Nogitsune

It was an extremely average day… except that it wasn't. Mayoke wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but something didn't feel just right.

"Hitzugashi-san!" A voice yelled from inside the shrine. "Hitzugashi-san, where are you!" Mayoke identified the voice as belonging to Konima Tifu, the other temple maiden at the Hitzugashi family shrine.

"Aiya! Coming, Tifu-san!" Mayoke jumped up from the porch and dusted off her temple robes. When she'd first come to the temple she hadn't liked the baggy cloth, but now it felt like a second skin. It was natural to see mostly red and white when she looked at her closet. Mayoke slid open the amado to the house and was bowled over by a human whirlwind.

"Eh?" Tifu climbed to her feet. "Hitzugashi-san?" Mayoke didn't know why Tifu still used formal address, but she'd given up convincing her otherwise.

"Hai, Tifu-san," Mayoke began, "I'm here. What do you want?" "Well, Hitzugashi-sama," Mayoke's uncle, the head priest of the shri ne, "Said I could have today off and go into town. He's going into Osaka for the weekend, so you'll be by yourself. Okay? There's food in the kitchen, and there's still a bunch of miso soup packages in the hall closet if things get desperate."

Mayoke frowned. "Remind me why we put miso soup in the hall closet?"

"Oh," Tifu shrugged, "Because when Hiztugashi-sama came back last time from Osaka he brought that three-pound jar of wasabi and we had to rearranged the kitchen or eat sushi for a month."

"That's right," Mayoke frowned. "Hey Tifu-san, remind him not to do it again, okay? And don't worry about me. I have homework I need to do." The shrine maiden turned Tifu around and shooed her back into the house. Mayoke could hear her uncle calling from the far side. "You'd better run, I think he's in the car." Tifu shrieked and sped off, overturning a table in her haste.

Mayoke looked at it for a moment and shrugged, deciding it wasn't her problem and in any case she was hungry and th at came first.



The young woman sat out on the porch again with a bowl of ramen in front of her, watching storm clouds gather overhead. She stayed under the safety of the shrine's overhanging roof as the first drops speckled the ground in front of her.

"It smells nice," Mayoke muttered aloud. Everything was blue and gray, with the green of the forest beginning about fifty meters from the shrine. On the other side of the shrine there was the bad dirt road- it would be muddy now- that led down the mountain into town. Everything seemed perfectly all right, but... Mayoke had an odd feeling. Her uncle said these would become
normal after a while, and was obvious evidence of her future as a Miko of the Hitzugashi family shrine. Mayoke wasn't sure she wanted to feel like a bug was climbing up her back for the rest of her life- and that was what it felt like. At least you could squish bugs. Looking around as the rain fell harder, Mayoke had the oddest feeling that she'd left something out i n the rain, out by the shed.

"That's stupid," She muttered. "I don't even go out to the shed. Besides, it's raining and only a real fool would go out to the shed like this. It's too far away." Still, the feeling persisted. Maybe this was something that shouldn't get wet? Mayoke wondered for a moment if her powers as a Miko were manifesting like this, but decided she didn't want to know. She wasn't moving.

It was very, very wet. Mayoke looked down, and realized her feet had moved without her volition and that she was now about ten meters from the shed, and it was a five-minute walk! The mud was the only thing that kept Mayoke from sitting down right then and there. That and the idea that maybe the shed would be shelter until the rain let up.