudden need to eat.

“We might have been better prepared had I turned back.” Red hair burnt bright, but soft, lifeless darkness shimmered in her eyes.

“Pffft,” Arden scoffed and picked up a sesame bun from the mountain of bread to his left. Though they were for the udon soup, one would not go amiss. It was still warm and the flour dusting still loose.

“You’re going to tell me I’m too hard on myself, aren't you…,” she affirmed.

They chopped in silence. She sliced spring onions, diced radishes, and squashed grapes with fervour. When she finished the salad she dressed it, tossed it in a large chestnut bowl, and stood.

[Lillith]

“I will always tell you only what you need to hear.” Arden’s truth was absolute. He did not believe in dressing failure up. They had centuries of lying to one another behind them.

Pressing down onto the table’s edge, she leant across and knocked the roll from his fingers quicker than he could swipe her aside. Motherly and stern, she picked it up, dropped it back in its rightful place and pointed to the door leading to the garden.

“Advice I hope you appreciate must be given in kind.”

“Done maudlin’, then?” he spat. There was a cheeky grin on his face, clear as day. Though his long brown hair tied back, his mirth veiled his features and masqueraded his tiredness. He was drawn. They both were. Words were their body’s only sustenance since dawn.

“Outside. Make sure there’s enough chairs. If Ruby turns up and she has to sit on the floor in whatever outlandish dress she has chosen to wear we’ll be moaned at until dusk and beyond.” Leaving him to follow orders, she rolled up her sleeves and dove her hands into a bowl of flour.

“You will be doing what, exactly?” he asked sarcastically. He stood up all the same. Dragon slayer or not, Lillith was a monster he could not best today.

“Quiche bases.” Her dry tone told Arden that was all there was to hear and he stepped out into the courtyard silently.

“And letting go…,” she mumbled when he was out of earshot.

[Quentin Boone]

Lillith receives:

672 EXP
72 GP

Congratulations!

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!