Post
by Ko » Sun Jun 07, 2020 5:51 am
Ko's dream is always the same:
She had been walking a long time. Days? Weeks? On her left were the familiar hills and woods of the coast, all leafless and gray. On her right, the mud and pebble beach stretched away endlessly. The sea was gone. She could see a dull gleam like lead at the gray horizon that might have been the water, but might as easily have been her imagination. Her bare feet alternately shuffled through soft, unstable dry sand and dragged through mud laced with jagged shells.
It was very hot, and everything stank.
Ko was hungry and thirsty, but all the streams were dry, and when she dug in the sucking mud the only clams she could find were dead and already rotting. She ate them anyway, retching, and somehow kept walking. She knew she had been doing this for some time. She could see that her flesh was wasted and her whole body engrained with dirt under her ragged clothing.
Time blurred. With the same relentless, painful strength, she hauled herself over the ridge of rock that sheltered the west side of the shore people’s village. The roundhouses looked neglected, their straw roofs bleached and patchy. No smoke rose from the people’s fires. Above the waterline—what had once been the waterline, before there was only a foul-smelling expanse of mud where the sparkling water should be—the fishing boats, many with their hulls stove in, lay wreathed in a tangle of sea-wrack, broken oars, and ruined nets. The totems on their prows had all been smashed and mangled as if with knives, or maybe claws.
But there were people here. Ko’s heart leapt as she sighted the first few figures moving among the houses. She skidded and tumbled down the homeward side of the ridge with a sickening loss of balance, almost pitching over when she reached the bottom. But she scrambled upright and dashed into the village. Was that her cousin Rin? Her uncle? They looked as wasted, sunburnt, and filthy as she was—so changed that she should not have been able to recognize them by sight. She knew them anyway. Ko tried to greet them, but her mouth was so parched she couldn’t make a sound. Salt tears burned her dry eyes.
Somehow they knew her, too, and came to welcome her with clawlike hands and bony embraces. By gestures they indicated that she must be hungry, and Ko felt faint at the thought of food. They led her inside the Pearl roundhouse—up close, she saw mold on the balding straw walls, and inside smelled rank, but her aunts’ woven blankets and her mother’s baskets were still there, it was still home. They sat her in the place of honor and, with their dirty hands, brought her a big bowl of steaming fish stew.
Ko had never smelled anything so delicious. She forgot about her own filthy hands and blackened fingernails as she scooped up a big bite of sea vegetables and the soft, tender white flesh of some large fish, still clinging to a fragment of translucent bone. Just as the morsel touched her lips, the contents of the bowl shifted. Something round floated to the surface and rolled, almost seeming to… wink?
It was an eyeball. Green iris, bluish veins, a silvery quality to the white that marked it as not quite human. Impossibly, the pupil widened as Ko stared, as if to get a better look at her. She knew, suddenly, that this was Tsamaru’s eye. Flesh of her kin.
Ko shoved the bowl away in horror, gagging and coughing. The eye of the murdered ningyo rolled away across the straw mats, coming to rest against a basked with its lidless stare still fixed on her. “How—?” Ko rasped. Her uncle and cousin watched her impassively from across the cold fire pit. What have you done? How could you?
“You were too late, child.” The ruined, still-familiar voice came from behind her. Ko whirled. Her mother was as transformed as everyone else in the village, shrunken and burnt-looking, but she was still Otsu. “I’m sorry, little Ko. They waited as long as they could. We had to live…” Otsu opened her arms to Ko, smiling sadly with broken teeth. Eyes welling, Ko flung herself into her mother’s embrace. Those arms were so thin, but still strong as they wrapped around her. Still her mother’s arms…
“I’m sorry,” Otsu’s voice creaked again. “You were too late.”
Ko felt her mother’s sharp teeth sink into her throat.
—
She twitched and whimpered in her sleep, but didn’t wake.
Shore People ✖ 'Bushi? That sounds right' ✖ Stone-tool-user ✖ Awkward ✖ On A Quest
Status: 1.0 ✖ Glory: 1.0 ✖ Reputation: Bad, real bad ✖
Character description
Wears: Simple clothing, pearl and coral jewelry, copper coin bracelet; light armor when expecting danger.
Carries: Walking staff or yumi (or both); knives; jade, pack with misc fishing & survival tools and small daily items. Warclub (tetsubo) when needed.