Mochizuki [Full Moon] (1/2)

On the trek from one nameless swath of province to the next, the ronin happened on an inn which rested on the lip of a winding river. Along the shore, the mud was bearded by reeds which bent and swayed in the gusting lowland wind. Atsu, who had for days been picking her way through the mud plains and the gyring woods to the south, relaxed her shoulders and exhaled in relief at the sight of the flickering ochre-gold lanterns in the middle-distance, and the painted wooden sign at the side of the road much the closer at hand. Pulled down over her brow, the tattered straw and wicker hat which was her custom hid much of her stern, but winsome face from view. She had sharp, beady eyes, a subtle bow to the full lips she had near-permanently pursed or curled over with distaste, and an upturned stub of a prim pug nose. Her clothes were customary wanderer's garb—flowing black hakama pants and a kimono the colour of that verdant yellow ginkgo tree back home—and at her hip the wolf blade fashioned by her father in the last days of the long autumn of her childhood. Lifting her chin, she urged her horse onwards with a quick snap of the reins, eager for hot supper and a real bed after so many weeks camping out under the stars.
Arriving at the inn, she guided her horse through the crooked wooden gate and into a courtyard bounded on three sides by low stone walls and open on one to the river. Across from the inn itself, there stood a tumbledown barn marked by a sign that read stables in feathery chicken scratch. Atsu dismounted, brought her horse to the entrance and introduced herself to the stablemaster. He was a stout man, thinly-moustached and wearing a headband loosely around his shaved crown. His wife took the horse and guided it to a stall at the rear of the stables while Atsu discussed business with him, while his young son was hard at work skipping through half-dried puddles in the yard outside. "Rough journey?" the master asked, counting the coins in his palm as he flashed her a knowing grin. Atsu scoffed. "Rough land," she said, wearily. "Glad to be off the path, even if only for a night."
"You picked the right place to stay, we're the last decent inn for miles."
"Decent?"
"Well, last one that won't ask the Shogun's own ransom and give you nothing but lumpy pillows and bamboo soup for breakfast in return."
Atsu smirked, but only faintly. "I'll hold you to that." She crossed the yard and passed over the threshold of the inn, moving past a gaggle of muttering greybeards in the hall and through a shoji screen into the parlour. The landlady was kneeling at a table in the corner pouring herself a cup of tea, when the low whisper of the screen made her pause and glance up. "Room for the night?" she guessed.
"As you say," Atsu replied, incling her head slightly as she closed the screen behind her. "Though a cup of tea wouldn't go amiss either."
"Hmph," the landlady slid a second cup across the table, then continued pouring as before. She was an ancient woman, cloudy of eye and leathery of complexion. She wore a flowing, layered housecoat, and a pair of wooden sandals on her feet. "Sit, my knees haven't the strength to raise me up for another twenty minutes at least." Her eyes flicked back up momentarily, narrowed in mild distaste. "And take that damned bit of flotsam off your head. Bad manners to hide your face in a place of hospitality." Atsu obeyed, walking over to join her kneeling on the opposite side of the table, then reaching up and sweeping her hat down off her head and resting it on the floor beside her. "My... apologies," she said. "Seems I've been away from civilisation too long."
"You're a bandit?" the landlady asked, topping off the first cup and starting on the second. Atsu suppressed the impulse to smile. "No, not a bandit. Sometimes a ronin, sometimes a soldier... but never a bandit."
"Hmph, makes sense—a bandit would simply take the cup of tea instead of asking for it." She finished pouring again, placed the pot down on the tabletop, slid the second cup across the way. Atsu took it, smelled the drink, swished it gently about, took a tentative sip. "Just so," she said, replacing it on the spot she'd taken it from. Sitting back, the landlady gave her a long look up and down. "You have money?"
"I have money."
"And you're a clean guest?"
"Cleaner than most, I'd wager. You have a bathtub?"
"We have a bathtub."
"And it's a clean bathtub?"
"...Cleaner than some, perhaps not as clean as others." The old woman waved a hand dismissively. "A lady's back is not as pliable, and her fingers are stiffer and more crooked than they used to be." Atsu considered that a moment, before giving an airy shrug. "We all have our trials; worst comes to the worst, I'll creep out of sight and wash myself in the river." She finished her tea and made her share of conversation; the landlady poked and prodded at her for details of both the road behind and ahead of her, but Atsu would simply deflect, or answer in diplomatic vagaries. When she'd drained the cup down to its tea laves, she paid the woman her fee, asked for directions to the bathing area, and politely took her leave.

In the far corner of the yard, in a thatch-roofed shack whose back sat flush with the boundary wall, she found the tub, or rather the only thing that passed for one here. It was a wooden affair, held together by steel bands and riddled with termite holes at the base. Atsu lifted it, made a face, then tossed it carelessly back down again. "Cleaner than some, not as clean as others..." she echoed, in a mocking, nasal whine. "Figures." She looked up as a shadow fell across the doorway, and found herself face-to-face with the stablemaster's boy. His face was ruddy from the exertion of all that running about, and he was swivelling his upper torso back and forth while he fidgeted nervously with his hands behind his back. "No extra coin," she told him. "No time for games either."
"Don't want coins," he said, "or games."
"Then what?" Atsu tossed the tub down, where it hit the floor with a loud, creaking clatter. "You needn't be afraid, if that's what has your tongue, but neither should you waste my time."
The boy swallowed, his eyes darting curiously about for a long moment, then he answered, "You... want to bathe?" She straightened up, put her hands on her hips. "I'd have had a strange notion in coming out here if I didn't, hm?"
"P-papa knows a place," he added, his fidgeting seeming to intensify. "H-hot springs, up on Lotus Hill..." He turned and pointed at an unseen point beyond one of the walls. "Ten minutes on foot."
Atsu snorted. "Ten minutes? On the road, and at night?" Just for a bath? It struck her as indulgent, not to mention tedious. "Could go find a secluded spot on the river in half the time, wash myself there and never leave eyeshot of this place."
The boy made a face. "River's cold, and muddy too. And papa says there's leeches in the reeds more often than not besides."
"Your papa know a lot about bathing spots?" Atsu asked, quirking an eyebrow.
He gave a shrug. "Papa says cleanliness is divine."
"Not half wrong," Atsu sighed, rubbing at a dirty mark on her palm. "A traveler never feels further from the gods than when they've been too many days without a soak." Raising her head, she regarded him intently. "Hot springs, you say? And only ten minutes on foot? Three or four on horseback, then."
Vigorously, the boy shook his head. "Path's too treacherous. A-and there's snakes... weeds... wolves..."
Atsu smirked. "Snakes, weeds and wolves? My, what a dangerous country this is." She exhaled briskly, before starting toward the door of the shack and sliding carefully past him. "Alright, take me to the gate and point me in the right direction; while I'm gone, tell the innkeeper my whereabouts and have her ready my room for my return. If you do a good, honest job, there'll be good, honest coin in it for you. That sound fair?" The boy considered the offer for a heartbeat, then gave a cheerful nod and beckoned for her to follow him. They walked to the gate together, before going around the corner until they were standing parallel to the rutted road she'd cantered in on. Before them, the land was a swaying rush of pampas grass, and the crickets were hard at work filling the night with their soft, percussive chittering. "There," the boy said, nudging her arm as he gestured toward a not-so-distant hillock. "On the top of it, you'll find the spring." He cleared his throat conspicuously, resuming the back and forth swaying of his upper body. "Papa swears by it, mama too." Then, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "They go there sometimes, together!"

After a short but tricksy climb, Atsu emerged onto the crest of the hill with a grunt to find herself standing at the foot of a weathered stone path which snaked around the summit and up to the edge of the hot spring. It was a large, simmering pool, overhanged by the gnarled brown trunk and frilled pink foliage of a cherry blossom tree, the air warm and heavy where its heat wafted pleasantly outwards from the water. Overhead, the sky was a deep blue cloak pulled taut across the firmament, the stars a field of shining pinpricks in its velvet swath. Breathing a sigh of relief, Atsu took off her hat, rolled up her sleeves, and picked her way along the path and up to the spring, sliding off her sandals as she came to stand at the edge. She peered down into the bright, frothy waters, her expression softening as she imagined what might be like to lower herself into it. "Not bad, not bad at all..." she murmured. She had to admit, the boy had damn near earned his coin already. It had always been difficult for her to know the motivations of the little ones. A strange trait, they often told her, in a woman. More often than not, she assured herself there must be others like her who were suited more to fighting than to child-rearing, because the alternative was that there was something wrong in her. Some vital aspect of the inner lady left to wither in the absence of her mother, or else cleaved away like so much else on the night the Yotei Six had come to call, the empty space they'd left behind filled in by the name so many had long since learned to call her by.

Onryo.

She held a finger to her temple, sensing the dark thoughts brewing on the surface of her mind like the froth upon the water's face, then pressed its tip into the hard shell of her skull, as if trying to press those evil notions back beneath the waves. When she could breathe again, she decided she had wasted time enough on rumination for the moment. With a view to distract herself, Atsu used her toe to push the sandals aside, and quickly set about fiddling with the fastenings on her sword belt. After that, she did the same with the belt of her hakama, before stepping out of them and standing bare-legged while she slipped out of her kimono, depositing it carelessly atop the former. Now clad only in a discoloured breastband and a fundoshi cinched tight around her waist, she gave herself a cursory once-over, patting her stomach absent-mindedly, before moving to relieve herself of those too. Her breasts fell slightly when she removed the band, and she couldn't help but shiver slightly as she undid the fundoshi's knots and shucked it shyly down her sculpted legs. She folded them together, and lay them down next to the rest of the pile. And here, a gasp escaped her, for she was well and truly hadaka now, every inch of her exposed to the elements. Slender but strong, her body was a display of curves and elegant musculature in equal, winsome measure. As she stepped up to the hot spring's edge, her reflection showed hazy and smudged in the simmering waters—a blur of pallid skin and raven hair, and the charcoal smudge of prickly down which lay at the juncture of her thighs.

Suddenly, Atsu felt her breath catch, something rooting her to the spot. A memory, some strange, sepiaed brushstroke of a recollection. It tugged at her, urging her backwards. She let it, in the same way that the moon allows the rising of the sun.

Afternoon on the Shikotsu River, once upon the longest time ago. Mother and daughter ambling along the rust-brown shoreline picking flowers, playing shamisen, and sharing stories, and practicing their singing in duet. They reach a stretch of ford in the shadow of a line of cool, green trees. Mother makes a visor of her hand and sweeps her eyes around in all directions thereabout, then turns and flashes Atsu a particular, wicked smile, the one that always heralds mischief in the wings. "This will do," she declares, taking her shamisen off her shoulder and laying down the basket of flowers with it. "No one will see us here."
"See us what?" Atsu frowns.
"Bathe," her mother replies, shrugging out of her gingko-leaf kimono as she speaks. She has such a softness to her features, the jawline rounded until its arrival at a pointed terminus on her chin, her eyes heavy-lidded and feline in character, the hair bound up in a messy bun, wispy black strands framing her either side of her forehead. "What else, on a lovely day like this one?" Fearlessly, her mother frees herself of her undergarments and leaves her clothes in a rumpled pile as she wanders in statuesque, womanly nudeness to the very tip of the shore. Her pristine, elegantly-shaped back shines beneath the summer sunlight, and her full hips draw the casual eye to a sumptuous, heart-shaped rear as gilt and pretty as a ripe ogonto peach. Atsu lingers by the shore, drawing lines across the river mud with her toes. "Are you coming, Atsu?" Her mother calls, reaching up to undo her hair and planting a palm on a voluptuous hip as she turns to face her daughter. Between her legs, the river laps at her manko, tongues of water dampening its wavy little wick. Higher up, her heavy breasts lie restfully just above her ribcage—wide nipples, tan nipples, thick and bulbous as a pair of half-bloomed saplings—the rings around them large enough they partly sit below the curve of each. Atsu looks her mother up and down, and pales at the thought of joining her. She could never, not like this, not in front of someone. She could never be that brave...