The Day of Thunder

[Kaiu Tai]

(open and expecting)

It's getting late, but there are times when the mind wants to be away from the chatter of other humans and the feet just want to roam. So despite the chill, Tai heads into the forest. She doesn't expect to find much so early in the spring and with fog dimming the moonlight, but you never know.

She hums quietly to herself while examining trees for useful lichens and listening for predators.

[Ryoshun Yukara]

She did encounter a young monk on her way back to the camp.

Yukara walked with her bisento clasped in her left hand, using it as a crutch quite obviously, but still giving the shape that appeared from the mist a wary glance.

It was a grandmotherly... crab. That was less terrifying. Marginally.

"Good evening, Maam. You are out late."

So was Yukara, but she seemed incapable of processing that she was an invalid.

[Kaiu Tai]

The spear slash walking-stick moves into something more of a spear-as-defensive-weapon posture as someone materializes out of the fog. "Yep, yep. Out late, wakin' some spirits...maybe you're one of them?" Particularly in the dark, her eyes, showing no white, become merely spots of darkness in the elderly face.

"This forest likes to play tricks, and there are folks asleep and dreamin' already. So pardon if I'm a bit wary when you look a bit like someone I saw the other day, but missin' a bit." Nightmare or ghost? Either could take a form and twist it.

[Ryoshun Yukara]

"That would be because I am missing a bit, as you said."

Yukara tried to gesture, but with her hand full of bisento sighed, and nodded her head at the shoulder. "It was eaten by a nightmare wolf yesterday. Well, not precisely eaten. Ripped loose and then amputated."

With a helpless shrug, she added, "If I were a spirit, I would choose a more disarming form than this, I should think. No demon eyes, to start."

[Kaiu Tai]

It's time enough to slip her other hand to the small knife, and the far more powerful defenses it allows. She looks down...and sighs in annoyance that the fog means there's now way to tell if the girl's even got feet. "Heard about that. Suppose that means you're the one Ayako helped. Shoulda brought you to camp instead've that healer. Kami're better when things are that bad. Were you his only patient?"

"As to eyes...can't see much more than that you've got em in this fog."

[Ryoshun Yukara]

Yukara stepped closer, so the old woman could see her cat's eyes, and offered a weary smile. Her eyes were puffy, proof she had been crying, despite her having since dried the tears.

She certainly had feet, calloused ones, with cheap sandals. And bandages. A rather roughly hewn staff affixed by a skilled craftsman to a bronze blade. Jade and wood prayer beads mingled on her single wrist, and maintained a relaxed stance.

"I did get some help from a priest as well, but apparently my arm was already... dead... when it was treated. The wolf dragged me down by it, so it was barely on to begin with." She did not begrudge the healer his efforts.

To do so was a road she dared not tread, asking what-if.

"Ayako-san aided in the procedure, yes. She and Ryoshun Nao-sama."

[Kaiu Tai]

Well that was something you don't see every day. And Tai found herself blinking her own dark on dark eyes in surprise. "Well, the name's right, and if you're the sort of spirit as can pick that out of my head, there's not much to be done anyway. It's dead now for sure. Not much to be done there."

The old woman's stance relaxes a bit. "This one's Tai then. ...Kaiu Tai in the way they're sayin' things now. And I'm just out to hear the whispers here while it's quiet, and forage for what's useful."

"Heard the wolf was huge and bled corruption besides." Her eyes drop to the jade. "you've some protection then?"

*******************
(casting ahead of time. D3 LE: PTiP on Yukara | 5k3 ⇒ 22 (TN: 10) should heal 12)

[Ryoshun Yukara]

"Ah... I hope you have found something useful, so as not to waste your journey." Yukara offered, a simple offering of good luck. Holding up her wrist, she jade was clearly visible among the wooden and clay beads. "I do carry Jade - though how effective it was when drenched in such a mess... I cannot say."

There was some melancholy at that.

"It was huge - it used to be a woman, before she succumbed to the madness. Not that she was any kinder before she lost her humanity."

With a faint shrug of the one shoulder, she added, "Is there anything you need help with, Kaiu Tai-san?"

[Kaiu Tai]

There is an approving nod at the jade, then a more appraising look. "Used to be a woman? So this is someone you knew, and the madness changed her that much physically?"

It would certainly be confirmation of things she'd already suspected. She offered a mental prayer that whatever that thing in the valley had been, its once human soul had escaped first. There was a sinking feeling that this wasn't how it worked.

To the question, she barked a laugh. "Help? Figurin' out what that monk thinks we're gonna do here, maybe. Maybe a quick history of this supposedly protective ritual from his crow?" She stops..."but you're kinda seepin' there." She gestures to the pale bandages damped with fog and darkened in spots with..probably...blood. "Might be you as could use some aid, hmm?"

[Ryoshun Yukara]

Yukara looked, and sighed. "Oh. I had tried not to re-open them. I have already been given much aid... by all accounts I should be laid up in bed, yet so many have already helped me I am able to walk already."

Glancing back at Tai, she added, "If you can do anything, I will not deter you, however. I will be better able to help the more I am mended, in whatever ways I still can."

Her comments about the wolf and shinsei had been hardest to answer, so she saved them for last. "As for this ritual, I do not know of it. I am as ill-informed as any other, but the beast... indeed I did know of her. She was a bandit queen who led the gang that destroyed my village when I was a child, and which later killed the sensei who took me in. We have been enemies for near my entire life. I hoped I could dispel her madness before she fell, but she was too strong. I had no recourse but to fight with all the fibers of my being. No time or breath to spare for mercy, to my shame."

[Kaiu Tai]

"Hmph, simple enough. And just as well not to have folks limpin' along through sleepless nights that seem to have become the norm for many. Give me a moment." She draws the small knife and runs the sharp edge along the back of the hand gripping the spear, letting the blood gather on the blade to flick against the bandages. It feels like the fog draws down more heavily, the cool seeping into the wounds to heal them.

The knife is wiped clean before resheathing. "Water's a bit changeable, but that should help some."

"So, not a good person...though folks good and bad have been driven to madness by the dreams, so I'm not sure if that's a factor in them becoming that corrupted thing." She looks up after sheathing the knife. "Did it come here hunting you then?"

[Ryoshun Yukara]

"Perhaps, or perhaps it ran here and I happened to follow."

Yukara shrugged. "I think she was tired of running - tired of being chased. Better to kill me and be done with it."

The healing was met with an appreciative sigh, and she murmured, "That is such a magnificent talent. Far more interesting than my own proficiency in swinging a spear."

[Kaiu Tai]

A small cloth is pressed over her small cut as Tai grins and thumps her own spear quietly on the damp earth. "Dunno about more interesting. There's plenty to spearwork if you work at it." Looking at hers with an appraising eye. "And this one's never cut up a demon wolf."

Those appraising, dark on dark eyes flick to Yukara. "You...chased it here? So you're not in these parts on account of invitation or some 'call' like most've us traipsin' in here from the Empire?"

[Ryoshun Yukara]

"Oh, I was summoned by Rock-sensei, if that is what you mean."

She waggled her own bisento, her usual desire to speak with her hands at odds with her new requirement to hold things with the one she had remaining. "Very vaguely, he promised I would find answers here. Having lost the trail, I decided this was as good a place to resume the search as any."

Gazing at the brass blade atop her weapon, she added, "He was right, insofar as finding my quarry. Or being found. Regardless... the matter was ended. She can harm no more, and I am cast adrift in the world once more. I will have to find myself again, now that my purpose is fulfilled." She had been rallied to the thought over the course of the day, even if she was no closer to discerning that path.

[Kaiu Tai]

"Rock-sensei...? Well, I guess that fits, thought I'm not sure he knows granite from feldspar. He did pick an ok rock to carry around though." There's little of reverence in her tone as she speaks of him. "Vague seems like what he does. Makes this whole nine champions thing feel weirdly specific. But I suppose that's prophecy for you."

"Anyway, first you'll need to get through the next week, it sounds like. Need to come out the other side alive before worryin' about your life's purpose, I'd think." She shrugs, the move feeling very deliberate as it rises from her customary stillness. "Hopefully you get a bit of sleep to help with the survivin' and that hunt for somethin' to latch onto."

[Ryoshun Yukara]

"I will try. The last night I did not rest well, so hopefully all this mending will set me to peaceful rest tonight."

Yukara sounded optimistic about it.

"As for prophecies, I confess I know little of them, or how to understand them. My teacher never focused on such things. The future will remain unknown for me - with all the promise and peril that entails." Leaning on her weapon, she shifted the weight off her feet, one and then the other, letting her stiff muscles continue to ease.

"How about you? Did you come here as well via some calling or invitation, or did you happen here by chance?"

[Kaiu Tai]

"Some of my people got callings...which I found odd and wanted to follow just to see they weren't bein' misled. Then there were rumors about some festival that was meant to help with the nightmares plaguin' everyone. Got here and ran into a fella who mentioned invites." There's a pensive tilt to her chin as she considers all the paths taken. "So whatever kept this place hidden for a bit, seems like it got cracked all sorts of ways."

"But try'n rest well. And...after hearin' of some dreams the other night that followed on all of us focusin' on fears, I'd caution that it might be good to turn our thoughts another direction." A shrug lifts and settles everything back on that solid center. "Just a suggestion."

[Ryoshun Yukara]

"Ah. A good thought, one perhaps you might share with the villagers. They had a festival event just today about focusing on fears."

A faint sigh. "I cannot make sense of this place, and I thought I knew the faces of madness from my duties - yet here there is a serenity that is perhaps every bit as unsettling."

[Kaiu Tai]

Tai nods with a small grin. "Aye, that's what had us all focusin' yesterday." She'd worry about the Bat's sense of time, but it wasn't uncommon to be a bit confused after getting injured that badly. Probably lost half a day to whatever the healer'd hopefully given her before finishing the job of taking that arm off.

"There's Yume-do bleedin' into this world here, so maybe it's not going to make sense. But the village does seem weirdly serene, neh?" She breathes deep of the annoyingly clammy fog. "Bunch of folks show up and camp in the place you've been hidden in and it doesn't seem to create any stir at all. Nobody comin' by curious what we're about...or if all these warriors are gonna cause trouble. Demon wolf and friends attack and there's not really even talk about it at the festival feast that I could tell. Shrine closed up for preparations, the whole time but...that's really bizarre. Normally you'd be using it to center the festival around." She shakes her head. "Yep. More'n a little strange."

[Ryoshun Yukara]

Yukara nodded, expression clouded.

"The shrine bothers me the most. Why block the Faithful, especially in a time where minds need to be at ease? It makes no sense."