涼風の 曲がりくねって 来たりけり
"THE cool breeze
Twisted and crooked,
Then came here."
-Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828).
It is autumn, brisk winds, and rice planting season. You can find people donning their hand-woven hats, going through the rows and rows of rice patties early in the mornings as the sun rises like a blanket. Sweat drips down their backs like rainwater, and if you stop to wave, they'll undoubtedly wave back. The peaks of the blooming land are covered in lush golden fields and if you look at them long enough, you'll want to prance through them like some carefree sort of girl. The deepest trenches where the water settles are riddled with the remnants of wars fought bitterly to gain control of the kami-blessed land. Bodies of merceries -though in this land they are called Ninja- lay displaced in mud that cradles their death like a mother. Like Izanami-no-Mikoto: she who invites, she who creates, and she who rules the underworld.
Amaterasu, born from the left eye of Izanagi-no-Mikoto: he who invites, hid herself in a cave. It's a time when yokai roam rampant, the disappearance of the ruler of the sun calling to them like a loud echoing gong. If you search for the cave now, you will only find a family of mercenaries, (Ninja, they are called, remember?) The matriarch, a slim woman- too slim to be giving birth- bares her husband another child. Her child comes into the world an angry red, screaming as fiercely as her little lungs will allow.
The woman, Aimi she is called, sits on the ledge of death, her feet dangling over and she can feel Izanami's cold touch looming on her ear as she whispers to her. Homura, Aimi says the name and she wonders if she will fall over the edge, or be pushed. Both are the same in the end. Death is death, as dust is dust. Homura. Ho, 火: fire, flame, blaze. Mura, 群ら : group, village, hamlet. Homura, 炎: group of fires. Homu, Homusubi. Homu-subi, child of Izanami-no-mikoto, brother of Amaterasu. His fiery nature killed his mother. Will Homura be the death of Aimi?
Aimi is the matriarch of the clan. The clan needs the head; a body needs a head to survive. Criminals cannot survive long without their heads, a clan will not survive long without its head. The head will not survive long without its wife. Amaterasu has blessed this clan, they safeguard her resting place, and so Izanami does not claim the matriarch. She will not claim that of which belongs to her daughter. Izanami withdraws from Aimi, pausing as she recognizes an unseen lady in the corner of the dimly lit birthing room.
The lady screams with Homura, their sounds meshing into something shrill and agonized. Homura screams because she is a baby, new to the word but the lady screams to let out the sounds that were lost to her in a torment of smoke and brimstone. Izanami smiles mirthlessly at the lady, before returning to the underworld empty-handed.
Homura grows up in the nursery with her older brother, Izuna. He is older by only a couple of seasons. Eight, he helps her count on her stubby fingers. She has three older brothers, including Izuna. That is three fingers; her thumb, pointer, and middle. One brother is dead, just as Homura was born. One finger. He's part of the wheat field now. They burned him, his ashes scattered by the wind. He never got a chance to lay beneath the earth, maggots and worms wriggling, finding shelter in his rotting body. No rot. He never got the chance to rot. Never got the chance to grow, either. He died young.
There is one nursery, the place where all of Aimi and Tajima's children are raised. One nursery, painted a light yellow, the ceiling a soft blue. Very different from the bleak browns that cover the rest of the house's walls.
"Izu-nii!" Homura calls out in the darkness of the nursery, the candles long since put out. Her teeth chatter and her eyes shake inside of her skull, "She's back, the lady is back!"
She feels paralyzed as she keeps her shaky gaze on the unseen woman in the corner, and the woman stares back through a single eye from the shadows. Homura lays completely still, fearing that if she moves even a little bit, the lady will move too. Move closer to her. Homura fears that if the lady gets too close to her, she'll die. She hears her brother crawling towards her, pulling her onto his lap. She finally moves, burying her face into his chest as her bare feet curl beneath her.
He rubs her back gently, "It's okay Imouto, I'm here. The lady can't get to you," he assures softly, and she closes her eyes, nuzzling further into him.
"Make her go away, make her go away, make her go away!" She pleads, and she can hear the Lady whom no one but her seems to be able to see begin to laugh something high-pitched and sickening.
The season is winter, crops have withered, and snow falls like stars, covering everything with a white quilt. Every breath fills the lungs with ice, the cold wind kisses. Everything alive, animals, trees, and plants, sleep peacefully beneath the earth. The land is silent, overtaken by a dreary winter. People cry out to the sunless sky, their hysteria heightened by the lack of food and warmth, "The kami have forsaken us!" However, Izanami calls to many, her chilly embrace inviting.
"Izu-nii, carry me on your back!" Homura says, raising her hands up, up to the dark sky where snow and rain falls like sand from an hourglass. Izuna smiles down at her, before securing her tightly with his arms. She leans into him, her small body curled across his slightly bigger one like a sack.
He jumps from roof to roof as though he were jumping on tree branches, and he tries to focus on not slipping or dropping Homura. She suddenly let's go of his neck; her scrawny arms spread out before them like wings on his back.
"We're flying!" she exclaims, their hair mixing in the wind like two different shades of black paint. Izuna laughs wildly when one of the Uchiha elders comes out of his house, his fist out in a warning.
"Hey, you two! I told you to stop going on my roof!" He yells after them, but Izuna keeps running and kicks a pile of snow off the roof and onto the fuming elder's face. Homura almost chokes on falling snow as she howls in laughter from the look on his face.
When Homura wakes up one night with blood dripping between her legs, everything changes. She's fine, she assures her mom who looks at her with some sort of twisted happiness and oh, Homura can no longer stay in the nursery. It's time for her to start sleeping in her mom's room with her. But what about Izu-nii? Oh, he'll start training with their father in that place where their other brother goes and Homura can't enter.
She used to fall asleep in Izuna's arms, but she finds herself sleeping with the hand of her mom wrapped tightly around her wrist, just below her palm. Where her heartbeats bragged from her chest through her veins like the ring of an auspicious bell. The shadow lady doesn't come to her at night anymore, something she appreciates greatly. Izuna had made her promise not to tell anyone about the women. A secret, he whispered to her, their pinkies entwining. She's sure that if Okaa-san found out, Izuna would be disappointed in her.
Homura still doesn't get much sleep because sometimes, she would wake up to her Okaa-san gone. The nights when the windows shook from particularly harsh winds and the moon hung damp in the sky. Those nights, her mama would get up, without waking up. Silently, as though not to wake her sleeping daughter, she would slip from the bed like water, and go to the nursery where she had raised all of her children. The nursery with soft colored walls and ceiling. She'd stand at the doorway, and stare through into the room for a long time. Staring at the room trapped in darkness. As dark as the mouth of an angler fish.
"Okaa-San, come back to bed," Homura would say, leading her sleeping mama back to bed, away from the room that pulled like a deep, deep pond. She didn't know why, but she knew somehow that if her mama took a step into the room, she would never come back.
"Why do we fight the Senju?" She innocently asks her mama, as if trying to find some sense in the world her ancestors created. Why was the world the way it was? Why tornados go round and round and round and gentle waters turn into crashing waves.
"Because," her Okaa-San says viciously, "They have killed so many of us. For our family, we will continue to fight them until every last one is dead."
Homura had never seen her mother make such a face before. She always wore a gentle smile, with a small crease of her lips. Her lips were pulled back now, her teeth showing in their entirety. She looks at her mama's teeth, how they could sink into flesh with ease. She wonders how that tastes. Her mother takes her face in her soft hands, bringing her close.
"Homura," She says, with a cold finality, her long painted nails digging into her cheeks almost painfully, "The price of the Senju living is our happiness. Do you understand?"
Not able to do anything else, she looks into her mother's eyes, and thinks of the nights when she would spend for what seemed like an eternity standing in front of a room that still held the wails of her lost children. She thinks of her brother, the one who used to hold her at night as she yelled in fits of madness, who assured her that she wasn't crazy for seeing someone who wasn't there.
Homura nods carefully, and when her mama's hands leave her face, blood dribbles down in soft splotches.
"What is fire to you, Homura?" Her mother asks her. She stares into the flame of the purple candle in front of her, the flame dancing in a way that resembles a dance one would see in a red-light district.
"Pain," the unseen lady says next to her, her body covered in a black tar-like substance that seeps into the ground as she leans into her. She remembers a time when horrifying tongues of flames rose to her pointed nose, her curly hair catching fire like dry leaves. Her skin sliding off her bones.
"Pain," Homura echoes, her tongue moving without warning. She tries to keep her gaze forward, ignoring the chilling presence of the woman next to her as she focuses on the feeling of her Okaa-San's warm hands.
"Fire is the gate to birth, Homura," Her mother tells her with a loving voice as her fingers slide down her hair, parting the endless black like a great waterfall.
""The dead trees burn, so that a new forest may grow atop the ashes,"" She recites, the phrase stemming from works Homura didn't know. A book, a scroll, or perhaps a stone tablet. She was certain she saw it written somewhere.
She ignores the small sting as her hair is pulled and twisted, and focuses only on the feeling of her mother's fingers running over her scalp. Digging into her skull, as if touching her very brain. She found it comforting. Homura was able to do her own hair, just as she was able to wash and clothe herself, yet her mama insisted on helping her. Just like Homura helps her mama back to bed when she wanders the house in her sleep!
Gliding past the tangles and undoing them with ease, her hair was pulled into an intricate style that reminded Homura of the way her older relatives always wore their hair. With many pins stricken through them, bells hanging off some that jingled with every step if you didn't walk carefully.
She swallows a yawn as her Okaa-San dresses her in layers of kimono, all different shades of red. They're soft, softer than her blanket, and tied together with an obi that's bright orange and reminds her of a phoenix feather.
"There," her mother whispers, her lips tickling her ear as she leans in close, the unseen lady disappearing like smoke, "You look lovely."
She looks into the mirror her mama hands her, the silver frame decorated with a plum blossom and a flying crane. Her hair is pulled away from her face, showing the sharp edges of her cheeks. Her pencil-thin lips were painted a vibrant red, the same color as the camellia growing beside the front door. She leans in closer so her nose almost touches the cold surface, poking at the area beneath her eyes. Okaa-San had somehow covered up the permanent eye bags that weighed on her face since before she could remember.
"Don't touch your face," her mama warns before leading her out of the room. "The priestess is waiting for us."
Homura walks behind her mother, the moon shining like a sticky pearl in the dark sky and she can hear her relatives (the ones who aren't gone fighting), speaking praises, as though they knew more about her than just her name. She catches a glimpse of her brother past a large torii gate, and she runs to him, her movement somewhat constricted by her heavy state of dress.
"Izu-nii!" she exclaims, and she can't believe he's in front of her, standing with a smile as if it hadn't been two whole seasons (she'd been diligently keeping track) since they'd last seen each other. When she hugs him, she knows he's changed more than just getting taller. His chest is firm against her face, his arms tight against her back.
"You're here," she mumbles and, oh how she missed him. She feels him laugh above her, as he always did before she's pulled away by Okaa-san who immediately starts chastising her about how she needed to be careful about smearing the makeup on her face and her hair coming undone and other things that Homura just couldn't seem to care about. How could she worry about anything when her brother was here!?
"Of course, I'm here, Imouto. I couldn't possibly miss your Shichi-go-san." he says with a twinge of something, and she noticed that her other brother and father weren't there though it didn't bother her one bit. Why would she feel sad over people she didn't even know? How could she care about people she didn't even know?
"Come now, Homura-Hime," a priestess ushers her through more torii gates, bowing before each one, before stopping at a trough. Water flows down into it from above like rain and it's cold on her hands and mouth. It helps to chase her sleep away, though. She remembers having to do the same thing when it was Izuna's coming-of-age ceremony. It was to cleanse her before she could stand before the kami, or something to that effect.
As the sun begins to peak from behind snow-covered ground, Homura is pushed into a bow, her relatives following suit. The sun is hot on her back (even though it's covered by many layers) and she wonders how it doesn't melt the snow around them.
"Please continue to turn your holy light to Homura," The Miko beside her says, the words repeated by her many relatives. With her head bowed all the way to the ground, she feels snow melting against her and she peaks up through her bangs to look at where Amaterasu-Okami supposedly resides and, for a moment. she loses herself before she feels someone lift her chin up.
"Oh, little sun, how lovely your kimono is," A booming voice says, and Homura suddenly can't breathe because every breath she takes feels like she's inhaling smoke.
"Truly beautiful, how you honor me!" The voice says again but Homura can't hear anything, and her skin feels like it's on fire. Her hair catches fire like matchsticks, her bones burn like wood. Her body is burning again, she worries.
"Oh," she thinks before her eyes close, "the sun is beautiful."
Many thanks to my lovely Beta: JustBeMe13