Raijin and Fuujin.

The green and pleasant fields seemed to pass swiftly by as the sunshine and fresh air moved the young man along at a comfortable, but reasonable pace. He stopped just a half mile before the border between his home country and his destination and made a spot of lunch from half a flagon of elderflower cordial, a couple of slightly stale scones and a lump of cheese. There was a mushroom pasty also sat in his knapsack, but he was saving that for later as it would be his last meal before reaching the walls of Camelot.

Few people passed him while he sat and ate his lunch, those that did were travelling back the way he'd come and had he been a smidgen brighter this might have concerned him, but as it was it didn't and he waved cheerily to them as they passed. A couple of them even waved back and stopped to have a little chat. The young man explained that he was going to visit someone in the Castle, that they were a friend of his mother's but that they'd never met so he wasn't sure how he would find them. The travellers told him that King Kramer – the reigning monarch of Camelot he guessed – was a fair king but rarely sighted these days. They said his son was brave but that palace life had corrupted a person who could probably have turned out alright otherwise.

The thought of the conversations sustained him as he crossed the border between the countries and carried on his merry way. He picked a few flowers as he walked, wondering if he ought to collect some tomorrow to present to his mother's friend – whom he was given to understand was a woman of quite some knowledge and experience.

The flower problem occupied all corners of his mind and as he wandered he began to pick the petals from his flowers in contemplation – give her some flowers, don't give her some flowers. In the end, the last petal told him to give her some flowers and make a nice impression. The sun dipped below the horizon and he made a little camp just off the road, fireless in case of bandits, and munched on his pasty. It had gone a little soggy through the day, but he didn't mind because it tasted just fine. The rest of the flagon of cordial washed it down and he curled up in the earthy loam to sleep.

The next day brought more sunshine and unseasonably hot weather – it was March and only just spring after all. Getting up was a little difficult this morning and without anything to eat to give him energy or anything to drink to cool him down the walk was uncomfortably hot and tiresome. By dusk however he had arrived at the walls of Camelot, hot, sticky and dusty. The first thing he did was to fill up his flagon from the well and pour it over himself. It earnt him a few strange looks, a few chuckles from behind hands as he blew the last droplets from the tip of his nose, but he didn't mind, it was refreshing.

It took him a little while to locate the quarters of the court physician but upon finding it he discovered no one to be home, but the door unlocked. Thinking very little of it as this was the place he was meant to be he took off his knapsack and began to look around while he waited for whomever to return home. He was just inspecting a bookcase – containing various encyclopaedias on apothecaria when a quiet cough from overhead drew his attention.

A woman was looking down at him from the rafters, a strange blade held in her hand and levelled at his head. He recoiled against the bookcase at the sight. Suddenly afraid that this was not the room he thought it was, or that he had just stumbled upon an assassin – she had the look of an assassin, sleek black clothing, thin belts around her hips carrying various pouches and a row of little daggers, gleaming silver hair bound tightly into a bun and an eye-patch – he covered his head with both hands and garbled "I'm 'ere to see the court physician, ya know! I'm sorry!"

There came an aggravated sigh and then, "NAME?"

"Raijin." He replied, eyes clamped shut and hands digging into his own hair, gripping it.

"SURNAME?"

"I don't have one, ya know."

A bated paused. "CLAN?"

Clan? What was a clan? Did she mean his village? His country? "Err, Ealdor?"

She gave an irritated click of her tongue and a soft thud indicated that she had abandoned the rafters. Raijin risked a peek between his fingers and saw that her hand was outstretched. He took it tentatively and they shook hands.

"FUUJIN." She said, "COURT PHYSICIAN. CROWN PROTECTORATE."

He breathed a hearty sigh of relief and cracked a smile before recalling the letter in his knapsack and scurrying over to retrieve it. Fuujin watched him with one eyebrow raised and only took the letter he offered after he clarified it was from his mother. She slit it open with the strange blade – it looked like an ordinary knife, only it was bent in the middle like the corner of a picture frame or something – and looked inside, reading only the first few lines before stowing the blade on her belt and rolling the letter, envelope and all, up and putting it in one of the pouches.

"DINNER?"

"Not yet, Ma'am. I only just got here, ya know."

She rolled her eyes and signalled for him to sit down at the table while she would get him something to eat. He gazed about as he was waiting. The office was extremely spacious, far more spacious than anything he was used to. It looked to be about the same as the house he shared with his mother – around 20 meters long by 6 meters wide, around about - and this was only one room. Another door lead off to the back and it wouldn't have surprised him if there was even more back there than there was out here. Certainly Fuujin had disappeared off to somewhere he couldn't see so there was much more here than met the eye. And what met the eye was very little indeed. He had expected a physician's office to be a cluttered affair, filled with books and plants and off things in bottles, their contents murky and the bottles themselves covered in dust. The tables – there would be many – would be littered with writing equipment, vials, pestle and mortar half filled with some medicine, perhaps some of it would have spilt across the table whilst it was being administered. Research projects would be everywhere and there would be no place to sit.

As it was, this office resembled nothing like the one in his mind. For a start there was only one table and two chairs. There was a blank piece of paper on the table and no writing equipment that he could see. Along one wall stood a line of bookshelves with their books in an ordered array – sorted alphabetically by title as far as he could tell – and along the other were shelves of empty containers. The place looked like it had no one living in it and – had Raijin not been forced to look up earlier – he might have believed that it was so. The only place which would reasonably suggest inhabitance was the rafters. They were dotted with objects, from jars with insects buzzing about inside, to piles of cloth neatly folded and arranged in a sort of wooden cage. Plants hung from hooks in the rafters, drying out for future use and one rafter sported a row of tiny daggers, perfectly in line. Odd.

Fuujin returned – from apparently nowhere – with a pot of tea and a bowl of apple and parsnip soup on a tray. She also produced a loaf of crusty bread and put the lot down on the table in front of her guest. "EAT." She said, then turned her back and walked away. Raijin watched – pouring some tea into the cup provided – as Fuujin climbed the first three layers of a stack of shelves, then launched herself at the rafters like a cat. She caught them and swung herself up gracefully, standing and wandering along them to the pile of cloth and extracting what he assumed to be linen.

The soup was divine and the bread so soft it almost felt like he was eating a cloud. It had just enough crunch to the crust to make it good soup-dipping bread though and he was enjoying it so much that before he knew it he'd eaten the whole loaf. Granted it wasn't particularly big, but he hoped she wasn't intending on having it for tomorrow's breakfast or she'd be sorely disappointed.

When she returned from the rafters, she was holding a number of things; a feather pillow; some linin; a broom; and a long-handled brush. She landed on the table with a thud, feet either side of his dinner things and rattling the table. "FOLLOW." She commanded as she leapt to the floor.

Grabbing his knapsack, Raijin did as he was bidden, following Fuujin to the door that led to the back of her quarters and opening it for her at her request. The back – he was a little relieved to find – was quite small. It consisted of nothing more than a room full of empty sacking and some old spider's webs, their previous inhabitants now nothing more than little shrivelled shells. Fuujin passed him the broom and told him to "SWEEP" while she went about making a suitable bed out of the sacking, tucking them under many layers of linin, thicker at one end than they were the other and with the pillow to indicate at which end his head should go. Once she was finished she disappeared again, leaving him to his sweeping.

Setting the broom up against the wall, he inspected the bed. It was very squashy and would probably come apart quite quickly if he wriggled about too much, but the linin she'd provided was soft and smooth – apparently never being used particularly regularly or for any great length of time. Another thing that was odd, but he wasn't given much time to dwell on it because Fuujin returned and commanded him to follow her once again.

This time he could see the passageway quite clearly. It was cut into the wall in such a way that you only noticed it was there if you were standing at the back of the room. It disappeared between two sets of shelves and came immediately upon a set of stairs that led to a lower level. The lower level was a good size, not as big as the main room upstairs but bigger than the backroom. It was illuminated by the light of a fire burning in a kitchen grill and there was a lot more down here than there was upstairs. The table that sat down here was long and covered in things, mostly vegetables and a few bowls of other food stuffs, but there was a bucket full of soapy water and his dinner things – which he hadn't noticed that she had removed. On the far wall there was a weapon-rack, bristling with the most gruesome looking weapons he'd ever seen. Some of them he would have had trouble conjuring in his nightmares. In front of this though sat, rather dauntingly, a bathtub full of hot soapy water. On a stool next to it sat a bar of soap and the long-handled brush she'd been carrying earlier.

So this was where she bathed? In front of such a horrifying display of metal? In the semi-darkness of the fire-light? He wasn't sure what he thought of that, but supposed it was probably better if he didn't think anything of it at all, let alone allow the images of a naked female assassin bathing in the company of her tools of murder. At least she was kind enough to run him a bath.

"SOAP. BRUSH." She said, pointing to the objects as she listed them, "TOWELS. WASH. RELAX. SLEEP." And then, without any further ado, she turned around and made for the stairs to return above ground.

"Err, thank you!" Raijin said loudly, clasping his hands behind his back and throwing her a goofy smile as her singular eye turned on him. "For the food and the bath, ya know. I really appreciate it!"

She nodded, said "GOOD NIGHT" and then left. He turned and eyed the weaponry. What to do? He almost felt like they were staring at him. He'd never been in the company of so many weapons before. In fact the closest he'd ever come to a weapon was a breadknife! He wasn't sure he fancied stripping off in front of them.

Shuffling about a bit, wondering what to do, he finally settled on completing the task with his eyes shut so as not to have to look at them. Getting his clothes off was the easy part, but as soon as he stepped into the bath, his eyes would stay shut no longer. It was heaven! It was just what he needed after so long travelling. He didn't think he'd ever felt something this good! His entire body surrounded by this much warmth… It was… Unreal! They had never had a bathtub in his mother's house so washing had involved ladling warm water over his head and scrubbing at his hair with scentless soap and a stiff comb. It had never been fun and although he enjoyed being clean the process had never inspired much affection. This however… He could get used to this.

The knots that had appeared in his muscles over the long walk just seemed to untangle themselves and the longer he sat there and relaxed, the more jelly-like his muscles seemed to go. He soaped himself up before he had the chance to forget what he was here for and scrubbed with the brush like he'd never scrubbed before. It was just the most divine feeling and the soap Fuujin provided him with smelt wonderful! Like a field of flowers in the summer, sweet and succulent. Part of him wondered what the soap would taste like, but he'd just had a full meal so he would refrain from eating her soap. The brush was soft bristled and he took great pleasure in scrubbing his shoulders and the back of his neck, revelling in the itchy feeling it left in its wake and the wondrous sensation of getting rid of that.

When he had finally soaked to his heart's content he clambered out of the now-tepid bathwater and picked up one of the surprising soft and fluffy bath-towels and began drying off with it. He took his time, enjoying the soft material on his thoroughly scrubbed skin, not even caring that the gruesome array of weaponry was still bristling at him from the wall. The bathwater was disgusting and he felt a little guilty for having to leave it for her to find in the morning, but he didn't know what else to do with it. Where was he supposed to empty it out? Did she expect him to haul it upstairs and empty it outside in nothing but a towel? Oh… That was another thing. His clean clothing was in his knapsack upstairs and the only clothing he had down here were so disgusting he was determined not to wear them until they'd been thoroughly washed. He heaved a sigh as his fate became clear. He was going to have to go upstairs and sneak into his backroom in nothing but a towel.

He gathered up his dirty clothing and began towards the stairs, casting a backwards glance over his shoulder to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. The worst way he could possibly make a name for himself was to present Fuujin with a bath full of dirty water and a manky pair of his pants on her kitchen floor. He'd have to kill himself to get over that…

Luckily for him he encountered no one on his trip to his room and was able to change into his clean underwear in peace. He slipped in between the linin sheets and sleep claimed him almost immediately.

Some hours later, he awoke to the sound of his name being called. A feminine voice, croaky from age and lack of use eased him from his slumber. "Raijin…"


A/N: Please leave a review and tell me what you think of it :)

-Lapin