7th Moon

The man approached Keisei. She knew what was coming, the same as every other time. He touched her, gently, at least at first. He moved his hands down her sides and held her chest, then one hand reached lower. He wasn’t holding her tightly, yet it felt too tight to Keisei. She knew that once she fought, it would get worse, so she tried to hold still. He turned her around to face him and kissed her, putting his tongue in her mouth. She definitely didn’t like this, it felt slimy and she could taste his breath. She couldn’t take it anymore, she bit down on his tongue, very hard. “Feisty, I like that.” He said with a sneer and a wicked laugh. He spanked her bottom and threw her down. She hated when they enjoyed pain and mistook her defensiveness for playing for their pleasure. She kicked back, hitting him hard in the one area she knew he wouldn’t enjoy. She turned and jumped on him hitting him until he couldn’t move. Just before he gave in to the pain, he pressed a button calling for help. Just before she struck what would be the fatal blow, the chain around her neck would yank her back, and someone would drag her back to the dungeon where she would cool off until someone wanted her again. The door closed behind her and the lights went off, but she welcomed the darkness.

Keisei awoke in a sweat in her room at the house at the shrine. It was just a nightmare, a memory of the past. Now she slept in the miko’s room, alone and safe. But she was not ready to go back to sleep just yet, for fear that the nightmare would come back again. She got up and walked outside. Her favorite spot was a pond just outside the shrine grounds where lotus grew. From here, there was a great view of the stars and the moons. She could see Seventh Moon from here, and it amazed her when she saw it to see that the place where she had spent the first eighteen years of her life suffering at the hands of one man after another, all seemed to be so small it could fit in her hand. She liked that reminder that it was far away and couldn’t hurt her anymore.

Tonight as she approached the pond, she noticed she was not alone. Hidariude was there too. He held up his hand with his index finger and thumb in front of him as he looked at the sky. “What are you doing?” she asked him.

“Pretending I was crushing the Seventh Moon between my fingers.” This got a laugh out of Keisei, she wished she could actually crush it too. “So you couldn’t sleep either?”

“I had a nightmare.”

“Me too. I had a flashback to something bad I did.”

“Anything to do with Seventh Moon?”

“That obvious? It seems like everything bad is tied to that place. The more I think about it, the more it seems like even the good things about it are all here. I hate it, and I’m so glad I left. I just came here looking for a few answers, I didn’t realize I’d find a new beginning.”

As Keisei listened she understood everything he was saying and absorbed every word. However, lost in thought she hadn’t moved a muscle since she noticed Hidariude, and now he noticed too.

“Are you just going to stand there all night?” he patted the ground next to him, “Come sit down.”

Keisei was very cautious as she sat down, keeping a little distance between her and him. They stared at the sky in silence, feeling the night breeze on their skin. Eventually it got cold enough that she began to shiver. Hidariude noticed and reached over to hug her and help keep her warm, she pulled away.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing.” Keisei said suddenly very flustered. “I’m sorry, I think I’m a little more tired than I thought, I’m going back to bed.

The next day after morning prayers when he dismissed the others to chores and training, he approached Keisei. ’You wear the robes of a miko, sleep in the room assigned to the position, and pray at her shrine, but do you know who she was? Bakeneko was a ninja, her name meant magic cat, because the few times she was seen in action, she had the grace of a cat, and her skills seemed to be like magic. She had once been a geisha known for performing the dance of the fans. Once she was hired to perform for a lecherous feudal lord who tried to take advantage of her. She tried to fight back, and by chance, she was rescued by a ninja assassin, for the noble was known to not be noble at all and one of his enemies had commissioned the assassination. The assassin realized that if he left the geisha behind she would be blamed, and the little he saw of her fighting showed potential. He trained her to use her fans as weapons and to use the flames of the candles she would set up for ambiance. Using kayakujutsu, she could turn tiny flames into deadly weapons, and she could kill without a trace of how she did it. She became the greatest kunoichi of her time, seducing her victims under the guise of a geisha. Then she happened upon the golden dragon, the peaceful monk, and the one-armed ronin. She had tired of killing for hire, finding it every bit as distasteful as the lie she perpetuated as a geisha that she had been using as a cover. She decided to retire from both professions and become a miko, using her skills only when necessary in service of the dragon, to protect the shrine and her friends. She passed her responsibilities on to her daughter, and so on and so forth for generations. The last of that line was my wife Sakura, bless her soul.”

Ryu paused for a moment for a silent prayer for his late wife. Keisei thought about what Ryu said, and she found herself relating to the legend of Bakeneko, finding many parallels between their lives. She found herself wishing she had that strength. Ryu finished his prayer and noticed Keisei was still lost in thought. “You know if you’d like, I could train you to take up the mantle of the shrine maiden. My wife shared with me all that she knew. I haven’t practiced any of it myself, but I can teach you the basics and then you can study on your own.”

Keisei nodded in agreement.

“Good. We will start with calligraphy. The walls of these shrines used to be covered with ofuda, slips of paper with prayers written on them. The miko is responsible for writing these prayers. You must learn the kanji for each of the kami so that you may invoke their blessings. You must also know the kanji for your own name, as ofuda require a signature of both the kami and the representative of the shrine writing it.”

Keisei looked confused. “I thought you were going to teach me to fight, using fans and fire.”

“Yes, I will, but trust me, this is the first step. It’s not very difficult, there are only a few kanji you really need to know, at least for this stage of training and I trust you should be able to write them by the end of the day. First I will show you how to write them, then you will copy them until you can write them from memory.” He went to the cupboard where he kept the training weapons and picked up a bottle of ink, a brush, and a small stack of paper. He then sat down at their dining table, dipped the brush in the ink and scrawled the following kanji:

“The first kanji is Shinryuu, the second is Nyudo, the third is Kyutsume, the fourth is Bakeneko, the fifth is Keisei, your name, and the sixth and final kanji is fire.” Keisei’s eyes lit up when she heard him say the last kanji was for fire. “Yes, for the kunoichi’s miko to use fire, she must be able to write it on an ofuda. Practice writing the kanji, and when you can be trusted with the precision to write all of these kanji properly, I will teach you how to conjure and manipulate fire with kayakujutsu.”

Keisei eagerly began practicing her calligraphy. Her first draft was rough and she missed a few strokes. When she remembered all the strokes, some were too long and others were blurred together. It took her all day and the entire stack of paper she had been given to achieve perfection.

“Good,” Ryu said at last, “Now tomorrow I will show you how to use this for kayakujutsu.”

Keisei was so excited she could hardly sleep that night. When she did, she had sweet dreams, now when the men came for her, a wall of fire would rise up between them and protect her.

The next day, Ryu got the ink brush, but then he brought out a different bottle of ink and a different kind of paper. As yesterday, he wrote the kanji on the paper, then held the slip of paper between his index and middle fingers and recited an incantation, “Kayakujutsu ignite!” The paper lit up and he flicked his hand throwing a small fireball as he did.

Keisei clapped her hands and smiled with delight.

“The key is the ink, it contains vitriol. When you use it to write on this cotton paper it creates flash paper, which will ignite when it dries. Honestly the kanji are more for artistic flair, though it has been the traditional medium of this school of kayakujutsu. Since it’s so volatile, you need to be able to write quickly. Precise timing with writing is incredibly important to make sure you throw it before it ignites, yet give it enough time to dry so you don’t throw it too soon either. The real challenge of this art is getting that timing down. If you don’t, well you burn your hands. It’s a discipline that teaches itself.”

Keisei proceeded to practice throwing fire. She did burn her fingers the first few times, but eventually she got a good rhythm down.

“Good, you’ve got the timing to not burn yourself, now for the really hard part, learning to direct it. It looks impressive at first, but for our purposes, you need to have complete control so you can put the flames where you want.”

Keisei continued to practice fire throwing. Ryu continued to watch her progress. He could tell by how sharply she flicked her hand, the line of her arm, the steadiness of her stance, and most obviously, how loud she grunted when she faltered. He had a plan to get her form corrected, but first, he needed to see how far she could get without assistance.

The next day, Keisei was eager to continue her training in kayakujutsu, but Ryu had other plans. This time, instead of gathering the ink, paper, and brush, he got her a pair of fans. “Today you begin tessenjutsu, the art of the fan. Your form needs work and learning to fight with fans should do the trick.” Keisei looked skeptical. “I used to train with my wife and she used fans to duel with my sword. It does take some skill, even more when you use kayakujutsu at the same time, but it is very possible, and I suspect there is some satisfaction to be had when you can hold your own against a steel blade with a pair of paper fans.”

Keisei practiced form with Ryu all day. It really didn’t feel as powerful as throwing fire, and it seemed like a step backward to her. Most of the time it just seemed like she was dancing, which seemed very weak.

“Is something wrong Keisei?” Ryu asked when he noticed her frustration.

“I feel so weak doing this. Are you sure this is a fighting style?”

“You feel that way because you’re not doing it right. Hold your arms more firmly. Feet flat, back straight. You need to move those fans as if the wind could knock down mountains. But if you need a visual aid, I have another training method. Stay right here.” Ryu walked away for a moment and returned with an armful of candles and set them up around the perimeter of the training ground and lit each one. “Stand in the center and blow out the candles using only the fan. When you master that kind of force, then I will move you on to the next stage of training.”

Keisei found it to be more difficult than she thought. With the wave of a fan, she could make a flame flicker, but not blow out. She waved more forcefully, and finally with a good stiff and firm wave, the first candle went out. Repeating this feat was also harder than she thought, because she was getting tired from the effort she had put into the first one. It was sheer determination and force of will that allowed her to accomplish anything. In the end she was strong enough to put out each of the candles, but she was exhausted.

“That will do for today, tomorrow we will use lanterns.”

“What’s the difference?” Keisei asked, exasperated, sweating and out of breath.

“Larger flames, so you’ll have to have to put more force into your fan.”

Keisei still faced training with a lot of enthusiasm, though she started to understand how Hidariude had felt during his plum flower post training. She was tempted to use both fans to get more force, or lean closer to make it easier, but every time she did, Ryu would catch her, remind her to correct her posture and relight the lantern.

“The point isn’t to put out the flame, it’s to get form correct.” he reminded her, “The flame is merely a measure of progress. If you cheat, you are getting nothing out of the training.”

Keisei sighed, shrugged, and went back to practice. It took her until sunset, but as the last red ray sank below the horizon, she fanned out the last flame. She was thoroughly exhausted and her arms were so sore, she didn’t think she could lift them at all. In fact, she found she couldn’t even lift her chop sticks to feed herself dinner. Hidariude had to help her, feeding her himself. Part of her felt really bad about this, but she was too exhausted to care, or for that matter to even understand why she didn’t want to be fed by someone else. Ryu even felt so bad, he gave her a day off, allowing her to rest while everybody else handled chores.

By noon, Keisei felt good enough to get herself out of bed and drag herself down to the lotus pond. Sitting by the pond helped her relax. She felt the breeze and listened to the rustle over the lotus petals. It was very subtle, too quiet for normal people to hear, but just on the edge of the range of her feline ears. As she settled into a meditative state, she heard footsteps behind her. It was Hidariude, and he had brought rice cakes.

Keisei was startled and asked him “What are you doing here? Don’t you have chores to do?”

“Yes,” Hidariude answered, “But it’s lunch time, so I made some rice cakes so we could eat together down here. I figured you were hungry and I could use the break. Here, have a rice cake.” He handed her one with his right hand while eating one with his cyber hand. Keisei was hesitant, but she took it anyway and sat an arm’s length away from him. He raised an eyebrow at her, and sat down in a huff. “It’s not poison.” He stared out over the water, trying to find the same Zen feeling Keisei had a moment ago. Keisei stared at him while they ate, and he continued to look away. When he finished his rice cake, he clapped the crumbs off of his hands and stood up to walk away. “Have a nice day.”

Keisei spent the rest of the day contemplating Hidariude. She knew he wanted her, but he was acting different than every other man she ever knew. Everyone else seemed to just come and get her when they wanted her and do what they wanted and she hated that they never considered what she wanted. But he didn’t seem to be the same way. He didn’t seem to know what he wanted, he just showed up and when she flinched, he stopped. She liked that he didn’t come on too strong, but it confused her too. She had no idea what to do with a man who wanted her enough to be near her, but not enough to do what he wanted. The whole situation made no sense at all, it made her very uncomfortable.

The discomfort was an issue that had to be faced the next day, because Ryu’s next step in training was to have them train together. “I used to spar with my wife, the old shrine miko. She would use her fans and I would use my sword. It was very effective training for us, and I suspect it will be good for you too.” He handed them their weapons and told them to begin.

Hidariude took his stance, holding his sword with both hands at a forty-five degree angle to his body. Keisei responded by mirroring his feet and holding one fan directly in front of her to defend her midsection so she could easily block higher or lower without leaving either top or bottom too vulnerable, her other fan held back perpendicular to the other so that she could follow a parry with a strike. Hidariude could see how she was positioned and that a direct strike would fail, so he feinted. She took the bait, swatting his sword away with one fan and striking him with the other. However, he had been careful to draw her block high and brought his sword down under the first fan so he could block the second. Seeing that her primary attack was foiled she improvised by striking with the first fan that he had let go of to block her. He had to swing his sword back and forth to parry her fans as she went constantly alternated her defensive and offensive hands. Finally, Hidariude figured out how he could draw her fans low, dodge the offensive strike, spin his sword around to hold both fans down, twirl the blade around underneath the fans to lift them high and then quickly bring the sword to point at her neck. “That’s one for me.”

They went back and forth like this for the rest of the day. Surprisingly neither of them got tired, even though they put forth full effort, they relied almost entirely on adrenaline. That night, they found it difficult to sleep, still hyped up from the duel. Both went out to the lotus pond, though they had not intended to meet there. Keisei was surprised to see Hidariude, and she stopped and stayed back before he saw her, but it didn’t work. “I know you’re there, you can come out. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“How did you know I was here?” Keisei asked, very surprised, “I tried to be as quiet as possible.”

“After spending all day with you, I can sense your presence. It’s how I fight, a sort of sixth sense, I feel you coming.”

“Great,” Keisei joked, “Now how am I supposed to get any alone time?”

“Why do you want to be alone?” Hidariude asked.

“What do you mean? Aren’t I entitled to some me time?”

“Everyone else here is trying to stick together and you’re the only one pulling away. I’m learning to fight because it’s tradition and it makes me part of something bigger. But when I fight you, I can tell you are actually trying to repel me away. You fight with the goal of defeating me, and by focusing your fighting on that, you fail to see my weaknesses. I focus on the battle at hand, instead of being distracted by the goal, I see you. When we were back on Seventh Moon, you seemed to like me, but ever since we left, you seem to be running away, trying to get away from me. Why?”

“It’s not you specifically, I’m just trying to get away.”

“Get away from what?”

“It’s really hard to talk about. I just did some really bad things back on Seventh Moon, things I didn’t want to do, but I had to, they made me. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t understand?” Hidariude echoed, “I killed people. For as long as I can remember I was trained to fight all day every day conditioned for one purpose, all leading up to the day I helped slaughter a village with Kichiku. That was the day we met Douji. We watched him cry over his mother as she died. We listened to her last words as she drew her last breath. We were covered in the blood of everyone he knew and cared about. Ryu trained us to do that and it wasn’t until we saw Douji cry that we realized the price we had to pay for Seventh Moon. That’s why we’re here now, that’s why we pray every day, to cleanse ourselves of the sins of Seventh Moon. Believe me, if there is anyone who can understand what it’s like to regret the terrible things you did for Seventh Moon, it’s the three of us. I don’t know what you did, and I’m not saying it’s not as bad as what we did, but I can’t imagine it’s that much worse.”

Keisei hung her head, her ears lay flat against her head, and her tail drooped. She approached the water and sat down on the edge. “I was a whore.”

“What?” Hidariude asked. “I’ve only been educated on matters of war and, since I got here, spirituality and balance. I am not familiar with the concept of ‘whore’.”

“It means I was used for pleasure. The perverts who created us thought it would be fun to make us look like animals because they were into that sort of thing, and for our whole lives, we were used as they saw fit. They touched us, whether we wanted it or not, and we usually didn’t. They touched us girls in places…inside.” She gestured toward her pelvis and started to cry. “It hurt. A lot. The more I fought them the worse it got, the more I suffered, the more they enjoyed it. That was my life, and I hated it, I hated myself.”

“And I remind you of that?” Hidariude asked, “Do I make you think of those men?”

“Yes.” Keisei muttered, “You were an escape. You weren’t much and I had no idea what you could possibly do, but I was desperate.”

“I understand. I really do.” Hidariude said as he sat down next to her, “It hasn’t been easy for any of us to adjust here. If you look over the horizon you can see what’s left of the village we destroyed. All we think of is how we are killers… were killers. We practice fighting because it’s all we know, but thanks to Ryu, we now know we can use that power to protect those we love instead of hurt them. Still, trusting that we can be near someone else safely… It’s kind of the opposite problem, but now it makes sense why we have been here for almost two years and it hasn’t been until now we are actually having a conversation. We’re both scared of each other, and ourselves. But you need to understand, I’m not like those guys at Seventh Moon, I’m like you. They treated us like things, but we’re not just things, we’re people. We both need to let go of the past and get a fresh start, let’s have that start together.”

Keisei looked at Hidariude and saw him stare across the water like he had done the day before. Now that she had opened up to him and heard what he had to say, she understood. He wasn’t approaching her like the other guys because he wasn’t thinking like them. He didn’t understand doing anything for his own pleasure, like her, he was conditioned to fulfill duty. He actually wasn’t sure what to do with her because he literally did not know what to do with her. So now she decided to show him.

She took his cybernetic hand in hers, and kissed his elbow, then kissed the top of his arm four more times as she worked her way down to his hand, then kissed his hand three times, once on each of the retracted blades, and finally, sucked on his index finger, holding his hand up so that she could look him in the eye. The entire maneuver was meant to disarm him, rendering the most dangerous part of him absolutely harmless, and she could see from the bewildered look on his face that it worked. As she pulled his finger out of her mouth slowly with one hand, she smiled, took his other hand and put it on her chest.

“I feel your heartbeat, it’s racing.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at this. As she laughed her breasts bounced in his hand and he found he enjoyed this, though he had no idea why. She suddenly realized, he really wasn’t going to hurt her. She didn’t know until this very moment, not every man got pleasure the same way, and maybe he could enjoy her company without being a threat. She kissed him on the lips and rested her head against his chest.

Hidariude felt himself seem to slip into a bit of a trance and without even thinking about what he was doing, he reached his right hand behind her head and scratched her right between her ears. It felt good to her, for the first time in her life, she felt pleasure, and she actually felt comfortable with a man. She felt so good, she began to purr. Hidariude laughed and she blushed. “That’s… that’s cute.”

They fell back on the grass and looked at the stars. They saw Seventh Moon up there, so far away, and a cloud passed over it blocking it from view. In this moment of peace, finally relaxed, the rigors of the day caught up to them and they fell asleep right there.

The next morning, they awoke with the sunrise. They suddenly felt flustered, though they had no idea why, and rushed back to the house for breakfast. When they got there, Ryu saw them and could tell what they had been up to. He said nothing and let them sit down to breakfast and handed them each a bowl of rice and a cup of tea. He smiled and laughed a little. “Young love.” was all Ryu said.

“Love?” Hidariude said, completely confused as he had never heard the word before. “Is that what this is?”

Keisei, with her women’s intuition, was a step ahead of Hidariude. She responded by holding his hand and smiling, “Yes, love.”

“Love.” Hidariude smiled back.

After that night, Hidariude and Keisei were inseparable. They ate together, prayed together, did chores together, and slept together. When they trained they were more in sync too. Ryu could see that they could anticipate each other’s actions and defend, block, parry, and attack with flawless form.

The next day, Ryu called everyone to the main shrine after morning prayers. “Keisei, you have made great progress in your training as a miko, just as Hidariude and Kichiku have come along in their training. As such, we now finally have a full trio of shrine attendants and we can unseal the main shrine. Hidariude, Kichiku, Keisei, come here and place your hands on the door and repeat after me: ‘Oh Shinryuu, great Golden Dragon, we present ourselves as your champions. Let us enter your home.’”

They did as they were told and the door opened. Inside they saw a statue of a dragon made of gold standing as tall as Kichiku. It held a sword in its hands. Ryu pulled a rope with three pieces of zigzagged paper hanging from it out of his robe and placed it around the dragon’s neck and took the sword. Ryu turned around and handed the sword to Hidariude. “This is the Shinryuu Masamune, the sacred sword of the Golden Dragon. With this, I pass my legacy on to you.”