[D7 LM] Quite a Lot to Think About

[Togashi Udo]

Udo nods. "I think Heaven is kind, though sometimes we are too small to see it."

"Last time we spoke, you said I could ask you things and you would answer. So perhaps... what makes you happy?"

"For myself, I enjoy quiet and meditation perhaps most of all, though it is nice to intersperse that with some activity. I have been making efforts at the miai to meditate less and interact more, so that we can all get to know each other."

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Happy." Saksaha looks out across the fields. "This is something I am trying to learn again now that our journey is over. When I was a girl I was happy riding under the sun and lying out under the stars, but after we entered in to the dark place these things were not the same. Now the sky is safe again, but I think I do not quite believe it yet." She smiles ruefully. "I also feel most at ease practicing my arts in quiet, but like you, here I am trying to be... less quiet. It is good to meet new people again, just not familiar."

[Togashi Udo]

"Then we shall have to discover what makes you happy now." Udo says with a small smile.

"The Dragon are a relatively simple Clan. We are miners, and we are often short on food. This makes us relatively poor. We focus on other things to find comfort and happiness. It is why we often focus on enlightenment. Family. Love in marriages."

"It seems that the Unicorn's ordeal experienced a similar poverty, but punctuated with much more violence. Where we had the luxury of the Empire around us, you did not. We found a simple peace and engagement the Unicorn were not allowed to. It has created a hardened exterior to your samurai.

"Just look at the blunt, straightforward talk. It is luxury that allows us to hide our intentions and words." Udo begins to pace.

"I hope that the Unicorn begin to feel at home here. To loosen that shell. I think that, with some time, we would find out how truly similar the Dragon and the Unicorn are to each other, separated more by circumstance than philosophy."

[Iuchi Saksaha]

Saksaha also smiles when the Dragon suggests finding out about happiness--or finding it out again? While he paces, she leans back against her saddle, stretching her legs out in the grass and altogether appearing more relaxed.

"What you say sounds true to me, Togashi-san. We have been travelers with no homeland for a long time, so we also know how to be happy with only the things we can carry. We had no land, only our flocks, and no riches to make our lives easy, but we have been rich in experiences and new knowledge instead. Well, and each other, too," she adds. "When you are always strangers in the lands of others, kin and clan are very precious."

She twists a strand of beads loosely around in her fingers. "We know how little we need to survive, especially after these last years. Now that we are home, it is time to remember that there is more to life than surviving, I think. That we are not strangers any more. The Dragon have already been good cousins to us in this." Releasing the beads and propping herself a bit higher on one elbow, she looks out across the fields and the few peasants out tending them. "It is strange even to think these farms are ours. We always had to bargain for our grain before."

[Togashi Udo]

Udo chuckles. "The Dragon can most certainly relate. Bargaining for grain is a Dragon staple. One would think we would have more Dragon merchants."

"On the rest, I can understand that. It does seem that the Unicorn are quite close. I have seen them sticking together and spending time together far more than I've spent with my Dragon Clansmen in this place. It is noble, though I fear that it might make the miai's inevitable conclusion harder in the end."

Udo jumps up and grabs onto a branch, pulling himself up to sit on it. "It would be nice if the rules are different. If we could choose who joins what family. If we could choose for love. But most don't have that luxury. And fighting it is fighting the sunrise: impossible and foolish. So we make the most of what we can."

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Yes. It is a strange kind of festival," Saksaha agrees. "Some people told me this is not rare in this country, that people here often choose their husbands and wives this way. Or even let others choose for them and marry someone they have never met. I would not like that at all." She leans back again and smiles a little ruefully. "But I did not look forward to marrying some boy I have known since I was a little girl, either, so I come here. And if I do not please the Ide enough to choose for myself and stay with my family's tents, at least I will have another adventure."

[Togashi Udo]

"It seems a strange way to choose, but I'm not sure there is a better way when marrying outside of your clan. And, how long must you know someone before you can be sure the marriage will be good? I don't think there is ever enough time. It is why we must live by honor and duty. If both partners do so, it will at least be pleasant."

Udo frowns for a bit. "It is why I have found some of the behavior at the miai as concerning as I have. It does not seem that honor and duty are the bedfellows that participants have. They have welcomed others into their bed, instead." He chews his lip. "If a person cannot behave well in seven days, how can one expect them to for a lifetime?"

Udo sighs from up in the tree. "I have considered leaving, but that would be a deviation from my duty. I think I considered it out of fear of making a bad choice." He blushes. "I hope you will not tell?"

[Iuchi Saksaha]

Saksaha smiles in what she at least hopes is a reassuring sort of way. "After I learn you have kept a much bigger secret for one of my kin, to protect such a small one is the least I owe to you, Togashi-san."

She too sighs, rolling over on her belly and propping her elbows up on the saddle so she's still able to look upward comfortably. "I fear the same thing, a little. Even though for me the bad choice would be some other man's to make. But it must be that you can decide to have a good marriage, whoever it is with, if they are not too bad. My grandparents had a hand in matching up my parents, and I do not think theirs is a great love story, but they get on." She kicks her heels up behind her, wiggling her booted toes.

"And I do not know what possesses some people, either," she adds in a tone of some annoyance. "If you plan to marry somebody soon, that business can wait. If you don't plan to marry them... it is stupid, here. It makes all of us look foolish."

[Togashi Udo]

Udo nods. "It is nice to know I'm not the only one irked by the whole thing."

"The real question is what to do next. I doubt I will make up my mind soon. It is not that I have experienced no connections, but rather that marriage seems a big decision. If it was made for me, it would be easier now, though possibly harder later. But if I do choose, and I make the wrong choice, then the burden of that shall weigh me down.

"Though, that is a selfish way of thinking about it." He sighs.

"Maybe we should discuss something else?"

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Maybe there is not only one right choice?" Saksaha suggests. "That way there also are not so many wrong ones. Different futures, none of them perfect or horrible, just..." she shrugs. "I hope you find someone who will trust you and try to make you happy, anyway. That is what I want, at the bottom of it."

"It is easy to get tired of this subject," she agrees. "Every day it feels like we talk of nothing else. Maybe... would you tell me something more about your home? I know that it is high and rocky, that the people mine, as you say, and keep goats there," she chuckles; somehow man's caprine best friends seem to come up a lot in everyone's conversations this week--"but what do they look like, how do your people live? I remember that our tribe crossed some mountain passes when I was little, but when I try to think what the land looked like, or whether anyone lived there, I cannot recall it very well."

[Togashi Udo]

"We live simply." Udo said, and then let some silence linger. After some time, he goes on. "It depends where you are in Dragon lands, and which family you are with. The Togashi, like other monks, even vary greatly within themselves." Udo runs his hand along the bark of the tree.

"I was raised by the Togashi. When I was young, I was sent off to my sensei. It was a remote monastery that focused on mastering the body and mind, ignoring other things. We ate because we had to, but no more. Even my hat was seen as frivolous. We spent hours in meditation. Hours training our bodies. It wasn't just fighting, it was all things. We believed that true strength comes from balance, and so we learned." Udo thinks for a time.

"The simple life is easy in some ways. I had nothing to worry about and no one to care for. I had no family, and there was not time for friends."

"But, that is not so common. Some Togashi are more a part of the world, or at least the Dragon. And the other families are much like other samurai, although with their own Dragon twist." With a half shrug, Udo adds, "Honestly, I was sent here because I was not as committed as the others my sensei taught. They hoped I'd be inspired. Perhaps I have been."

[Iuchi Saksaha]

Saksaha listens thoughtfully, head tilted to one side as it rests on her arms. "This sounds very peaceful, in its way. I have thought that peace would mean not working so hard all the time, but it sounds to me that maybe your people have a way of doing both." Her lips quirk up a little. "But maybe you are not made for so much peace? And to me it seems hard to have no family, though I have never known what that is like--I know I have had some luck in this."

[Togashi Udo]

"It is likely you'll end up leaving your family behind, no? You'll end up marrying into another Clan? Does that worry you?"

[Iuchi Saksaha]

"Yes and no," she admits, freeing an arm to tug at the strands of grass growing within reach. "It will be strange, but my tribe are bred to go to new places and see new things. This has been in our blood for hundreds of years. And we are home now. It should not be like leaving my people on the far side of a great desert. I may see them again, and write letters."

She uproots one of the grass stalks and begins twisting it into a little wreath, deftly enough considering she's only using one hand. "For some time I thought I might inherit my grandmother's tent, but if I go to live always in wood and stone houses, maybe my older brother will have it. That would be a little strange. Still, I wanted to come here and find someone different, someone I have not spent my whole life with already. If that is the cost of it, so be it."

[Togashi Udo]

"Well, different you certainly have. It seems that you are well suited for what is to come. And yes, you shall certainly be able to stay in close touch with your family..."

Udo nods. "It is nice that you feel you are home."