Sapphire Ambassadors

It would be strange to pick the day of the presentation on having your actions match your words and not uphold her word. Inori had promised the Shrine's head priest to be pack and pay her respects, and she most certainly would. Not a high price for keeping one's word, this.

Although these past days have been pretty hectic Inori sighed to herself

Still, nothing to it but..wash her hands. And rinse her mouth, ritually. Right. Temples and all. She was a priestess of sorts...

Bow to the temple's main statue.

Lots of gods to pay tribute to...might as well start with Hotei. Who couldn't use contentment and the strength to accept their lot?

If Hotei had ever blessed the next figure to arrive, it hadn't ever lasted.

Choudai hated temples.

The Seven Fortunes were capricious bastards who delighted in screwing with mortals, his ancestors weren't generally the sorts of people you wanted looking in on you, and the Kami, well... his Kami wasn't the sort to be impressed by mouthed platitudes or the like.

And then there was the whole business in Naishou, and what it had taught him.

Reverence was consequently a hard sell.

But he'd been more or less ordered to turn up, so he arrived in a sort of sublimated seething.

You bastards only ever seem to listen to my prayers so you can say "no" to them, but let's get this horseshit over with.

He was fully prepared to mouth some quite insulting things under his breath to any of the miserable divine torturers who might happen to be listening when he spotted the young Lion.

Guess I'd better behave.

It was a curious thing. He was pretty sure that Inori would, sooner or later, find out something about him to make her sever all contact, but...

But I like her. She's a good kid.

Hasn't been ruined like all the rest of us. Not yet.

He debated interrupting her devotions with a greeting, then opted against it.

Contentment. Kind of a big ask, is it not? Inori thought to herself I know I have damn well struggled against my lot, even though it's hardly horrible. A gift by any sane measure, even. Yet...

I feel like a child, really. Not the adult Samurai I'm expected to be now. Not doing my duty to my clan, just because it's not what I knew, what I wanted when I was younger, all I and my parents looked forward to. It's a new world now, and my Clan needs different things from me. Time to step up. Hotei, please, if you would...I have work to do to live up to your ideal.

Clasped her hands. Bowed, three times, with reverence.

Turned around and spotted another familiar figure.

"Bayushi-san!" she said, walking over and bowing.

He looked absolutely delighted to be here. The kind of delighted that more than occasionally has people draw steel or throw ornaments, cups and random pieces of furniture.

"Fortunes be with you..." she said, with a hint of apprehension.

"Ah, Matsu-san, today is indeed a rare one in my life... I come to a temple and find a friendly face. In that sense, things are looking up. I'm not... interrupting you or anything, am I?"

He looked about the structure with a remarkably well-concealed distaste.

Motivation in all things- Inori didn't need his own doubts poisoning her.

"I'll confess this isn't my usual environment."

"No, you are not interrupting" Inori said, smiling, looking around. "I must confess I am not familiar with this temple either. I think I should be, but...it's been a hectic few days, has it not?"

Plus I have been avoiding this, like many other things. I wonder if I can still do that. I probably should not

Her gaze went over the statues of the other fortunes, the architecture - like many things in Crane lands it was very conservatively designed and entirely too well-maintained and clean.
Then her eyes returned back to the Bayushi. Much of his earlier irritation seemed to have been quelled - perhaps she had misread, and he wasn't that angry? Inori honestly did not know, and neither did she know how to ask - or knew whether she should.

Would I be avoiding another thing that I should not? I wish I knew....

"To be entirely truthful I am here because I said I would. It is a good idea, you know, Bayushi-san, but...I still needed someone to make me go here"

"Hm. Something we have in common."

He chuckled.

"Not that I am ordered to be here, heavens no, but... it would be quite dishonest of me to say it was my idea. But you being here... anything in particular- or at least, anything you care to speak about?"

"Hmmm. I told Asahina Jurojo-sama I would, and...it's often not as easy to uphold one's word in deed."

Inori lapsed into a short pause, and thought

"But truth be told I was avoiding the Temple a little because being here forces me to face some questions that have been uncomfortable for me. You know...."

Paused. Stopped, started again.

"A lot of people always act as if I should be overjoyed, thrilled for all the new opportunities and throw myself into studying this spiritual gift. Shugenja are special, so much rarer and more valuable than that boring Bushi. In fact, I should go to a proper Shugenja school and learn the real technique, learn it right."

Finally a bit of the frustration and anger broke through, that was suppressed before

"I liked being a boring bushi. And I was never considered defective there until near the end."

The outburst had somehow burned off something Inori had held coiled inside her, and now she felt...drained, perhaps. Less keyed up.

"And the worst thing is that they may very well be right, and I need to learn to accept it to do what is right by my clan"

"Duty is important, Matsu-san."

Even when it's horrible.

"But it's not unusual that you're having trouble grappling with your situation. Do you know why I'm a bushi, despite being barely adequate for the task according to my sensei?"

"No, Bayushi-san, I do not"

Neither have I even heard about him being barely adequate. I suppose we give others more credit than they give themselves often enough.

"But please tell me, maybe there is a lesson in it" she said

"My two older siblings and my younger sister all work in the courts. My grandmother, my uncle, my mother, all have been courtiers. It's essentially the family trade."

He gestured to himself.

"And my chief passion is cooking. Hardly out of the line for what a courtier might do, and very difficult for a bushi in the field to indulge in, hm? So why did I go to the bushi dojo?"

He held his hands out wide.

"A... quandry. I lacked a fair bit of the polish the courts find so useful."

And I refused to adulterate my cooking with added "ingredients," ever.

"So I learned the way of the sword. I was not a particularly good student, nor a particularly bad one. I performed adequately. My little brother Ozaki, now, that man is a bushi, I mean, he excels, he pushes himself to it..." Choudai shook his head. "I perform my duty, Matsu-san. But I would not say that it truly defines me. That was created in my youth, learning to cook at my grandmother's knee."

He bowed to the Matsu.

"Just as you will always, on some level, be who you were as a small child. The girl who was going to be a bushi? That's still in you, and always will be. Your duty, wherever it takes you, won't change that."

She nodded, relieved.

"I feel it is so...difficult. Because so many believe it is waste of who I can be, but how can...who we ARE be a waste?"

Inori fidgetted a bit "Maybe this place is special, because whether you would have been a Courtier or a Bushi, you always were a cook. This may very well be one of the few times you were actually allowed to be a cook. Although...they are making all this ruckus about your cooking, too"

Inori took an involuntary half-step back, clearly suprised by her own words and just realizing what she might have said.

"I am...I don't know whether I should be sorry. Likely not. But."

She winced.

"They're not letting you have this one either, huh? That said it's not like we can just change completely who are. Just like I'm still a Matsu, you're still the cook who learned his grandma's craft and secrets"

"Exactly. And whatever fuss they make about my work here? However deeply they try to bury me? I've still won."

He gave a somewhat bitter chuckle.

"And since they never let me have much of anything, I can't say it hurts worse than the usual. All I can do is go on, and grab my moments as they come. Nothing is guaranteed, and nothing can be counted on to last."

"That sounds..." she was fumbling for the right words "Fatalistic. Like a man going to his death knowingly"

"I assume you are going to fight this somehow, or rather continue doing your thing despite their censure. At least you don't sound like you're intimidated by all this."

Inori started pacing. This was a little hard to deal with, but her mind had started running, trying to figure out the situation and looking for ways out. Which she could not see yet, but she might. She would keep thinking.

"You have a lot of resilience. That said I doubt you ever had much luck with Hotei. What about Ebisu?"

"I have generally found all of the Seven to be equally keen on ignoring my entreaties."

A pause.

Benten had come through, albeit in a way that the rest of his life would never accommodate, and had also shut him off from finding true happiness anywhere else.

Hotei was all but absent from his life.

Bishamon? The very idea was laughable.

Fukurokujin was plainly not looking after him.

Ebisu was for more honest toilers than Choudai had ever been.

Daikoku had smiled on him... in a reward for underhanded acts of deception.

And Jurojin?

Let's not kid ourselves, eh Choudai?

"Inari is probably the closest I have to a patron."

Inori could only guess at the short internal monologue Choudai was having, but it was not hard to guess that it was not a happy one.

"That is rather unusual for a Samurai" Inori said "Not wrong, mind you. Inari-kami is one of the most relevant Fortunes for our everyday life and survival. We should offer some prayer, then. Maybe incense"

Even if he has little use for the others - this Scorpion, he has not lost all his faith yet.

It was the strangest of thoughts, but Inori felt, for a second, that if the Scorpion ever gave up all hope and faith, that was when he would no longer care if he lived or died. Which was another thing from Courage altogether, and it scared Inori. Because for just a few weeks after the events at the thousand stances Dojo, that was how she felt.

"There are things left to hope and strive for. Let us get what celestial help we can for those"

"Obachan always said that Inari's blessings might seem humble, but that they would sustain you when all others failed- and without them, none of the others would be able to do you much good for long."

Starving times on the march into the Burning Sands, desperately collecting whatever could be put into a cookpot...

He sighed, and looked around the shrine again.

"And besides. The Seven get all of the attention, while Inari just keeps being Inari. I can... relate to that, sometimes."

Inori considered this for a moment, then nodded.

"There is a lot of truth in what you speak, and besides it certainly cannot hurt to pay respects there. Smaller gods and more obscure causes need their champions too, especially if they are this....overlooked and vital."

She paused, clearly struggled with her words for a bit. Knew what she wanted to say, but it was hard to get out.

"It's a bit hard to do be expected to do the right thing with barely any recognition at all, isn't it? It's not like Inari-kami can just stop, to make a point, to make people notice."

"No. But he does have a wrathful aspect if people offend badly enough, which is one of the benefits of being a Fortune, I suppose."

Choudai sighed, and looked around for some incense.

"Enviable, really."

Inori wordlessly produced several small sticks of incense.

"You know a member of my Dojo once ran into some kind of crazy fortunist priest or something who was telling him something about the relationship between power and strength and honour and whatnot?"

Inori tapped her chin in thought.

"Something like the noblest of convictions don't matter without power because they get crushed underfoot, and also good people having to be strong so they can do good and prove the actual value...I myself don't fully understand, although it sounds right. I'm beginning to get more of an idea of that. Of course we are not fortunes"

She wordlessly gestured to the statue of Inari, proferring one of two sticks of incense.

He took it and lit it.

"Depressing to think about, but many true things are. Power leaves more scope for virtue than weakness."

He paused.

"Although, you know, the greatest power the Fortunes have is probably that they don't go completely insane listening to everyone praying to them all of the time."