( imeeji ) memory registry

[worthathousand]

	DATE	LINK
亜子 Ako	day 75	you lift it anyway
Hero Worshipped	day 111	it has been my dream to live by your example
Alone in the Fields	day 111	the rice stalks sway
The Wyld Hunt pt. 1	day 127	your heretic chosen
The Wyld Hunt, pt. 2	day 127	the fate of those who lose their will to demons
Joined with Shiho	day 199	kimono in Serenity blue
A Fight for Father	day 201	once there was a maiden
The War Yeddim	day 201	the battle is a song
General Ascendant	day 201	white lily of war
Calibration Stories	day 201	born an exception
Shrine Maiden	day 260	you are my child of peace
First Battle	day 260	cries of the injured and dying
Shiho's Illness	day 260	a season of cold and fever
Meet-Cute	day 451	Tits, indeed.
Imagining a Future	day 456	"What do you want to do, after?"
TBD	---	---
TBD	---	---

full registry on trello

Comments

cw: death, limited gore

[worthathousand]

It starts with the smell of smoke. The scope of the memory widens, and then there are screams, the muffled sound of heavy boots on packed dirt and the clatter of weapons in the distance.

Out beneath the high hill of your family’s home, the village is burning. Flames lap at the thatched roofs of the minka. They are flickering up the trunks of the cherry trees; a sea of pink blossoms withering, black petals drifting along the breeze with the grey ash. Even from here, you can see the faint outline of bodies moving through the smoke—and the way the flames and the early morning light glint off the helmets of the soldiers. You narrow your eyes, but the numbers are impossible to discern—though surely it would take at least a talon for the town to be overrun like this, and—

“—Mother!” You’re screaming for her before the thought fully forms in your mind.

Her workshop is in the village, mingled with the shops; she was so close to finishing that she’d been spending the every night there. (“It is not with skill alone that one forges an artifact, little lily. It takes devotion.” The voice echoes through the memory as you recall it.) And you are running now, too, before you can even finish the thought, kicking off your sandals behind you, sleeves of your youth’s furisode fluttering behind you in ripples of embroidered red and white silk.

The streets of the village are worse. (Worse than what? What do you even have to compare this to, except studies in books, military history; the province has been peaceful for so long…) The screams are louder here; you keep running. A sudden pain in your foot, and you look down to see a shattered ceramic vessel—and look up in time to see a soldier take her glaive and run through an older woman wearing the uniform of a local defender. The defender falls; in the street beyond you can see a small group of mixed youths, young men and women in furisodes, and the soldiers beginning to herd them away.

A moment too late, you realize the soft sound of shock came from your own lips, and that the glaive-bearing soldier is looking at you now. Approaching you now. You’re swearing with words your father told you never to use in the home; why did you stop running? You had better fix that—but now there is a hand grabbing your forearm from behind.

Without thinking, you slam your elbow up and backwards, and are rewarded with a satisfying wet crack of bone and the soldier’s scream of fury. There isn’t time to turn around to appreciate your success, though—you’re already running past her, around the corner. You’re so close, so close.

Your lungs are burning now—with the smoke, with the effort of running. But there: the little street, the clay-tiled roof of her smithy, the ash-streaked red banner with its camellia heraldry, the… bodies slumped at the doorway.

“Gods, no…” It is probably for the best that your voice is too hoarse now for the sound to travel far.

The first two dead are soldiers—women in silver and royal blue, faces frozen in shock and indignation, and your breath tightens in your chest, because it isn’t her, but it is so quiet here, and somehow you know without knowing—

Another dead soldier. His wounds are messier, less precise. It had been more of a struggle, this time.

The final paneled doorway—the one that leads to the forge itself; you find it broken, and the blood that streaks it is still vivid. Just past it—

The woman slumped against the black jade forge is beautiful, in a hard sort of way. Her clothing is simple and soot-stained, and her black hair with its single streak of white is pulled back into a practical bun, yet held in place with a fine comb of bronze and jade. Gripped in her hands is a longsword that gleams where it isn’t red with blood. And her belly is a mess of meat, spilling out over her legs.

—You were so close. How close you must have been, to being here before she died. Your hand goes to your mouth, biting the soft skin between your thumb and forefinger to stop yourself from screaming. Then your teeth draw blood, and you drop your hand and howl anyway. Not sadness, but rage.

Behind your mother, lying against the cold forge: there is the life’s work she must have fought and died to protect. So few could make artifacts, after all. It is a massive naginata, oversized blade shaped from white jade and carved with lilies, heavy wooden handle wrapped in red silk.

“Ako,” you say—second daughter. It was what your mother had called it.

You know it will be too heavy to lift. That is the nature of artifacts, and Ako is two hand spans taller than you besides.

You step up to the forge. You lift it anyway.

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Notes

• Amaranth appears exactly the same age in this memory that she does in Imeeji (about 20).
• The architecture of the village most closely resembles the Sengoku period of Japan.
• The invading army does indeed appear to be made up of slightly more women than men.