Note: I use the term Yamato here in the sense of the Japanese ethnic group encroaching on Emishi land. I'm not trying to be weird but I don't know a better term that won't seem anachronistic.

Hoping I didn't screw up the characters too much

The Yamato always came.

That was their history for as long as they knew it.

At first, the Emishi held them off with hit-and-run tactics, with mounted archery and steadfast refusal of pitched battle. But the Yamato learned- the same horse archery that stymied them became a weapon of their samurai.

The Emishi lost and kept on losing. As far as Ashitaka knew, his little enclave was the last of them. The rest were swallowed up, made into Yamato as the rotting corpse fed the sprouting tree.

And the Yamato came again. The scouts reported them in the distance, a procession of simply massive size, spearheaded by a column of fighting men. Strange clothes were to be expected, but there was discussion of strange weapons as well…

Ashitaka levied the village's fighters and rode out to get a better look. Even with their mounts, Ashitaka wasn't sure about winning a battle, but they had to investigate. You didn't survive the Yamato by ignoring them.

(You didn't survive with a village this small, with no real prospects for exogamy…)

They went into the forest, elks snorting and huffing as they leaped between the trees. Still, if the column was as big as they feared… their chances were bad.

Lady Eboshi was not the sort for the baseless superstition, but she was glad to exploit it. If their enemies refused to settle here, refused to even pursue, then that was their problem.

There was a sense of relief in the air, though. This land was good: gathering was easy, animals were abundant, the trees mighty. Honestly, it was just a matter of time until someone came and exploited this primeval forest- they just happened to come first.

"Someone's there!" A shout, and Eboshi's gaze snapped to the forest. She caught a glimpse of something passing by, a faint hint of roan.

An explosion of movement as her men hefted spears and prepared guns. Eboshi reached for her sword and tried to ignore the phantom pain lingering on her right. The column stalled, and now that they were paying attention they could see the forest was alive with movement, figures dashing to and fro under dark branches.

Perhaps there was some truth to those rumors…

However, no fusillade of arrows sprung from the underbrush- instead, a single rider came forth, his face covered by a red hood and mask, body hidden by a great coat of straw. Dark eyes peered at her from the back of a mighty red elk, framed by the heavy horns of his mount. Some of her men aimed their muskets or couched their spears in the dark earth.

After a moment or two, the rider pulled back his hood and lowered his mask. He was remarkably young- although Eboshi reckoned he could use that bow of his with the best of them. "This is Emishi land," he warned her, his voice heavily accented.

"Emishi?" Eboshi asked, "I can't say I'm familiar." There was a sadness in his eyes, like he suspected her answer, but no was no time to be getting sympathetic.

"Most aren't," He sighed. "But we were here far before you Yamato were."

Did it particularly matter that they were first if they had lost everything? Well, near everything, apparently, considering that Eboshi and her followers had chanced on this little enclave. (It was just history in motion- there were winners and losers, those who took and those who were taken from.)

"Not a fan of the emperor and his daimyo, then?"

"Not particularly."

"Then we're agreed."

Those eyes were piercing. "They drove you away?"

"They did. We have no home to return to, no lands to farm…" but they would certainly fight to take them. The Emishi boy- their leader?- seemed to understand that implication.

He looked at them again and sighed. "We should talk."

The Emishi prince- who introduced himself as Ashitaka- sent for a few elders from his village, who rode in on elk despite their age. They sat by him, alongside a few fighting men and women from his retinue. (Those bows were masterworks… Eboshi couldn't imagine how many bowmen sat waiting in those woods.) There had been a close call when one of the mounted archers just seemed to melt out of the woods next to one of her jumpier gunmen, but nothing came of it.

Of course, Eboshi had her own fighting men behind her, and they had set up some umbrellas and laid out some cloth to make negotiating a bit more comfortable. And then they talked. About how much Eboshi's people might need, about where they could settle… a few token suggestions about other locations were made, but those were all under the rule of various unfriendly daimyo.

Eboshi was confident that if worse came to worse, she could put a singular Emishi village to rout. It would hurt if those elk-archers of theirs had anything to say about it, but it could be done. Much better odds than attempting to overthrow a nearby daimyo, that was certain. But it would still see her men killed pointlessly.

For all that he attempted to put on a harsh face, Ashitaka seemed a bit of a bleeding heart. Sure, they were being pushed into action by the threat of Eboshi's forces, and that gave him good reason to seek a non-violent resolution, he seemed oddly concerned with the safety of her people.

Certainly, a better stance than others had taken regarding her people. Hell, it was sympathetic. There was a certain point where all the fighting grew tiring. She had lost an arm and more people than she liked to think about. A peaceful solution would be preferable… but she wouldn't sell her people's futures away for it.

The problem was that they didn't have much reason to be amicable. Sure, nobody wanted to get murdered, but that was a far cry from accepting these strange new neighbors into your life. What was to stop them from getting into a fight eventually? General goodwill?

The Emishi elders were painfully aware they'd be on the losing side if such a thing were to occur. They whispered to each other for a moment or two, before Ashitaka cried out, "A marriage? To her?"

Eboshi's guards had a similarly explosive reaction, but… it made sense, sort of. A union would tie the two groups together in an extremely concrete way- it was just personally unappealing.

Yes, she understood this was the sort of thing that people with power did. It was a tool that daimyo were particularly fond of, but it felt…. She wouldn't go as far as saying it was the same scenario as her poor brothel girls, but it felt similar. Her price was land and goodwill, not money, but it was a price still.

She made no move to reject it, at least while Ashitaka vainly argued against it. His existing betrothal? It could be negated for the sake of the village. Her foreign stock? Well, they would have foreigners stomping around one way or the other, making sure that their future rulers were part Emishi…

That was an unfortunate reminder. If they were to go through with a marriage, that meant all the duties of the marital bed. Ashitaka had been talked around if it meant a peaceful solution to their current problem. It was up to Eboshi to decide now- whether she could bear it.

For her people?

She could.

"A marriage it is." She laughed.

It was a funny sort of wedding, in that they had both a dowry and a bride price; the Emishi would give and Eboshi's people would give. It was understood that no small number of the gifts were going to go to keeping Eboshi's people alive: the millet and barley, the hunted game, all of that would be stretched out to last them through winter.

But then there were the finer things. The breeding pair of lovely elk with their flawless coats and proud bearings, the ones that no one had managed to ride yet- those would be hers. A day or two after the arrangement, Ashitaka presented her with a chipped stone knife which she was to wear as a necklace.

"Is this a sign of our betrothal?" He nodded and she took it. It didn't seem to change much, other than provoking the fury of one of the Emishi girls, who constantly glowered at her, alongside the traditionalists and their ilk.

Opinions among Eboshi's own people were mixed as well: some were excited for a marriage, hopeful that she might find some happiness without becoming an old maid, while the rest saw it as beneath her dignity. At times it almost felt like the marriage would bring about more problems than it ever solved, but Eboshi and Ashitaka both managed to herd their own people into not acting stupidly. There were better things that excess energy could be directed toward, like preparing for winter… or the wedding.

Typically, a trousseau was a labor of months if not more, but with the girls anxious to help it was done in a couple of weeks. Admittedly, it was nothing compared to the sort a true noble would have, but it was no small amount of work. That was one small area where they started getting along with the Emishi- they had their own style of producing fabrics, their own preferred embroideries…

At the same time, houses sprouted up on the hillsides, gardens were planted with vegetables, and fields were tilled for millet and barley. The Emishi didn't depend as terribly on rice as the Yamato did, which was a blessing and a curse.

Thankfully, this was the sort of thing Eboshi and Ashitaka talked about, instead of their upcoming nuptials. Any hopes of keeping them apart were vain, just because of how closely they had to cooperate, but they always had a chaperone, for fear of 'propriety'. Like that mattered for an arrangement like this.

"Will you have enough food for the coming winter?" Ashitaka asked, concern on his face.

"Not enough yet, even if we manage to squeeze in a harvest on the fields being cleared now."

He frowned. "And we cannot overhunt without courting disaster in the future…" He stood up and whispered to one of the Emishi elders, before departing.

Eboshi gave the elder a questioning look, but they remained silent. After a bit of a wait, Eboshi double-checked her figures, sent a runner to see how the clearing for the millet was going, got some answers from the elder regarding how much the Emishi ate… it took some time for Ashitaka to return, a bamboo coffer in his hands.

Sitting down and setting the heavy box before her, he opened it to reveal gold. Pellets and nuggets, lumpy and largely malformed, but gold nevertheless. She didn't gasp, but her eyes did widen.

"Is it sufficient?" He asked. "To buy enough food to last through the winter."

"This would… put us in your debt, Ashitaka."

"If it keeps us from starving, keeps us from killing each other… I would think it a price worth paying."

The idea of falling into his debt made her stomach churn, but it would solve almost all of their problems.

Despite the fact that they would have to be careful with their food in the lead-up to winter, they somehow managed to get quite the feast prepared for the wedding. Well, quite the feast if you didn't mind a lack of alcohol too terribly. Other than a token bit of sake for the ceremony proper, it was a shockingly dry affair.

Like the food being served, the ceremony itself was a bit of an awkward compromise. Just as the Emishi and Yamato peoples prepared their foods differently, they worshipped the gods in their own ways. Well, Eboshi wasn't much of a worshipper herself, but there were certain behaviors that were expected during a marriage to make it legitimate.

There was a ceremonial exchange of goods. Ashitaka received a quiverful of iron-tipped arrows, vicious as they come, Eboshi received a viciously sharp obsidian knife. The pair of elk and a snorting black horse.

There was the prayer to the gods, the burning of incense and sweet-smelling poultices before an altar whose carvings had long since been lost to moss and time.

Eboshi was wearing the single fine kimono she had- the one rarely used for negotiations, back when she needed to flatter the egos of petty daimyo- while Ashitaka wore something in that strange Emishi style, vividly red and blue.

They didn't interact much for most of the ceremonies, not when there were boxes to be checked. Ritual purification and pleading for the blessings of the gods did not require much effort on their part, other than sitting still in an uncomfortable posture through it all.

Finally, they reached the part that required some action on their part. Ashitaka reached forward and took a porcelain cup of sake, raising it up to his lips and taking a sip. If he took some issue with warm sake, he hid it well, and after a moment he held it out to her. Eboshi took it herself and had a similar sip, finishing off the tiny cup.

Then again, with a slightly larger cup. Eboshi picked it up this time, had the first sip, passed it to Ashitaka. (There was a stain of lipstick on the pale ceramic.) Then the last bowl, which Ashitaka sipped from first before launching into the vows.

"And so I swear to remain steadfast, to share with my bride fortune and misfortune alike…"

Eboshi figured it was all a sort of legal fiction. Nothing changed physically, it was all human expectation at work. It was… it was almost like the state. You could look across all of Honshu and not find a single ounce of empire.

Sure, you could find the Empire, find his daimyo, find their halls of power, but the state itself? It was a fiction, one that chewed up lives by the score, one that gathered taxes and blood.

To be married to Ashitaka meant giving up her freedom. Not all of it, but society would compel her to act a certain way regarding him. What did she get in exchange? Ashitaka being compelled by the same forces.

Well, he was probably a bit less of a cynic about it. That, she supposed, was what made the entire deal tolerable in the first place. He was good. He was generous. Despite his age, he had a respect for life and a love of peace some daimyo and samurai would never achieve in their entire lives. That was a lesson she took a while- and a lost arm- to learn.

Hell, he had never pitched a fit about what jobs she couldn't do. He listened when she offered advice, yielded to her expertise…

The Emishi were doing something right out here, if they could produce a man like that. Getting married had never been an ambition of hers, but if she had to, a man like Ashitaka seemed the best she could get outside of folk tales.

Ashitaka had thought the marriage was something he was simply obligated to do if he wanted his people to have any sort of future. They would intermingle with the Yamato, but hopefully become a part of them, indispensable and impossible to root out. His marriage to Lady Eboshi was just a way to do that.

So it was perfectly fine that they were just going through the motions. There was never any expectation of emotion behind it in the first place. It was just politics. If politics meant a loveless marriage, meant no real chance of love (because his honor and their peace both required he not cheat) then that was something to be borne quietly.

The celebration was good, at least. Seeing Emishi and Yamato sit down together, sharing rice… well, it had happened before, just the simple result of laborers going to dine after a hard day, but there was something different now. Ashitaka liked to think things were a bit more amicable.

Eboshi handled things with the usual grace. She had lost her right arm- and her dominant hand, likely- yet she could use chopsticks deftly, sometimes even used a sword, all with incredible grace. It made him wonder how long she had lived like that…

"Do you need something, husband?"

"When did you lose your arm?"

"Some months ago, we found this fortified keep…" Eboshi launched into a surprisingly engaging tale involving a gang of warrior monks and their allies, a band of incredibly skilled onna-musha, warrior women…

The time flew and the feast came to an end. Hopefully, everyone had come to a greater appreciation of each other, but now Ashitaka and Eboshi were being escorted to his house. Their house, technically speaking, now that they were wedded.

It was a strange thing, walking into the house with another person. Her shoes sat next to his, her heavy cloak hung on a hook… that left her in a kimono, which she worked to take off with one hand. Ashitaka froze up.

There was scarring. Her arm ended in a stump. And she was beautiful. Unbelievably so. She let her hair down and turned to him with a smile, and he looked away, his cheeks flushing. She laughed. "What, are you afraid I'll bite?"

"You don't have to do this!" Ashitaka informed the wall he was currently staring at. "If you don't wish to…"

"After the all stories I've been told by the girls… I most definitely wish to." He turned to Eboshi, who had the most beautiful grin.

Being married turned out to not be that bad, really.

San: probably smells like a dog, relatives hate you, hippie who will make you live in woods

Eboshi: leadership skills, cool under fire, might let you be a househusband

Is it even a contest bros (jk love San)