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[Hikiko]

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Recent weeks had brought a quiet sort of joy into Hikiko's world. She had been out more, engaged in several conversations, even played songs for the leader of one of the warrior clans deep into the night. Time had an ethereal, floating quality whose envelopment she appreciated deeply. It seemed her songs, her calligraphy, even her meditations had benefited from this serene happiness.

The evening found her leaving her prayers in the tiny hidden garden, and walking along the paths on the perimeter of the city. Eventually she came to the home of the Blue Lotus, who welcomed her there, and treated her well. Slipping her waraji from her feet she went inside and made herself comfortable, kneeling beside the fire pit. Perhaps it was her timing, perhaps the phase of the moon, for it seemed that the night was a particularly rowdy one that involved much bloodshed. Hikiko knew that the lands of Tokuno had two drastically different sides. There was the aspect of those such as herself: simple persons who spent their days taking the simplest things to an art form, and the warrior and ninja classes. She really had little experience with the latter; perhaps that is the reason that the events of the night took her so off guard; Kiko spent so much of her time in that dreamy place reserved for the artist and philosopher--not the place of clashing swords and rapidly chanted spells.

At first she didn't realize that the man spoke to her. Soon enough she discovered it was her attention he demanded. The Shogun frightened her terribly. She trembled beneath his gaze, flinched at his words. When the warrior took her chin in his hand and forced her to look up at him she nearly fainted. The man forced her to speak, which was an ordeal for the girl. Eventually he let her go and bid the group a farewell. Hikiko hurried into town before she disgraced herself by publicly shedding the tears that lined her eyes.

She was not used to feeling such fear. Especially not here. Not in Zento. Never, in Zento.