Ghost Stories
A Letter
Maki,
How are you, my sweet?
It has been an exceptionally pleasant spring up north. I can only imagine how beautiful the cherry trees must have looked from the temple. The mist rolling off the mountain every morning must look even more exquisite from the peak of Mori herself. I haven’t visited since I was around your age, but I’m sure it’s every bit as breathtaking as I remember. I look out at the mountain from our window each day and think of you.
How goes your training? It’s the start of a new cycle, right? Be sure to make friends with those new girls. I’m sure they’re just as homesick and nervous as you were when you first arrived. Be a friend to them and show them how dependable you are, just like how Chisa and Elly took you under their wing. I still want to meet them, by the way!
Your father, worrywart that he is, wanted me to tell you to be careful. He says he’s been having a lot more encounters with some unsavory folk (not his words) that are a bit out of sorts and troubled of mind. They’ve definitely been popping up more often and getting rowdier to boot. Just last week, your father had to go help out Rebus when a few of them barged onto his property and started getting physical. Your father put them right as rain (his words) and I’m sure you could put them out even faster than that nowadays, but I suppose I can’t help but worry, too. The world is a dangerous place. Even if you have two years of shrine maiden training under your belt, do be safe.
We don’t usually see Ghosts this far north outside of Oppia, either, but Old Tilde swears she’s seen more black robes in the last few months than in the last 20 years combined. You know how she is, though. I haven’t seen any myself, of course, so I’m sure she’s just being jumpy and freaking out at the shadow of that gnarled old apple tree.
Other than that, the fish are just excited for the warmth as we are. The goddess is sure to favor us in the jamboree against /wah/ and /mep/ this year.
Your father and Mr. Iwanaga were out in the gulf in the fog one morning when it turns out they hooked the same tuna as a wah boat that was right next to them with their long, deep sea lines and they didn’t even know it. Then suddenly a risu boat comes between the two of them and managed to snag either the fish or their lines because your dad and the tako fisher wouldn’t let go and both ended up in the water. There’s a lot more to it than that including all of them meeting at sea with drinks, but I thought I’d give you the short version now before your dad starts rattling off the two-hour one when you get back.
Please let us know when next you plan to visit, so we can have a whole fish feast prepared ahead of time, and don’t be shy about writing home more often! We can’t wait to hear from you again.
With love,
Mom
This letter was intercepted before reaching its intended recipient, and expunged.
A duplicate was painstakingly crafted and delivered the following morning, omitting sensitive information.
An Encounter
In a heartland town, Keiji is cleaning up the last of the drunks before closing bar. The patrons had been few but the regulars had been generous. He locks the building and sets his way home. The night is fair.
Along the way, a pair of men appear ahead of him on the sidewalk. Keiji can’t tell if they’re raving drunk or just raving, but they’re impossibly loud, irritating, as well as blasphemous with the kinds of things they were proclaiming. He prays for them to at least quiet down as they pass, but they get even more raucous and crude as if in response, suddenly talking about other blasphemy he doesn’t understand. He turns his head as they pass.
The sight of something underfoot catches his eye and he stops. Keiji considers the small, bound blue book he thought he briefly saw one of the men waving before he evaded eye contact.
Before he wonders, the sudden feeling of a presence touches the back of his neck at the same time the sound of the men is no more.
Blankets of red and sable descended from soundless flight like an owl. Sleekly-fitted arms underneath heavy black cloak. Gripped in knife-like fingers, an ornamented nodachi. Underhood, its face was a fox’s, long of eye and marked by intersecting umber.
Standing but twenty meters away, it looms like a phantom, feeling at least seven feet tall from where Keiji stood.
like a phantom
Keiji reflexively drops the book, but even his body’s knee-jerk response in flight mode felt eons too slow. An eternity of quiet passes between an unbroken exchange with the fox, punctuated by the sound of leather meeting pavement. He doesn’t know if his wits will leave his mind before the last of the air escapes his lungs.
Mere seconds had passed.
The figure silently raises a finger to its painted lips. With as delicate a movement as it is, its weight in sheer presence exudes immense gravity over Keiji’s entire being, his eyes drawn to the slender black digit like a world to its star.
Keep silent.
The message was clear.
Keiji is more than halfway down the block before he knows it, set on no destination except away. He rounds the corner with shut eyes, desperate to turn away from what he’d seen. He cast that memory and the implications of it down the boulevard and into the darkness of night.
Black robes flow and melt against the backdrop of night—alongside the two men and their blue book—vanished like smoke.
