The Day of Thunder

Yukara furrowed her brow, debating internally if having someone follow her would have been unpleasant, and finally concluding she wouldn't have known about it anyway.

With a faint shrug, she added, "I've... seen more than one village scoured by violence. For whatever reason, good or bad." Her eyes had taken on a more distant look, and she scowled at the river, as if it had somehow offended her personally.

"Or maybe the warm season ended and they moved on from this land. Wasn't it just recently when many tribes decided to stop going nomadic and settle in parts of the Empire? Such progress sometimes resulted in a shuffle and adjustment across the land," she shrugged with a faint smirk on her lips. It seemed that everyone was giving rather depressing answers, the least she could do was offer another perspective. Admittedly, she had to admit that it didn't quite look like the case, given everything around them was either ominous or pointing to supposed doom with Shinsei here.

"I know for certain that none of us here are local and we don't have the answers but I do like the attempt of conjuring tales that may have been or never were," she tittered before looking to the monk. "Have you spoken or acquainted yourself with anyone else around the village?"

Oddly that answer drew a dark expression over Yukara's features, but she just shrugged, expression mulish.

Turning away from the river, as if putting if from her thoughts, she cast her gaze over the vegetation, mist, and damp... tapping her bisento haft against the soft ground absent-mindedly, and then muttered, "We are an odd gathering. Are we all truly here for the same reason? Advice from the Rock-Sensei?"

Norikage shook his head. "Like I said before, I didn't come here on the old man's request. Also, I'm not convinced they left here due to the Kami arriving, at least not in the sense that most left their far flung villages."

He faced the others properly now. "Something happened, and still is happening here. The village head said the people here didn't seem to have left in a hurry, but that doesn't convince me it was on a high note. Bad water, but these people still gathered here, that in of itself is a warning one can't ignore."

Bayushi Norikage wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 24, 2023 1:34 am

Norikage shook his head. "Like I said before, I didn't come here on the old man's request. Also, I'm not convinced they left here due to the Kami arriving, at least not in the sense that most left their far flung villages."

He faced the others properly now. "Something happened, and still is happening here. The village head said the people here didn't seem to have left in a hurry, but that doesn't convince me it was on a high note. Bad water, but these people still gathered here, that in of itself is a warning one can't ignore."

"But the one you followed, did they come thanks to Rock-Sensei?" She gestured vaguely with one hand, as if to imply a causal link, and then added, "In either case, if the village was repopulated, there is no way to know why it was abandoned initially, if nobody is left to ask, no?"

“They left a good amount of writings behind.” Sukuna adds, head tilted to the side. “Well-preserved as well. They took care in sealing it in a way that the weather wouldn’t rot the documents away.”

"Writings?"

Yukara looked genuinely surprised. Literacy and peasants were not often combined.

"Have you read these writings?"

"Fleeing people rarely leave things in good condition. It seems more probable that they left with intention to return," he shrugs. "Now as to why they never returned, well, even before this time the land was not safe. Priests always pride themselves about their magic, but magic takes time to cast and there are several things faster than a word."

"Rock-sensei? Oh, you speak of Shinsei and his rock, I suppose? Did he always carry the burden of a rock? You'd think that as a storm crow, he'd have a totem that would allow him to move a bit faster. Perhaps a feather or even a bird of sorts?" She tapped on her chin in thought.

That muse aside, she looked at Sukuna regarding these writings that were supposedly well preserved. Yukara already asked the question on her mind.

“I have not read them myself, I know of their existence thanks to the headwoman. But that’s why she thinks that this place was occupied by Isawa.” Sukuna answers, hand still on her chin thoughtfully. “Rock-sensei is a funny nickname.”

"I did not know his name before today."

Yukara blushed. "I am struggling to relearn it now."