Almost all of two years into her training as a warrior, and the fox would not leave her be. Every morning, without exception, she'd wake to the fox curled up against her side, quietly awaiting the dawn. Every meal she'd be there, ready to steal some of her food- so much so that she even got extra portions from the sympathetic chefs, and the students who didn't want their meat to be just taken. It'd happened before. Many, many times.
Sometimes, even, she joined her in her sword forms, prancing neatly just out of range of her strikes, always smiling, always impossibly lithe. There was a grace to how she held herself, a gentle assurance that regardless of form made her seem untouchable.
Inari, she named her, for the rice she scarfed down and the fiery color of her fur.
At the beginning of her second year they'd moved her into one of the more luscious, blessedly interior rooms- warmth, at last- partly as tradition, partly as a hope it'd get the fox to leave her alone. Of course, that didn't work- nothing but a closed and locked door, and sometimes not even that was able to keep Inari out of where Inari wanted to go.
She- and Kisoi, for that matter- had mostly grown used to the fox that constantly hung around her ankles. The rest of the shrine… she grimaced at the looks she got as she walked past the many gates and onto the long stairways, fully packed for her journeyman's expedition plus extraneous fox. Not so much.
The whispers weren't anything new, but the glares, entirely unsubtle even if they pretended not to be… those were new. Maybe the seneschal had something to do with that- most of the older warriors held a sort of dismissive disdain toward her, or rather, Inari, yet she found that she really didn't care all that much. Foxes, she'd decided after over a year of being subjected to cruel and unusual cohabitation, were somewhat fun to be around.
"Kensho!” Ah. Overbearing exuberance, endless wells of arrogance, superiority complex half as wide as the emperor’s… Kisoi, clearly. She was leaving on her own as well, out into the vast expanses of the wilderness to complete the last step of her training and return a warrior in truth. They both were, but there was the general implication that if Kensho came back with her fox she would come to seriously regret it. “Where’re you off to without saying goodbye?”
“Outside. Away. Anywhere but here.” It was said in perfectly good humor, but there was a bitter undertone to it that anyone but Kisoi and Inari would have missed. “Well, I was thinking of going north, towards the seat of the empire-”
“Wow! I never knew you wanted to die so badly!” Now, Kisoi… that was all good natured cheer. Scathing as it was, she barely realized it before continuing on in her blunder of words and taunts all rolled up into that one overarching endeavor known as banter. Or well, her specific draught of it- “the capitol is the best place to be conscripted into massive armies and random, doomed rebellions. Seriously, the nobles around there are absolutely insane. I’m going south, if you want to follow?”
“...really?” Inari’s head butted against her shin, as if to ground her. “...I’d be honored, my lady, to join you on your journey.”
“Yes! This- it’s going to be just like one of the stories- the merry band of warriors- well, warriors and a fox- off to beat up random people and save the noble warriors!”
Kensho’s face twisted into a grim, giddy smile. “You mean beat up warriors and save random people?”
“Yeah, I wish.” They laughed, together, joined by the soft bark of a fox so faint as to be barely heard. The world was open before them, from shrine to forests to vast expanses beyond, gray-clad sky weighing like a portent of grandeur, a blanket- of futures, possibilities and expectations, and the gentle drifting of snowflakes as they stepped from the shrine into the world at large.
A moment passed, deep eyes of fire tracking their excited motions, and the fox followed after them.
………
The first people who tried to attack them were bandits, and not even the retired warrior type. Literally just bandits who’d picked up some blunt farm instrument or two, clearly expecting easy prey on the backroads between the country villages. With the situational awareness they had- they missed the swords holstered across their back. They missed the armor- it was almost a wonder how they hadn’t tripped over themselves and died already. Inari could take them.
Something that, much to her surprise even though she’d long since decided that anything the fox did was normal and unsurprising by default, she did. A blur of orange launched from her shoulders with a rush of fur and growling claws, bouncing off two of the bandits shoulders with enough force to send them crumbling to the ground before her jaws latched into the final one’s throat, gouging it out in a spray of arterial blood.
“Holy stormwinds- kami, what are you teaching her!”
Wide eyes met Inari’s clearly smug posture, tracing the lines of blood that ran from teeth shining white to snow stained scarlet red. “So that was why you kept jumping at me during sword training… you’re pretty smart, aren’t you?” Inari preened, and for all the gore that stained the world, she smiled back.
Only one of them noticed the child- knife clutched in hand, frozen just behind the trees the others had leapt from, looking at them in abject terror. Inari glanced at the child with her cool, burning eyes, quirking the edge of her eye- and the child ran away into the forest darkness.
The forest spread out before them, and they walked away across a path of memories not their own, continuing a new journey so ancient.
………
Her sword cut a crimson line across the other samurai’s chest, shearing through armor with the force of a single harsh blow and sending the older man to his knees. Pale eyes met hers with shaky tears, a hard grimace across his face- for all he’d attempted to kill them, she hadn’t wanted to end this way. “You… you have invited the wrath of the Cherry Shrine warriors onto yourselves. Rest on the riches of your actions, and die like-” his voice turned to a wet gasp as a single orange paw pressed itself onto his throat.
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Those burning eyes… the samurai didn’t even have a chance against her. “Good job Inari. Let’s join the others.” Five bandits, this time, though organized thugs might be a better name with how they’d been mobbed out in the open in the center of a village.
Kisoi stepped up beside her, flicking the blood off her blade as cold eyes stared down the dead men and cowering villagers. “I don’t think I like this… Cherry Shrine. Incompetents against the honor of the Black Mountain Shrine, but even fools can kill a god in number enough.” For some reason, Inari found this inordinately funny.
"Likely some sort of local force. Maybe official, maybe not… we can investigate?"
A grim smile etched itself onto Kisoi's face. "Oh… this will be fun." She sent one last glare towards the bodes before they quickly strode out from the village and into the vast expanse of forest, the shadows domain of gangly trees and jagged rocks, glittering white in the snow's sunlight.
………
Aside from the occasional village, the vast countryside was empty. Forests forever, an expanse of evergreen trees and ever-furious winds, casting snow adrift on the biting winter air. Shadows etched in inky light, splashed across a canvas of wintertime- so coldly, sharp and shifting soft as they loomed behind their lone trail, footsteps trailing off to the horizon so far behind.
Step by step, forward, trudging through foot high drifts of snow they marched onwards, ever to a destination they didn't even know. A journey without end, winding through rugged wilderness, valleys' ridges casting wavering shade as the trio tried, and failed to find the Cherry Shrine.
A harsh kick snapped the tangling briar remnants, followed by a tanto's slash that sheared neatly through the rest of the spiny- annoying- twigs. "We're not going to find anything at this rate."
"Well, at least you're the one forging the path." Kisoi shrugged halfheartedly, slipping neatly through the gap made in the brambles only to receive a hastily-made snowball to the face. "You- brat, get back here lest you wish to face the desecration of a thousand snow-" another snowball slammed into her, icy chill sending her spluttering. "Very well, then!" Three snowballs flew from her hands in perfect synchronicity, two slamming into Kensho's armor with staccato precision, a third neatly deflected off her tanto. A grin split Kensho's face, all gleeful, vindictive angles and-
They fought in the snow, free, for hours as the sun rose to zenith's throne and fell to the grace of night.
A spark of light was all that remained by the time they were finished, a flickering fire tucked out of the wind behind a low stone outcropping, merrily blazing orange-bright as shattered brambles burnt away. Kisoi crouched down next to the fire, shivering against the chill night as it wrapped its eminence around them, outstretched hands greedily absorbing the gentle warmth. "I hung them up from a tree over yonder-" past the rock that sheltered the winds, where their armor would dry during the night- "and I would have hung the clothes, too, but…"
A faint grin slipped across Kensho's face. "You're unrepentant, aren't you."
"How dare you insinuate that I, Kisoi of the venerable and prestigious Black Mountain-"
Kensho cackled with laughter, reaching across the fire to bop her on the head with her katana's scabbard. "Enough! I give, your excessive holiness!"
"Hmph. And you better remember it-" but she was smiling too. There was a peaceful atmosphere here, beside the fire- one they'd not had even in the sanctitude of the shrine itself. Just the three of them- "hey, Kensho?"
Said warrior looked up from where she was gnawing on the next best thing to hardwood, wincing as she tried not to break her teeth. "Myeah? In busy?"
"Where's Inari?"
She frowned, glancing around expectantly, yet not seeing even a hint of those bright eyes in the dancing shadows. "I don't actually know. She was there with us when we started the snowball fight, I'm certain. What if… what if wolves, or a bear- or a hawk, or an unexpected and inconveniently placed ravine hidden beneath the snow-"
Kisoi snorted dismissively, yet there was an implacable edge of worry to her expression, hovering on the edge of her face. "Calm down. She can kill grown men almost as easily as we can- some wolf won't be able to do her in." The rest of their time by the fire was soured, though, by the missing fuzzy- they'd long since grown used to her form, curled up about them as they chattered about something inane.
Long after they'd tucked in for the night, the soft sound of paws on snow echoed in the distance, dropping lightly into the small clearing with an excited yip that was clearly too loud for the half-asleep warriors. Kisoi was the first to wake- shuffling blankets and mumbling something incoherent about not being ready to bully random nobles at this time of the day, before her eyes caught on the vulpine face but inches from hers. "...Inari?"
"Inari's back?" Second to wake, Kensho still managed to be the first one to crawl out into the bitter midnight chill. "Where were you… is that a scroll?" Kensho tugged the- remarkably slobber free- object from Inari's mouth, turning it over a few times in bewilderment. "Is that one of my scrolls?" A singularly unimpressed look met her incredulity. "Fine, I'll open it."
Kisoi slid up beside her, frown written clearly across her face. "If she just ran off…" inky lines and a compass rose, scribed with unsteady hand- or paw, as the black stains on the fox's fur clearly denoted- scratched out the barest form of a landscape, a paw-print in one corner and a sakura blossom in the other. "Did Inari give us directions? I'm pretty sure that's not normal…"
"Eh. She's Inari."
"Fair enough." A wide yawn split her face as she snuggled back into her blankets after quickly throwing a few more sticks onto the dying flame. "I'm going to deal with this absolute… in… morning…" then she was sleeping, lost to dreams and exhaustion.
Kensho spared Inari one last glance before slipping the scroll into her bag. "I wonder, sometimes, if you're getting smarter instead of older…" and then she too fell asleep, adrift on the fox's lazy dismissal- quiet, in the dark of celestial night.
………
{ISON-II note - APC liaison: You're going to blow your cover wider than that one annihilation thing you attacked me with.}
"Circles. APC, my amazing comrade-in-testing, they've been walking in circles."
{ISON-II note - APC liaison: Counterpoint- you drew them a detailed map.}
"Two weeks. We've been walking in circles for two whole weeks." Kitsune huffed, bordering on the edge of a smile.
{ISON-II note - APC liaison: Acknowledgment- fair enough…}