[D3 EM Saksaha's Yurt] Early Pony Catches the Charm

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"Why tomorrow when you can find it out now, eh." Dong-Ha chuckled in return, before the tapping sounds continued. "Or maybe they know it can be done and this is nothing but an elaborate ruse to make us figure things out... on our own?" They were both fresh adults after all. "Perhaps this is something they never taught to us, figuring we'd never need it."

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Why wouldn't we need it?" Saksaha sounds a little doubtful of that suggestion. "It sounds useful. But maybe you are right that this is a thing they think we can devise on our own." She'd rather imagine that her teachers have such confidence in her, rather than that they didn't even believe she could come up with a purpose for a summoning-spell if she had one.

Humming tunelessly under her breath, she selects a sharp-pointed charcoal stick and begins to sketch her design in faint lines on the surface of her bit of wood. The tip catches and skitters a tiny bit off true; she frowns and picks up her scraper again.

"Hei, Dong-Ha-san... If this works, and the next try works, and we really can make the elemental spirits of this land talk to us... what do you want to ask them?"

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"Well, I mean, before we got here. Maybe they thought we needed other charms more." he looked up from his charm, brandishing the small hammer in the air at the general direction of Rokugan. "Tossing boulders just... does a bit more than calling forth a... bucket of dirt. Scouts can find us water... but only we can literally bring forth luck." Dong-Ha had his own theory.

"Do they mind being harassed like that?" Dong-Ha chuckled softly, though his tone was rather sober. "I don't know the scope of their knowledge... I mean, assuming they are spirits that linger around, they would only know about things that they have witnessed... or can interact with." he paused for a moment. "I guess we could try to ask about Khulan and her blade... though I guess we'd need her to stay in place long enough..."

I guess I could also ask them where I put my nicer brush. I'm sure it's in my tent but I haven't seen it in a week...

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Huh. That is a good question," Saksaha agrees. "I suppose they have not much choice about being asked to do things, by us or by the other shugenja. I would like to know what it's like to be such a spirit..." she confesses, a little wistfully. "But I wonder if it would be any use asking. I do not think my horse could explain what it's like to be a horse, after all."

"We could ask the spirits in her sword? But no, not if its making was of this blood magic. It might be unsafe, right?" She takes up her charcoal pencil again and moistens the point with the tip of her tongue, pausing a moment before touching it to the wood to say, "I will see Khulun-san later today. Something important she wants to talk about, I am not sure what. But I'll warn her about the sword then."

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"Suppose' not." *tak* *tak* "But Isawa I talked to was very insistent that they do not command the spirits, they request... and sometimes spirits refuse. That's why they need those scrolls... because apparently the spirits like long winded speeches." he could not help but snicker at that. "Still, it sounds like spirits have some agency, when elements do not." After all, meishodo never failed as long as one did not try to summon torrent of water in a middle of a desert.

"Well, I am pretty sure they'd yell at us, in one way or another, if they didn't like what we are doing?" Dong-Ha shrugged. *tak* *tak* the hammer struck the chisel. "I mean, what other ways we have?"

"Not the spirits in her sword... but the spirits around us. They... ought to have a better understanding of supernatural." he didn't sound too convinced about that. "Do so." Not that she'd listen, but at least later Saksaha could proclaim in a very mystic tones that 'she had told her so'.

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Perhaps they would. But would we hear them?" Saksaha says, wondering to herself. "Do you think we are, really, well... 'commanding?'" she speculates, borrowing Dong-Ha's word--her own teachers had also sometimes spoken of commanding the elements. "Or are we just better at asking? It may be those long prayers bore the spirits sometimes." She giggles as her charcoal scratches a growing pattern of feathery marks on the wood surface.

"Say, Dong-Ha-san... do you mind if I smoke? It steadies my hands a little. But I need not, if it bothers you."

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"Well... that's another good question." Dong-Ha replied. "We aren't exactly asking nicely either." he shrugged. "It's not as if the elements get to say no, do they? What's the difference? I mean, people of Laramun asked the Otaku do do all kinds of things... not like they really could refuse." In a way, he likened the Iuchi mastery of elements to relation of a slave owner and a slave. One commanded, the other obeyed.

"Could be." he joined her laughter, shaking his head. "Yet, you know... those long winded speeches.. sorry, prayers... are really old. As in, chances are our ancestors used similar magic before we left. I wonder if their spells were bit... shorter and t the point."

"Suit yourself." he shrugged before pausing for a moment. "Wait... what you plan to smoke?" Some of the Moto smoked various herbs and mushrooms to receive visions from their ancestors. While the method was widely approved, Dong-Ha wasn't quite sure he wanted to receive visions while he needed to focus.

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"It's just tobacco-leaf," Saksaha reassures him as she fishes her kiseru out of her belt pouch. Not that she'd never have any use for those other herbs he might be thinking of, but it's awfully early in the morning for a psychotropic vision-trance. If Dong-Ha has ever spent time with anyone else who shares the habit, he might indeed recognize the shreds of brown leaf matter she tips from her little horn flask into the bowl and carefully lights over a bit of charcoal from the stove. Her small hands seem, if anything, even more practiced at this miniature ritual than at the meishodo-making she's put on brief pause.

"I do not think I like your metaphor, Dong-Ha-san," she says once the little pipe is burning to her satisfaction. "We do not intend to--to pillage and force, when we invoke the elements. At least, I do not think I do." She breathes out a small puff of smoke and frowns, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "The old Iuchi mixed the gaijin magic with the wisdom of Shinsei and Isawa--balance, respect for the elements. I can't think of it as something violent." A little morose now, she regards the glowing bowl of her pipe and adds, "Well, soon enough we can just ask."

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

Some of the older Moto wise women Dong-Ha had known had been seemingly tripping balls from dawn to dusk, and while he didn't think Saksaha was quite there yet, he found himself wondering if she would become of them eventually. She had admitted being curse-struck after all.

"Suit yourself then." he too had a pipe somewhere in his tent, but hadn't seen it in a while. "I have a pipe somewhere, but at one point I'd ran out of tobacco and I misplaced it.. and now I have no idea where it is." the young man sighed softly between the taps of his small hammer. "Well... don't. But I don't think that elements are conscious anymore than wind, fire or rain itself are conscious. How can you mistreat a rock or a mountain? They just.. are, no?" Dong-Ha argued in return, though his voice was still mellow. Yelling at people rarely helped convince them, and yelling at your elders only got you caned. "We speak a word.. and elements obey. You can say that you are asking nicely, politely even... but did the elements have ever chance to refuse?"

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"I don't know," she admits thoughtfully between puffs. "But I can never truly know what can't happen, isn't that right? I only know it can happen, once it has happened. All sorts of things have a consciousness that we can't see in front of us in waking life. Animals, dream-spirits, the sun and moon, the honored dead..." and at this point, as she gestures vaguely with her lit pipe, somehow barely avoiding scattering any ashes on the carpet, the resemblance to stoned Moto grannies may be starting to seem more than coincidental.

"Have you talked of this with any of the Rokugani priests? I have met two, that Fairuz Kaiya and a woman, Bayushi Hotaru. But each time, the moment was not appropriate to speak of such things." In Kaiya's case because there'd been a dead woman and an oni attack to clean up after, and in Hotaru's... well, there were sheep. And a bunny.

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"I guess?" he shrugged. *tak* "But if you really think that anything could happen, you ought to think that one morning Lady Sun might not rise, or the one day horses would talk. We cannot know that it can't happen, but if it hasn't ever happened, saying that it could sometime not happen is.." *tak* *tak* "..playing a jinn."

"Mhmhm, I discussed this Seppun Hitako-san and Isawa Nonin-san. They were both intrigued by the idea. They... seemed to think it was impolite to command the elements." he shrugged. "We are supposed to figure it out with Isawa-san, set up an experiment. I'll disturb the elements and he'll talk to the kami. Well, he said he'd invite priestess of the Centipede to do the talking. Pious people, Centipede, apparently."

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"I would like very much to hear what you learn from this test," Saksaha says, setting her kiseru down in favor of drawing a few more charcoal strokes on her blank talisman. Then she takes up the little pipe again for a last puff, eyeing the draft design judiciously. "I wish I had thought of this," she confesses. "It is a good notion. But... suppose we learn that our practice does make the spirits unhappy? Do you think it's possible? What could we do about it?"

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"I'll tell you what we find out, if we actually get to it." Dong-Ha promised, tapping his chisel for one last time to remove the chunk he had deemed unnecessary. The extra piece fell on the floor with a quiet thud. "Well, if isawa-san ever gets back to me that is. Though if these work..." he patted the coarse, porous stone between his feet. "... we might not need him at all." There was a marked look in Dong-Ha's eyes that spoke of slight distrust towards magics and sorcerers he did not know.


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OOC realization: We cannot roll for crating anymore as you can't roll on 'past' days. ^^;; So, i guess our first experiments failed? Also, Isawa never got back to me. I may be able to use Moshi D5 to resolve this however...

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"True." Saksaha giggles, her laugh made a little huskier by the smoke she'd indulged in not long ago. "I would also like to know if if they will speak with us the same way as to those others, though. It is all very... exciting," she admits, though intimidating wouldn't be totally inaccurate either.

((I actually made a roll in my PF before the day changed, though only one of the attempts succeeded. We could fade the thread into further off-screen small talk and tinkering at some point if you like. ))

[Iuchi Dong-Ha]

"Well, that's actually a good question. I figured they wouldn't really care who asked the questions... but you are right, if it is a spiritual matter... it might just matter." He picked up the stone, holding it between his fingers, studying it intently. "Or how the questions are asked. Our charms... or their scrolls."

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OOC: Well done then. ^^ Also we might better focus on the D4 thread since most of the substance has been covered here. So, fade to tinkering next post? Unless you have something to ask or bring up.