"There you are! What are you two doing here!?"

A loud voice resonated along the stones of the pathway, cutting through the silence of the night. We turned around to see two forms flying through the air, and while it was too dark to make out their faces, I didn't need to to know who they were.

"Ah, it's Sanae. Hello there. Hi, Kanako." Suwako waved cheerily.

Sanae landed softly on the stone pathway, a gust of wind swirling out to cushion her descent. Kanako was right behind her. The expression on Sanae's face was utter confusion, but Kanako's glare was much less forgiving.

"Were you two unable to sleep? How did you end up here? It's supposed to be hard for anyone to get to this part of the shrine." Sanae said questioningly.

"How, indeed," Kanako asked, looming over us. "The barriers I placed here should be both impenetrable and invisible to humans.

I couldn't help but flinch away under her glare. As I did, Renko stepped forward, removing her hat and scratching at her head. "Ah, sorry about that. I was merely curious about why someone would have placed a barrier over those pillars going out into the water and wondered what was inside it."

"Wondering is one thing, how did you get in? How did you even know it was there, for that matter?"

"Well, it just so happens that my partner is something like a living boundary detector. She's very skilled, and if the barrier has even a little gap, well, she just pops right in."

"Wait a minute, Renko. Don't pin this on me! This was your idea! Besides, I'm not your human boundary detector. If you're going to call me that, I should start referring to you as some sort of inconvenient watch that only works at night."

"That's not fair, Merry! You're forgetting about my GPS function."

"That doesn't even work here!"

"It seems the both of you possess some unusual abilities. Especially for humans from the Outside world."

"What should we do Lady Kanako?" Sanae asked nervously. "You were planning on keeping Lady Suwako a secret, right?"

Kanako sighed and looked down at us, glaring as she crossed her arms. "If this is what humans are like in Gensokyo, I suppose it would only be natural to assume this sort of thing would be inevitable. These two already seemed to have some dim idea that there was a hidden god in this shrine from their familiarity with the Suwa Grand Shrine of the Outside world. As you can see, Suwako Moriya is the native god of these lands, and the goddess of the innermost shrine here. I would ask, however, that you keep her existence a secret."

Renko chuckled, smiling up into Kanako's glower. "Well that's fine, I suppose, but why the secrecy?"

"Although you are friends of Sanae's, you are still visitors to this shrine. I have no obligation to reveal the mysteries of this place to the uninitiated."

It was a flat and wildly suspicious denial, but delivered in a voice with such dignity and confidence that as mortal humans we had little choice but to accept. As it happened though, her statement was called into question by someone who wasn't merely human.

"There's no need to be so harsh on them, Kanako," Suwako said from behind us. "They didn't cause any harm just by being here. In fact, they were a welcome distraction. I was bored just sitting here. No one even invited me to dinner."

"Sorry about that, Lady Suwako" Sanae mumbled with a pained expression.

"No need for you to apologize, Sanae. Kanako told you not to invoke me, right?"

"Of course I did. We can't let visitors know of your existence."

"Well maybe, but these aren't shrine visitors or uninitiated worshippers. These are Sanae's friends. That makes this like a little festival for our family, and even the hidden treasures of the innermost shrine get brought out for festivals!"

"Don't be ridiculous Suwako, it wasn't a festival."

"There was a feast, wasn't there? And a trial! You know how hard a time Sanae has making new friends! You needed me there with you to help make these newcomers feel welcome. I could have baked a cake! You always make decisions about her without consulting me, but I'm here too, you know! Sanae should be able to rely on me! You're abusing your position as a caretaker! I demand an apology! And compensation! And sukiyaki! I know you ate it, I could smell it from here!"

"Hey, Suwako, can we do this later? There are potential worshippers here."

"Oh yes, the last thing you'd want to is to look bad in front of worshippers. Heavens forbid that they ever think of you as anything less than the perfect divine ideal of a parent. Well I'm as much her mother as you are. Sanae finally brought home some friends for the first time and you don't even think to introduce me! I ought to curse you! I should make all your hair fall out, or have frogs sing at your bedside every time you try to sleep!"

With one enormous bounding leap, Suwako sprang over us to land between Renko and Kanako, waving her arms as she shouted up at the goddess.

"Suwako. Don't make a scene in front of worshippers. How are we supposed to attract faith if you do?" Kanako hissed, her glare turned completely to regard the diminutive goddess before her.

"Faith? You're worried about faith at a time like this? This is Sanae you're talking about! Think about someone other than yourself for once! She needs me here too and here you are giving her new friends the impression she comes from some sort of broken home with only a strict and overbearing stick in the mud like you for a parent! It's disgraceful!"

Somehow the scene that had looked like it was about to end in a divine condemnation a moment ago had turned into a heartwarming domestic squabble right out of a sitcom. Even in the darkness of the night I could see the blush on Sanae's face as she looked away from the feuding goddesses, mortified.

"Alright, alright. It hardly matters now that they've seen you anyway, and they certainly aren't going to forget about it now. I'll call you for breakfast in the morning and you can meet them before I take them home."

Suwako had been leaning forward on her tiptoes as she shouted but suddenly stopped, rolling back onto her heels and smiling up at Kanako. "Really?" she asked.

"Really. For now though, these three should all head back to bed. Young girls shouldn't be wandering around at night, even on sacred grounds. I'll overlook your trespass into the innermost shrine, so please just get some sleep. We've still got an early morning tomorrow. Sanae, can you show them the way back?"

"Oh, sure. Of course. Thank you Lady Yasaka, thank you, Lady Moriya. Please excuse me."

She delivered the briefest flash of a bow, then turned and hustled back up the path.

"Oh, uh, please excuse us too," I said and grabbed Renko's sleeve as I turned to follow her. Behind us I could still hear Suwako complaining about something while Kanako tried to calm her down.

-.-.-.-.-

"Remind me not to follow you into the hidden domain of a secret god ever again Renko. What would you have done if we had gotten cursed?"

"Figured out some way to deal with it I guess. And tell you that you're beautiful, like I said. It didn't happen though, so no reason to worry about it, right?"

As always, what passed for planning in my partner's mind was little more than senseless bravado and a reliance on dumb luck. As I sighed she was grinning, staring up at the stars with her arms crossed behind her head as we walked.

Ahead of us Sanae turned her head, talking to us over her shoulder. "You guys really surprised me, wandering off in the night like that."

"Ah, I am sorry about that, but I did warn you we're the curious type. Could you perhaps overlook it as just a field activity conducted by the local occult club at your shrine?"

"I don't think even occult clubs usually try to sneak into something like an innermost shrine that's protected by wards."

"Well, we didn't know that's what was behind the barrier. We were just conducting our investigation of Gensokyo's newest mystery spot, the Moriya shrine!"

Sanae giggled softly at that. "As long as Lady Kanako and Lady Suwako don't mind, it's fine. You ought to be careful though. Despite how she looks, Lady Suwako really is a curse goddess. Walking into her home unannounced in the middle of the night is risky."

"Well, she doesn't look like something out of a Yokomizo novel, I'll admit. She was pretty cute for a curse goddess, has she always looked like that?"

"Gods appear as they wish to appear. Faith is about more than what can be seen with the eyes."

At least in Gensokyo that certainly seemed to be true. How else could you explain the curse god we had met further down the mountain who dressed in gothic lolita style?

"So being a dangerous curse god explains why Lady Moriya is sealed behind that barrier, I guess?"

"Well, it's not like she's trapped, exactly. She's allowed out. It's just that, when we came to this world we wanted to try gaining faith through Lady Kanako's blessings, rather than out of fear of Lady Suwako's curses. We were planning on having her stay in the innermost shrine until we had settled in a bit and had built up a reputation. Kanako doesn't like the idea of just anybody coming and praying for favors from a curse goddess, that's why she wanted to make worship of Lady Suwako a secret practice. Something that had to be earned. Sorry for hiding it from you."

"I see."

"Despite being a curse god though, she's really nice. She's been looking after me and Lady Kanako for as long as I can remember, though she might deny being nice if you asked her. She likes having a scary reputation."

"So those two really are like parents to you then."

"Yes. Is that too weird? I've been able to see and speak to them since I was a baby, and they've always watched over me. They were closer and more protective than any human."

It seemed like a sad thing to say, but Sanae's smile as she answered Renko was utterly without guile or regret, shining as bright as the moon that hung in the cloudless sky.