1 The Twinkling of Stars

"These are safe, I think," Kagura ponders as she plucks a handful of tiny, red berries from a seemingly familiar brush. She sniffed the small, round fruits before closing her eyes. She inhaled deeply and bit one of the small berries and chewed it. Kagura was surprised. The berry was juicy and sweet, her tastebuds exploding in delicious ecstasy. Kagura could only do so much to prevent an excited yelp from escaping her throat, but she did anyway. These berries were just amazing. Without hesitation, she took the rest of the berries from the shrub until the very plant is nowhere red in sight. Silently, Kagura felt a small inkling of guilt that she just stripped this beautiful plant of all its fruit, but she ignored the feeling. She needed to eat to gather her strength for her journey. Her journey to the Land of Dawn. As Kagura chewed, she was suddenly visited by memories of her childhood friend, Hayabusa, who took to the roads to the Land of Dawn way before her. Hayabusa, who she now needed to aid in whatever tasks and burdens he was going to face. What are friends for, right? The thought of her friend being alone in such unfamiliar lands distraught her, and she silently put a prayer for him as she ate.

"Oh, Hayabusa," Kagura muttered as she finished swallowing her seventh berry. She put the rest on a berry pouchs he brought along. Those berries she would ration. "I just hope you aren't in any trouble," she finished.

She proceeded to walk on the narrow forest trail she was following for two days now. Her gut tells her this way is the correct way, and she was fairly sure her gut was telling her the truth. Kagura's footsteps made small crunching noises as her sandals met with dried up leaves, but the sound in itself is soothing, at least to her. She indulged herself in the sounds of the forest as she strolled: the quiet chirping of cicadas and crickets, the rustling of leaves, the hooting of an owl perched upon an oak tree to her right. She bowed her head to the owl and smiled as she passed it. Owls are wise creatures, her people believe. They are emissaries of spirits and must always be respected. Kagura and the rest of her family are onmyoji, practitioners of onmyodo, or magics that dwell among the divine, as well as the spiritual. Kagura and her family are well versed among the arts of the cosmos and fortune telling, as well as the exorcism and guiding of spirits who have lost their way. Her seimei umbrella was a tool her family used in their practises. Kagura "borrowed" the umbrella before leaving to set out to meet her friend but she thinks her family wouldn't mind. She was basically the next in line to inherit the umbrella, anyway. They wouldn't mind.

"There's north," Kagura whispered to no one in particular as she noted one singular star in the night sky. This star was magical, she thinks, as this star, unlike the other stars, never moved from its place in the heavens, no matter if it was early in the dusk or when the night is finally giving way for the morning before the stars' light once again twinkle out. This star she used to be a guide, because the Land of Dawn was due northward from where she came, so northward she shall go.

Kagura skipped over a fallen log blocking her path and landed silently in a patch of dried dirt devoid of leaves or any grass. Suddenly, Kagura was bombarded by a sudden defeaning silence. All the sounds of the forest were suddenly muted. She listened harder and, no, nothing. The forest was suddenly dead. Even the wind stopped billowing on her hair and clothes.

"This is weird," Kagura noted, but she probably already knew the reason why, and it wasn't long before her theory was proven to be true. Truthfully, the forest wasn't ALL that silent, because as Kagura strained her ears once more, she heard a faint cry. A small cry. A woman's cry, silent and breathy, from across the trees to her left. Her umbrella twitched in her hand as she made her way closer towards the source of the sobbing, and this just made her assumptions a hundred percent correct.

There was a spirit in this forest. And it needed her aid.

Kagura gripped her umbrella tighter as she made for a faster stride towards the treeline, diverting from the forest path. Despite this, however, her gut didn't protest, rather, it pushed her to continue her trek towards the grief-stricken sounds. Kagura smiled and made her way deeper into the forest. To do what she was born to do.