Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun and Origin of all that is Good, slows her sprint into a jog. Around her, the blurry, undefined greenery morphs back into trees and bamboo before her eyes.
Bamboo is good. It means they're getting closer to Kusa Village, where the demon Crimson Helm is said to be holed up. As much as she would like to make the rest of the trip before sundown, her mortal body shakes with fatigue. Her jog slows into a calm walk along the beaten dirt road, her aching paws and injured leg thanking her.
Amaterasu huffs to herself, both to catch her breath and out of annoyance. Her favored form, that of a brilliant white wolf, is fleet of foot and mighty as they come, but she knows she should be stronger than this. The terrible fog that has been clouding her memories for the last several weeks fades with an agonizingly slow pace, but she knows that during her last adventure in beautiful Nippon, one that passed over one-hundred years ago, the trappings of mortality never seemed like issues.
Just a few days prior, she felled a pack of imps seeking to ambush a courier along the road. Although she slew the demons without a scratch, one tried to flee by unfurling a body-sized kite and riding the wind.
Amaterasu jumped high, and removed the imp's head from his shoulders before he could run away and cause misfortune elsewhere. When she came back down, it was upon uneven ground. Misjudging her fall, she landed with a painful jolt up one of her hind legs. Her hip and leg have been stiff and sore ever since.
Alas, trying to rid herself of the stiffness was a fruitless effort. Mighty and varied is her Celestial Brush, a divine power that lets her draw her will into creation as if the world was a canvas, and none of her techniques were so useful as Restoration… Which failed magnificently when she tried to heal her leg. The divine power fizzled out to her bewilderment. Then she realized why.
She doesn't know what exactly she is trying to fix. Fixing a broken object like a rotted wooden bridge or a snapped fishing line is one thing, but mending something as complex as a body is another, it seems…
Her stomach growls, and the white wolf growls back.
A flash of green appears in the corner of her eyes, and Amaterasu looks up.
Standing upon her head and between her ears is Issun, her partner in this sojourn to rid Nippon of evil.
The man is tiny, no more than a few centimeters tall, wearing equally tiny robes and a beetle-like hat. Belonging to a race of sprites called poncles, Issun glows with a bright green aura of magic. Despite being a crass womanizer and self-described freeloader, the tiny artist has been her guide, her voice to humans (owing to the poncle talent of animal speak), and most loyal friend since her awakening. For that, Amaterasu feels she cannot thank him enough. She swears she knew a poncle before Issun, but the name just won't come to her past the fog in her brain.
"Jeez, Ammy," the tiny man bounces on her head. "You sound like you could eat a horse. Maybe we should stop for the night and find some dinner."
Her stomach growls once more, so she can't help but nod in agreement.
In the waning sunlight, the wolf and poncle pad along the road. It's not uncommon to find rest stops on well-trod paths, either small inns, teahouses, or unmanned hovels used as a place to sleep, so with any luck, they'll stumble upon one soon.
"At least the demons around here are laying low. We haven't seen one all-day," Issun comments, filling the silence with his pleasant chatter. "No demons, no aggravated leg." After a beat, he asks: "How is your leg doing, furball? Still hurt?"
Amaterasu snuffles and throws her head.
"Running the whole way probably didn't help, ya know," the poncle chides in reply. "I do gotta wonder about the demons, though. Did someone get to them before us? We haven't passed any monks or exorcists on the way, did we?"
The Sun Goddess silently wonders about that herself. Bands of demons roam the land nowadays, making travel perilous for people, but the road from Taka Pass to Kusa Village has been oddly quiet.
They walk for another twenty minutes as Amaterasu's sun dips further and further behind the horizon, bathing the tall stalks of bamboo around them in pink and orange. Finally, they come across a rest stop along the road, one it looks like they'll be sharing with someone else, judging from the gentle light shining out of the windows.
A pleasant, savory smell wafts by her nose from the rest stop, and Amaterasu instinctually takes a deep sniff. Immediately, her tail begins to wag and her stomach grumbles. Hopefully, the temporary companions within are willing to share what they're cooking. The smell is delicious.
Stepping up to the small shack of a building, Amaterasu noses the sliding door open and pokes her head inside. With a blink, she tilts her head at what she sees.
Sitting cross-legged by the hearth and tending to both a boiling pot and a number of meat skewers, a clearly foreign man looks up and meets Amaterasu's surprised eyes with his own. His western features are marred by a ghastly trio of claw-like scars on his face, one nearly claiming his eye, and his hair is a lighter brown than most. Much like his visage, his clothes are foreign, and Amaterasu can't hope to name the articles he wears. Even sitting down, Amaterasu can tell the man must be quite tall.
Beside him sits someone even more surprising. At the man's side is a kitsune, one who regards Amaterasu warily.
The kitsune is roughly Amaterasu's size, and coated in fur that shines and glitters like pure gold. A twitch of her nose tells the Goddess that the kitsune is a female. Ruby-like eyes stare into Amaterasu's own amber orbs, but it's not the fox's eyes that Amaterasu lingers on. No, the wolf swiftly counts the fox's tails, which number nine.
Not just any kitsune, but a kyuubi. Amaterasu can't recall the last time she spoke to one. Lesser kitsune are a rare sight on their own.
…Perhaps this kyuubi is the reason the road to Kusa is free of demons?
"Hey, buddy!" Issun breaks the silence before it can grow awkward, bouncing up and down on Amaterasu's head. "Mind if we join you? We've been running all day and could use a rest."
The western man snaps out of his stupor and smiles politely, unphased at meeting a poncle. The scarred side of his face can't smile as well as the unblemished side does, and Amaterasu finds herself tempted to try her paw at healing the scars with her Brush. "Of course. Please, come in. Some company would be lovely," he says, his accent thick and quite humorous to listen to.
Stepping inside, Amaterasu noses the door shut behind her and seats herself a polite distance away from the man, relaxing her body and sore leg. Although she feels a bit bad for ignoring their new acquaintances, she watches the pot above the fire longingly, her stomach gnawing at itself.
"Hungry?" The man smiles again, pulling a packet of rice paper along with a mortar and pestle from the curious bag behind him. He opens the packet and dumps the contents, a collection of salt and spices, into the mortar to be ground up. "It'll be ready shortly, and we'll be glad to share some."
"That's mighty nice of you, pal!" Issun says. "Normally, I'd make fun of Ammy here for having a bottomless pit for a belly, but we ran all the way here from Taka Pass this morning, so lemme speak for her when I say the generosity will be appreciated."
Amaterasu wags her tail with a short bark of agreement.
"Issun is the name, and this here is Amaterasu!" Issun introduces both of them.
The man and the kitsune meet eyes for a second, a conversation seeming to play out between them in a heartbeat. The scarred westerner then turns back to them. "It's nice to meet you two. My name is Lee Henson… Or I suppose it's family name first here? Henson Lee, then," he says, giving the pot above the fire a stir.
"Ninetales is my name. I am Lee's partner and protector. A pleasure to meet you," The words falling from Ninetales' mouth are no human speech, but Amaterasu understands them regardless, as she's sure Issun does. The kitsune inclines her head and wraps her tails around her legs, seeming content to say nothing else.
Protector? So it was Ninetales who culled the demons on the road. Amaterasu smiles and barks in thanks. Selfish interests or not, the fox has no doubt saved more than one unfortunate traveler some trouble, and the Goddess can appreciate it.
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"T'was no issue," Ninetales smiles in reply.
"Oh, tales, I get it!" Issun chuckles to himself, drawing a roll of the eyes from the fox. "How did a westerner and a kitsune meet, if you don't mind me asking?"
"You might say we were made for each other," Ninetales says mysteriously. "It was simply fate that we crossed paths on that sunny day years ago."
"She found me lost and alone in the woods, and decided the dumb man she found needed all the help he could get," Henson cuts in, sending the exasperated fox's mystique crashing to the ground with a smile. "I still need it, so here we are."
Issun's little green aura flares. "Huh. Small world. I did the same thing for Ammy. Poor thing would still be on the other side of Nippon, as helpless as a turtle on a fencepost if not for me."
Annoyed, Amaterasu throws her jaws and catches Issun in her mouth, letting him squirm for a moment. After a few seconds of suffering, she unceremoniously spits him out on the floor with a splat!
"Ick!" Issun gets back to his feet, his aura flaring into a furious red and burning the saliva away. "Again with the wolf slobber! You can't treat a man of my station like that!" He complains.
An elegant, cream-colored tail rises up to the kitsune's face to hide an amused smile before Ninetales sets the conversation back on the rails. "You came all the way from Taka Pass in a day, you said? We've been traveling along this road from the Pass for a few days now. You must have kept quite a pace."
Amaterasu lays down and relaxes, letting Issun speak in her stead. The conversation drifts from topic to topic lazily as the cool of the night sets in. The wolf Goddess listens to Issun boast about his painting skills, to Ninetales' wistful wishing to visit a number of locations in Nippon, but the wolf listens with the most interest to Henson, who speaks of his scholarly pursuits in things like biology, meta-biology, transformative energy theory, and sapient psychology and interrelations among other things that Nippon has no words for. Such dull subjects are boring, but it's hard not to listen when the large man's voice swells with his passion for understanding every facet of life itself. Many of the terms and words fly over her head, but it's clear as day that the man is an expert in his chosen schools.
"We do travel quite far for Lee's studies, sometimes." Ninetales nods along to one of Issun's questions. "Sometimes the locations are less than a day's travel, and other times they're far off the beaten path. Occasionally, they're… farther than we expect." She trails off, looking out the window and to the starry sky outside. "Returning home is often an experience in and of itself."
"We'll get back. We always do," Henson smiles and pulls Ninetales into a one-armed hug. The other arm is busy serving food onto a number of colorful plates made of an odd, flexible material that Henson produces from his bag.
When a plate is passed to her, Amaterasu takes a moment to let Issun gather an armful for himself before leaning down and taking a bite. The meal is simple fare, being rice, grilled eel, and assorted vegetables in a savory sauce with little in the way of presentation, but the taste! The meat is tender and flaky, the rice is soft and has absorbed the flavor of the eel and the sauce, and the vegetables round the flavor and add a pleasing texture to the mix. Eating is a mortal pleasure the Goddess is always glad to indulge in, and this meal is one for the books. As she wolfs down her food, she wonders if one of the esoteric sciences Henson studies somehow involves cooking.
Her plate empty and belly full, Amaterasu stretches out and sighs happily, relishing the simple joy of good food and company.
"Thanks for the food, Henson! It was great!" Issun once more speaks for Amaterasu and himself. "I could eat like that every night!"
"You flatter me, Issun," Henson seems pleased that his dinner went over well with everyone. "Once everyone's food settles, I was hoping to see about Amaterasu's leg."
Amaterasu's head rises off of her paws, taking in Henson with bewilderment.
"Her leg?" Issun parrots.
The westerner nods. "Yes. I noticed she wasn't putting quite as much weight on her right hindleg as the other. May I ask what happened? I'm guessing a bad trip or a long fall?"
"Uh, yeah, actually." Issun seems as surprised as Amaterasu feels. "You seem experienced on the matter."
Henson nods his head toward Ninetales. "I'm just a squishy, regular man, so Nine often has to fight for me if we get into trouble. As a consequence of my fields of study and her being my frontline defender, I've seen about every natural injury a creature in the Canidae family can experience, and a lot of unnatural ones, too. If I can help, then I'd like to."
Issun goes silent. "What do you think, furball?"
Amaterasu thinks to herself.
Henson certainly seems to know his stuff. He spoke earlier of his various sciences and experiences without hesitation or any signs of deceit. When she watches his eyes, though, she feels her own narrow.
Her Godly features are hidden from the eyes of normal humans. To most, she appears as a regular wolf, albeit with a pure white coat. None see the divine red ink in her fur, the swirling tufts on her legs, her ink-dipped tail, or any of her divine weapons, which she keeps in a telekinetic grip behind her when not in use.
Henson is looking directly at the Divine Reflector above her back, a mirror imbued with holy sunfire that has struck down many a demon as a bludgeon. The man isn't quite so regular, now is he?
Yet, that matters not when she looks deeper. The man fidgets under her gaze, but does not shrink away or hide. No, his intention to help simply for the sake of helping is as true as can be. If there is one thing that Amaterasu can trust, it's motives that mirror her own, as arrogant as it may sound.
With a pleased, affirmative bark, the Sun Goddess lets the flames around her divine reflector fizzle out before she sets the weapon gently against the wall. She trots up to Henson, who smiles back.
"Okay!" He begins. "Let's get this show on the road. Can you present your side with the injured leg to me? Issun? Can you sit somewhere else for a bit? I may need Amaterasu to take an unstable position and don't want you getting hurt in the process."
Issun bounces away, over to Ninetales, where he bounds up and perches upon the kitsune's head instead. The fox frowns, visibly displeased, but she doesn't knock the poncle away
"Let's get started," Henson murmurs, taking his hands and feeling up and down Amaterasu's leg.
Henson's experience immediately becomes apparent. The tips of his fingers ghost across her leg with featherlight touches, pausing over areas where the soreness is most prevalent without so much as a twitch from Amaterasu. The hands move up her thigh and to her lower back, where he gently runs a pair of fingers from the top of her pelvis to the base of her tail. If Henson weren't a professional healer and a human to boot, then this feels like it might be too lurid to allow.
"Hey, I can hear your teeth grinding," Amaterasu can hear Issun whisper to Ninetales. "What's got your tails in a bunch?"
"Nothing, bug," the fox hisses, just as quiet.
…Apparently, Ninetales does not appreciate this…
"And this was caused by a bad fall?" Henson questions, his face set into a mask of focus. "Did you land with your body parallel to the ground?"
Amaterasu shakes away the awkwardness with a whine and looks over to Issun.
"Kinda?" The poncle provides from his place atop Ninetales' head. "She was twisted a little bit, and that leg hit the ground before the other."
"Alrighty," Henson mutters. "Amaterasu? Do you have any kind of abilities that would provide passive accelerated recovery from physical injury? Like a healing factor or regeneration?"
The wolf nods. She's always healed quickly. That's why she's been so mystified and frustrated with this persistent ache.
"Okay, Then I have a good idea what's going on." Henson smiles. "I've seen this happen a few times with Ninetales and a few others. It looks like you have a factor fault."
"Factor fault?" Issun crosses his tiny arms. "You've been talking in nothing but jargon all night, Doc. Maybe explain this time?"
"Sorry," Henson blushes, looking away and faintly embarrassed. "A 'factor fault' is medical shorthand back where I'm from used to refer to a category of injuries caused by healing factors incorrectly repairing a prior injury. Things like a bone breaking, then healing back together crooked before it can be properly set, or torn muscles accidentally bunching up and healing together in a big mass."
Amaterasu feels her hackles rise. Ugh! That sounds ghastly! And she has that condition?! She looks over at the man with no small amount of horror, hoping that he's wrong.
"Thankfully, it looks like Amaterasu's case is nothing to be worried about," he smiles. "I didn't feel any misshapen bones or anything of the like, so this is probably just a case of compacted connective tissue in the upper thigh from axial overload." He presses the back of his hand to Amaterasu's thigh once more, before taking her ankle in his other hand and gently lifting her leg a few centimeters. "Her hip wasn't dislocated, but I imagine she probably has some trapped fluid from a bit of transverse overload if she landed at an angle. We can fix both in one go, thankfully."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Issun bounces impatiently. "Fix her up!"
"Aasir, I thought I would never need to do this one, but you ended up being right again…" Henson mumbles to himself before slapping a pleasant smile back on his face. "Okay, so what I'm going to do is this…"
Henson lifts her hindleg and scooches closer so he can place it over his shoulder, leaving her inner thigh against the back of his shoulder blade. "I'm going to 'hug' the meat of your thigh here, as my hands-" With his arms on either side of her leg, he presses his palms against her lower back, just above the base of her tail, "-push down right there on your hips. Using my body as a leverage point, I can both squeeze and pull your leg, freeing the compacted connective tissue and the fluid in your hip."
…Okay, now this has to look like a compromising position. The wolf does her best to hide how embarrassed she feels. Ignoring the daggers being stared into the back of her head is a bit harder. Harder still is ignoring how uncomfortably hot the room is getting.
"Ready?" Henson asks, looking totally oblivious to the fact that his face is so close to what lies under her tail. "Your leg is going to sting, and your hip is going to feel a pinch. Three, two, one…" He clenches his arms together, pushes down on her hips, and leans his body back. "Just grit your teeth and keep your balance!"
Amaterasu winces, feeling a sharp flare of pain followed by-
PO-PO-POP!
An absolutely heavenly surge of relief.
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Amaterasu would look back and ruminate on that night a number of times throughout her and Issun's journey. The noise that came out of her mouth when Healer Henson popped her hip was… embarrassingly indecent. Borderline lewd, even.
That's probably why Ninetales spewed a furious stream of flames from her maw, scorching the ceiling black and scaring the life out of everyone. It was nothing Amaterasu's Celestial Brush couldn't fix, but it was not an occasion any of them would remember as one of their more dignified moments.