Archive of Our Own

The last time Ashitaka sees Kaya she is no longer his bride-to-be.

When she bequeaths him with her dagger her eyes water with the woe of a widow wronged. Ashitaka has nothing to give in return but his word to keep her in his thoughts and a smile to stoke enough courage for them both. Though it's as if Ashitaka's heart is falling to his feet, he keeps his back straight and his head high.

She'll cry all night, he's sure. Before she begins, Ashitaka slips headlong into the dark, never once looking back.

Astride steadfast Yakkul, Ashitaka rides westward through seas of grass and sheer roads paved by scree and scarp. He watches pink birds soar across clouds dappled sunset-gold, and bathes in glittering lakes that mirror the high heavens. Ashitaka tries not to let rue obscure his sight (for what wondrous things blossom for eyes unclouded), but strive as he might to exile thoughts of his impending death, they remain capped over his mind, taut as pigskin over a drum.

In time, Ashitaka starts on a path obstructed by smoke. The curse grows covetous and takes two arms and one man. Not far from the battleground he happens upon a little clearing. The cedars surrounding it sleek skyward like lofty timber dragons. A little shrine sits on a boulder, overlooking a slender stream. Understanding the place to be sacred, Ashitaka bends down beside it and sluices his arm under the water to rub the soot out of his eyes and cleanse the scar now spreading towards his elbow. It coats his skin and cleans up cool like Kaya's best mint salve.

The town he stops in next is nothing like Emishi; the bustle of life in it means little measured against how cold it feels. Ashitaka does not pass a single smile within its gates until he is lucky enough to happen upon the company of a monk, though Ashitaka later comes to think Jiko-bo is perhaps too cynical to be much good at what he does. They share thin gruel for a meal and some dampening conversation, but Ashitaka is grateful for the company.

The rest of the night he spends restless and haunted. Ashitaka sees the tatarigami again in his nightmare; his arm convulses and the pain is amplified twofold from when he last felt it. It's splitting and hellish and so unbearable he fears his body will crumble under the strain. It crumbles a little now; even if Ashitaka is to suffer through this, he'll still die in due course. So he must make use of his time as he would a wick dwindling. And Ashitaka is no stranger to witnessing valiant fires extinguished; his people have been dying since before he had been born. Still—this, this is different. Emishi had always known itself to be hexed, but as a prince, Ashitaka's village had been his palace, and his people had been his riches, his heart.

Now, he is a ghost belonging to nothing and no one. It's only at the thought of Yakkul that the raw rue wrenching in him has any hope of ever being quelled. Ashitaka grinds his teeth, holds his arm still, shifts over onto his other side, and tries to go back to sleep.

Before long, dawn breaks and Ashitaka mires one sun closer to death. Knowing now the path he must take, Ashitaka departs after leaving Jiko-bo with a bow and a silent goodbye.

The wolf-girl cuts into Ashitaka the first time he sees her.

The incision is as deep as roots, and the weapon that makes it is spear-sharp, blade-bright. It's as if gunpowder's gone off in his gut, as if an explosion of hot colour's unfurling underneath his skin. The ground under Ashitaka's feet pulses, almost; he's convinced it's in agreement with him, convinced it's as much in awe of her as he is.

Ardour and anguish hang stark in her eyes. With one look Ashitaka knows she will not dither to die for her family or her home. Stooped by her wolf-mother, she passes blood through her mouth, and wears it over the swell of her lips, distended from having drawn from the wound so frantically. There is a spearhead of ink guarding each cheek, and a third upon her forehead, red as the rouge she doesn't wear and the blood she does. Twin medallions of smooth bone dangle off her ears: a prize snatched from some beast she must have felled with her own hands. She is dressed in no dainty robes of silk, but drapes across her shoulders a white wolfskin. Sweetness abounds her form and belies the ferocity of her face; Ashitaka had at first mistaken it for the tip of a blade, for there is the same resplendence in it, the same quickness—

She could cut for herself a slice of the moon, if she wanted.

A god-girl with a wolf-heart. Oh, Ashitaka thinks, never be tamed, you ought to always be free.

A glance is all she needs to take him. Ashitaka's fluting body begs desperately to know her: the girl outside, the wolf inside, whatever wilderness thrives behind it all. Heat proliferates through him freely and his breath halts halfway through his throat. The cursed part of him, the part that's withering away, thinks of bowing to that beauty before granting himself egress from it. Only grief would emerge from a meeting between two phantoms bearing two hexes. Yet the warrior in him, the prince he had been raised to be, it wants more than anything to be worthy of her ways.

So Ashitaka ascends to mirror her stately stance and offers his name, waves a lonely flag in her favour. He half expects the reaction he receives, though this does nothing to dull the intensity of her absolute attention: she simmers and smoulders, fiercer than firelight, glowering at him with all the wrath of a god desecrated.

Ashitaka waits for the fireworks to fade, but they never do, lingering long after she sleeks back into her woods. All he can do is let the vision of the sylvan maiden sink in, so she's etched into his spirit, vivid with colour. He enshrines in his heart the thrill of encountering her, the memory of her wolfskin cape, sheer skin, imbrued mouth, penetrative eyes.

And the boon is a beautiful one to bear, standing tall beside the colossus of the curse splitting him asunder.

In the end it is she who liberates him.

It's a long story. It only starts properly the second time their paths converge, in the alleyways of Tataraba. Somehow, Ashitaka leaves them with a hole in his lung, and she ends up drawing his blade and pressing it to his throat. Ashitaka then uses the last of his strength to tell her the truth. The rest happens to him in a daze. He hears her scramble back, then hears nothing, for a long time.

A drop of dew on his mouth brings him back to the land of the living. Ashitaka wakes to sunlight filtering through the shimmering leaves of a great tree, purling water, a healed chest. Yakkul is right beside him, and as soon as each is aware of the other, his muzzle comes to Ashitaka's shoulder, nipping. But when he moves his hands up to pet him, Ashitaka's eyes sting as if pricked.

The curse had spread. Is spreading still. Why hadn't—?

Then she comes. Ashitaka can hear it in the rattle of her hollow necklace, not in the silence of her footfalls. The wolf-girl tells him she had spent the night waiting for him, with Yakkul. San, her brother had called her. But how does she know his name? From Yakkul, she says, she's learned all about his forest, his hometown. And now he has her favour, as he has Shishigami's. Yet the curse still rages. By that, Ashitaka's too dismayed and too tired to chew the salted meat she urges into his mouth, so she does it for him, passing the mash through his teeth with unexpected tenderness.

The tears only trickle but the tragedy behind them comes like a torrent. Now the tether of time tugs tighter: Ashitaka still yearns for the brilliant world he'll leave behind, the future he'll never know, the maiden with a fate more brutal than his own, and, above all, his life to live.

It's a while before they finish the meat. Afterwards, Ashitaka musters energy enough for the gathering of giants that then takes place. It would be ill-advised for one to abandon vigilance in the presence of such gods: the gigantic Moro, carrying herself with superb aplomb, and the prodigious Okkotonushi, rheumy-eyed and wart-snouted. His fissured tusks are almost the length of Ashitaka body. Each tribe is with its circle of children, wolf and boar, though given their size they hardly look it. Ashitaka tells his story, then, through words, through smells. He asks the chief if there is any way he might lift the curse. There is no reply, and instead a warning that he will be killed the next time he is seen.

When Okkotonushi turns, Ashitaka withholds his breath. He exhales only when he can no longer hear the trod of hooves or the incensed cries of the squealing tribe.

Then he allows himself to lapse back into sleep, dreaming of the golden deer he'd seen when he'd first entered these woods, of San's hands handling his head. Ashitaka longs for her even in slumber; he dreams also of touching her cheek, vibrant and rosy against the rot spreading through his arm and across his hand, and lets the fantasy continue for days, until the pain of something contorting under his skin wakes him.

Cold sweat disperses down his face; the stone of the cave under his body is colder still. She is warm beside him, though. And different in sleep. Ever beautiful, but a stranger to Ashitaka. There's a disparity between the one who scuttles off rooftops, puts a sword to his throat, screams and rages in indignation, and her, nestled against her wolfskin, her fists drawn up to her face, something embryonic.

The hushed, steady pace of her breaths is enough for Ashitaka to overlook the wolf that dwells behind her breast. It's presumptuous to do so, but Ashitaka forgets for a moment what it means for her to belong to this place. Wanting her to have the freedom she's gifted him with, Ashitaka pleads for it as soon as he walks out the cave.

Moro only cackles at how foolish and selfish and human he is to think of himself as the one to free San; she tells him she is a daughter of her tribe, and had become one as soon as she had been tossed by Moro's paws, unwanted. When the forest's life is sapped through its roots, San surely will perish with it, for she can be neither human nor wolf. And there is nothing Ashitaka can do about it.

Digesting this, he returns to his makeshift bed exasperated and aching more badly than before. His presence stirs her awake. And startlingly, the solace slumber seems to have granted her remains unbroken.

And then, she smiles.

Soughs scuttle behind Ashitaka's breast before his heart clenches and breaks and dawns again, the hot slivers smelting back together when San snuggles back into her furs—slowly, achingly. Ashitaka steadies his breaths and pulls her bearskin back over her shivering shoulders. He wakes the following morning with it returned to his.

It's then that he leaves her Kaya's dagger. He ought to keep it with him, and parting with it feels a lot like treachery, but a guard like Kaya's is no help to a dead man, and is safer with San than with him. She likely hasn't the faintest inkling as to all it symbolises, but whether or not the gesture is returned, Ashitaka hopes it will help protect her from harm.

San wears it when he sees her next, though it's a mystery how she'd lost her mask, furs, necklace, spear, and forest before she'd parted with the dagger.

And it ends up cutting into his chest when she pounds it against him, but it's a fair price he must pay for telling her the truth she doesn't want to hear. It doesn't hurt. Ashitaka cocoons her with his arms, her face soft against his cheek, her chin solid over his shoulder. She must never have let a human hold her like this, with the way she clings to his body as if it's the only harbour left on earth.

At the beginning, Yakkul finds Ashitaka like he always does, and nips him on the head so he's finally roused to something amazing.

Ashitaka's body is fitted against San's, his hands resting low around her hips. The soft crooks of San's elbows warm his sides; her forearms are spread over his back like a coverlet. Ashitaka presses a hand to San's shoulder and nudges. He marvels at the languid blink of her lashes when her lids lift open and her eyes reacquaint themselves with the mountain on which they lie.

Above them, the sky spreads, the wingspan of its boundless blue furling around the horizon, the earth. Underneath them, the grass is so green it engulfs the eyes with almost nothing but it, and exalts the heart with blossoms the colour of the sky after rain. As Ashitaka stands, the astonishment the miracle brings and the vermilion vertigo of the heights and the grasses strike him dumb and flummoxed and stumbling. But he regains his footing with ease enough, as well as his verve. And San, too. Their feet pad excitedly across the mountain's tender coat, discovering it anew with all the curious wonder of two creatures reforged from flesh and flame.

From so high up, San tells him loves him, that even so, she won't forgive the humans for what they've done. Of course, Ashitaka had been foolish to have ever thought she'd be free living in the town with him, as a human. And he had been more foolish still to have ever thought to uproot a tree from its native soils.

But it's all right. Ashitaka promises her he'll come visit her. San nods and bestows him with the greatest of gifts before she departs; her smile ought to taste of nectar, if Ashitaka were to swallow it.

There is no hesitance in the way San holds her head when she coalesces with the landscape to which she belongs. It's not until Ashitaka sees the last lick of a white tail and the distant glitter of a diadem that he can begin to do so towards his place, if it may be by hers.

And for sure, it's a beginning. A trembling, shy one, but a beginning no less.

At the gates of Tataraba, Eboshi thanks Ashitaka and offers him a place to stay for good, if he wants it. Though it seems she can barely manage to stand she loses none of her dangerous grace in the way of her posture. Ashitaka agrees to her generous offer to provide lodging, food and drink so long as he lends her his help.

By the lady sit those freed from leprosy. They hold each other by the hands, the faces, the wrists, weep, and discard their bandages as tinder for the fire.

Toki hunts down Jiko-bo and shoots him in the foot. It's part accident and part tremendous luck; Jiko-bo is not an easy target to hit. Toki's not one for pity, though. She seizes him by his shirt-sleeves and swears on Kouroku's life that she'll kill him next time if he doesn't do something to appease that Divine Bastard Mikado and provide them protection from that Warmongering Asano Scum. With a lake of blood pooling by his feet, it's not in Jiko-bo's interest to protest, so he doesn't. Instead, he broods over a bowl of rice in the corner of the camp.

"I'll be gone by dawn for brighter pastures," he says, still smiling wryly. His shoulders are raised. Ashitaka can't help but laugh at the idea. Where would he go? Jiko-bo's the one who had renounced the world and called it a curse. "You can't win against fools, like I always say."

Just as Ashitaka is about to rebuff his comment, a voice calls for him to go to Eboshi. Abandoning Jiko-bo for the moment, he enters into a scene wherein Toki works at the bandages on the lady's arm. By them is an empty bowl smelling of blood and spirits. Ashitaka had heard no screams from this direction. At what must be tremendous pain, the lady only winces.

"Are you well enough?" Eboshi says to Toki.

"Of course, milady," she says, blinking. Toki's hands are nimble, quick, when she works at Eboshi's wound. "But—"

"Come, come." Eboshi claps her knee. "Your eyes testify otherwise; what troubles you?"

"It's nothing."

"Oh?"

Toki's hands stop. "Well," she starts, averting her eyes, "it's that Mikado guy. I've been worried about him. He won't... he won't come for us, now, will he?"

"For a son of heaven," Eboshi scoffs, her lips upturned into a smirk, "he seems awfully unconvinced about his place in it, does he not?"

Toki gives an emphatic nod. Ashitaka sits by a stack of charred hay, unnoticed.

"All of Japan believe his demands to be heaven-sent." Eboshi points a finger to the ceiling and her gaze follows it. She is still smirking. "So his most throwaway comment is treated as divine will that must be met."

"Does Eboshi-sama believe that?"

"No." She is still ostensibly reposed. "And it would be wasteful for him to smite us now. Why shed gold for pride's sake? All is done." Eboshi steels her eyes. "Even if he were to come, I wouldn’t yield to him."

"Eboshi-sama," Toki says. She puts her hand over her heart and exhales before taking another deep breath. "And Asano?"

"He has no choice but to agree to a truce." Eboshi almost snarls. "Neither do we."

"But the forge is…"

"I’ve never known you to be an anxious woman, Toki." Eboshi grins. "Shan't we build a new one?" This time Ashitaka opens his mouth to object, but Eboshi turns to him before he can. "Worry not. I’ll upkeep the peace your precious woman so desires, or so I'll be told," she says. "I owe her brothers a good deed for carrying me back to this place. And I’d forgotten colour of the lake I’d seen when I first claimed this mountain."

"Eboshi," Ashitaka starts, but then forgets what he was about to say.

"A pretty sight," Eboshi sighs, and inclines her head backwards. "Now, if only we were to find a trove of sapphires underneath."

Forgetting herself for a moment, Toki clutches at Eboshi's sleeve, tightening her other hand so her nails dig into the heel of her palm and the skin of the impresses whiten.

"And milady? How will she fare?"

"Fine," Eboshi says, softening, smiling, "She has your kindness to depend upon, and on top of that, your strength. It’s more than enough."

Eboshi lowers her chin and grips Toki's trembling fist with one snow-white hand.

Before dusk, they set up camp with all that's left of Tataraba. It doesn't amount to very much. The skeletal buildings become makeshift shelters and provide untouched caskets of sake and well-loved paraphernalia under the debris. The women towing timber coo to Ashitaka, asking about Mononoke-hime, and the scar on his palm. Ashitaka welcomes their conversation, as he does the men's, who chortle and boast and sing while they work. Asano has lost much, they say with robust cheer, so much that his forces have been cut back a good ten years.

"They’ve no choice but to agree to a truce," Kouroku laughs. "What would they know, they might even come to like Eboshi!"

Around the bonfire everyone gathers when the sun sinks between the hills to the west, to share tales of valour and of hope into the darkest trickles of the night. Ashitaka tells the story of the time clever Kaya fended off a whole crew of bandits with just three stones and won her obsidian dagger, grinning all the while. He reminiscences of own his forest, its firelike autumns, the kodama in it. Yakkul eats the last of their grains and bawls throughout each tale he knows, often reaching with his muzzle for a pat; he misses their old home as much as Ashitaka does.

Nearby, a young poetess narrates succinct otogizoushi in a singsong lilt; further away, an elderly gentleman murmurs sutras for the fallen; beyond him, a weary mother sings a lullaby for her child; and more distantly still, a father teaches his daughter how to fashion a paper lotus.

Ashitaka listens until all the words dancing about the campfire are embroidered into the stars and the fabric of the night. He falls into slumber beside the fire thinking of San, dreams of the same flame flickering whilst sleeping by her side, and wakes up to a shimmering white sky.

His body is still sore from fighting in the fray. When he lifts his arm to rub his eyes he finds the pink scar on it. The thinks of all the despair he'd defied, the defeat he'd dodged, and the hands of his own fate, eluded. Ashitaka has an inkling now, of why Eboshi had grown to be so unafraid of gods and hexes. He knows of how triumph can taste on the tongue of pride, and of how such tragedy may befall one so blindly intoxicated by its sweetness.

Now, Ashitaka's gaze wanders into the distance. The world is awash with white-blue light; the horizon disappears, flooded by it, and Ashitaka can't tell anymore where the earth ends and that celestial beyond begins. He watches his breath dissipate into the air like braided mist unfurling, and thinks of how amazing it is to be alive, his heart welling with all the radiance in the river of stars, because he's finally learned to see it the way he does.

Summer in his new home in the south is long when he spends it in Tataraba. It is humid and hard in town, even in the midst of burgeoning friendships and bettering prospects. Strangely, it is short when he aestivates in the mountains with San, laughing and loving, or at least learning how. Their relationship unfurls at a kusemai pace; the slow steps they take are shy on his part, bold on hers, budding always as if bespelled by some unheard song.

The kodama come back, one by one. Ashitaka and San find many of them diffidently debuting whilst lapping around tussocks of grass, or dangling off the bones of old boughs. How careful they are now, as if they fear the wood will crumble under their feet. The forest is quieter than it used to be, and there are losses in it that cannot be undone. Some of its inhabitants may grow to be unversed in the word of the wood, but Ashitaka thinks that in time it will be home enough for all the animals to live in again.

Tataraba too undergoes mending. Eboshi is tireless; her people are ever devoted. All Ashitaka can offer is to bear what he can on his back. It is a good proposition, for Eboshi rewards him with dry shelter, warm meals, and her priceless friendship. There are few occasions in which Ashitaka must be depended upon to bear arms; Eboshi is right that Mikado makes no move to crush them, and Asano is far too weak to attempt the same. Jiko-bo has come nowhere near the gates of Tataraba since the fall of the forest.

The days are replete with labour, and the nights are rife with coupling. Toki and Kourouku talk of their want for a child born by next spring. Ashitaka hoards his zest for all the time he is with San. The kisses she encourages him to shower upon her are clumsy at first, but she consumes them all the same, collecting them under her ever-hungry tongue. By summer's end Ashitaka never hesitates to leap on a chance to press his skin to hers. Luckily she shares his enthusiasm for it, loving best to enjoy him by biting his shoulders, or by pawing and playing with him in her hands.

The women in Tataraba can always smell her on him, or see the marks San stamps onto his neck; they're constantly hurling advice at him that is both unsolicited and helpful. It brings blood to the cheeks, the way they speak of where San might like to be touched, and advise Ashitaka on what to do if he and his lady are not yet prepared to conceive. They bring him caskets of fruits telling him he will be sweeter to taste for it; they never miss any golden opportunities to giggle and acquire news of his latest escapades: at times, Ashitaka is unsure whether to feel mortified or indebted. Most instances it's a healthy blend of both. He never fails to brighten when thinking about how the success of a town is gauged by the happiness of its women; he knows no ladyfolk merrier than those of Tataraba, and he is ever fond of their earthy wisdom, their lusty laughter.

Autumn is quiet, though, for the harvest that year is poorer than most. Eboshi toils to keep Tataraba fed, but other towns are not so lucky. Some would even encroach upon the prey of the wolf-princess and trespass into her dominion. A man from Asano does it and ends up dead at the hands of its mistress, though she, like him, does not escape the incident unscathed.

Her brothers call for Ashitaka that evening, while he's roasting chestnuts with Toki. When he and Yakkul go to her, they find San hurt badly, in her leg and in her heart. After a night nursing her, Ashitaka decides to pass the autumn away from the towns, and in the strange, evergreen forest that dies not in the autumn.

The time he spends there starting out are testing. San's wolf-brothers come back the second night reeking of blood, and Ashitaka coughs up the sour dinner he cannot keep swallowed. The third night he has a nightmare so awful he can barely bear to remember it, even when San's hands cradle his head and her lips press sweet anythings into his neck, half-snarling, half-murmuring. On the fourth night he steadies himself into a sound sleep by the beat of San's breaths and the warmth of the hands she uses to stroke his hair, his face, as if her fingers cupped over his ears are a guard against all evils in the world. And they are.

From then on, they cohabit the cave with greater ease than they first expect. That way, Ashitaka learns not to see her as either human or wolf, but to know her as San, and nothing else. The facets that are wolf and ones that are human are so intimately intertwined that it would be impossible to try and pull them apart. It would be pulling her apart.

In intervals, she'll lick her hands as if they really are paws. When she is with her brothers she will eat her prey raw. She always sits and crouches and stands with her legs spread apart, as if to balance a weighty tail invisible to Ashitaka's eye. And she does it with tameless composure, as with all movement sprung from her sinews: quick, quiet footsteps; pretty, proud strides; supple, sultry swivels.

Yet, for all her wolfish conduct, San will behave sometimes as a young woman might. It may be an indulgence she allows herself, or a proclivity drawn from somewhere innate inside her; from time to time, she may tousle her hair from her face as if to tidy it, or while in Ashitaka's presence put a hand to her throat as if to call attention to all the skin below it. And when she scolds him it's because he's been stupid or slow or unthinking or unpunctual; when they argue he rebukes her with silence. She screeches, angers like an animal. But for Ashitaka she forgives like an animal, too; she often seems to forget her rage as soon as it's unleashed.

Most confounding of all, San sleeps curled up in a ball, with her head always resting someplace on his body. She'll call out for Moro, some nights. On others, it's Shishigami. Ashitaka's own name is as commonly uttered, but that's an immediate desire he can satiate. As often as she does it, though, Ashitaka can't tell if it's because she was raised as a wolf or born as a human. He guesses the two behaviours are so similar it hardly matters.

The days pass not unlike a dream. A wild, primeval one, but a fiercely glad one. But the winter comes like a night-terror, for they will spend it apart. San, in the harsh cold with her brothers, beside the frigid cruelty of avalanches and blizzards; and Ashitaka, grouped amidst the white seclusion of the sleet-slick town. With the frozen lake separating them, Ashitaka sleeps alone in his room, and no matter what he blankets himself with, he must always chafe his arms to ward off the cold. He thinks it must be warmer high up in the mountains, even during spring and autumn, because San's there.

Work is not always viable in the ankle-deep—and soon to be knee-deep—snow, and the days become too short, hence Ashitaka finds joy spending time with the likewise idle townsfolk. He also likes wholeheartedly to play go against Eboshi; she is a formidable opponent, and for every one of his wins, she will have already claimed three of her victories. He nevertheless likes to believe he is bettering with each match. Sometimes he helps critique Gonza's renga, and scribbles poems of his own in San's honour on the back of his old deerskins.

Infants grow nestled in the warmth of wombs, kicking their tiny wet feet against their mothers' bellies, with their fathers' hands clasped over them in wonderment. Toki fashions pairs and pairs of bright baby shoes, and Kouroku starts to carve for it toys made of paper and wood. Ashitaka gifts them with his own in the shape of kodama, and it is the first time he has seen Kouroku react to one with a smile.

Around midwinter, Eboshi welcomes a troupe of travelling culinarians into town, who enlighten them with their newfangled cuisines. Stir-frying is a sound activity for Ashitaka to keep his fingers from getting nipped in the cold, and San ought to appreciate his efforts the next time he goes to see her. Then, after they leave, with nipped fingers and toes, Ashitaka dreams the last stretch of the winter away.

Spring comes, and the forest thaws from its hoarfrost veneer to reveal once more a whole world waiting to be tasted and touched and trailed. New sprouts work their way up through a bed of soil; butterflies unfurl their flecked wings after spending all spring swathed inside their sticky shining chrysalises; slender-limbed does bear the fawns of herds of harts shorn of their velvets in the autumn past. Echoed is the coquetry of birds who flitter about weaving nests to host their vernal dalliances, pinion upon pinion and beak upon beak, though fidelity too is a mainstay for some of them, as it is for the red-crowned cranes. They skim the lakes and rivers that liquefy once again to sustain all the new life being made on their banks, in their waters.

Sadly, as much as he would like it not to be true, Ashitaka is late to come to San and celebrate with her the delirious onrush of the season.

In the withering winter and the nascent spring, Ashitaka journeys back east to deliver rifles for one of Tataraba's wealthiest patrons. He ends up coming up short of food only halfway through his journey, using his bow once, being in need of a meal, and his blade twice, against bandits.

The first town at which he stops is bounded by yellow mountains. The winding pines scaling the sharp crags protruding from them are scarce, with wisteria clinging to their branches as if knotted in rapture, and azaleas crawling close to the roots hidden amongst their entwined shadows. Swallows weave their way through the petals of flowers, shining black and songlike. They lead him to the nearby settlement, where a girl approaches Ashitaka as soon as he steps through its gates.

"Um, excuse me," she says to him, amidst the gloam. She is tall enough for her hand to catch on Ashitaka's robe, and her hair glows red in the afternoon light. "Is that your steed?"

"His name is Yakkul." Ashitaka thinks of Kaya, smiles, and bends down. "And I'm Ashitaka, from the east."

"So you're from somewhere far away? I thought so," she says, her eyes widening. "Yakkul is very beautiful."

"He says thank you," Ashitaka tells her, before Yakkul touches the top of her head with his muzzle.

The girl laughs and laughs when Yakkul begins to lick her palms. It's a while before she speaks again.

"Hey, mister, do you think you could help me out?"

Ashitaka nods solemnly.

"My brothers are very sick, and it would mean a lot to them if you could tell them a story or two, about somewhere far away."

"Gladly. But I would be very grateful if you showed me the way to an inn first."

"You can stay with us!' she says, delighted. She takes Ashitaka's hands abruptly and drags him by them. Ashitaka lets himself be guided until the sun has gone all the way over the hills and they have reached the barn he assumes is her home.

There two boys press their slight shoulders to the walls, and look as if they would crumble upon lifting themselves off them. Their eyes are shadowed and their bodies emaciated. They strain at what little dusking light comes through the door.

"Where—where are your parents?" Ashitaka chokes, not knowing what to do with his hands. He decides to clench them, as if it might keep his voice from shaking.

"Oh, they've been gone for a while now." She fixes up her brothers' robes. "Nakabe-nii, Jirou-chan, I brought a traveller with me. He's got stories to tell!"

The boys look up from under their coarse black heads of hair. Their eyes glint.

Ashitaka remembers then when he himself had been dying, and the final goodbyes he had said to his mother, his father, and each of his bygone siblings. They are not memories he often revisits. The pain is no less felt.

"How wonderful," the littler one—Jirou-chan—croaks, shutting his eyes. Ashitaka cannot be certain he can see with them. "Might you be a samurai? A prince?"

"Well, I'll let you guess," Ashitaka says, sitting down. Each of his trembling hands support the other. He thinks of what he can tell them to give them joy, and perhaps hope, if he can muster enough for them. "I—I'll tell you a tale of a people from the East, and an ancient forest, and a curse, and gods. And of a girl raised by wolves, whom I cherish very, very dearly..."

The story begins yielding, but ends strong. The children divide their attention amongst it and Yakkul's hide. As the night grows old, they present him with a pot of rice in gratitude. It's the most heartening gesture he has received for a long time. Ashitaka weeps while the children sleep clustered together for warmth. He blankets them with his deerhide and curses himself for not bringing more furs on his journey. Next time he will ask San for an extra bearskin or two to bring to help insulate the children.

The girl wakes early enough to see Ashitaka off. "Take these to buy medicine for your brothers." He places three pieces of gold in the girl's palm, to keep. "Don't let anybody know you have them. Look after yourself, won't you?" She nods. "That's a good girl." He readies Yakkul to leave. "I promise I'll be back again."

At a northerly marketplace, Ashitaka wanders through stalls decked in crystals and wildflowers, and past patrons dressed in lavish kimonos, all amassed like a scene from a cityscape painting he'd seen once, in some other town, a very long time ago. The merchandise is as clustered as the robes of all the market-goers inspecting them: each silk-draped table hosting extravagance in silver ornaments, golden hairpins, brocaded hina-dolls, and plush mirrors with magnolias engraved into their mahogany flipsides.

In the midst of it all, two limpid blue earrings gleam up at Ashitaka. He openly marvels at their stark, pure colour.

"For a girl?" the merchant says, scratching his stubble. "Finest piece I have here. That's one's from the Kunlun mountains."

"Yes, it's for someone I love dearly," Ashitaka replies, smiling at him. "This came all the way from China?"

Ashitaka spins the stones in the sunlight and watches them shine white from within. He's fond awfully of the discs San wears on her ears, and the teardrop earrings aren't quite as dark as the obsidian knife, but it catches light in the same sheer way San does. They're the same colour as seawater, or the sky they saw that day, when Shishigami had dispersed and his life had cycled into completion. So Ashitaka purchases them with the rest of the feckless gold he's been trudging around for almost a year now, places them into his pouch, and resumes his errand.

From the gorgeous riverside city to the east, he takes the fruit of a paulownia, the princess of trees, in full bloom. Just behind the amethyst copse, Ashitaka enters the prosperous domain of Eboshi's recipient, and finishes his delivery with a cup of sake and a deep bow. Exiting, then, he notices that they sell many other seeds here, of peaches, apricots, and aspens, Yakkul's favourite. He stays and picks them so there looks to be a rainbow of seeds and pips in his pouch; he so wants to show San all the comeliest sights and scents that'd beget from them, and thinks of them often as he steers Yakkul back west.

On each night of his journey home Ashitaka dreams of San. Under the sun he relives the romance through reveries.

Often, he will inspect his pouch, fearing the seeds have escaped out of some hole in it that has eluded his notice. They never do, though Ashitaka must remember that even in soil, not all of them will survive the sowing. And if he and San are to plant the seeds they must be careful to ensure they do not obstruct the regrowth of the forest. They may have to pull up rogue vines before they strangle a sapling, or raze parasites draining away the riches of the soil around them.

Still, it will be worth it to see the look on San's face when she smells wisteria for the first time. There hadn't been enough sunlight cast on the mountain for them to have grown, before.

When he goes to her at last, she waits for him perched aloft a green versant dotted with sprightly flowers, bellowing his name after he screams hers. Once she runs out of breath she begins to sprint towards him, moving at a speed both godlike and exhilarating. He mistakes her for wind, or lightning, and barely sees her coming when she tackles him. They roll down the slope knotted together, gathering grass and dew.

San has never come to meet him, but it's different this time. She kisses him without restraint; her teeth and tongue know no bounds, no, none at all.

"Oh, San," he says. He likes the taste of her name on his tongue. And Ashitaka can say with great certainty there are few things in the world he likes better.

A year from when Ashitaka had first entered her forest, he prepares for one of his weekly visits, just like any other time. Though ever since this new spring, San has always come halfway to him, which she had never done before that one long winter.

Ashitaka awakes before dawn, does up his futon, and serves Yakkul his breakfast. He helps Kouroku thatch a hole in a roof while Toki suckles her newborn daughter. As soon as he's finished that, he leaves with enough time to spend with San.

It rains in the morning, when Ashitaka meets San by the burbling river. They wait together for the rainclouds to pass, under a cliff with their shoulders pressed together. Neither of them mind getting wet, but they welcome the excuse to talk about their time apart whilst drying each other off, right until the storm clears. Scented with rain and mud, they then go foraging for berries and fish by a purling stream up near the apex of the mountain.

They make a fire once they've gathered enough material for a meal. Ashitaka smiles and pats his pouch before bringing out the pungent salt, sansho, duck grease and nori wisps he keeps in it, so they can use them to embellish their findings. San had also hoarded a few pieces of ginger, cutting little pieces out of them to top the frizzling skin of the day's catch.

Owing thanks to their admirable cooperation, the two of them eat skewered bream and blue crabs aloft an ancient boulder. San watches her feet dangle off the edge. Ashitaka can't ever decide if he loves more the fluffy clouds he can almost touch from where he sits, or the expanse of greenery and life teeming under his feet: colourful bugs, dewy leaves, blue basins, and all the wriggling minutiae in them. But he can say for certain San is the best thing in all the world.

Especially when they get to share days like this. It's even better when the food is this good, and she's enjoying herself as much as he is. Garnished with spice and fruit, the fish is smoky and San notes it's even better than usual. She likes it so much she yelps.

She rubs her stomach contentedly, throws her head back to face the sun, and insists they stop by the little garden they'd planted the other day. When they arrive at the grove, she bends over to see their handiwork, her hands on her knees, her attention rapt. She spots bright green shoots sprouting through the soil, and dances around the fence of twigs she'd constructed herself, wild and riveted. She tells Ashitaka that while he was away she had guarded it as fiercely as she would a cub. Then her lips curl, ruddy and grinning. Ashitaka thanks her for it, running his hand through the crown of her head, down the length of her jaw, and across the beautiful bight of her neck.

In the afternoon, they kiss by the waterhole. On San's part it's half-bite and half-caress; she puts her mouth on Ashitaka's, affectionately predatory, nibbles before nuzzling, and uses her claws to clutch at his sleeves. She'd rip right through them if he ever let her, but he doesn't, if only because it'd be a bother to sew them back.

Ashitaka too is gentle with her dress; he knows all too well that new clothes are a bane to San's pride: first, he unfastens the fabric to pool around her folded knees; next, he pries away the straps of San's undershirt from her torso. Open-mouthed, he kisses her shoulder and thinks of swallowing the moon. In turn, she nudges her circlet off her forehead, sucks his cheek into her maw. She gives it a good gnaw as he slips his hands down her underclothes to relieve her of them. Then her turn to disrobe him comes. She paws at his neck and tongues him back where the hems of his kimono part, above the obi, clawing at the sash until it's off.

Ashitaka's spent enough time with her to think she has a fondness for rolling around in wet grass and gyp. Must be a wolf thing, he thinks. Not that he minds when she settles down in a spread of green and white as if it's a bed, so he can kiss her with his fingers and his mouth and his eyes. Behind her ears, between her breasts, below her belly. Licks and laves until she kicks her legs and squeals with delight.

That's when Ashitaka pulls away, gathers San's hands together, and rubs his lips against her supine palms, an echo of how he'd buried his nose between her thighs and tasted salt and wet only a moment ago. San makes a strangled sound, then, and they've kissed enough in the last year for Ashitaka to understand what she means by it. Ashitaka chuckles when he hears San follow up with a snarl deep in her throat, and sees that there's a glint in her eye, a crinkle in her shoulders. She's ready to pounce.

"If I had a tail," she says, breathless, clenching her fists over his thighs, and between, "it'd be as tall as you are now."

"Is that a good thing? Enlighten me, please," Ashitaka says, curling her wet hairs around his finger. "I haven't hurt you, have I?"

"You've never hurt me," says San. She rolls her eyes. "And it's a good thing. When a female wolf wants the male to mount, she'll show him her rump and lift her tail out of the way." She demonstrates with her arm, inclining it to the side so it resembles a willow branch yielding to the wind. "Like so."

Ashitaka swallows and clears his throat. For a moment he imagines San with a set of perky wolf ears and a bushy tail wagging behind her. He has to shake away the thought before it escalates.

"So—"

San bends low and presses her hand to Ashitaka's mouth. She never likes to talk whilst there's an itch left unscratched, and it's only out of worry that he ever protests the rule. It's almost certainly a wolf thing, to vocalise approval solely through arrhythmic (yet no less gratifying) refrains of grunts and growls and whimpers and moans. Yet, Ashitaka can't help but be unsure. He had had no lovers before San, and remains presently mortified by his memory of how he had approached his first taste, when she'd disrobed before him and spoken of desire, and he'd averted his eyes with his wrist. He had done it thinking it impolite to gaze, or fearing that he’d relinquish his restraint.

But knowing she wants as much as he does, he would never look away again.

"So come," she finishes for him. There's the ache in her voice, again. "Come in."

Panting, San rakes her fingers through his hair and fixes him to the marsh with her eyes, her hands. She opens her legs and moors a knee beside each of his thighs. Ashitaka's already pressed against her, firm and keen.

"Oh, may I?" Ashitaka swallows. With his fingers he strokes her front, and down, all the way to her knees.

"Of course you can." San guides him to her with sticky fingers and a well-wetted welcome. "D-dumb human. Can't you—" she says, her breaths ragged between the words, "—Can't you smell it?"

Ashitaka can't quite breathe until he feels the pull and grits his teeth. His hands tremble like a bowstring drawn when he reaches out to touch her. Colours scatter behind his lids when he closes them. Once more when they open. Poised astride his hips, San's form is glorious in its rawest rendition. Ashitaka swears she's painted from the stuff of divine scrolls; the arrowheads on her cheeks are inked into them like runes he's yet to decipher; her skin blooms peach-pink under his bronze hands; and her hair catches the dusk and glows red-gold with it.

Overhead, rushes of clouds scud by, white and dizzying like her smooth soft moonstone skin. He touches her body all he can. Her dimples, her crests, her clefts. But her face seems unreachable to him, no matter how far up his arms search. And it's only when San swoops down and nudges his lips with her maw that she seals the rift, prying his mouth open before she shudders and sighs into it.

Ashitaka inhales San's breath and savours every sultry, sweet puff. While she lingers above him—mouth gaping and shoulders shaking—he pumps the same air back into her lungs in small gasps, waiting for her hips to slow and the skies to stop.

"A-are you sleepy?" she asks. She wheezes before flopping over him. "I still want to—"

"So soon?" Ashitaka dabs at her face. "I never get any better at this, do I?"

"It's not that." San groans and rolls off him and onto her own patch of marsh. She grumbles and fidgets, and her brows relax only when she turns her eyes to the sky. Absentminded, she reaches for Kaya's dagger and unlatches a sigh. "You're a human and a fool, so you worry about useless things. It's because I enjoy myself that I want to go again," she says, with a toothy grin. "But you worry about important things all the time, too, so you're all right."

"Oh, that's a relief," he says. "Ha—I thought I'd dissatisfied you!"

"'Course not." San shakes her head. "Whenever we do this, it's like I'm making my way up the mountain. Up a really tall peak. I usually manage to get high enough that I end up thinking I'm soaring, or that I can put my foot on a cloud and ride on it. It's a nice feeling. Warm, too, here," she says, and puts a hand just below her breasts. She rubs as if she's hungry, and slides her fingers down so they're folded between her legs. "And here."

"It might be because I was born in this form that I want—" she says. Her tongue flicks out and curls around her lips. Something scorches under Ashitaka's skin. Any thought of sleep he might've had are obliterated and he feels very, very awake. "—Want always to go climbing again, every time we meet. Does that make sense? It doesn't, not to me, but I act on it anyway."

"It makes sense! It's much the same with me." Ashitaka nods.

"Hmm?" And there's a question in her expression. Ashitaka gathers his thoughts between the huffs of his lungs.

"Well, when you look at me, this here—" Ashitaka clasps his hand over his heart in a dramatic fashion before turning to her with a flourish and a smile. "…It spills," he says, fanning out his fingers, "in every direction."

"Oh, I get it," San says, without hesitance. "So it becomes like the sun at noon, in summer."

Ashitaka wonders if she's ever had the same sensation surge through her, and thinks she must have if she can relate to his so quickly. Quite enamoured by the idea, he quietens for a time before thinking to open his mouth again. Meanwhile, San looks at him with the patience of a child adamant on watching grass grow. He speaks when he finally catches sight of her face as it's shrouded in curiosity.

"Yes, something quite like it—and," he says, finally, a little choked. He has to adjust his head so his eyes are on hers, but obliquely. "…Often, my body begs." Ashitaka gulps down a breath. "Even when I tell it not to."

"Did you know," she says, her eyes dilating, "that that's when you smell the best? Not like when you come fresh out of town and reek of Tataraba. It's a fine scent. I think it's reason enough for wanting."

San touches him as if she's trying to embed the contours of his body into the patterns on her fingertips.

"What's that look for?" she says. "I should still be angry at you, you know."

"Oh?"

“You’ve just accused me of having poor taste in mates.”

San bites Ashitaka's wrist. The girls from Tataraba would likely snicker at the imprint of teeth on his skin, later.

"Why would I—"

"Taste so poor that I'd pick a man who would think that he's—he’s unsatisfactory when—"

"All right, all right," Ashitaka yields, belly filling with mirth, "I'm sorry for suggesting it. I'll make it up to you?"

San whips her head around to face him. There's a wicked grin on her face, and a gleam in her gaze again. The swift movement leaves her earrings jangling, a flash of blue stone catching in the sun.

"Better," she mumbles against his chin. A warm tongue slides through his teeth and pokes into his cheek. Ashitaka laughs and sinks his hands into the thistledown of her hair. He's hard again, and suddenly grateful to be so young. In the least, it lets his hunger match hers.

Ashitaka thinks of the giggling women in town and their conjecture. His disposition in bed (or bark, or grass) is a popular topic of much contention. He also thinks of the men who in turn chuckle and tell him to properly savour the very thing. His cheeks feel hotter than they already are; this must be what they mean.  

"Oh," San says, cradling the tip of him curiously, "you're up again."

Ashitaka throws his head back and laughs, crosses his legs and opens his arms to her. "Then come, if you'd like."

Ravenous still, San leans close to him, set to devour him whole. She looks as snug as a pup cuddling a bone when she nestles into his lap and links her ankles around his waist. Ashitaka wonders if he'll ever be enough to satiate this appetite of hers. He thinks he must be capable, when he brushes the back of his forefinger against her clit, and below, to find she's as slippery as she is.

Ashitaka wraps his other arm around her nape and strokes southward until he reaches the dell in her back. By steadying the both of them his fingers make little white impresses in her pinked skin. Ashitaka helps San this time and fills her slowly. The sigh it elicits from her is languorous and breathless and comely. Southward still, he then brings his hands around and along the dips in her waist. Down he moves and curls them around the spread of her hips, and lower, drawing her rear towards him so there's as little distance between them as possible. Once they dovetail, Ashitaka helps San to sway against him with his own limbs, so the heaves of their hips are easier met.

As soon as she tells him she's comfortable, Ashitaka presses his forehead between her breasts and nuzzles and licks, wetting the curves and cusps with circles and streaks drawn with his teeth and tongue. She flinches and scrunches her fingernails into his hair, neck, shoulders. Still she lets him breathe on her, lets him nip until she itches in other places too, juts up, and offers him her neck.

Oh! To kiss the throat of a wolf is an honour seldom bestowed. Ashitaka finds himself swallowing in anticipation for it. He rims his tongue around his mouth once, twice, and trembles when he brushes it against her jugular, puts his lips against it reverently, nipping at the flesh, inhaling. Oh, he can taste the spring on her skin, smell it: evergreen leaves and dew-kissed grass, fragrant hyacinths, April rain and lush loam. Are gods like her supposed to taste of colours, of seasons?

Of sex, for sure. Ashitaka licks a long stripe against San's throat and tries not to laugh. She jolts down on his hips in kind and whimpers into his hair.

"San?" he says, his hands fluttering up towards her hot pinking cheeks.

She doesn't speak, but repeats the noise when her mouth is by his ear. He can feel her chin quiver into his shoulder when her head lolls against it.

"Yes? Yes. G-go on," she urges. San's nails scrape into his back. She always leaves her mark, even if she doesn't mean to. She almost growls, taking his earlobe between her teeth when she presses them together. "I'm asking nicely, aren't I?"

"Very nicely," Ashitaka says. He reaches deep and chuckles into a wet tangle of her hair.

"Mmmnn." San's teeth clamp down on his shoulder and her arms encircle his neck like a bastion. Ashitaka hears her earrings twinkle, her breath hitch. "It's good."

Likewise, Ashitaka has to curl his toes and clench his fingers, mewl into San's shoulder, his senses inundated by her warm thrumming body, her accelerating pants, until there's a pull and a paroxysm and San's hands press into his shoulders and oh, Ashitaka's name comes tumbling out her mouth, each syllable of it dulcet and drawn on her tongue—

Ashitaka's fingers tighten around San’s waist to help hold her together. He closes his eyes and kisses her mouth and the late sunlight dances behind his lids, in every colour and shape, all peacock plumes and peony hues budding against the privacy of his shut eyes.

And then, with sleepy giddiness, San eases off slow and kindly lets Ashitaka finish in her hands. Laughing, licking her knuckles, her eyes go drowsy and she says, "My brothers are jealous of me, you know."

"They are?" Ashitaka has to scrub the sweat out of his eyes. "Well, there's much about you that's enviable!"

"Not in that way," she says. "Wolf-mates are very hard to come by."

"That's—" Ashitaka has to suppress a giggle. "I'm sorry, I—"

"So mate with me all you can," she says, kissing him again, "I like teasing them with the smell of you on me."

"I bet you do," he chuckles, "though I think you like teasing me the most out of anybody."

San only laughs, and tickles his ribs until he does too.

When Ashitaka had been besieged by his initial hot yearning and the hard clamp of his heart, he had been too bewildered by the finer aspects of loving to act on them. He had very seldom kissed Kaya, and had not been well-versed in sex or romance or any of the rest of it. He had only known how to love well, and truly. And Kaya he loved in a wholly different light from San.

It was only when San had moved first that she had kissed the confusion away and the rest had come together like something intrinsic and immaculate. Ashitaka has never forgotten how to touch her after it, but is often revisited by that same bewilderment. As he had when, weeks ago, he had asked San if he might marry her someday. And to his elation she had told him yes.

Though San is not finely attuned to human mores, she understood the sentiment, and the proposition agreed with her. Many wolves prefer to mate for life.

They'd exchanged gifts as if they somehow were recompenses for all the time they'd been bereft of each other. Ashitaka had let her try on the earrings, and then shown her the seeds he'd gathered, and San had brushed and brushed Ashitaka's hair with an exquisite deerbone comb she'd made him. Ashitaka has thought of San's hands tangled in his hair each time he has used the comb, after that.

And that night, she'd held him. In the moments before they would meet again in dreams, Ashitaka spoke of his homesickness for his village, and what he remembered of his family. San in turn talked of Moro, her majesty, and of her brothers and their antics as cubs. She had mentioned last that Moro had once said there was a life for San, with Ashitaka. And then he had spent the night sleeping as soundly as a suckled babe.

It's strange, Ashitaka is wont to think, that very nearly every night in Tataraba, he relives the guilt and shame of slaying men by his hand, the pain of leaving Emishi for the first and last time, Shishigami's head severed from its neck, and the sour, rancid flesh of a tatarigami, the sockets empty and teeming with worms. It's invigorating to take a sweet swig of fresh air and mist every now and then, in the mountains, with San. It braces him for the slog of life in town, his periodic deliveries upstream for the girl and her brothers, and the occasional uptake of arms to ease nearby conflicts.

San berates him for it inclemently, casts a plague upon all humans, yet never hesitates to lick his wounds. It reinforces Ashitaka's will to stand true beside her in the same way she has for him. It's the least he can do when a woman of her circumstances has gifted him with such a kind compromise. Ashitaka knows even if one day his spine splits and his ankles buckle under such a great burden, he won't give, not when she holds him high with the pillars of her arms. For her, he'll endure—no, it's because of her he will.

Ashitaka hopes he can live with San in the way the imbricate mountains lay locked in an embrace, weathering through wind and storm, and in the same way the fogs return always to girdle their peaks.

For when Ashitaka's with her, he dreams largely of sweetness: a festive homecoming; the garden he had planted with San bearing fruit like opals and flowers like meteors; the small silhouette of a child he's never met, not for years yet, with her spirit and his eyes, mounted athwart Yakkul. He walks through arborescent palaces so lofty their leaves become the sky, their countless chambers decked with peony and scented with oils of chrysanthemum and rosehip, adorned with seats of mottled mushrooms, and windows of cobweb and silk string. He journeys with Yakkul to the ends of the earth and beyond, through paths paved with stars. He plucks stones from heaven, chasing the glittering gems huddled deep within clouds, and threads them through stardust to string necklaces he hopes will be worthy of her magnitude. They coruscate and croon like the crown of a canopy.

Oh, he can remember but half of what he dreams, yet that is enough, and more than. Beauty abounds and truth resounds in all he can parse from them: the blessing of a golden deer, verdure blooming from rot, the tusks of a mighty boar, howls cracking open the moon, echoes mending it anew, a finger caressing the length of a bow, a whetted blade singing in the night.

Yes, yes, yes; Ashitaka dreams of them all, an amalgamation of truth or auspice or memory, and dreams again when he swallows San's kiss and sips her in.

San is always the first to rise. Today is no different. By Ashitaka's first blink for the day, she's already awake. Sometimes she wakes him to tell him about her dreams, but most days she's content to let him get up when he wants. This morning she probably had enough time to herself to go foraging; she still smells of rain and bark and soil. Two eggs, some roots and one velvety, byssine fruit are spread across his mat. San's in her underclothes, her face turned towards the mouth of the cave, the sunlight. Ashitaka admires the way the muscles along the length of her back knit when she raises her arms above her head and arches into a yawn.

Summer is coming; it's in the gentle little breeze that blows into the lair. By the time spring does ripen into the next season, Ashitaka will have much to anticipate. And he does miss Emishi's lovely, mild summers; while he's here, in the south, what he anticipates is not so much the sweltering heat, but the watermelon harvest, all the wriggling eels San can catch, and a trip with her to the South Island, to the sea.

Ashitaka scoots over towards her now. San's ears perk up at the sound of him emerging under their bearskins, turning to him with a whish of her hair, a flash of her sea-blue earrings.

"Ah, hello," she says, the morning in her hair, her attention a privilege. "Yakkul was hungry, so I fed him some turnips."

"Oh, good." Ashitaka sits up and rubs his arm. "He sure loves the food you find for him on your mountain."

"I know. He tells me he likes it here a lot, when my brothers don't pretend they're hungry. Poor thing," she says. "You slept well last night?"

"Yes." Ashitaka blinks the last speck of sleep from his eyes. "I don't know if it's the quiet of this place, or your being there, but I sleep much better here than anywhere else."

"So you've told me." San nips his nose and chuckles at the face he makes. "And I'm glad. It's troublesome for me if you have a nightmare, you know?"

"Oh, my dear," Ashitaka says, with a laugh. He slips through her underarms, hugging her close. "My San."

"Ashitaka?" She pets his hair and gazes at him with wide eyes and a quirked mouth, her head tilted towards her shoulder. "Is something wrong?"

"No, not at all." And he closes his eyes and kisses her collarbone. "I just wanted to tell you good morning, and thank you for yesterday."

"Why?" she says, still preoccupied with his hair. "You're always welcome to come and spend time with me in my den. It's mine, so it should be yours, too."

"Ha, come here, you—" he says, and pads his thumbs on her cheeks, places his eyes on hers, beholds. Ashitaka's lips follow his fingers and flicker over her lashes. He pulls away to see her grinning back. Her look is proud now, and prouder than the time he saw them first, her eyes glinting, dark, hungry, immense. The tumult in them has been traded for a twinkle, and Ashitaka will strive all he can to keep it kindled.

A rush comes now, fresh and flushed. Warmth spreads towards Ashitaka's mouth, belly, fingertips; still, he remembers meeting her by the river and the rocks when the both of them had been dying. Then he closes his lids and exults in the thrum of her pulse, and the amazement, the joy, of being alive to hear it.

And then Ashitaka kisses San for the first time that day. But oh, he thinks, each time now is like the first: a horsehair brush ink-steeped and still poised above pristine paper; the initial, shy footprints one might tread into sand before leaping headlong into the waves; the bright crest of colour arching across a sky still tender from rain. Infinity, too, is in the two of them, dappled and perennial and luxuriant, like the mossy understory of a forest thriving through each of the year's four seasons.

"Ashitaka," she mumbles, laughing into his mouth.

The den then brims with the sound of Ashitaka's thrilled heart as San cups it in her hand. And the howl of hers, in answer to his own.