The morning came, and the girls again went out to find food, or what they hoped was food. With better light, it was much easier, and they gathered in the water room to examine their finds: nuts, berries, shelf fungi and mushrooms, and they still had much of the meat from the evening. Aji looked it over. "I think we should keep the nuts for when we start travelling again. We'll eat the rest today," and Ashi approved the plan. So they cooked more meat, and ate it with their new finds, then shelled the nuts, vanishing the nut-meat into their shadows; the hulls went into the fire. Then they went out again to continue learning the area, then dashed back as their guts clenched up. Each in her own semi-screened niche outside the vast temple, they emptied themselves from both ends, unable to go more than few steps before having to bend over again.
As the sun lowered itself from sight, the girls prayed apart, unable to stand long enough to find each other, still wracked with spasms. Yet as the darkness grew, the spasms abated, and they were able to find the water room and rinse their mouths, and add some wood to the fire. They lay before the fire, shivering and baking throughout the night, curled up around themselves.
In the faint light of dawn, the girls finally managed to uncurl, then stood carefully, slowly, bracing themselves on the high benches. Never had they felt so utterly empty, so weak or frail. Ari finally spoke. "We can't do this. We need help, and… I'm sorry to say this, Ashi."
Ashi looked puzzled briefly, then her brows drew down in fury. "No! We are not turning to that traitorous wretch! Never! I will not allow it!"
"If we don't get help," Ami said, placing her hand softly on Ashi's arm, "we'll die out here. And death…"
"Is our failure," Ashi sighed heavily. "But… why her? There must be another way! Any other!" she insisted, brows still down and voice still high.
"We need help," Adi answered. "She's a terrible choice, if we can even find her, but we don't know anyone else to turn to."
Ashi barely managed to swallow her anger enough to speak without shouting. "How can you support this, Adi? You should want her dead most of all!"
Adi looked away. "I know. For her crimes, she should have died. But if she lives, and she has any faith at all, she and we are all that remain of our order. So she's the only one left we can turn to."
The others looked away, and murmured half-hearted support for the idea, and Ashi sighed at last. "This is still a terrible idea. But… it's the least terrible idea we have. At least that hard path goes the right way."
.oO()Oo.
Reluctantly, the seven made their way to the broad path, gathering nuts as they went, carefully keeping to the ones they recognized from the Temple. This time, strange sounds came from the broad path, whirring, almost recognizable noises. Then they came in sight of it through the trees, and quickly concealed themselves as best they could among the branches. Vehicles, more than they knew how to count! Big, small, with wheels and without. Ashi gestured, and they dropped to the forest floor, then began to walk along, paralleling the path while staying concealed as best they could, and gathering up whatever nuts they spotted.
As the sun rose, so too rose their hunger, and at it neared the centre of the sky, the girls paused at the edge of a stream, where they cracked nuts and filled the cups from the temple, sating at least partly their hunger and thirst, then they pushed on. Through the day, they kept the path to their right, staying far enough not to be readily seen, and crossing the smaller stone paths only when they were certain they were not being observed. As the sun went down, they paused long enough for their prayers, and thanks to their Lord Father for giving them the strength to survive their own folly and ignorance. Then they continued on, gathering what nuts they found as they went, not willing to stop so long as strength held out. Day by day, they followed the road, screened by trees and brush, finally forced by fatigue to rest, secreting themselves amidst the branches of a grove of trees, branches the tips of which hung down, and whose dark needles hid them from easy sight, and largely blocked the unfamiliar and uncomfortable light of the Sun from them.
On first watch, Ashi had to wonder if they were really doing what was right, seeking out that one, or merely what was needful? Was it sin? And if it was, was sin would it be? Heresy, blasphemy? It wasn't as if they were delaying their mission by choice; they had no idea how to even start looking, and the moment they found even a hint of the Samurai's location they'd be at him and on him like arrows.
Far below, strange creatures walked the ground, creatures with thick hair, creatures with antlers like their Lord Father's, ones with long faces, ones with short faces. By watching the shafts of sunlight move, she estimated when it was about half way to sunset, and woke Adi to take watch in her place. Ashi settled into a decently stable position, then allowed herself to sleep. To sleep, and to dream.
She stood with her sisters before the great bowl held in the idol's hands. In her hands, she held a piece of wood, and her sisters as well. The year's new fire was only a tiny handful of coals, barely visible, and they had been given the honour of giving it its first feeding. As one, they tossed the wood into the bowl, unerringly hitting the few coals, and watching it catch. The others came up one by one to add pieces, and soon enough the fire was rebuilt, and the girls used long tongs to take coals from the fire, and use them to relight the torches. It was the first time, and would not be the last, they had served as the light bringers. They returned the coals to the bowl, the tongs to their storage nook, and in a departure from reality, they withdrew to their chamber where they held each other close.
She woke at Adi's touch, and they woke the others, then all dropped to the ground for their sunset prayer before they resumed their reluctant journey, until after nearly a full day, they approached cleared land, bare land, with a structure near the centre. They weren't sure what to make of it: Relentlessly plain, with gleaming panels on its side. It didn't look like a place of worship, but it didn't look like any kind of defensive structure. And the time for prayer was fast approaching. Ashi glanced to Adi. "Lead the prayers. Then we'll scout the structure once full dark settles." Her sisters nodded, and they withdrew into the woods.
The darkness beyond the house was near absolute, and the shadow-clad girls all but invisible. They'd surrounded the house, and now crept slowly toward it, crouched low as they could be, wondering silently at its purpose. Aji saw a person at a clear panel, one that glowed from within, and froze in place until the person was gone.
They regathered at a certain tree, to discuss their findings. "I'm fairly sure it's just a dwelling," Aji said. "It's too small to house a reasonable numbers of fighters, and it has no images of Aku so it can't be a temple." The others looked at her, and each other, then back at her.
"A… dwelling? Nothing else?" Ashi asked. "How sure are you of that?"
She shrugged slightly. "It's a strange thought, I know, but Mother did tell us the greater world might be very strange."
Strange didn't even start to cover it. Where did the people go to praise Aku? Where did they go to train for the Last Battle? And where were their food trees and bushes? Mother had kept them strictly within the Temple, but she'd finally yielded to Ashi's endless questioning of where their food came from when her sisters added their voice to the chorus, probably the only time she hadn't been beaten for irrelevant questions.
"We'll go there. We could sneak past, but we have to meet the people of the greater world sooner or later. Better to meet a few first, I think," Ashi said, and set off toward the entrance with the ornate covering over it.
.oO()Oo.
The woman of the house kept glancing out the window. She was sure she'd caught a glimpse of someone, even if her husband didn't believe her. Just as the old man rose from his chair to light the fire, a light tap came at the door, and he went to open it. Outside, over the covered veranda, seven disembodied heads floated in the darkness, and he stood frozen in terror until his eyes adjusted to looking out into the darkness of the night. Then he finally saw the heads were indeed attached to bodies, very shapely bodies indeed, sheathed in some dark material. The girls bowed to him, then the one with the peaked hair spoke.
"May we enter? I pledge you we mean no harm to you or yours," the strange girl said.
The wife looked over. "Who is it?"
He answered without turning to face her. "Seven girls. Sisters, they must be, all looking alike." He tone was soft, almost stunned.
"Well, don't be a ninny, let them in! It's going to be a wet night and cold."
He shook himself a bit, then stepped clear. "Please, come in. I'll light the fire for ye," and he cleared the door, kneeling at what they presumed to be the hearth.
As she watched them file in, the wife saw why her husband had been slow to act; it wasn't just their dark clothes, there was something about their movements. something she couldn't name but still felt, that seemed somehow off. As they sat upon the floor, feet tucked under themselves, it came to her: it was in their posture, an air of tension, a readiness she'd seen sometimes in soldiers, or in… oh, no. Poor children. No mother could survive birthing seven, their father must have taken it out on them until they'd run away. She smiled to them, very gently. "Ye're welcome te stay the night. Would ye like summat te eat?" They looked to each other and spoke in a strange language with a lot of vowels, then the one with her hair parted in the centre answered in the affirmative.
As the fire rose, the sisters looked around at the dwelling, and its inhabitants. In the familiar light, they took in strange objects for sitting before the fire, a thick sleeping mat between the objects and the hearth, a mat with oddly curved ends. Behind them, a raised sleeping platform, with curious vertical extensions at each end and against the wall beyond the fireplace, a narrow set of oddly proportioned steps leading to something above, something they couldn't even guess at.
The woman was tall, slim, as they'd expected, and a bit stooped, unlike the women of the Temple, but there was something strange about her skin, its texture unlike that of their faces. The other, they guessed to be a man. They knew the Samurai to be a man, and he was built rather like the images they'd been shown of the Samurai. He too had that strange texture to his skin. and both wore weird, loose clothing, the woman a covering that reached from neck to ankles, and shoulder to wrist, the man a covering above his waist patterned in crossing stripes and a second below his waist in a solid colour.
When they turned to see the woman, they saw her busy at something they at least vaguely recognized, having occasionally entered into the Temple's kitchen (and been promptly chased out), though what she was working with looked like no food they'd known. After a time, she returned, setting the tray she bore on the floor before them.
The guests looked at the tray in utter confusion. Hadn't they seen sandwiches before? How had their brute of a father raised them? She sighed. "Yes, thet's food. Ye just pick up a piece, and eat. They's sandwiches, an' good. They's clean wateh i' the jug. Ye'll have to share…" and her eyes went wide as the girl reached behind themselves and produced weirdly carved cups. "Neveh min'," she finished weakly. The peaked hair girl reached first for a piece of sandwich, and after biting off a small bit turned to face her, eyes wide.
"What is this white stuff? It's amazing!" Ashi demanded as the strange texture and novel taste spread through her mouth. The meat, she recognized as pork, but there was a sharp taste as well, not salt or anything like salt.
The woman gaped. How… what kind of monster had raised them? "'Tis bread, mos' common food i' th' worl'" she told them. An' tha's pohk, wit a li'l sal' an' peppah."
Bread. Pepper. She open the sandwich and looked in. "And the yellow?"
"Ah… butteh. Ain't ye never had butteh a'fore?" she asked. Bread, butter, pepper, what had these girls been raised on? Their trick with the cups was too weird to grasp, but food was something she understood.
Ashi shook her head. "Never. Is it common?"
"Aye," the woman finally said. "Almos' common as bread. Cor, wha'd ye grow up on?"
The one with her hair curved into what looked like a pair of horns answered. "Fresh fruit or fruit leather, vegetables, meat fresh or dried depending on the time of year, nuts. What else?"
The old man finally rose, and walked over to them. "Nothin' made from grain? No milk, no cheese or eggs?" Ashi's questioning of what they were answered that. "Did you grow up in the forest?" he asked, and his wife's opinions of the poor girls' father dropped even further. He'd raised them like savages!
"No," said the girl with her bangs cut into an arc that swept up at each side. "We grew up in a temple."
The old woman smiled. That changed things a great deal. "Did the sisters raise you well?" she asked.
Aki answered that. "Our mother, our trainers, the sisters, they did their best to train us to be the mightiest fighters we could be, and now, we seek the Samurai." And both of their hosts smiled brightly.
"That's wonderful," the old man said. "Ye're welcome to stay the night, I don't think you want to travel in the rain that's comin'."
Ashi smiled back to him. "Thank you. We'll leave the mat and the bench to you; we're fine with just the floor."
The two looked to each other, then to the girls. "Nonsense," the old man said. "You don't need to sleep on the floor. Come upstairs with us, we'll show you where you can sleep."
By the light of a candle, they followed the elderly couple upstairs, and were led to a door behind which lay a room roughly half again the size of a sister's sleeping area, with an enormous raised sleeping platform. The girls swarmed onto it, and found that with some creativity and closeness, they could all fit onto it. The old woman told them that they could put the cover of the "bed" over themselves if they wished. They tried it, and squealed in delight at the warm softness settling over them. As they did that, the old man started a fire in the small fireplace. He closed the spark screen, and looked to them in the rising light. "That should be enough to keep you warm tonight. Sleep well." They smiled, and returned his wish in chorus.
In their own room, after they'd changed and gone to bed, the couple spoke softly. "What are those girls, d'ye think?" he asked her. Beneath the covers drawn up to their chins, the old couple's hands touched, hers upon his as they lay on their backs.
"Dunno. Thought they'd had a ro'en fatheh, but… whate'h they are, they'h weird. I gotta wonder, what kind a' temple they'h from, the way they dress. Looks more'n any'thin' like paint. An' don' tell me y'ain't noticed, ye ol' goat!"
He laughed out a soft bleat. "Ne'er too old to look. An' I remember a time ye wore such things."
She smiled, and it could be heard in her voice. "Oh, aye. But still… and that trick with the cups. There's somethin' real strange 'bout 'em."
"Well, there's lots of strange things in the world. If it doesn't hurt ye, don't mess with it."
In their own room, the girls had heard every word, thanks to their carefully trained senses. To ears that could catch the sound of an arrow in flight, the voices in the near silence had been perfectly clear, and they spoke softly to each other in the private language they'd created so long ago.
"We should do something to help them tomorrow," Ashi said. "And if they have questions, we'll answer them." The others agreed, then Aji spoke.
"We knew the greater world would be different, but we didn't realize that we'd seem as weird as to its people as they seem to us. We have a lot to learn, and… I hate to say this. I really hate to say this."
"But she's our best choice," Ari said when Aji couldn't bring herself to continue. "If she's still alive."
"Tomorrow," Ami said, as a strange sound began to come from the roof. "Is that the 'rain' they were talking about?"
"Must be," Aki said, then the girls readjusted themselves for sleep. Seven girls in a double bed.
