I was the last child of that marriage. Apparently I could see what life held for me and had decided not to leave my mother's womb without a fight. Ultimately I did sufficient damage that she never bore a child to term again. This of course, did not endear my parents to me.

My sister was two years older than me, and she truly believed this meant that she knew everything, no matter how many times I made her eat dirt. I was not a very feminine child. It was at thirteen that my family sent me out into the world. They already had one daughter and, without a son, what did they need with another girl child? It was not cruel. Cruel would be if I had been smothered at birth, which my mother often told me she wished she had done. No, this was practical.

I was something at a loss on what to do when I first set out for the horizon. I knew what I did not want to do, there was no chance I would become a kept women or some other failure of society, but what to do instead... I wandered on the brink of starvation for quite some time, subsisting on the scraps I could beg from strangers.

Apparently it finally became too much for me, I was told later that my half frozen body was found on the side of the road and taken in by one of the onna bugeisha, a travelling female samurai."

I looked confused at her words and she laughed.

"Oh my young innocent, didn't you know there were other female wielders of the sword?"

I glared at her, but couldn't stay mad. I was fascinated by her story.

"Well she took it upon herself to take care of me until I recovered, but she soon found herself caring for me with sisterly affection, and in the end, decided not to sent me off as soon as I regained my health.

It was at this point that I begged her to take me on as a pupil. I wanted to learn, I told her, learn how to protect myself and defend my honor.

She told me later that she saw herself mirrored in the defiance of my eyes.

Around that time, her lord was not interested in any territorial struggles, rather he focused on building up his domestic power base. So she was not called to duty for some time, and was able to train me at her leisure.

I soon surpassed her. I guess it is fate that the student will always surpass the teacher. Anyways, after a few days of my trouncing her, she finally told me that I was to good for the provinces and should make my way to the capital. This was not spoken with bitterness. By that time we had pledged ourselves as blood kin. I believe that she was proud of my accomplishments, as a good sister would feel."

Light was beginning to fade at that point, and we could see the light of the lanterns that the temple put out at dusk, glimmering through the gaps in the trees. The crickets began singing as we made our way back through the forest, and the fireflies flickered, tiny flashes of illumination against the shadows of the foliage.

The night brought a sudden chill to the air, and I pulled my shirt tighter around me, looking forward to the relative warmth of the enclosed rooms. I glanced over to make sure she was still with me. Often times her mischevious nature would make her wander off only to pop out from some hidden spot in an effort to surprise me. I told her she could get killed that way, but she merely scoffed.

This time, she was there in body, but her mind seemed to be on different things, as her eyes shone grey while she gazed off towards the shadows.

His story reminded of an old friend. I had not thought of her for a very long time and she was shrouded in the cobwebs of unuse.

The first time I met her was when I was having one of the few brotherly arguments that we indulged in, and I was shunning my usual companions.

What was the argument about you ask, eh it is not important. It was one of those small thinks that you laugh about later, if you can remember it at all.

I was settling in to the tree that I had designated as my own, for a long indulgement in furious anger and the willful increase of my ire, when the strangest visage popped up at the base of the tree.

She looked up at me intently for a long time without saying anything. And just as I was about to interrupt her meditations, she poked me with a stick that she had picked up.

I was so surprised that I almost fell off of my perch. Here was a strange girl, who I had never met before and couldn't possibly have harmed, poking me at random.

She was not a pretty creature. Her knees were stained with grass and her kimono was horribly dirty and ragged. I could barely see the geometrical pattern on it. Her hair was all over the place and her eyes were too big for her face. A stark contrast to the flower I would meet later, no?

I glared down at her, prepared to flatten her under my righteous anger and rank, but she merely giggled.

"What are you doing in the tree?" she asked me. Obviously she had completely disregarded our different ranks. As the landowner's son I was far above what was obviously the offspring of a very poor peasant, but she continued to speak to me as if we were bosom friends. I was in a particularly eccentric mood, and I decided that this social innocence was refreshing.

I most likely learned more from her than she did from my pretentious efforts to teach her etiquette. After I got over the discomfort of our first intoduction and came down from my perch, we treked out into the fields and she told me of the difference between this or that herb and which berries were edible versus poisonous. This knowledge is probably what kept me alive after my departure from the military.

We met up for such exursions from time to time even after I made peace with my brothers. However I tried to keep such meetings hidden from them, as I was ashamed to be seen assosciating with a peasant, but I enjoyed her company enough not to completely cut off our meetings.

I was about, oh six or seven, then. Too young to be affected by the scandal that, when I was older, would have attached itself to the news that I, a landlord's son, was wandering around empty fields with a young peasant girl. But at that age, it did not even process that her femininity made her any worse of a playmate.

We grew apart of course. As I gained years, I found my days were more than full with lessons in reading and writing, as well as more physical things. It had been about a month since I had seen her, and I decided to visit her on a whim. But she was long gone. Her family had left days ago for the territory two provinces away from us, where they apparently had relatives.

I am sorry my boy. These sudden bursts of memory must seem like randomn tangents to you. But for an old man these streams of conscious are extremely logical.

Now, Yoshitsune was relating Tomoe's story...

"She said that with the blithest tone. As if it was normal for perfect strangers to adopt you as kin, without some reason of their own. I was already something of a cynic at that point. But she continued."

"So there I was, a lone woman travelling along deserted roads with heavy packs full of provisions. The perfect prey. I must have been set upon by bandits at least every other day."

She laughed at the memory and I looked at her with something in between horror and amazement.

She held a mischievious glint in her eyes, as she looked up at me through her lashes.

"I gained something of a reputation after a while" she confided.

I was struck by how pretty she looked at that moment. She still wore her guise as a male, and the other residents remained convinced of her masculinity, but she had changed. It was the little details, that only I, who was with her more often than others, could have noticed. Her face was more angular and her cheeks softer and when her hands moved, they seemed daintier as they fluttered. She often talked with her hands making wide gestures to emphasize her words. I believe the monks though that she was merely unfortunate in her absence of body hairs. I suppose it was because they did not expect her to be female, that they did not see these things.

These moments when I saw her as an actual female, were startling for me, and I shook them off quickly. This was Tomoe, true she was female, but she wasn't a girl in the derogatory sense that I was convinced all females were. She was the one who could nearly beat me with the sword. She was the one who taught me archery. And she was the one who could eat just as many berries and I and then get sick later. Certainly not one of those overly emotional weak figures that she told me about.

While I was having this inner argument with myself, she continued her tale.

"Yes. A reputation as a kind of lady of justice who would defeat any bandit who got in her way. Soon they stopped coming. Even the most arrogant of them feared to come up short against a girl" she giggled. "I was not yet wise enough in the ways of the world to think of disguising myself as a boy, or perhaps too proud.

The capital is what finally broke my delusions of the world" she continued in a darker, more serious tone. "I had previously lived in something of a protected bubble. My teacher had told me some things about the world, but I do not think they had fully processed, or at least, I did not believe that such things actually occurred in the real world. Such were my delusions.

I did not enter through the lower districts. As an unofficial samurai with a letter of introduction from my teacher, I entered through the middle districts and made my way to one of the government complexes to register my letter.

I was sneered at by many of the men there. It was unusual, though not unheard of, for a female to enter service as a warrior.

This was when the Minamoto clan were still a powerful adversary to the Taira, and held a place within the capital, before everything went down the way it did."

I stilled at the mention of my family name, watching her closely to make sure that she did not have some ulterior motive for mentioning this. I was a bit paranoid then, but rightly so.

She did not appear to notice as this was just a way to explain the situation she found herself in once she had arrived in Kyoto.

"It turned out that I was signed on as a lower ranking attendant for the Minamoto family. I had not yet proven myself to anyone who mattered, so they set me up in the training halls to see how I faired."

She shook her head at such foolishness, letting her hair fall out of what was supposed to be an orderly topknot. Her hair was her one foible. In all other ways she acted exactly like a man, but not in regards to her hair.

No matter how many times I would tease her about it, she would always scoff at me. When we were alone like this, she would often take it down and brush it. Then let it fall around her as she talked. One did not cut the hair or in any way dirty it. I learned this the hard way.

It was during one of our various duels that a strand of her hair was cut off, just shy of an inch. I would swear that her eyes flashed red.