The Day of Thunder

Sora approached the headwoman's house with the air of a man whose sleep the night before had done him no good whatsoever, and whose day had been one long festival of bad news.

But as he'd told Kumori, hope was more important now than ever, and he let himself have just a little, as a treat.

I hope this conversation goes well.

He rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, and then awaited the village headwoman's response.

Chouri comes out to greet him, looking a little surprised. "Ah, Jiyo-sama, good evening. The rain's only picking up, please, come inside and have something warm to drink by the fire," she said, hurrying inside. She's holding a cloth and coughs a couple of times into it before getting the drinks ready.

"Please, Chouri-san, again, no 'sama' with me. You are head of this village. I'm just one of a cluster of armed strangers who showed up on your doorstep. If anything, I should be using that honorific for you."

But he followed her in. The weather was, after all, trash.

And he had some idea of what that cough was about.

She chuckled wearily and sighed. "Ah... Well, maybe not. Actually... I owe your group of heavily armed strangers a lot. Especially Shiba-sama and Ryoshun Nao-sama." Her eyes are down, concentrating on preparing the drinks.

"So I've heard. It's going to make things both... simpler and more difficult in some ways, moving forward."

A pause. And a deadpan delivery.

"If you think Lady Makime is charming now, well. She was already going to be livid at the idea of the meal I proposed for tomorrow... now her head might very well explode."

He grinned.

"So that's nice."

Chouri lets out a low chuckle. "I'm sure things will be even more fun going forward talking to her."

She handed him over tea. "Here... I take it Shiba-sama told you what happened."

"She told me the broad strokes."

He bowed then.

"I am sorry the Empire could not provide better choices for you in an impossible situation when you were younger. And I am certain the gravity of your situation is not a point I need belabor. But we need to move forward. And I think to do that, your people and ours need to come together. I would hear what can be done to assist in this."

She nodded firmly. "Yes... We do." She said, taking a sip of her tea and a deep breath. "That's a little better."

"I think the first thing is coming clean. Yes, they were right about the fireworks and the meal being drugged. The first night to keep people from sleeping and the feast to induce the effigy nightmares. I... truly don't know what those needle things were. Probably monsters sent by the Harbinger herself. While it's true that my actions were under duress, that doesn't excuse them," she said, shaking her head. "I'm making some adjustments to the coming days' events. Making the healing safer, for one thing."

She let out a breath. "The dreams will still happen. I can't stop them where we are. She will use them to try and tempt people; play on what they want the most, or weaknesses she thinks exist in their souls. She will... also probably try to take matters into her own hands from Yume-do."

"Coming clean will likely not persuade the daimyo as such, but if your people were ignorant of it, that will likely help."

He paused.

"Did anyone else involved in the process do so knowingly? Offering you up as a scapegoat is of limited value if another simply goes on sabotaging your efforts."

"Most of them were ignorant of it," she said. "My only co-conspirator was Enrou. He's... had it worse than I did. I was planning on talking to him in the morning. I need help suppressing my illness again now anyway."

"Ah, well. Stands to reason. You hardly struck me as an expert herbalist."

He paused.

"You might want to take... help. In case he proves... difficult. Do you think he'll accept a change of course?"

Chouri takes a deep breath and lets it out. "It's hard to say. If he's warmed up to any of the newcomers, there's a chance. He actually took an apprentice, which is... it's a good sign."

"We've been trying to help out as we can- my old friend Kyosei has been asked to help, a Nezumi shaman chipped in, and probably others..."

He sighed.

"I hope we can reach him. His knowledge... I told him the Imperial Libraries would benefit by having some notes of what he knows how to do. He was asking rhetorically about why he bothered, with the shugenja able to heal so easily. I pointed out that not everyone can be a shugenja."

She nodded slowly. "He was originally an Isawa. They... didn't take him as seriously as a mind like his deserves."

"I've learned to never underestimate an Isawa's pride. His or the rest of them."

There was a suspicious twitch of his lip, as if he were suppressing laughter.

"I suppose the snarky attitude should have been a giveaway."

He cocked his head to the side.

"With so many of your secrets... no longer secret, would you like a new one?"

She chuckled a little. "I think I've had enough for a lifetime, but I don't mind looking after one more."

"It has to do with why I follow the Emperor. Why I swore myself to him."

He tapped the cheekbone under his oracular eye.

"This thing... shows me futures, sometimes. At the Tournament of the Kami, it made looking upon any of them an... agonizing experience, because each of them created so many futures. And many of them, I wanted no part of. Several of the Kami, had they taken the Throne, would have made a land I would have left. I wouldn't have been able to stop what was coming, but I would have wanted no part of it. I would have gone north, beyond the mountains."

He cocked his head to the side as he regarded her.

"And I was not the only one. There were a fair few of us greatly concerned about the potential tyranny of the Kami. I am still in touch with many of them today."

Her eyebrows went up. "I see... They would have gotten along with my father."

"Maybe I even knew him once. Our little... correspondent's club has had its ups and downs. Certainly, at the time, I was starting to despair. So many of the Kami seemed to think they could rule Ningen-Do as if it were Tengoku."

Sora chuckled.

"Insanity, right? But... when I looked at Shiba..."

He took a breath, the memory of it still clearly having the power to move him all these years later.

"Do you know what I saw in many, many of his futures? I saw him kneeling to a mortal. Not out of cowardice or submission, or because the mortal had defeated him... I saw Shiba kneel because the greater good meant more than his pride. I saw a Kami who cared more for the people than for his standing as the Son of Heaven. And that was the only sort of leader I could willingly serve."

He closed his eyes.

"So, I planned to follow him for a time- and if one of the siblings who so concerned me won out? I would leave when the time came. But Shiba became Emperor. And I told him everything I knew. And do you know what his response was, when he found out that I was a member of a group that had viewed his family's arrival with fear and hostility in many cases? He just asked me to keep him apprised of mortal concerns."

A pause.

"What could I say to that? Honestly, what was there to say? And then, when he entrusted me with the protection of his children?"

Sora shook his head.

"It was over for me, the moment I held Kumori's eldest sister in her swaddling clothes. I have never told anyone but the Emperor himself of the visions I saw- I didn't wish to create an expectation for him to bear in the eyes of others. But..."

He inclined his head to Chouri.

"... I feel that a good secret might help you in place of a bad one."

She smiled as she listened, just taking it in. "I can see why you followed him. Thank you for telling me."

She looked down. "I've seen so many people like me and some of the others here who fell through the cracks. Even if things aren't perfect, I'm glad to know someone is doing their best."

She took a sip of her tea and then looked down into it for a little while. "I hope... the next Emperor will remember us. People like me and the others."