Under A Japanese Moon

Chapter 19

The next morning, Dawn woke up and realized she was all alone in the temple, the sudden silence seeming to suffocate her.

          Smoke curled up from the mostly-dead embers of last night's fire and their packs were missing. She was just about to give in to the building panic, afraid that Tsukuyomi and Kenji had abandoned her during the night and took Ayame with them, when she heard their voices. They echoed, coming from outside the temple walls.

            At that moment, Ayame poked her head in the doorway, her small raccoon ears twitching as she looked at Dawn. A smile streached over her lips.

            "Hey!", the tanuki girl shouted, "She's awake now! Kenji, Tsukuyomi, shes awake!" The tiny girl disappeared from the doorway as quickly as she had popped up.

            As Dawn slowly sat up, Kenji walked in with a steaming plate of food. He sat beside her and handed her the plate, his eyes shining with amusement as a smirk spread over his lips.

            "Your hair looks like a rat slept in it during the night.  It's all over the place." His shoulders shook from the effort of holding back his laughter.

            Dawn scowled at him and atracked the unruly mass of tangles that stuck out everywhere. She winced and almost whimpered when one one of the knots held up ageanst her tugging, feeling like she almost ripped the strands from her head.

            Kenji walked closer and plunked the plate of food down on the temple floor beside her. The fare looke unappetizing: a sort of lumpy porridge with bits of egg and meat that resembled quail or partridge.

            She thanked him and took a tentative bite. It was bland but she forced it down, knowing that she needed the energy for whatever the day would throw at them.

            Ayame devoured hers, shoveling the food past her lips as fast as she could, the spoon filled as high as it would go,without choking. As she ate, her ears twitched with each bite and her tail swished back and forth in a constant, steady rhythm.

            "Slow down a bit, Ayame. Noone is going to take it away from you," Tsukuyomi spoke from behind her and patted her head, "because if they do, I would beat them up and make sure they gave it back."

            The tanuki girl rolled her eyes, but giggled and started to eat agean at a much slower pace. She still cleaned her bowl quicker than the rest of them and begged Kenji for more, making her eyes big and pleading.

            Turning away from watching the both of them, Dawn's eyes slowly slid over the outside. Rain still fell,but the raging thunderstorm seemed to have moved on to torment another part of the country. Somewhere else, there was the exact same storm that they had escaped possibly tormenting others, only the people would not understand what was happening.

            She only hoped that the storm steared clear of her mentor and that, wherever Umi was, she knew that they were safe. Dawn hoped that she knew that the three of them were still working to return the Sword to Ryujin.

            And once they had completed that task, then she, Tsukuyomi, and Kenji were coming to get her.

~~~~~

Umi felt something shift in the air that surrounded her, as if the entire balance of the world had altered.

            She stirred awake within her cell as if she had been called, her green eyes shifting around as she tried to see through the dark that had gathered. The grey shadows that hovered on the walls were all she could make out through the gloom, though she could not hear anything that could have caused the change.

            Pain blasted through her as her various wounds streached and cracked when she sat up against the slimy cell wall. The wetness on the hard surface began soaking her soiled torn clothes, feeling too much like blood.

            Umi had to bite back a whimper as her unhealed burns stuck to the clothfrom where it had pressed against them.

            A woman's voice, all smooth, ancient, and cynical, echoed through her mind at that moment.

            "Your misery could end right now if you choose, you know. All you must do to free yourself is help me get that which I desire above all."

            Umi lifted up her head with a pain-filled groan and glared at the owner of the voice, Oni-baba. Her green eyes seemed to light up from within as if a blazibg inferno coursed behind them, singeing the air with what little power she had gathered.

            Umi spat at the woman's feet. "I would rather die than do anything to assist you.

           "The gods hear your wicked demands and see the vile deeds you have committed ageanst them. You will not go unpunished, Kijo."

            Oni-baba sneered at the priestess, her white-on-black eyes glared at her with animus. "That is Queen to you, human wench.

            "Now, I have somewhere else I must be. Evil plans do not enact themselves~."

            With that, the queen turned and glided away, leaving Umi alone in the near-dark. The receding pounding of her boots on the floor was the only sound for a moment, until she turned an unseen corner and vanished.

            Umi struggled to remain awake, fighting ageanst the desire to pass out, to enter into the oblivion of sleep. The feeling, unnatural and invading, had to be the touch of the Kijo's abominable magic, the power trying to force her to succumb to the she-monster's will.

            Though she fought against it with every ounce of her remaining, feeble strength,  the miko could not fight off the magic that gripped her.

            Pain seered through her body as she struggled to hold on, to fight the feeling, to resist.

            But her body was weak even though her mind and spirit remained unbroken. Her eyes drifted closed and her head drooped as the strength drained from her, her muscles falling limp as she stumbled, screaming with defiance, into the void.