Something Like a Star (B. Katsuki)

Thirteen: Red Stars at Midnight

     The birds were quiet. Their song was there, relentless but soft, and gentle like a whisper. A breeze blew steadily through the woods, just hard enough to raise a few strands of hair away from the face to float about.

     The girl whose hair was a beautiful shade of purple, one that darkened down the lengths and molded into red at the tips; the girl who almost always had her hair tied up in a braid— you could find her in those woods. She was seated on the earthy floor, a bundle of moss cushioning her. Her legs, hidden away beneath a vibrant kimono of primarily red and blue colors, were neatly crossed, her elbows rested on her knees. Her forearms pointed outward and her palms opened flat towards the sky. Around her waist, an obi held fast and tight, and her hair was tied in a messy top knot, held with a pair of floral kanzashi sticks. Two eyes, one a fiery red and the other a marvelous blue, stood dormant beneath her eyelids, and her breathing was slow and smooth, and the only sound to come from her. Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. In the nose, out the mouth.

     In front of her, a shrine, long since drowned in vines and moss, but standing strong all the same. Hairline cracks trickled up and down its lengths like tiny streams, a few birds nests could be found amongst the foliage, but the shrine still withheld all the power it had the day it had been built.

     The girl with the purple hair had lit incense in three burners that sat immediately to her left, the smoke following the will of the ever-changing breeze, sometimes blowing over her, and other times blowing over the gentle face of the kami within the shrine.

    Omoikane: The deity of wisdom, preserved in overgrown stone in centuries past and for centuries to come. His wisdom beheld him in many forms. Some saw him as a beautiful woman with flowing hair and an all-seeing eye; others as a young man with a bow and arrow. Even more notable, the depiction of him as nothing but a brain, featuring tendons with eyes on the ends who were thought to look into the deepest parts of one's soul, seeking secrets.

     The shrine at which the girl sat was none of these, rather depicting the gentle face of an old man. His head was bald but his beard grown long, and his ears were large. Each wrinkle on his face, delicately carved with an expert hand into the rock, looked as though it represented another facet of his wisdom. His eyes, soft. Cottony. Bright as though they loved.

     It was here, far in the woods beneath the watchful eye of Omoikane, that the girl with the purple hair was sent to discover a part of herself that she had been missing. Though, she didn't exactly know that yet.

     The rustling of leaves somewhere behind and to her right was what broke the girl from her peaceful state, launching her into a mode of defense in which she jumped to her feet and produced a crystal spear in her small hands, the action blowing out the incense as what used to be tranquil suddenly became dangerous.

     Red and blue eyes were instantly free to look and see what they desired, and they did so with scrutiny, staring hard into the part of the woods where she thought she had heard the interrupting noise come from. Feet that were bare planted themselves firmly in the soft soil and moss, and teeth ground themselves together under the threat of a fight.

     A red panda hopped from the tree line. Tense shoulders relaxed and bent, ready knees extended until they were straight once more. A smile crept across the lower half of a face tinted with a bundle of freckles on each side. Red and blue eyes softened, and what once narrowed with fear now danced with excitement.

     The creature sat back on its hind legs and grinned at the girl, and she gave a short gasp, more of a quick exhale than anything. It jumped about, bounding off of rocks and stumps and making for the tree line, only to stop and look back at her again.