Okano Rin is reborn into a land of perpetual rain. There aren't words for the experience. There isn't room enough for them in the sheer overwhelming stimuli of being returned to a human body.
Wherever she had been, she'd become accustomed to the lack of physical form, the utter absence of sense and sensation. There was a somewhere after, and there was a sense of before. And then there was simply being. No true sense of dimension was present to give it name, only a vague feeling of directionality. She knew in that time that if she stayed, she would slowly disappear, and in time the choice of After of Before would be made for her.
She did not want that.
After, or Before
She pushed away, pulled from that other place of forgetfulness. She made her choice, and here she was, thrust from beyond back into existence.
Blood and bone and so many damn nerve endings. She didn't think she'd ever bear the sheer overwhelming presence of the world around her. But she did, and here she was. Alive once more, all fumbling limbs and gurgled noises. The local language was incredibly similar to what she recognized as Japanese. A name of a language she could remember when she had to pause and consider what her old one was. The idiosyncrasies of newly reformed human existence.
Her early days were spent with sleepless nights and frequent visits in daylight hours to a rotating cast of older faces, men and women alike who'd invariably poke and prod at her. The constant rain outside, coupled with her infant's sleep schedule, makes much of her first months feel like a waking dream.
As she sleeps she dreams of the woman she used to be & the life she once led. It feels like cheating, having these memories. A life already lived, skills cultivated and talents honed. Most of these she tucks away.
As Rin grew older and learned to better contextualize the world around her, she learned two things. First, she was quiet. Far too quiet. Second, that she was sickly.
Pale, even by the local standards, and possessed of shallow breath. So shallow, in fact, that her parents woke her in the night to ensure she was still breathing. No cause could ever seem to be determined. Anemia was the most often suggested, but no treatment seemed to take. She was considered to be behind developmentally.
Well, she thought, at least that much was the same.
She wriggles endlessly when awake. Her father, a tall dark-haired man named Katsuo dubs her his little snake, his hebi-chan. Her mother, Michiru, admonishes him for likening their child to a reptile, but her voice belied an undertone of humor. In time, she starts using the nickname as well.
While doctors claim she is behind in development, she hits many milestones early. Crawling, then walking just after her first birthday. She follows her parents everywhere she can.
Her father is a machinist, buying metals from traveling merchants and reshaping it. Most of his trade is farming tools with occasional odd bits of smithing work building various replacement parts. Her mother works the trade as well, and there is a consistent presence of tools & the scent of grease and oil in their home. Her parents alternate days depending on their work queue.
Rin explores her home on tottering legs. The house was a strange amalgamation of concrete and hardwood. The walls, all curved and arcing into the domed ceiling, were sealed with a sort of rubber, same as the windows. Cables and pipes are fixed to the surface of walls rather than being hidden within. There is an impression of a building molded in concrete before being finished with more inviting surfaces.
The first window she is tall enough to see her own reflection in teaches her much. She is a round-faced child with charcoal-colored hair. Rin makes a surprised noise that makes her mother laugh. She is surprised to see her eyes are a bright shade of magenta, closer to purple than red. It is her father's eye color, much as her hair matches her mother. Hair and eye color are strangely varied here compared to what she knew, but no one seems to find it remarkable. Her own father has green hair so dark you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for black or brown.
There are so many strange inconsistencies. There is indoor plumbing as well as electricity (although not in every room). Oil lamps are stored on shelves next to hand-crank flashlights. Her parent's tools are varied, some suggesting they were crafted by hand, while others bear the telltale signs of mass-manufacture. There are bound books in the family room next to scrolls. But as in most things, she becomes accustomed to the anachronisms.
She learns in time she lives in a village named Ōkura. This is the surname of the man who built the small-scale hydroelectric generator which fuels the village by way of a nearby river. Not bad for a village whose main industry is watercress farming.
When Rin is with her mother, Michiru does her best to talk as frequently as possible. Rin is two now, and it is expected she will speak. Michiru, as far as she can surmise, hopes that her constant prompts will entice her to speak. Rin obliges, stumbling through her words. She hopes this will satisfy her mother into leaving her be, but instead it only eggs her on. Rin feels a bit too much like those doctors' visits, all poking and prodding.
Her father is not a verbose man, but he teaches her in his own way. He sees her pull books off the shelf when alone, scrunching her face as she tries to understand their contents. The books have complex diagrams, and she suspects it will be long before she understands them.
Katsuo sweeps her up, fearful for the paper in the hands of a frustrated two year old. As he swiftly returns the book to the shelf, she is confident she has angered him. But the following day he gifts her with a variety of children's books. They have a coarse and worn feel, and she is confident he has traded for them amongst Ōkura's residents.
Rin learns the rudiments of romanji, and by age three she is literate and working on her own handwriting. Michiru is over the moon. Her little girl, so intelligent and bright. (that she has also proven the various traveling doctors wrong goes unspoken). Rin doesn't want to think of her mother as frustrating. It is far too early in her life for animosity. But Michiru rarely lacks for enthusiasm or energy. When she gets an idea in her mind she fixates until a new focus emerges. This much Rin can understand and relate to.
Childhood is full of more discomfiture than she remembers, itching muscles and bones as she grows. But she is grateful. She does not know where she is. It could be her old world, certainly. Everyone is human enough and she's yet to see any wildlife that stand out from the fauna of her first life. When she asks what year it is, she receives a confusing answer; she is told her own age. No one seems to be able to give her a coherent answer. There is a seven day week, a twelve-month calendar. It is ostensibly the Gregorian calendar, but no one has language to articulate or explain it. If the local shrine is any indicator, the catholic church has no influence here.
Rin settles for asking where she is. Ōkura, her father reiterates. She asks where is Ōkura. Ame no kuni, she is told. She tries to ask where that is before she is shooed out of the workshop. It's a fitting name for the region, considering the seemingly endless flow of water from the clouds overhead.
Later, Michiru says she will seek a book of geography for her. She speaks of education, of finding a place for their daughter to learn. She is convinced her daughter is a genius. This unsettles her father, but she is unsure why. She supposes he wants an apprentice. There are few children in Ōkura, and those precious few are older than her by several years. But even then, she largely keeps to herself.
By age four, she is allowed in the machine shop, provided she stays at the small desk her parents share. She wears a pair of protective earmuffs as he runs the lathe and similar equipment. Her mother continues to insist on her brilliance. As she draws close to her fifth birthday, she spends most of her time reading.
Her parents no longer parade her out for either the town healer or traveling doctors for anything save routine check-ups. She recalls one final incident. The doctor, his name long forgotten, simply dubbed her general silence as a sign of what can only be repeated politely as a mental ineptitude. The man went on to explain it was in the village's collective interest that she not bear any children when she came of age, lest she pass on her "ailments."
Rin piped up from her place on the makeshift office floor.
"Is that why you don't have any children?"
…The man's furious blush was easily worth the spanking that came afterwards.
Her father, seemingly in tradition with fathers everywhere, chokes on a combination of laughter and tea when Michiru relays the incident. As first complete sentences went, it left something to be desired. But it was confirmation she could and would, if motivated, speak. While her father never explicitly stated his amusement, he did offer her a warning.
"You've a barbed tongue, hebi-chan." He says. "Be careful you aim it at someone liable to cut it out." He punctuates this last part with a twist of the screwdriver in his hand, making an almost scooping motion with grim implications. It's a morbid thing to say to a four year old, but there is no humor in it. It's the same tone he uses when warning her of the various tools and devices in the shop. For the intense emphasis on formality in this land, Rin suspects he is being quite literal.
Michiru, true to form, takes the idea of etiquite and runs with it. She decides that her daughter will be a courtly lady. A woman of the Daimyō's court. But this is one of many previous fixations, and one that will likely pass as well.
Privately, this disheartens Rin. She could have done worse for a new life, but the presence of feudalism doesn't bode well.
Michiru already insists that if Rin will not have a formal education, she will seek one herself. She fixates on the written word as a means to achieve this. Most of her shared library with her husband is trade reference, all too advanced for her daughter. Rin, herself not an engineer in her previous life, does not push the issue. The missing tips on her father's ring and pinkie fingers do not incentivize a life of a tradesman.
But history texts are, apparently, the purview of the wealthy. None manage to enter her grasp. Medical texts (healing is another one of her mother's ambitions for her) are similarly scarce. The single reference book she does obtain is an aged scroll on the treatment of unbalanced humors by way of bloodletting. This holds Rin's interest, but the complexity of the language within shows plainly the author expected the reader to have an extant education in medicine.
For her fifth birthday, she receives a crate of books. Rin doesn't think she's ever seen her mother more excited and full of pride. They're old, and more than a few are water-damaged. But this is Ame no Kuni, and finding anything that hasn't seen at least a little bit of water is about as easy as finding a dry stone outside on the open ground.
A merchant came through town a few months back, one of many whose route included Ōkura. Her mother got the entire crate at a discount, and had eagerly been sitting on it since. Rin thanks her okāsan and otōsan, and together they enjoy a treat of wagashi.
She feels, not for the first time in this life, genuinely happy. Considering her old life, she doesn't entirely know what to do with the sensation.
A few weeks later, her mother tells her she is to see Matsuma Mako, the local midwife. Depending on how it goes, Rin may apprentice to her. Not every healer specializes in women's health, and her own insight and intelligent make her a natural fit. Rin is surprised to find herself feeling excited. She can think of more than a few worse fates than being a healer.
Reincarnation in a small farming village. None of the pressures of her previous life are present, none of its vices. Well, all except alcohol, but at five years old its presence doesn't even register. Rin thinks that this time around, she will avoid that particular beast. dShe begins to question the value of even holding on to those old memories. Maybe she is better off forgetting that woman she once was. As the days go on, she thinks she will be happy to live this new life of hers.
While she does not yet know it, the world has other plans for Okano Rin.