Dark Edge Village

Saksaha sits with legs crossed on the wooden stands overlooking the dueling field, haloed in a cloud of smoke that catches both the light of the waning moon and the small, inviting glow of the candle lamp she's using to fire the tobacco in her kiseru. She hums a soft tune to herself as she watches the cloud shadows and moonlight chase one another across the white sand of the dueling circle.

Nonin pads up beside the Iuchi and looks to the sky.

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."

The Isawa and Iuchi weren't the only ones out tonight, Hotaru had returned from her stroll in the Western Feilds and her doggy companion followed beside her as she made her return to the camp actual. Her gaze caught sight the bit of glow that came from an otherwise darkening evening. It was too large to be a firefly, that's for certain. Taking a detour from her intended destination, she weaved through the field to join the two.

"Huh?" Saksaha had smiled a little on seeing the curious Isawa approach, but his poem earns a somewhat blank look. "I do not know this song, Isawa-san. Should I?"

She nods and lifts her pipe in a sort of smokey salute as Hotaru comes near. "Hello, Bayushi-san."

Hotaru smiled sheepishly when she found that her walk brought her to two people. She quickly gave her worn haori a quick pat down and dust off, as she had been laying in the grass earlier to watch the fireflies dance in the night. Mamoru gave a few cautious barks at the strangers before him.

"Shush, Mamoru!" She said to her companion and bowed politely to greet both samurai. "Good evening, Iuchi-san and Isawa-san! I hope...I'm not interrupting something? It's a rather lovely night and I figured that a good long stroll was in order. It might be a long while before I find myself here again. I feel obligated to drink in all of the sights and sensation one last time."

"Nothing is interrupted," Saksaha says after another draw on her tiny pipe, the words emerging on a small puff of pale smoke. "It is a very pretty night. Grandfather Moon is still strong, and the stars are bright. A night to remember."

Seeing the casual setting. Hotaru would assume that she didn't need to ask for an invitation sitting at the wooden stance. She approached with Mamoru by her side and joined Saksaha, giving a small wave of her hand of the smoke that was in the air. The miko let out a strained sigh, as if just having braved an ordeal earlier in the day. "This whole week was something to remember, really. I get the feeling that we would appreciate the sights a little less if we didn't have some journey that brought us before this night."

Nonin gives the Scorpion a bow. "It is a good night for thoughtful reflection."

"Yes," Saksaha agrees, tapping the spent ashes out of her pipe against the edge of the lacquered plank they're sitting on. "There have been many nights we prayed to see the stars and moon so clearly, and could not navigate by them when they showed at last. I do not take them for granted any more."

"This one is Bayushi Hotaru, honoured shrine maiden of the Shining Retreat." She said to the Phoenix, bowing back in return. Asako Yuki did mention that there were other Phoenix here and some were even priests. Nonin looked like a priest, but she couldn't be entirely sure in the darkness.

Hotaru looked up at the skies once more. "They are more lovely in the northern skies, I have to admit...Even if we don't travel, they still navigate us nevertheless. I wonder what they are saying?" She asked as a hypothetical question. With some effort, she could read them but that would require work. After the last few days, she was exhausted with fussing around divination.

"And I am Isawa Nonin, a shugenja of the Phoenix, Bayushi-san," said Nonin with a nod.

"If I lived among the plains and the stars, I would learn to divine from the celestial pattern."

"The stars are difficult for omens. They are far away and so much older than we are... better than nothing, but hard to read." Saksaha shrugs. "Most questions the people want answered are too small for them--or this is how I find it. But they are still good too look at." She sets her kiseru on her lap and taps out a pinch more tobacco from its little horn flask into the palm of her hand, then begins rolling the finely shredded dried leaves into a neat ball and filling the pipe again.

"At least, far too small to ask them what will happen tomorrow. When you're this close to the future, you don't need foresight, only patience," she said with a mustered giggle.

"Uhm, anyway...I think I could really look forward to a long and legitimate bath." She said as she attempted to change the topic to something less related to her talents.

"Truth, Bayushi-san," says Nonin. "Tomorrow will be a new dawn for us in many ways."

"I have heard this complaint before," Saksaha says, with a slight smile and a raised eyebrow. "Our tales of home did not record how important bathtubs are in this country. Maybe it was not like this when we left." She chuckles as she lights her pipe with practiced hands over the little flame of the candle lamp. "These things sound nice enough, though. Even if they would be very hard to move."