"Can you rise?"
The metal-tipped boot nudging at Mokou's shoulder wasn't entirely gentle, but the brightness of the voice suggested its owner's didn't mean her harm. Therefore, Mokou ceased playing dead and looked up. The eyes that met hers pierced her straight into the soul.
Eiki smiled and extended her hand. "Come with me."
Mokou accepted the help. After a few newborn fawn steps — it had been some days since she had eaten — she felt steady enough to follow Eiki across the meadow and towards the nearby hill.
"The cape suits you," she said once she found her voice, raspy with thirst.
"Hmm?" After a moment of hesitation, Eiki brushed at the hem of her new uniform, sleek and plain and the colour of twilight. "Thank you. There was a recent change in the uniform policy."
Mokou nodded. That was about all the catching up they needed to do after one hundred and twenty years apart. No, seventy: there had been that entire incident with the seabound city state. Nevertheless.
She kept walking. No point asking why she had been conscripted. She'd find out soon enough, and though she and Eiki didn't always see eye to eye, the enma had never given her a reason not to trust her.
Still, she hesitated when she saw where their path was leading. "They've killed me before." It had been a long time ago, but even so.
Eiki's habitual smile narrowed into sombreness. "The morals of those who live in this settlement have strayed far from what is just. However, they will not touch a single hair from your head while you are in my company."
"Good. I like my hair." Even if they did, what did it matter? It all came back each time she died.
"Besides." Eiki's smile returned. To Mokou's great surprise, she thought she recognised a hint of deviousness. "I have reason to believe their disposition towards you has changed. What do you know about this village?"
"Not much. It's just another small tribe of humans, I suppose."
Eiki slowed her gait. While her smile stayed the same, her eyes changed.
"To us, it's a small community of humans, with no significant history nor notable residents. But to the people living in the village, it's a complete world. Your perception is as white as theirs, but you must not dismiss them simply because of their limited understanding of the world. Their deeds are as black and white as those of any other living creature." Eiki halted completely, with a crack in her smile. "There have been many who thought their beliefs and deeds were more pure and righteous than those of others with no true basis to their assumption. Such thinking leads to complacency and a desire to always be proven right, and further breeds resentment in those hurt by their unjust dismissal." She shook her head and began walking again, her smile re-emerging like the sun from behind a cloud. "Concerning yourself with the righteousness of your own actions before judging those of others. This is the good deed you can do right now."
Mokou sighed and followed. It had been presumptuous to assume she might make it through the day without at least one lecture. At least this one had been brief, and so she swallowed the counterargument which would inevitably have led to an hour-long discussion at the best of times. They had all the time in the world to get back to it later.
A dead tree marked the entrance to human lands. They only managed a dozen steps further before being accosted by two spear-wielding warriors.
The younger of the pair, a man with a haphazard beard, pointed his weapon at them, then hesitated. He stared first at Mokou, then at Eiki.
Eiki raised her hand and spoke a few words in a language Mokou didn't know. The warrior responded in kind, then stepped aside, the spear withdrawn. Mokou felt four eyes on her back as they continued onwards.
Soon after, they reached the stake perimeter which surrounded the village proper. Eiki led her through the gate without a single sign of hesitation.
Immediately, there was a stir. The village children, clad in simple rough-hewn tunics and playing in the dirt out in the open, scattered. The few adults standing by the buildings pulled themselves into shadows.
Mokou looked around as they kept walking towards what she assumed was some kind of a market square. The buildings were an eclectic mix, made of wood and stone with patches of colourful glass and metal left behind by those who had lived on the same land long ago. Woven tapestries hung underneath small canopies made out of repurposed foam grids; thatch and long-grown grass mingled with aerographene and transparent alloys. Overall, Mokou found it an interesting crosscut of history.
It didn't matter whether the villagers saw Mokou or Eiki first; they dispersed, hurrying inside their mosaic houses and scurrying towards the opposite edge of the village. Mokou grinned with her teeth showing. Being fled from was better than being shot full of arrows, at least.
They came to the heart of the village, marked by what eerily resembled an ancient relay tower. In fact, when Mokou squinted, she could still see the grips that had secured Immer-Screens in place thousands of years ago. She assumed the flowering vine encircling the tower was somewhat more recent.
It was by this tower that Eiki paused, lowering her arms and clearly preparing herself for a long wait. Mokou shrugged and leaned against the tower, mindful of the blossoms.
Then they came. A handful of humans approached, their eyes bright and their expressions earnest. They gathered around Eiki with an almost reverent air, though many shot awed looks in Mokou's direction as well. The few honest ones, Mokou supposed, or else the foolish. Perhaps they were the same thing.
She looked on and quickly deduced the rules of the game when one of the humans stepped in front of Eiki and the enma began a sermon in the people's rough, low-pitched language as though she had been born speaking it. She idly wondered if Eiki had actually had to learn the language from scratch, or if instant language mastery was a perk of being an enma.
As the unfamiliar syllables washed over her, wave after wave after wave, her eyes wandered over her surroundings. Odds were good that soon enough this society would either rise or get trampled by another, and she couldn't begin to guess which. Would they invent new things, build shining cities, live longer and more prosperously with each generation before a collapse? Would it happen slowly like the passage of autumn, or quickly like an avalanche? And would another tiny village like this one soon rise from the ruins, phoenix-like right down to the flames?
Her musings were interrupted by the sound of giggling and nervous whispers. When she looked up, she saw three maidens in sky-blue mantles approach her with their heads bowed low, arms laden with fruit and wild flowers. As one, they laid their burdens at her feet and bowed deeply, clasping their hands.
Baffled, Mokou turned towards Eiki. The enma paused her lecture just long enough for a quick smile and an aside comment. "They're offerings."
Mokou looked again at the bounty at her feet and then at the women in prayer. For the first time in centuries, she blushed.
A goddess.
That's what they thought I was, anyway. Eiki explained to me afterwards that they had spoken to her of a fiery goddess who wandered the plains and never died. They addressed me in their prayers for mild winters and painless births, and now wished to pay me more direct tribute.
When I protested that I couldn't actually help them with any of these things, she grew serious. With enough faith, anyone can become a god.
Did I truly become one? Who knows. If I ever did, I may have slipped back out of it.
It's not so strange, really. The distance between a god and youkai was never more than a hair's breadth, and, truthfully, the distance between god and human isn't often much longer. The distance between a god and whatever it is that I have become? I can't answer that question.
If nothing else, I do believe in what she said. I don't know how it is in the Lunarian Capital, reader, but it's in the nature of living creatures to seek out divinity, and when it can't be found, to create it themselves.
I hope someone answered their prayers, at least.