Only Human

Shirasa watched her teacher and patiently waited for her to speak. Elder Yuriko had long grey hair and a well-wrinkled face. She may not have been the oldest woman in the world, but she was certainly the oldest in the village. She held the vial of cloudy liquid in between her finger and thumb and watched it move as she turned it in her hand.

     Ama, the Elder’s second apprentice, sat beside Shirasa in a chair with the wobbly leg which she used to rock back and forth, whereas Shirasa perched delicately on the brittle, half-eaten chair that had barely survived the arborworm infestation a year ago. The tent’s walls looked as if they were held up more by the bookcases than poles, and the fabric it used was lighter to allow the maximum amount of sunlight through while still keeping the rain out. Shirasa knew to dress warm during her lessons in the Elder’s tent and so she wore the green robe her father had given to her for her last birthday over the more simple brown slacks and shirt most the other villagers wore. 

     Ama and Shirasa were cousins, and they looked the part with their shared soft features and rounded faces. Shirasa wore her straight black hair down to her shoulders while Ama kept hers cut just below the ears and had streaks of light brown coloring which she had put in her hair to stand out a little more from every other black-haired teenage girl in the village, an act that backfired when all those other girls had followed suit and did the same. They both stood taller than almost every other female in Kazejiyu, but while the height made Ama seem  slender and graceful, Shirasa felt lanky and awkward. Her mother, before she died, had said it was all in her posture, but Shirasa never seemed to get around to practicing to keep her shoulders up, back arched, or walking just that certain little way. She just had too much to learn if she ever hoped to become Elder Yuriko’s replacement.

     Elder Yuriko looked away from the vial and regarded both her apprentices. “I have been told the substance inside this vial killed a horde of gen within seconds. What would you hypothesize this substance is?” She pointed to Shirasa first. 

     "I would need more information,” Shirasa declared. “There are plenty of toxins that could kill thirty whiptails while only making something larger slightly sick.

     The Elder nodded in confirmation. “The komainu call them razorbacks. New to the area, they’re barely two meters tall, covered in some sort of spiked plating- not that they could be bothered to tell me what kind of plating. For the sake of argument, let’s say these gen were of the rodentia order. And let’s say the horde was, oh, let’s say, twenty-five strong. A complete fabrication, but again, such important details are beneath them.

     Shirasa sped through every bit of information she could of creatures known for their toxins. The gami came straight to mind. They were Apex gen, so efficiently evolved that rather than needing to adapt, they forced other clans to either stay out of their way or form a symbiotic relationship with it. Gami adults lived in The Maw- the snow-capped mountain chain in the north which got its name because they looked like the bottom jaw from some horrible, toothy creature, and while they weren’t venomous, their young were for a time. “It could be gami venom. It can kill a full grown man in seconds and if they had stumbled into a nest of adolescents, I doubt any kind of plating would have been enough protection to stop them from penetrating it.”

     Elder Yuriko must have been expecting that response, because she responded immediately.

     “There were no gami. This liquid simply touched the skin of the gen and it started a chain reaction that killed them all off .”

     Shirasa furrowed her brow. She’d never heard of anything that could do that. Was this some sort of unanswerable test?

     Elder Yuriko saw her struggling and moved on. “Ama?”

     "I'd say whoever told you that happened was a liar, Elder Yuriko." Ama’s bubbly-voiced answer made Shirasa roll her eyes.

     But Elder Yuriko nodded thoughtfully. "A very likely answer, Ama, especially when you consider a Maylin was the one who originally possessed this item. I've been charged with identifying the substance, but I already suspect it is nothing more than an overzealous Maylin merchant trying to take advantage of us barbarous, know-nothing westerners who couldn’t possibly know the difference between polished metal and glass." She placed the vial on a shelf of the bookcase behind her.

     Kazejiyu was one of many villages this side of the badlands that purposely kept themselves from developing new technologies for fear of setting off the gen into a never ending evolution of even greater threats that would lead to the final destruction of humanity. Those in the east, especially in the city of Maylin-Ha, not only boasted their own advancements but constantly pushed the boundaries in rediscovering the works of the Ancestors and their ancient technology.

But the thing they were hated for the most by those in the west was their gen engineering. They raised and bred gen through their guiding hands and adapted them in ways that benefited the human race. They had even given it a catchy name; Gengineering. 

     Of course, as with any strongly held beliefs, there was an absurd amount of hypocrisy. The people of Kazejiyu loved to forget that their weirun, with their quick growing wool coats, their incredible resistance to sickness and disease, and their protein enriched milk were the things that let Kazejiyu survive in the sporadic winters. Or the messenger birds they used to communicate with the other villages scattered throughout the western front. But if anyone could create a poison that could eradicate gen on contact, it would be the Maylin. “But what if it’s true?” 

     Shirasa immediately felt regret for asking as Elder Yuriko met her with an icy glare. “Shirasa, recite for me the history of The Fall.” Ama didn’t bother hiding her smirk.

      The so-called history of The Fall was nothing more than a children’s story with no factual basis in anything, but failing to humor Elder Yuriko would only leave her worse off, so she rattled off the words. “When the gen came, humans used their mastery of great technologies to fight and exterminate them, but each time the humans used one of their great weapons, the gen only became stronger. After all their weapons proved futile, they created more. Humanity could control the weather, create mountains, harness the power of the sun itself, and they turned all those marvels into the strongest weapons ever created. But the gen rose above every challenge presented to them until finally the great human race shattered and broke. It was only then, when man returned to the dirt, that the gen too, returned to the dirt as well.” Shirasa sighed. She doubted the true events were anything like what the story described, just like how the same stories told of a great white egg in the sky that lit up the night for untold millennia until it suddenly hatched and birthed the gen, leaving Earth infested. But Elder Yuriko was not above humoring nonsense when it supported her own narrative.

     "And what's the moral of that story, Ama? And how does it relate to our Maylin friends?"

     "You can't rise above the gen. Escalating things only quickens our own extinction. The eastern cities, especially Maylin-Ha, ignore the lessons from our past and continue to push forward. Eventually they’ll bring humanity to extinction."

     "Very good," Elder Yuriko beamed at her nose-browning pupil. "The harder we push the gen, the harder they push back. You understand that, don't you, Shirasa?"

     For as many times as she had been lectured on the subject, Shirasa didn’t know why she expected the old woman set in her ways to find a different outlook, but she couldn’t help but notice her original question had been deflected from ‘could they create a poison like that’ to ‘why they shouldn’t.’ “I just think that if we had a weapon that could kill a mass of gen at the snap of a finger, maybe we could use it to our advantage.” 

     "I think Shirasa wants to live in Maylin-Ha," Ama teased.

     "No, I just don't think we have to make life so hard for ourselves. Our water wagon came from Maylin-Ha years ago and we use that. The weirun were originally from the city as well, but people like to forget that, too. So why can't we use more of their inventions?"

     "Inventions like this?" Ama pulled a brown lacquered box the size of a fist out of her pocket. She opened the hinged box and the tiny mechanisms inside started playing music. Shirasa recognized the chime in an instant- It was one of the last gifts her mother had given her before she died, and something Shirasa had managed to keep hidden for the last two years.

     Shirasa lunged for the box. "Give that back!"

     Ama shot out of her seat and away from Shirasa, giggling.

     "You stole that from my room! Give it back!"

     "Girls!” The Elder squawked. “Behave yourself!" 

     Shirasa ran after Ama and grabbed her arm and neck, but Ama kept the box just out of reach with her other hand as she struggled and twisted against her grip. "You're not allowed to have Maylin things!" Ama shouted. "You can't have this! It’s forbidden!" They were no longer the seventeen-year-old girls they were, degenerating into screaming children as they pulled and pushed and scratched at each other while Elder Yuriko pointlessly threatened until Ama lost her balance. The music box fell and crashed to the ground.

     The music came to an abrupt halt as tiny mechanical pieces splashed across the ground. Shirasa cried out and for a moment Ama looked horrified- until Shirasa took hold of Ama's hair, yanked her forward, and punched her in the face. Ama reeled back and stumbled to the floor, taking a pile of books and an unlit lantern down with her, which shattered much like the music box.

     Elder Yuriko bolted out of her chair and grabbed onto Shirasa’s arm. "Enough! Honour’s shame! You both know better than this! Ama, are you okay?" Ama sat up and sniffled as she cradled her right cheek. Her eyes swelled with tears, but she nodded. "This is not how my two apprentices should behave! If I wanted to deal with this, I'd go watch after children. At least then I'd expect shouting and fighting. Both of you go home, now!" Shirasa went for the pieces of her broken music box on the floor. "No, Shirasa. Leave it." 

     Shirasa swallowed a sob and left with tears crawling down her cheeks. It was a long walk to the southeastern side of the village where her family’s lone tent sat beside the weirun pen, but she managed to make it home before she completely broke down.

 

     It was an hour later when her father arrived. Their home was larger than many of the tents thanks to her father being an elder, but not big enough for Shirasa to disappear in.

Shirasa got her height from her father, though he was still a head taller than her and his frame was well muscled, earned from spending his days dealing with the livestock, and his hair and beard were as wild as some of the weirun. He came in with his sister, a petite stick of a thing you couldn't guess he was related to, aside from how tall she was, and her daughter Ama, who had a very noticeable black eye. Forced, false apologies were exchanged between the cousins with nothing but hatred actually being passed between the two, and then they were both gone as quickly as they had come. 

     Her father placed his hand on Shirasa's shoulder. “I’ll talk to Elder Yuriko about getting the music box back.”

     Shirasa’s eyes stayed focused on the rectangular wooden planks that made up the floor. “It’ll still be broken.”

     “Then we’ll get it fixed.”

     “How? No one here would know how to fix it.”

     “We'll figure it out, sweetie, don’t worry.” She believed him. There wasn’t a time where she could remember him letting her down. “But for now,” he said, “I have to go back to the Hall. Got a meeting to go to.”

     Elder meetings typically happened in the morning. For one to be called at midday meant something important needed to be quickly discussed, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what this one was about. Her hair fell in her face as she looked up at her father. "The Maylin?"

     “Heard about that already, huh?”

     She brushed her hair behind her ear. “Barely. Just Elder Yuriko saying he was some lying merchant out to swindle us with a miracle solution to all our gen problems.”

     Her father scratched at his beard. “It’s definitely hard to believe. The only two witnesses of what really happened are that Maylin and Taoru.”

     And there wasn’t much love for Taoru in the village, either. Although the people of Maylin-Ha, Kazejiyu, and dozens of other villages both on the eastern and western sides of Stonescar Chasm nearly all shared the same basic ancestry, a different city name and time was enough to deem one group of people substantially different from another. If a Maylin was involved, everyone else would no doubt jump to the conclusion that Taoru had to be involved in the scam as well, despite him never even setting eyes on the black walls of Maylin-Ha. “All they have to do is test it to prove if they’re telling the truth or not,” Shirasa said. “That should be simple enough.”

     Her father shrugged equivocally and patted her on the head. “Let’s hope it’s that simple. Don’t worry about my dinner tonight. I’ve got a feeling this meeting’s going to be a long one.”

     “Alright, Dad.”

     Her father left. Shirasa waited a few more minutes, then went to sneak into the meeting.

 

     There were still a few stragglers at the well, filling their buckets with the water the komainu had brought home. Shirasa, with a book tucked underneath her arm, took a wide berth around the central hub and tried her best to remain unseen and avoid being stopped by anyone who wished to talk to her. Her duties as Elder Yuriko’s apprentice gave plenty of the teenage boys an excuse to flirt with her under the guise of needing tutoring and made her a target for parents who had an assortment of complaints for either her or Elder Yuriko when it came to the tutelage of their children. Fortunately, she made it to her destination unbothered. 

     The Hall- or Great Hall, depending on how overly important you wished it to sound- was only a single section of the larger structure it contained. Forty meters across, the whole thing was a rectangular structure designed as simplistic as possible and split into three different sections; the Great Hall took up two-thirds of the front, with Chief Tomo’s home being the other third. The entire back side was used by the komainu as barracks as well as storeroom for weapons, traps, materials too precious to leave unguarded, and more than a few small separate rooms with cots inside.

     The entrance to the Hall was guarded by two senior members of the komainu, so she slipped around the back and headed toward the storehouse entrance. Normally, admittance was limited, but as Elder Yuriko’s apprentice, it wasn’t uncommon for Shirasa to go inside for tutoring lessons. She slipped inside without much more than a nod from those in the training yard and from there, she knew exactly where she to go. It wasn’t the first time she had snuck in on a meeting, and she knew the best spot where she could overhear the entire thing.

     Shirasa entered the storeroom proper and walked past the line of spears leaning against the wooden racks. She cut through the middle of a collection of closed crates and took a seat on the floor in the corner of the room beside a barrel of dried red flowers. With her back against the wall, Shirasa opened the book she brought with her and looked down as if to read it. If anyone happened by, she would just tell them she was waiting for one of her students to tutor. 

     Shirasa wouldn’t be able to see what was going on inside the Hall, but she could hear it perfectly well and she knew exactly how the room would be set up inside.

     The four Elders would be at the head of the rectangular room; Her father, Elder Yuriko, Elder Torii, and General Aki. Chief Tomo would be seated in the center, on a slightly raised dais. Villagers deemed relevant to the meeting and those few important enough would be seated to the sides of the Elders against the wall on slim wooden benches. By the time she sat down, she was surprised the meeting was already underway. 

     Chief Tomo was an old man of sixty years, but his voice still went strong. “What I don’t understand is why you were out there alone, so far away from home, Van of Maylin-Ha.” The Chief managed to keep most of his spite from the city’s name. “The merchants we get from your city come with a retinue of komainu. I hope you offered a prayer of thanks to Fortune for keeping you safe.”

     “I may have survived, Chief Tomo, but my other companions- the ones you noticed were missing- did not. And whilst I have given due thanks to Fortune, I place the majority of my thanks in the hands of Taoru.” The Maylin sounded modest and educated, quite different from how the Maylin merchants had spoken with their quick talking professional sales pitches. Shirasa had just assumed all Maylin had talked like that. Apparently not.

     "Taoru's actions were truly commendable and I am sure Glory's crown shines bright upon him." The Chief's tone was hardly jubilant. “I’m also sorry to hear about the loss of your companions. May I ask what brought you out this way that was worth the cost of their lives?” 

     "A traitor from our own ranks stole something precious from us. I tracked this traitor to a village northwest of here, across the river."

     “Gintani, yes. We are working to corroborate that fact. What about this thing that was stolen?” To Shirasa, the meeting sounded more like a trial. 

     “We call it genshi,” Van said. “It was created to be the ultimate weapon against the gen, a substance that could kill any gen, be it plant, insect, or beast. And right now it’s the only thing that can save my city from the gen assaulting it.”

     “Save your city?” General Aki scoffed. The leader of the Kazejiyu komainu had only held the position for the last two years when the last general died alongside her mother and two others when their wagon had fallen into the river. “Are your walls not tall enough to keep the gen out, Maylin? Is your miraculous ancient technology not able to defend your people? And what about all those amazing weapons your people continuously try to shove down our throats at ridiculous prices?”

     There was a long silence until Van sighed. “Our walls only worked to trap us. Maylin-Ha has become besieged by gen and is now a prison for its people. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes a tomb.” There were murmurs of confusion from the people inside, but Van gave no one the chance to ask questions. “The genshi was our last ditch effort to save us, but it was stolen by the same forces that brought the calamity down upon us. If I can return to Maylin-Ha with the genshi, then I can still save my home, but only if I waste no more time here. If not, then Maylin-Ha will be lost, as will every other city, town, and village soon after, conquered by the usurper queen and her army of gen.” 

     The room erupted into chaos. People shouted and yelled over one another until Chief Tomo knocked his cane onto the ground to bring order back again. “I’m aware you easterners think we are idiots, but this is the story you try to feed us? This is ridiculous!”

    Even Shirasa found it difficult to believe. Sure, it was theoretically possible, even likely that at some point gen could potentially be weaponized into some kind of fighting force, but it just sounded too difficult to believe. Her shoulders slouched in disappointment. She hadn’t realized just how high her hopes had gotten. But perhaps Elder Yuriko was right and this was all nothing but a sham.

     “I’m not making anything up.” Van sounded so sincere it made Shirasa not give up hope completely. 

     Chief Tomo on the other hand, wasn’t buying it for a second. “The Maylin are notorious liars. Your merchants come here telling whatever lies they can to sell their little toys and pet gen and while Taoru has attested to the claim of this gen-killing poison, we must assume he simply did not understand the Maylin trick he was seeing. Elder Yuriko, you were given this genshi to identify and verify this man’s claim. What have you found?"

     “Inconclusive,” the voice of her teacher spoke

     “Inconclusive?” General Aki practically shouted the word. “What do you mean inconclusive? Either the stuff can kill a gen or it can’t.”

     “Inconclusive, meaning I am not about to go splashing an unknown substance around like a young boy writing his name in the snow. I need proper control and I have not had the time to organize such a test. However, it is my opinion that even if the claim the genshi can kill any and every gen it comes into contact with is true, it would only be a matter of time until one adapted beyond it and that we would be worse off once one-“

     “Not true,” Van interrupted. 

     Shirasa winced. Bad move. Elder Yuriko did not tolerate anyone interrupting her.

     Elder Yuriko responded with a raised, stern voice. “Maylin experimentation has done nothing but bring our world closer to the brink of utter destruction. You people play around with things you don’t understand. We are bugs compared to our ancestors and their technology did nothing to help them against the gen. In fact, it was their folly that brought us nearly to extinction. And here you are trying to follow in their footsteps, pretending like you’re all so smart because you found some of their old broken toys. Chief Tomo, I can’t tell you if the genshi is legitimate or not, but I strongly recommend destroying it, regardless. Nothing good will come of it.” 

     “The genshi attacks the very being of what makes a gen a gen,” Van responded. “There are very few things that a gen cannot change, but there are certain qualities that all gen share.” Shirasa could attest to that. All gen laid eggs, or spores in the case of floral gen. All gen clans shared only a single egg laying matron. All gen stayed their same, relative species; A rodent stayed a rodent, a reptile a reptile, a bird a bird. The lines perhaps blurred a little, but nothing so dramatic as to break the records of research by centuries’ worth of scholars. “The genshi attacks these immutable traits,” Van continued. “There is no fighting back, no adapting beyond it. If a gen is infected, it will die. There is no alternative.”

     “How fanciful,” Yuriko spat out the words. “You spin a tail of fantasy. Of gen besieging an entire city without word of it escaping, of traitors and a journey to a faraway land to reclaim what is yours, and a magical substance that can end all of our problems. At least when your merchants come to peddle their wares, they don’t spit in our eye and call it rain.”

 Chief Tomo cut in quickly. “General Aki, how plausible would you say it was for the entire city of Maylin-Ha to be set upon by an enemy army- an army of gen, mind you- without the slightest word of their troubles getting out? For surely if even a single person or messenger bird escaped, such as our Maylin friend here apparently has, even we would have heard of it by now.”

     “Plausible? It’s utterly impossible. An army taking a whole city would not go unnoticed. No, it’s obvious this Maylin is trying to use fear to blind us to whatever his intentions truly are.” Shirasa doubted General Aki knew anything about battles, armies, or wars. He may have been a fighter of gen, but she had read every journal in Elder Yuriko’s collection about the Dark Age and its blood-soaked history of warlords fighting from shore to shore, mountains to marshes, as humanity began to try and reclaim what land they could after The Fall. Shirasa could cite two separate instances of a village being completely overrun in the span of a single night without most of the victims ever waking from their sleep. The ruins of the Silent Fortress was standing proof of just how brutal and terrible the Dark Age was. Yes, it seemed implausible to her that a city the size of Maylin-Ha could have fallen so quietly, but if you accept the existence of an army of gen, and a poison such as the genshi, then there was no impossible. 

     “I’m not asking you to believe me,” Van said and Shirasa wondered how the man stayed so calm when the odds had been so stacked against him. “Just give me the genshi and I’ll be on my way.”

     “Ha!” General Aki laughed. “You think we’ll just let you leave without knowing exactly what it is you’re up to? You’re planning something and I’ll find out exactly what it is.”

     “I didn’t even want to come here,” Van stayed calm, but grew louder. “You don’t need to know anything about my intentions because I don’t care about your village. Give me the genshi and exile me from your village for all I care. Just send me on my way.”

     “If a Maylin wants something, he should be denied it,” said General Aki.

     “I don’t know if it’s as extreme as that, Aki.” It was her father’s voice. “I don’t see what harm sending him on his way could be.”

     “Exactly,” General Aki snapped. “We don’t know what harm he could do, Kento. He and his genshi are an unknown factor. We need to secure the safety of our home first and above all else. Once we have all the facts, then we can say what we need or don’t need to do.”

     “I agree,” Chief Tomo said. “Keep him restrained. I don’t want him going anywhere until we have answers.” 

     Her father raised another objection, but Shirasa was distracted by movement in front of her. She looked up from her book just in time for a pair of hands to grab her. One covered her mouth while the other dragged her up before shoving her back down on her stomach.

    "Looks like someone's poking their nose where it doesn't belong," Ama snarled. "Hold her still."

     Yu, one of the many boys Ama loved to flirt with, pinned Shirasa’s arms to the ground and set his knee on the small of her back. Ama knelt beside Shirasa and waved a knife in front of her face. "You call out for help and I'm gonna make you regret it." 

     Shirasa strained as Ama knelt down and grabbed a handful of her hair and grunted as her roots were pulled taut. "The black eye you gave me made me ugly," Ama said. "It's only fair I return the favor." Ama began hacking away at Shirasa's hair with the knife. Shirasa didn’t dare move her head for fear of the knife finding more than just hair and Yu kept her firmly pressed against the ground. "If you tell anyone I did this, I'll tell Elder Yuriko you were listening in on the meeting." 

     Swaths of hair lay on the ground around Shirasa by the time Ama was finished. Ama held a fistful of her hair up to her mouth and blew it away with a smile. “Shir-ass-a, Shir-ass-a. You really should just give up on being Yuriko’s replacement. We both know it’s going to be me. Best you can hope for is getting traded off to some stinking coastal village, teaching little children the difference between the smell of rotting fish and their own breath. Or maybe you could go to Moreya and join Taoru’s mom since you both love Maylins so much.” Ama and Yu left laughing and congratulating each other while Shirasa stayed on the ground, her cheek pressed against the wooden floor. She clenched her eyes shut so the tears wouldn’t come. Ama had made her cry once already today and she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of another shed tear. But the tears came, anyway.

 

     Back home, Shirasa stared at her own red-eyed reflection in the mirror. The back of her head had been shredded. Not a single strand looked the same length. The left side was missing chunks out of it, but the right had been saved from most of the damage since that was the side forced down against the ground. If Ama thought the threat of tattling on her for eavesdropping was enough to stop her from getting even, then she was dead wrong. Shirasa would have her revenge for both her hair and her music box, but she put aside her thoughts of revenge for later. Salvaging her hair came first. She could shave it all off and claim it was a precaution against scalp walkers, but that would send anyone she’d had close contact with into a panic of parents checking their children for the little menaces, so she decided on a different tactic. Shirasa took her comb and scissors in hand and began to work.

     During the process, her father had come and gone. She had turned him away, making up one of a dozen excuses she always had ready. When she finished, her hair was short off the back of her neck. The left side of her head was cut close to the scalp and grew longer as it moved up and around, and the right side was long enough to cover her ear. It was the best she could hope for.

Thoughts of revenge cropped up once again, but before she could address them, she wanted to talk to her father about the meeting. She had a thousand questions and until they were addressed, she wouldn’t be able to focus fully on making Ama regret destroying the last gift her mother had ever given her.

     But when she went searching for her father, she couldn’t find him. He wasn’t inside, nor was he in the weirun pen, so she went into the village, nearly grabbing the sunhat to cover her new haircut, but stopped herself from doing so. That would just be letting Ama win. And so she went out with her hair exposed and attempted to make passing small talk to the people who stared at her. Comments about her new hair ranged from cute to interesting and helped to boost her damaged self confidence but she knew any negative comments would be kept away from her ears. 

     Eventually Shirasa learned her father had gone back to speak with Chief Tomo and so she stalked back to the Great Hall. That was when she saw Taoru walking around to the komainu storehouse like he didn’t want to be noticed. Even sneaking around, he moved with the air of superiority she had come to expect from the spoiled teen prodigy. Her own interactions with him could be counted on her right hand and mostly involved listening to him complain about how useless her ‘book learning’ was. She wondered if he had been there during that sham of a meeting. A firsthand account of it and the entire inciting incident would have been a useful thing to hear from him, so that’s exactly what she went to do.

     Shirasa heard Taoru’s voice before she turned the corner to the back of the storehouse and stopped just out of sight. "It doesn't matter if they believe it or not," Taoru practically growled. “You’re Maylin and that’s enough justification to do this to you. Believe me. I’m only half Maylin and most don’t even like sharing water from the same well as me.”

     "Then I'll take the genshi back to Maylin-Ha myself." Shirasa recognized Van’s voice from the meeting. Slowly, she peaked around the corner. The kennels kept at the back of the storehouse were occasionally used to keep wild gen, but it was rarely a chance taken and so they typically sat empty. Cages lined the rear wall facing out into the practice yard which was currently empty aside from a few wooden dummies which vaguely resembled the shapes of various gen.

    All of the cages were empty except for the one Van had been placed in. The only way he could fit was by sitting and even then, his head nearly touched the top of the cage. Shirasa had to stop herself from cursing aloud. She couldn’t believe they had stuck the man inside of a cage!

     "Van, they’re not going to allow that,” Taoru continued. “They're afraid of everything Maylin and they want nothing to do with the genshi.”

     Van bent forward, placing his hands on the bars. “I need to get back home.”

     “I know you do. I can break you out of here, but I don’t know where the genshi is. I’ll find it, I can guarantee that, but I need you to be patient. I'm not exactly free to do as I please at the moment, either.”

     "I know where it is." Shirasa was shocked to find she had stepped out from her corner and had spoken. 

     "Shirasa?" Taoru snapped upright and froze like a witrat caught in a bag of grain. His eyes snapped between her face and her hair, his mind deciding if he was more surprised to see her there at all or at what had happened to her hair.

     “I know where the genshi is,” she repeated, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “And I want to help.”

     Taoru regarded her cautiously as if she was only here to trick him into even more trouble.

    “What the Elders are doing is wrong,” she said. “Elder Yuriko doesn’t consider the genshi worth her time. Chief Tomo’s only worried about tainting his hands with the Maylin name and doesn’t show a shred of concern about this possible outside threat. They’re letting their hatred of the east blind them and I want to know the truth.”

     Taoru finally stopped staring and nodded. “General Aki’s also acting strange on the matter,” Taoru admitted. “The cage is humiliating.”

     “It seems I underestimated just how much your people hate Maylin-Ha,” Van said. 

     Underestimated is an understatement, Shirasa thought. “I want to know more about the genshi. What is it? How does it work?" Van’s eyes narrowed on Shirasa. “I want to help, but I’m not going in blind. I have concerns.”

     “You know we aren’t supposed to be back here, right?” Taoru asked. “The entrance is right there. Aki could come out any second. Van doesn’t have time to answer all your questions.”

     “I’ll be quick,” Van said to Taoru. “Since I am not a learned man, the explanation will be brief and it could earn us an ally.” He took a breath and looked back to Shirasa. “As I was told, it attacks the very being of what a gen is. Flesh, hair, blood, bone, everything is made of tiny, nearly invisible things.”

     “Cells,” Shirasa interrupted. The term was noted in several surviving texts from the Golden Age. Today’s scholars couldn’t do much with that information, but it did help their understanding of sickness.

     “Right. Gen identity is marked throughout all of their body and it is that marker that the genshi attacks. It attacks and replicates using the gen’s own mass against it. The genshi will continue to consume and replicate until not a trace of gen remains.”

     It was deceptively simple, but she knew there could be complications. Nothing was simple when it came to the cellular sciences. “So if it only attacks gen cells, are humans immune to it?”

     “It is safe for humans.” Shirasa noted Van’s lack of the word immune. She knew enough about illnesses to know there was a stark difference between ‘safe’ and ‘immune,’ though it was one Taoru certainly didn’t catch. “What about-“

     "That’s enough," Taoru hissed. “We’re short on time and if we don’t get moving, we might all be stuck in a cage. Are you going to help us?"

     Shirasa swallowed hard. She could walk away now and that would be that. Taoru might fail in getting the genshi and freeing Van, or he might succeed and Shirasa could pretend she knew nothing. But go back to what? Apprenticing with Elder Yuriko alongside Ama? Sitting with them day after day knowing the Elder favored Ama as her replacement and doing nothing, knowing that her village had crammed a person into a cage and ignored even the possibility that there was an army of gen in the east driven by a tyrannical queen with thoughts of domination? The warlords of past centuries were greedy, bloodthirsty monsters. They destroyed and killed and burned everything they couldn’t have and only worked to push humanity closer to their end after The Fall had already brought them to their knees. If Shirasa didn’t help and a new warlord rose and brought a new Dark Age with it… No, she couldn’t turn a blind eye. 

     "I'll help."

      

     “I really like your hair,” Shirasa’s father said as they sat down on the cushions around the kotatsu to eat. It was a massive thing meant to sit eight people, covered with a quilt her mother had made more than a decade ago. “It’s very unique.”

     “Thanks.” She stared down at the plate of rice, a small chunk of bread, and a slice of meat, mostly lost in thought.

     "What's wrong, sweetie?" 

     “Thinking about the future.”

     “Ah. Well, think about it or not, the future always ends up coming, anyway.”

     Her father considered himself an amateur philosopher. It was a rarity in the village and so she liked to encourage him, but she had other, more pressing things on her mind today.  “How’d the meeting go?”

     “If that’s what you want to call it,” he said with a mouthful of food. “They knew exactly what they were going to do with that man before they even heard his story.”

    She couldn’t keep up the charade, not with her father. “Dad, I’m going to give the genshi back to Van.”

     Her father didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow at her confession. "I'm guessing Yuriko won't be privy to this knowledge?"

     She slowly shook her head.

     "Do you need anything?"

     "I'm going to take some maps and a few books they might find helpful, too."

     "They?"

     "Oh. Uh…"

     "Well, I’ll need to know how many people I should have dried food stocked up for. I presume Taoru's one of them. Seems like the thing he'd volunteer for."

     Shirasa smiled. She didn’t have much family- especially when she refused to acknowledge Ama as part of it- but it was nice to know there was someone who she could count on for anything. "Just him and Van. Do you think they'll be okay? Maylin-Ha's really far from here."

     “Taoru definitely has the attitude to do what he puts his mind to. He might be getting over his head again, though. You’re not going, right?”

     Shirasa shook her head. She couldn’t have managed the six-day journey even if she wanted to. She would have loved to see all those places she had only read about in journals and stories she listened to from travelers, but she had to be realistic. She was a scholar. The occasional work she did with her father tending to the weirun wouldn’t do anything to stop her from getting blisters on her feet after the first day of walking, or prepare her for sleeping under the naked sky. She would only slow them down.

     Her father looked glad, which betrayed some of the false confidence he had in Taoru and Van’s success. Still, at least Taoru was willing to try, and that said more about him than anyone else in Kazejiyu.  

 

     Elder Yuriko wasn't in her tent. Somebody had told her she was needed in the Great Hall and it would be a little while before she realized it had been a mistake. It had burned the big favor Sai had owed her, but she knew she could trust him.  

     The vial of genshi was still on the shelf between the two stacks of books. The Elder likely hadn’t given the genshi a second thought. Shirasa grabbed it and turned to leave, only to find Ama blocking the entrance.

     “Oh, my! Some little girl with terribly ugly hair is stealing from Elder Yuriko.”

     "Get out of the way, Ama." 

     Ama scoffed. "I think you should try to make me, Shir-ass-a."

     Shirasa grit her teeth. "No boy to back you up this time?"

     Ama brandished a knife in front of her face. "This is all I need."

     From the psychotic grin on Ama’s face, she planned to do more with it than just cut her hair this time. "This is ridiculous, Ama. What is wrong with you?"

     "You ruined my face! Renni called it ugly!"

     "You're doing this because a boy called your black eye ugly? You're insane!"

     "Ever since your mom died, everything's always been about you. She was my aunt, you know. But no, it's always you, you, you!" Ama charged her with the knife. 

     Shirasa took a step back. With her left hand holding the genshi, she reached behind her back with her right. She hadn’t been naïve enough to think Ama would have let things be, so this time she was prepared. Her fingers gripped the handle of the stocky wooden rod tucked in her pants and pulled it free. It was a tool designed to get stubborn weirun moving when they didn’t want to and it was heavy in her hands.

     The impact gave an audible crack as Shirasa smashed Ama’s knife-hand across the fingers. Ama cried out, dropped the knife, and cradled her hand. Shirasa didn’t hesitate to throw a punch right in her face and Ama stumbled and fell backward on her ass. Perhaps Fortune would bless her and give Ama a second black eye.

     Shirasa tucked the rod away and scooped the knife up from the ground. "Leave it be, Ama. You're done." Shirasa left her cousin whimpering on the ground, cradling her hand.

 

     “No, I wont just let it go!” Ama shouted. "I'm going to make her pay and you're going to help me!" She sat on her bed with a wet cloth pressed against her eye and another wrapped around her right hand. Her fingers hurt and were slightly swollen ,but she didn’t think they were broken. Worse, though, was that the bitch had stolen her father’s knife. Yu, Eiichi, Noru, and herself were crammed in the tiny section of her tent that made up her room.

     "No, I'm definitely not,” Yu said. “This has gone way too far, Ama.”

     "Yeah, I'm out of here," Eiichi said.

     "So am I."

     The three of them left and Ama threw a screaming, raging fit. The sun was setting and she promised herself she’d make Shirasa absolutely regret what she did before the day was done. She had followed Shirasa earlier and overheard her, Taoru, and that filthy Maylin's plan. She didn't care what happened to the genshi or the Maylin before, but now she'd get them all; Ruin Shirasa's life and get Taoru kicked out of the komainu- if the rumors of him getting kicked out weren't already true- that was her plan now. Let the Maylin rot in his cage for all she cared about him.

     It was nearly dark when her father returned and she was able to sneak out with his spear. The lanterns were being lit throughout the village and there were little enough clouds to see some stars. Any other night she would have loved to sit on the grass and stare up into the sky at the little dots, but there was no time for that tonight. She had to rush and hope it wasn’t too late to catch Shirasa in the act. 

     Ama slowed as she reached the corner of the komainu storehouse. She could hear rustling from behind the kennel and the sound of metal clinking together.

     Great! She wasn’t too late. She would catch them directly in the act. Ama turned the corner, spear pointed forward. Oh, how she hoped one of them tried to attack her so she could stab them in self defense. "I got you, fu-" It wasn’t Shirasa or Taoru she was looking at. It wasn’t even the Maylin, whose cage sat open and empty, the door blowing in the wind. It wasn't even human. 

 A giant cat with a mane like a thistlebush stared back at Ama with deep golden eyes. It was covered in wounds, some scabbed over but some still wet. The gash across its face was particularly red.

     Ama tried to scream, but the monster had its jaws around her throat before any sound escaped.