As she had expected, Makoto found that riding in a saddle through the pitch black was not, in fact, anything at all like sleeping in her bed. Even if she managed to lay forward, some tilt of the land would force the horse to move in a way to smack a part of the saddle into her face, and if she attempted to doze while sitting, tree branches would poke at her face, invisible in the dark. And so Makoto grimaced and bore the discomfort while, she presumed, they made good time. After a seemingly endless time, they must have passed into a treeless region, as things stopped slapping her in the dark. At some point, she dozed off in the saddle.
((Ren heard the change of her breathing and deftly secured Makoto in her saddle, ensuring that the mechanically precise trot of the artificial horse had zero chance of unseating her.))
The dawning sun glared suddenly and Makoto's groggy eyes fluttered open. They were in open grassland sheltered between rolling wooded hills. And above them, gleaming white in the dawn light:
"Fujiyama!" gasped Makoto, who had only occasionally glimpsed the volcano's distant shape from certain points of Tock-Yo on clear days. Now it seemed to loom above them with a sort of lonely dignity.
Ren followed her gaze. "Fujiyama? Is that the human name for that mountain?"
"T-the human name?" said Makoto, feeling inexplicably scandalized by the idea the mountain could have any other name- and a vampire name at that! She had never been this close before, but she had seen the mountain's shape in many paintings, carvings, and drawings- the merchants who plied the trade roads between Tock-yo and the western cities seem to become uniformly enchanted by the mountain as they pass, and the artistic among them tended to recreate it. Makoto doubted a single mansion in Azabu lacked some piece of art of Fujiyama.
Still, Makoto was morbidly curious. "What is your name for it?"
Ren cast a wary look over his shoulder, his wide-brimmed hat very low over his face in the morning sunlight. Makoto saw an annoyed glance and a grimace, before he turned back to the front, gathering his cloak up around his neck in the effort to bundle up against the rising sun.
"My Mother's people call it: 'The Grandiose Arrival Point of the Sacred Ancestor'"
Well, that was an inelegant mouthful. Fujiyama was obviously a superior name. But Makoto kept her opinion to herself and offered a lame, "I- I see."
Ren laughed darkly at her tone, but offered no other information. They continued on in silence for a time, Makoto taking the opportunity to gaze at the mountain in question. 'The Grandiose Arrival Point of the Sacred Ancestor'? What a stupid name, honestly. What does it is even mean?
But then the logical side of Makoto's mind managed to usurp her scandalized train of thought. Wait, a moment. What does that name even mean?
"Ren," said Makoto, "What does that name mean?"
Ren didn't look back, but he reigned in his horse slightly so that he starting riding next to her. Between the low brim of his hat and the high collar of his cloak, Makoto could only see his eyes and his nose poking out.
"Nothing really," said Ren, "I remember Mother saying that Lord Sayuri named it that to make people think the Sacred Ancestor either had visited this province, or would visit it. But Mother says that never happened because the Sacred Ancestor never traveled anywhere."
"So this Sacred Ancestor was real? A real person?"
Ren glanced at her, then looked away, and said lamely. "Real? Of course. The Sacred Ancestor sired my Mother- and all of her generation."
Makoto almost fell off her horse. Ren was just casually dropping information about the origin of vampires like he was talking about the weather. Did- did he think this was common knowledge amongst humans, too? Well, if so, maybe she didn't need to clue him in on that misunderstanding.
"Oh, right," said Makoto after a pause. Then, thinking she was putting on a good voice of subterfuge ((She was not)). She said: "I knew that, of course. I was just waking up."
Ren gave her a suspicious look.
"W- well," mumbled Makoto, "Is the Ancestor still alive?"
Ren shrugged. "Who knows?" Then, he laughed suddenly.
"It's strange to talk about this," Ren continued, "These are things your mother tells you while they desperately hope you go to sleep. Supposedly, the Ancestor left- something like 50 or 60 thousand years ago, never to return."
"Left? What do you mean he left? She left?"
"This land. The Ancestor flew into the sky and never came back down."
Makoto instinctively looked into morning sky, a bright and clear blue sheet. Whatever cloud cover that had blocked the stars and moon last night was gone. But what could be up there? An island, perhaps, like in the story books? Some kind of castle in the sky? Surely, Ren was pulling her leg.
"So this is like a children's tale? Faeries and witches?" asked Makoto.
Ren shrugged. "Maybe. But it would be the only one Mother ever told me, if so. She's… not exactly that type."
"And- she knew this.. Sacred Ancestor?"
"Of course."
"What was he like? She like? And how did-" Makoto's mind was off and running. If this Sacred Ancestor created Ren's Mother as the first generation- then who created the Sacred Ancestor? It was a sort of chicken-or-the-egg dilemma which needed to-
But Ren derailed her logic train: "I don't know. Mother sometimes just… says things during her lectures, and She expects you to understand- like a reference to some book she expected you to read of your own accord just, just randomly. But sometimes what she says is about something that happened- maybe- ten thousand years ago? More? Who knows? Stuff that only She could possibly understand. And when you ask her about them- I think She realizes she.. I don't know- lost herself in a memory. And that makes her angry and she refuses to answer. Saying something like: 'Oh, it doesn't matter now. That was ages ago."
Makoto didn't know what to say to that- it was another of those sudden bursts of free information from Ren that she was still getting used to. There had been exasperation in the Ren's voice. Frustration. And a bit of sadness?
"Ren, forgive the question," hesitated Makoto, "But is your Mother… in her right mind?"
His head turned to her in confusion. "What? What does that mean?"
"Well- when humans get really old. Sometimes, they can act strange. Apparently, some can forget a great deal- and some can almost become like children."
Ren gave a look like he was surprised by the idea. "Oh, well. No, then. Mother, is not 'in her right mind.' She is as sharp and observant as she ever was- can turn your own argument against you like it was a leaf in the wind. Talking with her is- well, an adventure. And that reminds me, eventually we need to talk about how one goes about talking to her. Its dangerous."
He had the colloquialism backward, but Makoto understood: Ren's Mother was not senile, or at least not in anyway Ren could detect. And he had been away from home for only a few years- which must be like the blink of an eye for a woman who had lived some… what had Ren said? 70,000 years? Give or take… 10,000? Did such a difference even matter when the number was so large?
"Is it that different?" asked Makoto. "From talking to anyone else?"
Ren frowned and looked up at Fujisan. "Is talking to a god different from talking to anyone else? Perhaps if you don't think about it too much. But to talk to someone who could do anything at all to you? And effortlessly, at that? It's a little different, I think."
Makoto was silent for a moment. Ren's words echoed some of her own earlier fears of Ren himself. Did he forget the difference in their physical strength? Did he not notice they were deep in the wilderness and she was entirely in his power? Makoto would certainly fight back against him if she had to- but that would just be for pride. She was no match and the outcome would be inevitable.
Finally, she said: "I don't think so. I talk to you the same as anyone else."
Ren blinked, seemingly mulling over that answer, then turned towards her in wide-eyed shock and alarm. He blinked wildly and made sounds like he was opening and closing his mouth behind the high collar of his cloak- as if starting to say something and then discarding it. Ren's grey eyes were full of worry, anxiety, and revelation. Eventually, he seemed to give up and turned away from her.
"I see what you mean," said Ren, with a sigh, but then he turned back to her and gave a deeply earnest look. "But you're wrong. Makoto, I would never do anything to hurt you. I swear it."
What did one say to such a claim? Any protagonist from her romance novels would say something like that, and Makoto could see the emotion and the good intention behind that statement- could see it glimmering in Ren's grey eyes and the serious creases around them. But she had also seen some aspects of his people's strange hunger- directed at her. She had seen him move entirely to his own objectives, even while in her employ. And his Mother could apparently set blocks into his psyche at will…
Makoto silently edited the sentence in her mind: 'Makoto, I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you. I swear it.' That, she could allow herself to believe.
But- is that not the most honest claim one can ever really make to another person? And was it not the basic premise of her own belief that she will get home alive? Ren would guide her into the lion's den and back out. Makoto believed that as she believed the sun would rise again this time tomorrow.
"I know, Ren," said Makoto, "Thank you."
They pushed on a few hours more, but as the sun rose in the sky, Ren progressively slumped in his saddle. Makoto wasn't much better. She had managed a few exhausted moments of sleep before sunrise, but she was exhausted. It seemed a shame to waste good daylight in the wilds, but with Ren's special incense, it seemed nighttime was not the terror she remembered as a vampire hunter. When she and Sae had been out hunting, it seemed the ghouls almost never let them alone for longer than an hour. But last night, Makoto had not noticed a single sign of the creatures.
"Do you need shelter?" asked Makoto, breaking a long silence.
"I'm fine," said Ren, though he made an obvious effort to correct his posture. "And we should make as much distance as we can today. We are far from the roads, so there won't be bandits- but the Tock-Yo hunters don't come this far, either. The ghouls are like starlings out here."
"Are you out of that incense?"
"Low, but its reliant on the wind, anyway. Last night, the wind was blowing right towards where we wanted to go, so… but the wind switched on us, we'd be fools to rely on it in any other situation. In fact, let's pick up the pace a little, Makoto."
Great. That was not what Makoto had hoped to hear, but she supposed it did make sense. "Right!" she said, gamely.
And they were off, My. Fuji gleaming near at hand, its slow movement to their right was a silent recorder of their westward progress. On and on they rode. Much longer than Makoto had anticipated, but her pride wouldn't allow her to request a break before Ren suggested it… she would not be some useless thing holding him up!
But hours and kilometer's later, the sun was on its way down to the horizon and Fujisan was now behind them rather than beside. Makoto's bladder was like a knife in her waist with every stride of her horse. Ren had yet to show any sign of fatigue, what little of him she could see behind billowing cloak and broad hat.
Unable to withstand the pain, and beginning to sway in her saddle from fatigue, her legs trembling, Makoto was forced to shout: "Ren! I need a break!"
Ren jerked his head around to look at her, and there was a slight widening of surprise that sparked a flash of anger in Makoto's mind. She was pretty sure he had half forgotten she was behind him- or at least forgotten that she was a- a- damn human woman who might need a calm drink of water and a chance to go to the bathroom sometimes?! God!
But he didn't seem annoyed at being asked to stop, more concerned than anything.
"Y- yes! We should start looking for our shelter for the night!"