Bedtime Stories (D3, LE)

[Nanzi]

Nanzi shrugged and turned his gaze back to the Jiyo babysitter.

[Ongaku no Ryoko]

Ryoko, perhaps catching wind of unspoken exchanges, sat back, turning thoughts inward, contemplating the stories in silence, wondering about the ways of these clans.

[Jiyo Sora]

"I don't think I know this story...?"

"Well, in keeping with its teller, it's a crude thing. And Nanzi-sama perhaps flatters the teller, because the owner of the knife that the story isn't really about is me, however auspicious I may or may not be. But it's not really about the knife. It's more about who I got it from."

He glanced about. Shrugged.

"I hope none of you are expecting any artistry in the timing here. For me, it's information, not art."

A deep breath.

"So, the esteemed daimyo of the Nanzi asked me about Hikaru funerary customs some time back. And I said that we basically disposed of our dead in a variety of ways- sometimes we built a platform and let the birds carry them away, sometimes we set them on fire, sometimes we stashed them under cairns of rocks- it's largely down to season and personal inclination. We mostly remember them by telling stories about them- and by sharing their gear out among the rest of the band, since they're certainly not going to need it anymore. Hence the knife."

A shrug.

"The knife was a good enough one, but the man who carried it before me was named Gondo. Think he got it in a raid , since it was bronze and well-made. Anyway. Gondo was a fair bit more popular with the Hikaru than I was, and he had a woman who loved him- her name's Chika. She was still alive last I heard, think she might have joined the Ki-Rin with their son, Miki. Miki'd be eleven winters now. Can't say, I haven't been back. So. There were two things everybody in our tribe knew about Chika- she always preferred her fish dried to fresh, and she wore a lot of bones on her dress, so you could always hear her coming. Gondo liked the style of it, and he'd look for good bones for her."

He quirked an eyebrow. Grinned.

"In more ways than one. Made it hard to sleep at night, 'cause Chika, well... you could always hear her coming. So. Miki came along, and they were making it as formal as those things ever were with the Hikaru in those days- they were together and that was all anyone else needed to know. They were working on getting Miki a little brother when we ran into that fight. I'm not even sure who they were. Gondo would have known- he knew most of the tribes we ran into by the way they wore the hair, their facepaint, their warsongs, whatever. I wasn't nearly as good at that sort of thing, and I'd ask him, after some of our scraps, just who it was we'd been killing that time. Was going to ask him this last time- it wasn't much of a fight. More of a massacre- we cut the other guys to pieces, one archer got away. Only guy we lost was Gondo."

Sora sighed.

"Gondo caught a ridiculously tiny knife in the throat. Couldn't even see what had killed him from some angles. And again, only one we lost. Big win for our band. Lot of bragging around the fires, lot of divvying up the things the enemy had been carrying."

He shook his head.

"But it didn't do Chika or Miki much good."

[Nanzi]

"And thus Gondo is remembered," Nanzi said with a nod.

[Togashi Saruko]

She listened thoughtfully, even if Sora had prefaced that it wasn't a story, but she still listened like it was a story. Perhaps there was some... macho-thing going on that she didn't understand, as she had thought there had been a tension between Nanzi and Sora over this story. But what the reason was was lost on her.

"Is that how the Hikaru would remember the lost ones?" she asked curiously.

[Jiyo Sora]

"Is that how the Hikaru would remember the lost ones?" she asked curiously.

"More or less. Most of them end up as either examples or cautionary tales. After enough time goes by, the story changes to the point where no one's really sure who the person was. And I'm sure Chika would tell a different story about Gondo than I just did."

[Togashi Saruko]

"Mm," she nodded, "a story can change much depending on one's viewpoint. It makes me wonder how... differently the tribes, and now the clans, are viewed by those belonging to other groups."