MA - Hiten's Story - Ch1

The earliest of my memories was dark and dull. My eyes had not yet open and I was but a kitten, ears tucked and folded down. I could not see, and what I could hear was limited. But I remember the scent of the earth of our den and the clan. I remember the warmth of my mother's body, her heartbeat soothing me to sleep after every time she nuzzled me to her full breast to feed. I recall my father's tongue, cleaning my face after every meal, the scent of what he brought to her for her to eat. Meat. The scent was stifling, gagging, and some days the scent was so strong that I threw up and again mother would feed me.

Her soft pelt always was a comfort, my fat tiny body nestled against her much larger form, some times Father's body joining her as we rested together, my tiny, dull scythes stretching every now and then, the squeaked mewls forever a comfort to my parents' ears. Some days when my father was bathing me with his tongue I would feel the long scar over his muzzle, the stiff fur at his chin tickling my belly.

Some days strangers would come. The elders visited too and they would nuzzle my nose, cooing sounds of comfort to me.

I never felt a want for anything during those times. All I wanted or needed was right there.

The day my eyes opened, all I could see was darkness still, decorated by the weary light of tiny things with tiny wings, flitting about. The warm moist air surrounded me as I peaked over my mother's body from the soft nest of fur, watching the little lights move and blink in and out. My hazy little eyes blinked slowly and I mewled at the lights, wanting to touch one, to know what it was that created such a soft yellow glow. I mewled again when I felt my mother's broad warm tongue smooth up my back, ruffling my meager pelt and making it stand up at odd angles before she smoothed it the right way with soft nuzzles.

"Go back to sleep, my son." She murmured against the soft folds of my flimsy ears and with a soft nuzzle, she nestled me back into my place against her fur, despite my mewls to the floating lights. "Fireflies." Mother murmured as she looked to where I was looking. Content with this knowledge, I curled up into the warmth of her body and went quiet with the exception of a squeaked yawn I could not withhold. Fireflies were what I dreamed of.

They were what I dreamed of for the next five years as I rested in the burrow, gradually weened off of my mother's milk and some times she would leave with father, leaving me alone in the burrow for a few hours, but always returned with something for me. My first taste of anything but my mother's milk was soft and flavorful, juicy, tangy, sweet, tart, cool, and light. Mother called it a peach. I liked this peach. Father complained that it was overripened but mother answered too soft was better than too hard for her son. He did not say anything further.

I eventually came to sample rice. The grains were soft, warm too. Mother complained. Father had stolen it from a human, the deep scarlet bowl I ate from bore marks of my father's teeth, but I did not care. It filled my belly quite contently. I enjoyed this thing which ended the call for hunger in my bowels. Some days there was no rice, but there was fruit. Peaches and so sweet apples made soft with age and cherries with big hard seeds and watermelon with moist flesh and mushrooms that made my tongue numb and nuts which my mother  broke open to feed me the hearty meat and berries tart and seedy. Some days my father would return with rice, some times cooked other days hard and crunchy. Mother brought leaves which bore sweet, earthen aromas, herbs I gradually learned they were called.

The first real meat I ever ate, and continue to eat today, was the soft white flesh of fish, the flank broken open for me by my father's swift teeth. It was cold, and slick, and slimy, but it filled me. It was not the meat which my father brought my mother, which stank of heat and adreniline and blood too much like my own. The cold of the fish I ate.

Although at the time I did not keep track of my age, my parents had counted the seasons since my birth. It had been six summers  when I felt awkward strength within the scythes which made up my forelegs. The actions were awkward, head and feet too big for body as one day I squirmed after my mother when she left one day. Although I knew she was long gone, I continued to try to follow her out. With akward scythes propping me along, I began to smell things I hadn't smelled before, hear things I hadn't heard before, and I saw the earthen walls of my den as it began to grow brighter. Light. Like hundreds of fireflies growing in increasing numbers, I jutted my nose from the den's shade and yelped, ducking back in. My eyes hurt, wide and unpreppared, so used to the darkness I did not realize how much sudden light hurt. It stung and hurt and I retreated back into the safety of my den where I spent more summers in the darkness.

I was eight summers young when my father woke me during the cool of the night, nuzzling me awake and he had me follow him. I never heard Father request such of me and I moved awkwardly behind him, curious. We reached the entrance to the den but there was no hundreds of fireflies brightening the way so harshly. Pale light, soft and subtle came to the entrance as father poked his head out  and gazed about before he slipped out and I hesitated before coming as well.

I was met with a world I found surprisingly beautiful. Fireflies glowed, flitting here and there among the tall grasses, every so often  my ears would flick to the sound of crickets that occationally snuck into our den. I felt the wind for the first time, ruffling my soft pelt of earthen red and subtle earthen gold. Turning my eyes to the source of the silvery glow of light, I saw the moon, great and round and white like a giant bowl of polished rice. Gazing about my surroundings, my father showed me everything and told me everything. I saw handsome gnarled trees, their branches like the knuckles of an old man, loaded heavy with fruit my mother had given to me so many summers ago. Peaches.

My father told me of the legend of the rabbit in the moon, pounding rice to make mochi. He told me the legend of the fish which swallowed the reflection of the moon which was why you couldn't see the reflection of the moon in such merky waters. He told me of how the lands were created from droplets of water from Izunagi's spear and the rainbow bridge that allowed him and his lover to cross to the lands they created, a river of stardust accompanying them. He told me of the gods of the land, the horse who moved the wind as he directed, the snake who ruled the water, the god of the storms, the great mother to us all who made the sun rise and fall. I listened in awe to these stories, not recognizing the warm feel as the sun began to rise across the land until my father pointed out.

"And so our goddess, great mother to us all and protector of all that is good, Amaterasu, wills the sun to rise upon the land of the east, Nippon."

I saw what I had not seen before. The many shades of the world around me and I was a child of an artist's palet. Flowers, birds, grasses, bugs, trees, animals, water, I saw so much and I felt such joy. So much joy filled me as the world came to life before me. I asked my father why I hadn't seen this during the time of the moon and he told me that they had been asleep. The sun calls to life while the moon calls to sleep. I asked why we were awake during the time of the moon.

"So you could see this and all that is."

I found so many more moments like that, filled with so much awe I could only bask in it while it lasted, fleeting as a whisper to the wind. I relished in those moments, when the pelts of my clan grew white as the ground grew cold and hard, being painted white with the softest falling snow and the rains which seemed endless at times.

I gazed at my mother and father with new eyes after that day. I saw them and they saw me without the dully lit glow of fireflies. My beautiful mother with her gentle, kind eyes and sleek fur which grew straight and untextured, dark as blood on soil, and my rugged father, his eyes set out with noticably deep eye ridges below, high cheeks, a deep scar over the top of his nose, and a goat's beard at the end of his chin toned with green, his pelt dull red-brown earth with golden tinges throughout. My mother, my father, soon the whole clan came to the surface of our earthen dens to view me in the sunlight.

Me, with my red earth pelt, gold touching along my spine and at the tips of my longer fur, and from my temples, the green of new grass. The mark of youth upon my head stretched down to my nose, earthen gold rimming my bright gold eyes. I was the descendant of the earth and sun, with the wind's blessing of the sky.

The Setsudanki clan of Kamaitachi.

Heavenly Sky.

Hiten.

Me.