He awoke in the forest. Perhaps he awoke afraid.

Not to say that fear was something foreign. He often found himself waking alone. And, he had grown used to waking in strange locations, to odd noises, or in some dissimilitude of reality. But it was rare for all three to occur at once.

When our story begins, he was certainly accustomed to facing such fears alone.

There, vaguely confused, he found that the world was green, absent the gray of the city or the muted browns of the bar, and distant noises stumbled round the arbour.

How he had arrived, he could not recall, thus a moment was wasted, blank-eyed, in deduction. He ran over himself. His clothes were dry, his wallet, keys, and phone were in the proper pockets, his head was not aching as it does after drinking or partaking. There were no bruises or lesions of crusted blood as he tapped his forehead with hands now striped with black clay and sticky with sap, and there were no strange aches upon standing up in the sunlit forest.

Still, he was paranoid, and darted his face back and forth like a rabbit’s ears, searching upon each noise, before the clarity of the ungrounded air elucidated that he had indeed been robbed. He fell, back to his hands and knees and dug through the twiggy loam to search for his bag – the bag with his knife, his gun, his phone charger, his notebook. When, with twitching glances he found nothing, he wiped his hands on his pants and swore as the resin from the pines pitched the fabric.

And besides, where is he?

The forest is effloresced, positively blooming. Purple and red and gold, and the vines and ivy are tangled far more than forest he had seen before. Though the ground was mildly damp, the light and humid heat felt summery. Still, at the borders of the many low ferns and bushes, speckles of mushroom caps bristled from the soil. And, many of those fungal ferns were pale, almost white. No, he certainly was not near home.

There is no path. Nor, is there a road. Or a trail, or any way he could be here. No disturbance in the ground, nor even in the branches above. He had not been deposited by some alien spacecraft, nor had he pushed forth from the ground like some undead creature. Not that those sort of things existed. Probably.

“Oh.” He muttered to himself. “Right.”

His phone read 2 AM. Which meant that he was very, very far from home. It’s later in the day, or… maybe much earlier. And therefore…

He gave up trying to calculate how far he must be from home for it to be either a bit past sunrise, or a bit before sunset. Another thought. There must not be signal. If he was very, very far – and he was, he would have a hell of a roaming fee to pay.

“Hello? Anyone!?” He shouted, calling out to nothing in particular, hoping that perhaps the situation isn’t as grim as it suddenly, surreally seems to be.

There was no response. What a shame.

But, burning daylight impels one to take a course of action, even if it is whimsical. Perhaps, he thought, there is some land-mark to head for. A river, or a lake. If, he reasoned, he had arrived here somehow, in however long it had been since he had been seasoned with whatever drug had knocked him unconscious, there must be something – someone – nearby that had deposited him here. Yet, that thought brought old, familiar panic. Outward watchfulness began to set in like a vice, along with cognizance of the situation itself: Something terribly, awfully, strange had happening, not a phantom of his unstable mind, but a likely starving, isolated, and harsh reality he was entirely unprepared for. Whether he had arrived at this conclusion through fantasy or reality, the danger he now was in was most certainly real.

Still, there may yet be hope, he thought to himself. However far he was from civilization, if there is a forest, there must be water. If there is water, there is a hill, and if there is a hill there is a valley, where there may be a lake. Indeed, if it is this muggy, he deduced, there must be an abundance of water, if only he can find it. From there, all the pieces can fall together, and at the very least he might not starve.

As he moved towards a large cedar, hoping to climb for vantage, something – someone – out beyond his narrow sight, murmured something. It was a foreign tongue, Japanese, or some Asiatic language, he presumed, but he couldn’t be certain, so low was it that it was merely a breath.

But whether it was quiet, or distant, the man paid it no mind. He was revealed to be a coward, either way. And so he abandoned the pretense of rationality, and ran.

It was right to run, he thought to himself, as the voices grew from whispers to laughter, uncoalescing from all sides in a vague stereo. He, tearing through and between the pines, pushed through whipping brush, hoping that he would stumble upon…

Upon what, exactly? We will never know, for indeed, cowardice is bestowed upon some as a role rather than a choice, and once such a cap is placed on one’s head, they often find that it is impossible to take it off. Before he could even finish his thought, his left foot broke through a narrowly concealed pitfall, his shin splintered upon a loose rock, and he fell forwards, screaming in pain.

Is the bone visible? The legging is certainly torn, and the flesh as well, quite deeply, he says – or thinks so loud that he may as well have said it. It is more likely that he said nothing and merely wheezed, having used the burst of adrenaline not to fight, or prepare to fight, but to pull himself from the hole, and, exhausted and immobilized, curl up and gasp like a dying fish.

All was not lost, at least in his pounding mind: the hand not tending the leg slipped around a stone, preparing to cave in the mouth of whatever beast or demon had set upon him. Perhaps it was the same stone that had doomed him to this rather pathetic display.

And yet, slowly, quietly, the voice grew closer. A woman’s voice, high and soft, singing a meandering, happy tune.

“Hey, I…” He trailed off in pain. “Excuse me, miss I seem to be… hurt, quite badly. Do you happen to know the way out of this forest? I’m just passing through, and got lost.”

The swishing of cloth on cloth. The tinkling of a little bell. A pale hand pushed aside a tall sapling and a little, brownish face peeked through the brush.

This figure was strange. Neither terror nor rage stayed his hand, only complete confusion. A woman – not even that, but a child perhaps no older than ten, was hovering through the brush and laughing at him. All the same, whether it was by delusion, concussion, or some other combination of idiocy and fear, he threw the rock at it as hard as he could.

It bounced off the child’s head, and with a yelp, she fell to the ground.

He did not realize what he had done in that instant. In fact, so absent of mind was this man, that, had he not later met another person, he likely would have entirely forgot about it within a day.

So, instead of rushing up, heedless of his sprained and broken leg, to help the child he had just savagely attacked, he lay on the ground and caught his breath, before, after a short, not so peaceful moment, he sat up and prepared to stand. Of course, he immediately fell back on his ass.

His leg was, in the best case, badly sprained. You could not call him a malingerer, at least. But regardless, this would not do; any weight on that side triggered a sharp bolt that ran up and down the injured limb. Loosing his white-knuckled grip on his shin, a simmering trail of blood slipped forth from a nasty, red crater. Glancing between it and the little girl – who was still laying facedown on the ground – he decided to work on the wound, taking off his undershirt and packing the cleanest strips he could tear from it into the wound, before snapping a few branches off some low bushes, tearing strips of his torn pant and wrapping a makeshift splint.

Only then could he stand and turn to examine the child he presumed concussed. But there was no child there. Only a large fragment of gray stone, one side pasted with a dark fluid.

Had the child wandered off? Been dragged off? He touched the tip of his tongue to the wet rock, and it tasted of blood. Surely he was not hallucinating. He smelled it, and likewise, it smelled back, of copper. No, this too had certainly happened. He had, certainly, hit something.

He hobbled around briefly, believing the child had been misplaced, perhaps he had been turned around – but still it was gone.

“Girl! Hey! Where are you?” He barked, but in reply, there was only the silence of the disturbed wood.

After waiting a moment for a response, He backtracked to the hole in which he had twisted his leg, and then walked in the other direction, taking great care not to slip. When he felt he had gone far enough that continuing would be absurd, he returned, changed his angle, and repeated the process. This pacing continued for several minutes, but still, there was no sign of the girl. After stopping to catch his breath yet again, he decided that, phantom girl or not, the best course would be to simply pick a direction, and walk.

From the time on his phone – the battery life was beginning to concern him – he had been walking, pacing, running, and generally wasting breath for about two hours now. As his anxiousness grew, carefully and wincingly stepping on the uneven ground, he finally crossed a crop of inosculated trees and found before him a long un-trodden path. He assumed, at first, that he had stumbled upon a game trail, and the unmaintained ground certainly alluded thus; it was dotted with odd footprints, in-human in form, clumps of multi-colored hair, tufts of un-natural feathers, and the occasional little bone or animal dropping – this ground, if it even had been tread by man, had certainly been the site of an adventurous expedition.

But once more, he who presumed to have discovered the truth, in fact, knew nothing at all. Coming to a fork in the path, there sat, bemossed and slimy with age, a sign. He moved, as quickly as he could towards it, and taking one sleeve, rubbed as much of the mould off as he could without squeezing the board to pulp.

霧雨魔法店：1200尺 ->

‘Well,’ he thought, ‘That’s not particularly useful. At least, there is… something, 1200 somethings that way. Am I seriously in China?’

Throwing up his hands in annoyance, he decided, after a moment of deliberation, that it might behoove him to heed a guidepost for once. Perhaps the sign was a marker for an exit, or a station of some sort.

It was slow going, and mostly uphill at that, but after twenty aching minutes, he managed to find what, he assumed, must be the ‘霧雨魔法店’ that was spoken of. Or rather, what was left of it. From a distance, he concealed himself and noted, in detail, the ruin before him.

A great dome of iron sat, rusted and buckled on one side by the roots of a massive, reddened pine that seemed to have grown fallen, and righted itself beneath it. Masonry was strewn about, blackened with soot and standing topsy-turvy across what could have, once, been a lawn, like a desecrated graveyard. Beside the dome, was a single visible wall, caked with ivy, and the black tiles of a roof, which once must have stood sharply. It had long since collapsed, and formed a great inverted arch, through which a revolting monolith of dark brown material jutted in a strange, organic spire. As he watched, it shuddered, and a cloud of dust seemed to flutter from beneath it. Instinctively, he covered his mouth with his shirt sleeve.

Yet, the faint scent was alluring. And so, he hobbled a step forwards, brushing from camouflage and stepping into the clearing. The spire shivered once more, calling him, its white gills fluttering like open curtains in the stagnant air. The ground beneath his feet was soft, his feet sank deeper and deeper into the spongy mycelia with each step, and squeezed out a dark sludge that stained his light boots a putrid gray.

“おい、バカ、読めるか？死にたいのか?”

Perhaps someone said something in the distance. If they did, it was no matter to him. Even as he drew nearer to the great fungus, up to his ankles in writhing, gasping roots, it was as if all was quiet. And quiet it was; for he had become deaf to all but the sylvan song before him.

But, pitifully, this would not be a peaceful death, for then, something hard whacked him in the back of the neck, and he shouted, the humming reverie shattered; he was grabbed, and dazed, was dragged back to the path, smearing a trail of red-clay filth across the grass.

“何してるの？なんで街にいないの？もっとわかってるはずだ!禁じられているんだ!”

“What?” He blinked rapidly; now, even the dim forest-light was suddenly blinding, and a girl’s voice, though soft, through the concussion caused his ears to ring as if someone was clapping them.

“どういう意味だ! 言っただろ– eh? Wait, wait, are you an outsider?”

Still dizzy, he rolled over to see who – or what – was talking to him, and instantaneously regretted caving to instinct. A fatal blow was not landed, though. Smeared with mud, fungus, and his own blood, he was dirtied even further with shame, upon seeing a sweet, round, blonde face looking down at him.

A practiced grin spread across his face; a friendly hand was offered to pull himself up as he raised an eyebrow unimposingly and laughed.

“What? I mean – what do you mean? Where is ‘outside?’ I simply got lost while hiking. And… who are you?”

“Well, there’s no need look so upset, especially when I just saved you.” She giggled, sticking out her little, pink tongue. “I’m… Miss Uwagi.” With a cute nod, her round hat fell off, right onto his face. He brushed it off, and once more struggled to his feet.

“Ok.” This girl was a trivial thing, and so he nodded at her and began to continue down the trail.

“Hey!” She shouted at him, and ran, or walked slightly faster than usual, and easily circled in front of him, pouting.

“Well? Aren’t you going to say, ’thank you’, Mr. Hiker?”

“Thank you.” The path was much more interesting, and indeed, the forest seemed to get lighter in the direction they were heading. Even if it didn’t, the noise of this girl’s voice was beginning to irritate him, so he pushed past her once more.

“No, you – hey! You, stop. You stop. It’s dangerous.”

“I’ll be alright,” he said, cheerfully, “Actually, I think I remember the way out. You can leave me be.”

Because indeed, any girl two heads shorter than him, in clean clothes in a forest, who had dragged him, a grown man from whatever was left of that house – was something dangerous.

You see, up until now, he had never had to particularly avoid mushrooms, because mushrooms, at least where he was from, did not grow very large or lure you with strange scents. In fact, in terms of things that actively frightened him, mushrooms ranked somewhere between flowers and small rabbits.

Young women, on the other hand, move around very much, are loud, encroaching and nosey, and worst of all, did not mind their own business and stay planted firmly beneath trees or – as he now had discovered – on the roofs of collapsed houses.

In other words, he would rather endure the company of a million mushrooms than a single young woman. Of course, given that there was a path that must lead out, he could likely avoid both.

“No. You should come with me, I live nearby with Miss Harigami. We’ll prepare you!”

Assuming he could drive off the one before him.

“Hmmmm…” He thought for a second. “No. But, if you pointed me towards the way out, that would be very helpful.”

“Oh… of course! Yes, yes! Follow me!” She smiled and sprinted down the path, the feathers in her cap fluttering – he almost caught himself remarking upon them. But he held his tongue, and clenched his fist tight, and followed the vested girl deeper into the wood.

As they wandered, she skipped and jogged ahead of him, throwing her arms out and doubling back and forth as he struggled to keep pace. All the while, she talked and talked, but said nothing of value. Her endless cheerfulness would have cajoled any sane man to smile and laugh along with her little jokes, and likewise her beauty was such that it could have compelled one to do as she wished as though they were as malleable as a doll.

Our fellow simply watched her with a chagrined stare.

They continued to walk past many strange sights. Mushrooms, towering, squalid ones that hummed, great ones that stood like still-lifes in every color. Strange lights hovered through the trees, voices sometimes babbled by them then drew away. They walked beneath a great radio tower, collapsed and rusted with age, a sole pillar of deep, ironic red stretching far above the treeline.

It was a wonderful hike, and he greatly enjoyed the little moments of silence between her babbling. He did not intend to be rude when he asked her how much further it would be to out the wood – in fact, he would not have minded walking a little slower to enjoy the scenery.

But when he uttered those words, she stood for a moment, as if in thought; a hot breeze turned up her long, blonde hair. It was as if the silence of the woods had taken possession of her; for the merest instant, her face became nothing more than a dim, upturned smile. His betrayed himself as well, for an instant he felt his eyebrows knit, his head lean back slightly. Though he caught himself in that instant… he was unsure if she had caught him as well.

“I really think that you should come in.” She dipped in a bow, this time pressing her hat into her blonde mane, “It’ll be getting dark, soon. It’s very dangerous out here, y’know. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”

The sun was high above them, and this man, in inkling and truth, was superstitious to a fault. He did not know why, in that moment, the bland satisfaction he so enjoyed was suddenly quashed. Or, perhaps, he was not willing to admit it and betray his face even further.

Yet, to not seize upon these feelings would be foolish. In truth, he felt he may be being ambushed by some fair creature. It would be unwise to be honest – in this instant, the kemptness of her clothes, the tidiness of her hair, the scent of juniper that permeated from her, the red sprig of holly in her hat, her chipper doting – all this told him of a dire glamor being cast on him.

“Well.” He paused and thought of the proper way to proceed. In many circumstances, a hasty acceptance would be foolhardy – but such succor would not be offered again, almost certainly, not on nice terms even if this were the most seely of courtiers before him.

Far greater dangers could be found outside. The fair folk were rulebound – they were wont to habit, to obsession, to helpfulness should they be satiated. And so, he, too a creature bound by habit and obsession, and amoral aid, took a step into the unknown dark, and sealed his fate.

“It does look like it will be getting dark, soon. If your house is near the edge of the woods, and… on the way out, I suppose I am rather thirsty, perhaps we could stop for a drink.”

“Hooray!” She ran up as if to hug him, but, half guilty and half trepidated, he stepped back, wincing against the pressure on his backfoot.

“Sorry. Miss Harigami will be so happy, though! We haven’t had guests in years!”

Skipping a few steps back into the wood, she turned, and, as if to say ‘behold’, in flourish threw forth a hand and bowed. Before them, was a leering manse.

How had he not seen it? Holding tight the remark of surprise, he faintly turned his head to look around, gripping his wrist so hard that he could feel his pulse thudding in his palm just to keep a straight face, he saw nothing but the gable of trees blotting the just tread path. Turning back, she stood with a cheerful smile on her face.

“Come on… come on!” She waved as if guiding a timid pup. “Let’s go inside! It’s nice and cool!”

At times like these, his thoughts could grow so loud that it was as if the world blurred away into a impression. It was a dull roar. It was a violent shudder. Yet the beating sun and humid air were driving his shoulders together like a wedge, and from all sides, beaten by every calculated risk that assailed him, his mind did as was wont, and left.

It wandered to where he always tread. He knew that he could always retreat to the empty city; and there he would be safe. But the empty city was where the mind longed to be – the world of hard architecture and rigid inorganics; of long cemented rules and well-defined symbols, where every step could be measured and every course plotted.

Did he have a heart, buried as it might be?

There had been a girl who had. Accepting things as they were, in wonderland, she had possessed a sanity that he lacked. He would ask himself – as the dreamer had said – was too much sanity the worst kind of madness? To grow jaded and realistic, to grow old in spirit even though the body was young? No – that was not to grow old in spirit, neither; it was simply to die. Was there a moment, long ago, when he stepped through some hole and quit being human?

Perhaps his heart was simply too curious, willing to snatch whatever gilded opportunity was dangled before it. Sooner or later, that kind of idiocy would cost him his head. This was not a world of honest men. That sort of thing only existed in fantasy. But hadn’t that been what he always had pursued?

And once more he crossed that fateful demarcation, towards the looming manor.

In his brief examination, he found that the house before him was bizarrely large, especially if it truly was just occupied by the feminine dyad. From the front, three layers of high, bayed windows pushed out, their light curtains, ever so slightly parted, peering like a great set of eyes against the dark siding. A dull red door sat beneath the bannistered veranda that outlined the front, and set to the side, in perfect framing, was a round table with two sandy chairs. The roof was sharp, sloping steeply at an odd angle that intersected repeatedly with the many turns and tower outcroppings of the highest level; the whole thing had a stilted, antiquated vibe, as if someone had ripped an approximation of a colonial house and roughly deposited it before the two of them.

“Wow. This certainly is a house.”

“Hm?” She said, before shouting loudly, “Hey! Harigami! I found an outsider!

There was a scuffle from within, and a girl in a red baseball cap popped her head out from the second floor window.

“Buh? Where? Oh, that one. Very good, very good. I’ll be down in a moment. Hold on.” She disappeared back behind the curtain, and he heard a door slam.

“Miss… Uwagi? Is it just the two of you living here?” He glanced around, surveying the corners of the building; as his paranoia continued to build. This space, possessed by another, unfamiliar, could vanish him entirely.

“Why… are you hoping to take advantage of some young –”

A single, dismayed glance was cast, surprised, and then uncast as he realized her flirtatious implication entirely missed the mark of his dark implication. Before he could interject a denial, a voice rang through the clearing.

“Heeeeeeey!” Harigami shouted from the window. “Where’d you guys… damn. Uwagi, bring him in here. Hurry up, I’m hungry!”

It was very convenient, he thought to himself, that the two already had a meal prepared.

Although she opened the door for him, before he could take a single step inside, she held out a hand.

“Please, take your shoes off before you enter. We have a spare set of slippers by the door.”

He doffed his filthy shoes at the threshold, and slipped into a pair of thin rubber sandals, lifting the sticky cuffs of his torn pants so they did not drag on the well-worn hardwood. The inside of the house was even muggier than the outside. A single A/C unit ground impotently, rattling on a windowsill; a lone cable lead into some back room. The shoddy device looked moments from falling apart, and was entirely unfit for cooling the foyer.

“Uh…” She smiled and glanced away. “I gotta go tidy up. You mind sitting for a second? I could get you something to drink?” Uwagi asked, stepping into a back room. He heard a tap turn and dishes rattling around.

The humidity had prevented his mouth from drying, but his clothes were soggy with sweat. He hadn’t realized it until he sat and rested, but he had been constantly pulling the collar of his shirt off his chest.

“No, I’m quite alright. It’s very kind of you to offer, though.”

That reminded him, in fact, to examine the wound. Thankfully, no mud had smeared beneath the thick cloth wrapped around the pale flesh. Sticking a finger beneath to pull a bit of slack showed a wound that had gathered the familiar dull brown of aged blood; he winced as the cloth tore from the clot that had gathered on the shin-flesh.

“Miss Uwagi, do you have a back room?”

She ignored him and continued to work in the kitchen, and he didn’t bother to re-state his query, instead, he sat on the stool by the staircase until the burning in his shin grew so strong that he almost undressed in the entryway – he girded his patience and grit his teeth, and forced the conception of pain as nothing more than an annoyance like a shiv into his tensed heart.

Soon enough sounds of cutlery in the kitchen finally stopped and she re-emerged, less her hat.

“Sorry~. We made a bit of a mess last night. I think we should have some spare clothes from the previous residents of this house, and –” She ran past him the staircase and shouted, “Hey! Harigami, stop lazing around and hurry up! And get him some medicine for his leg!

I used to live here with a few friends, but they all had to leave for one reason or another. Do you like to drink? We have a lot, Harigami-chan is a super-duper collector!”

He would like to drink. Alcohol could give a greater relief. Even without such a wound, he enjoyed imbibements a bit too much to be safe. But having something to mediate your crossness in that way would ensure he would slip up in one way or another.

“I tend to avoid it. It makes me sick.”

“Oh… well, I’ll get you a glass of water. It’s might taste a bit odd, if you’re from the city.” She hesitated.

“By the way, I don’t think you ever gave me your name?”

“Why?”

“Oh, it’s just something I do for fun.”

He sighed at the invasion; though this sort of thing was to be expected, he was hoping that it wouldn’t come.

“Call me Ishmael.”

“Is that your given name?”

“Some years ago – never mind how long – having little or no money, I found that there was nothing in particular that interested me in the whole, wonderful world, so I began to wander. I thought if I traveled around, perhaps I could see the world, the unexplored continents, the distant cities where foreign men traveled and spoke, and they could not understand me and neither could I understand them, and in doing so, I could truly be alone, even if I were surrounded by people, because we would be bound by neither speech nor custom, and so there would be no impingements enforced upon me in any way so long as I remained in my own way; therefore, I would be able to find some happiness, and therefore, I would be able to live my life without being a bother to people or letting them bother me.

Apologies. I find myself rambling.”

Around half-way through, he had forgotten the quotation and begun to embellish. Such creatures as these, he wagered, preferred something entertaining to something as banally tragic and dully real as the truth always is – and should she be familiar and call his bluff, it is likely she has heard the true story (or something quite similar) before, in which case, he would sit down and spin her a yarn again, and again, until they both turned into stumps. It was, by now, a cliche of sorts, but all journeys of the ocean, to him, were the same in one way or another.

“No, no, it’s quite alright.” Uwagi sat down, reaching absently to straighten a hat that was not there. He glanced behind her, looking to see if she had left it in the dining room, but it was around the corner of the stairs, obscured by the dark-trimmed spandrel.

“Anyways, you should come in, though, Ishmael; I’ve got the table set for you and we can have a good drink. There is wonderful food, as well. Please, come, come! It’s all waiting for you!”

He watched her wander off, and then, grunting, lurched in her footsteps into the dining room.

Eight ornate chairs sat in the hall, before a long, gold trimmed table, carved of a wood a tinge darker than the rest of the room. Portraits framed the walls, abstract and faceless visions of figures that stared with blind derision at the diners-to-be. Bowls of fruit glistened around golden candelabras, as if polished gems, and a melon sized slab of meat sat on a dish of ornamented porcelain. She drew back the chair, and in the motion, the engravements on the leg seemed to shift beneath the flickering auric light.

An angled palm gestured for the beloved guest to take his honourable throne at the head of the table, and a tilted head swam likewise, the hat slipping over her eyes, leaving nothing but her soft lips and a dogtoothed grin.

“Please. Sit down. We would love to have you.”

“I’m not particularly hungry, but my legs are certainly aching something fierce, miss.” He raised a hand to gauge the distance across the table, scratching his ear. Over her shoulder, there is a hallway he could dart into; with a fireplace. Perhaps there’d be an iron poker there. The tableware was silver. The candles were gold. The portrait-frames may have had nails, as might the chairs, but those probably wouldn’t work. The broom in the corner might work as a distraction, as would the salt shaker. “It’d be an honor, madame. But, do you have a bathroom? I’d like to wash my hands before I eat.”

“Ah, yes. Let me get you a warm towel, so you can freshen up. Take a seat, make yourself at home, I’ll be right back.”

He stopped his hand, which had already ventured for bag that was not there. There was a salve, he had been bequeathed, a drop of which on the pricked tongue would ward all spites, no matter how great or small – or so he had been told.

Not that there were such magics anymore. But the habit, at least, eased his mind when wandering into rune-encrusted haunts, or superstitious darkwoods.

That empty hand now fiddled with a ragged cuff, and engaged with his quick wit. He pulled himself a slice of ham on one of the empty plates, and quickly coated the meal in the delightful gravy, before cutting off a few bite sized sections, wrapping them in a torn off rag, and stuffing them into his pocket. Miss Uwagi re-entered the room at the moment he set his fork down upon the clam-lipped plate.

“Ah –” He said, before catching himself, “This is quite a delightful meal, miss.”

She beamed at him. “You like it? That’s wonderful! Please, have as much as you want.”

“Hm, hm. It’s rather filling.” He pushed the falsely-eaten dish away. “I don’t mean to intrude further, but would you happen to have a room in which I can rest for an hour or so, and a bucket of spring-water? I’d be well to clean off and get on my way – you mentioned a city – though I greatly appreciate your hospitality up to this point, you are a very honest woman.”

“There’s no need to thank me.” She pulled a chair out, and sat beside him. “But, Ishmael, I do wonder. Why do you feel the need to lie to me?”

He hadn’t even thought of a denial before she raised a hand and gestured to the food on the table, the cherubic veil melting away to reveal a spiteful smirk that – he might have complimented her, in another circumstance – added a spiteful beauty to her face.

“You are certainly a clever man. But it does not matter; for as shades we are cleverer. Know this – there’s no need to keep up good cheer, for a being of perpetual nature, such as myself – yet for you I did, and you know not why. Truly, are you aware of where you stand?

You stand alone, before me, the master of this domain; you – a dishonest and conniving man. Now, truly, eat and do not waste, for we are cordial to our guests. Not, upon our spotting of you, having consumed you outright for the trespass into these forgotten lands, was a cordiality that still we extend though you try our patience; therefore, eat, and listen to our tale, for it is our communion. Should you not, it would be the first and last true impropriety that you would commit, and that we would not stand for, nor would such trespass let us grant you standing.”

At this, he smiled – genuinely, for the first time in many months – and gently covered his mouth as he began to chuckle.

“I apologize. I believed that my dishonesty was perfectly clear, and was merely continuing it out of politeness. Miss Uwagi, I must say that neither of us have given an honest facade to the other, and so, I dare say, perhaps my deception is pardonable. Still, I have only deceived you thrice; once with my attitude, once with my name, and once with my refusal to enjoy your food. If you may pardon me, I will listen to your story, but I cannot eat of your table.”

“Why shan’t you?”

“Well, from one deceiver to another, I must say that you certainly seem to lack humanity – and I do not mean this as an insult: I am well on the underhand in terms of ability. To not mince words, I have no idea of your customs, and the rules of your home, and while it is mightily kind of you to offer, I must refuse your generosity, and hope that this small offense prevents me from stumbling into something much worse.

However, as you have kindly requested, I will listen to your tale, but then, I am afraid, I will have to make my leave.”

Her eyes were as a cicada’s as she grimaced at him.

“Very well.”

And she drew up a chair, and began to speak.