I thought it would amuse you to know that ky current combo hyperfocus on your zaraki in aeiwam and dragon ball has birthed the mental image of zaraki having monthly Saiyan Punchups (it'd be more often but the saiyans wives said no. Well. Bulma amd chichi said no. Videl joins in)
Unohana would be setting up a table with umbrella and viewing opera-glasses-style binoculars and a pitcher of VERY strong mimosas and selling Bulma and Chichi on the mental and physical health benefits of letting their respective man-things regularly beat the crap out of each other. Sure, that'd be terrible for you- but for them it enrichment, like that zoo that does tug-of-war with the lions. It's fine! You can trust her, she's a doctor!
It's only sort of working until Fellow Member of the Zaraki Management Team Yumichika shows up, and he speaks fluent Bitch (affectionate), and instead points out that this is good, actually. Their various men-things could have WAY WORSE ways of cutting loose than martial arts- drinking, gambling, adultery, miniatures building, or God forbid, GOLF! I'm sure you've all heard the horror stories from the less-fortunate wives at the PTA. You're quite lucky really - you get to see them being shirtless and athletic and it's very, very pretty and this hobby doesn't even cost money, just beans! Speaking of cute round things, where is his husband-?
---
Krillin and Ikkaku are having "Bald Men Who Are Possibly The Strongest Humans Alive But Look Like Wimps Because Their Besties Are Literal Gods And Are Married to Extremely Hot And Violently Insane Bitches With Bob Cuts" bonding time. Yachiru and Marron are having "Weird Little Girl" bonding time.
---
Once the concerns are assuaged ("brief periods of intestinal ventilation really do improve their internal biome!", it's mixed drinks and complaining about things as a group bonding experience time, and this further cements the monthly punch-up in a positive light. Unohana herself does not participate because Despite his best efforts, Yumichika has only barely sold Bulma on the idea that her little wolverine of a man will be alright and decapitating him in front of her will not help, no matter HOW FAST she puts his head back on.
I'd love to hear about Aunty Chihiro, and, by extension, what exactly was going on with Orihime's parents
Chihiro Inoue is the MUCH younger sister of Orihime's father. In fact, Chihiro was only about four years older than Sora, and the two of them were close growing up- more like siblings than cousins, because Sora was left with his grandparents so often by his neglectful parents.
The problem with Sora and Orihime's parents was that they were... Not up to the herculean task of parenting and didn't know how to cope.
They weren't stupid- they were actually both quite bright and did well in school, but both of them had little to no impulse control, emotionally volatile were intensely self-centered (mostly as a means to cope with the poor organizational skills and emotional disregulation).
None of those are sins, but they did make for two high school sweethearts who married and had a baby immediately and the stress of an infant overwhelmed them and they never recovered, hopping from one self-destructive coping mechanism to another until at age 17, Sora Inoue ran away from home with his two-year old sister, Orihime.
Chihiro turned out to be instrumental to their survival- She was taking a gap year before college and when her baby cousin called her at 1 AM in tears because he didn't know how to take care of her even babier cousin and they were sleeping under an overpass-
Chihiro Inoue, Force Of Nature, was downtown and herding them into the car within the hour.
They stayed in her apartment for the first year while Chihiro got Sora his Emancipated Minor status and a few months later, convinced her brother and his wife to give up custody of their daughter to their son, argued with the magistrate to get it done, set Sora up with an office job and got Orihime enrolled in Preschool.
She and Sora stayed close, but while she was finishing her degree in agricultural sciences, she met a charming young man and shortly after graduating, married him and moved up to his family dairy farm in Hokkaido.
She kept in close contact with her Baby Cousins, with Orihime often going up to Hokkaido during summer breaks to get out of the city heat and play with her aunt and her growing swarm of children.
When Sora died as a result of the car accident ten years later, Chihiro would have taken Orihime in in a heartbeat but
- She had five children of her own, And
- The Very Charming Man she'd married had made some exceptionally shitty decisions re: Money, fidelity and his general treatment of Chihiro, So
- She was in the process of divorcing him and
- Forming a sort of feminist Commune Of Women Wronged By That Guy Specifically with the four women he cheated on her with and their children to run
- The Dairy Farm in Hokkaido, which The Formerly Charming Man's parents had left to HER rather than their shithead son.
So Chihiro was in no position to take on a grieving 12-year old.
Chihiro holds IMMENSE respect for the Kurosaki family, who did their damndest to save Sora and immediately took Orihime in and coordinated all the paperwork between Orihime, the local relevant governing bodies and Chihiro. Isshin never asked for any kind of compensation and was bewildered when Chihiro offered it to him because "that's just what you do in this kind of situation?"
She's also very fond of Ichigo, who has always been a perfect gentleman, if a bit moody but he's a teenager, and compared to how insane Chihiro was as a teenager, he's a saint.
Psychic Bullshit runs in the Inoue family too, so Chihiro almost fails to notice anything odd about Kon, the cat who talks, and routinely forgets that most people don't see ghosts, so she doesn't get why Ichigo is sou grouchy about-oh, right. Sorry Kiddo.
Eventually, it was simplest to get Orihime her own place- Rent in karakura is remarkably cheap for urban Japan, mostly because of all the unexplained deaths the city has, and Chihiro didn't want to uproot her niece from all her friends and the very good schools she'd gotten into.
So the agreement was that Chihiro would pay Orihime's rent and living expenses "Provided you keep your grades up, because you're smart as hell and if your grades tank that means you're in serious trouble and need my help so I'll come get you right away baby"
Orihime is in close contact with her aunt and cousins- they talk on the phone at least once a week and Orihime often goes to see them during summer and winter breaks.
More Importantly, Auntie Chihiro comes down every September 3rd to Celebrate Orihime's birthday with her, and every October 3rd, Orihime takes the bullet train up to Hokkaido to celebrate Chihiro's Birthday.
...Orihime seems a bit distant and distracted during her Birthday, and awfully sparse with the details about the "Summer Trip" She and her friends from school went on. It seems like the trip ended up being kind of a downer because someone in management at the camp or whatever decided to quit very dramatically right at the end? And Ichigo got pretty badly hurt?? but Orihime insists that everything is fine and she's looking forward to seeing all her cousins and the cows next month!
So it's VERY SUSPICIOUS when Orihime fails to turn up at the station a month later, and calling around to all of Orihime's friends leads to various non-answers- Chad and Tatsuki just say they didn't see her at school today, Uryuu hangs up on her in what sounds like panic, and she only gets the Kurosaki household's voicemail.
So Chihiro Inoue, Force Of Nature, takes the train to Karakura.
Her first stop is the Kurosaki household where she discovers that Ichigo and more worrisomely, Kon have also vanished off to Parts Unknown, and she turns her wrathful gaze upon Isshin Kurosaki.
He folds like a deck chair.
Turns out HE's not sure what the hell is going on either, just that Ichigo made friends with some girl called Rukia earlier this summer and she's involved in the organization that is responsible for dealing with all the ghost-monsters and Ichigo may have joined it too also the entire gang of kids went to the land of the dead maybe Ichigo doesn't tell him anything these days, you need to ask Kisuke, he's the one that knows what the hell is going on-
Kisuke Urahara has all of 0.03 seconds warning before Chihiro Inoue literally kicks the door of Urahara Shoten in and demands to know where her niece is.
This is deeply surreal for Kisuke for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Chihiro Inoue looks EXACTLY like Orihime, but about 20 years in the future and terrifyingly SHREDDED. The Woman is wearing a MEGA MILK shirt without a hint of Irony and the only thing Kisuke can look at are her biceps as she lifts him up by the collar and indicates that he'd better start giving her some answers or she is gonna break that stupid cane off in his ass-
Kisuke Urahara, Noted Coward, directs her to the Basement.
Down there, she discovers Ichigo is undergoing some sort of horrific John Carpenter's The Thing-esque transformation under the supervision of a gang of badly dressed lunatics being lead by a man with the stupidest haircut she's seen in her life.
Shinji Hirako is reminded of the Utterly Terrifying Kirio Hikifune, and immediately levels with her.
Chihiro is Very Disappointed that Orihime told her none of this, but really, the girl has never REALLY been in trouble before, of course she panicked.
But where IS she?
Ichigo and his assorted inner spirits are having a great deal of trouble deciding who is horse and who is king but the sudden Booming Demand for Orihime's exact location in a voice meant to put the Fear Of God Into Bulls and other livestock makes Ichigo's imaginary friends all dive for cover, sorting out who the horses are rather nicely.
I have not actually figured out HOW to end this scene yet, but it ends with Chihiro agreeing to stay in Karakura and keep watch over Ichigo's body and family since Kon seems to have been abducted along with Orihime.
---
There is a MUCH later scene in which Chad's Uncle Jaime De La Rosa, who came up to surprise Chad because he got invited to a veterinary conference in Karakura at the last minute, is wandering around Karakura wondering WHY THE HELL everyone is asleep when he spies a horrible pale figure with a terrible twisted smile that can only be The Devil Himself, and some fucking gringo who won't shut up with him.
But before he can distract The Devil Away from Chad's friend with La Chancla, The Devil is Geta'd with enough force to actually throw him off balance, and a beautiful woman with the proportions and unbridled fury of a Valkyrie sprints up and starts battering The Devil with her other shoe whilst bellowing the most vile invective Jaime's Good Catholic Ears have ever heard.
Naturally, he immediately falls in love.
Shortly therafter, and exhausted and panicked Chihiro Inoue, in tears because she can't get the crowd of alarmingly powerful ghosts to let her see her niece, finds them being parted like the red sea by the wrath of a very small man directing them with a fury and speed not normally seen outside of livestock auctions or automatic weapons in both Japanese and Spanish, getting the chaotic mess sorted into a triage, the start of peace negotiations, and Orihime Delivered to her arms in under ten minutes.
June and July are the same months btw. They want you to think they're two different months but it's the same month that's 60 days long. Same way August is actually August and the first half of September
it shimmers like no gemstones i've ever seen: green as malachite and emerald but shot through with opal, gold, copper. photographs can't do it justice because of how it shines, as well as the way the actual material elements have their own dimensions. you can lean in and study all the fine lines of the circuits or step back and admire how the rearranged whole forms new patterns. it's one of the most beautiful creations i've ever seen.
Time is a flat iron, smooth as fuck
Time is a curler, twisted up
Time is an updo, pinned and tucked
Time is a weave-in, stitched and stuck
Time is organic, shaped by luck
Time is a construct
Monster truck
One of the most frequent requests we got in playtesting Eat God is a bigger Random Quirks table. This is the first of several planned expansions for playtest draft 0.8, previewing the 3xx entries (i.e., 311 through 366 on a d666); contributions from co-writers @ribstongrowback, Ashley Flanagan, and Zach Welhouse.
You know, if I didn’t already know that you were helping to make this, the usage of the phrase “milieu-appropriate ephemera” would’ve been a dead giveaway
#these are all good but some of them are GOLD #i especially like the 'your anecdotes always end in your own death and you don't see this as unusual' (via @infinitevacancy)
We unfortunately can't take credit for that one – it's a straight lift of a bit from Terry Gilliam's 1988 film adaptation of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
(Quite a lot of them are references in that fashion, in fact. See if you can spot some of the others!)
Last year I thought I got out from under years worth of emotional, physical, and (most prevalent here) financial abuse. My father took out several dozen credit cards and loans in my name and did not pay any of them back, and as they are "my" loans, my wages are, as of this year, being garnished to pay off the debt (upwards of $40,000 US). Given that I'm liable to wind up unhoused if the garnishment continues for more than a few months (and it is expected to continue for at least five years), I am attempting to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy. Due to the garnishment, I am unable to pay the lawyer in question handling the filing.
Car shat the bed. Even if I only fix the bare minimum, repairs wound up $700 more than I expected. Due to the aforementioned garnishment I am going to be in the red, and will only have less money to fix it with from here on out.
I can't even charge any of this as debt before filing because due to my ongoing bankruptcy case that would constitute fraud. I pay up front or nothing until this mess is over with. The car needs to be fixed before the filing goes through as well, because the minute it does my bank account will be emptied and anything I have that's considered an asset will be liquidated to pay off creditors, including the money that would have been used to cover repairs. Ironically, I will be permitted to keep my car.
I have $1900, and currently need $2638. If I can just get my feet under me to where I'm not pissing away any savings I get into a debt hole created by my father, I have a steady enough job that I'll be able to take care of myself, but I'm in a very dangerous position right now with a lot of things that are time-sensitive, and resources I otherwise would have been able to turn to are about to be gone.
My ko-fi is linked to my PayPal. If you aren't able to donate, please consider sharing. I know everything is tight right now, but any amount you can contribute would mean a lot. I'm sorry and if I can just get one month where nothing goes wrong and I'm not staving off three different sources of entropy at the same time I can hopefully never do this again.
reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)
HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")
In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.
A good boss (liege lord) is:
Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.
Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.
Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.
Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.
Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).
Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"
Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.
Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.
Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.
Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.
Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.
Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.
The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.
TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"
(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)
AEIWAM - Some details about whats going on with Komamura. IIRC canon said he was a werewolf, are you doing anything with him?
Me: What IS Komamura's backstory?
Me: *reads backstory and eventual canon fate of Komamura*
Me: Hm.
Me: That's thematically weird and depressing.
Me: I'll just ignore that :)
---
So in An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy, there's ALL KINDS of animal-people and supernatural creatures of varying degrees of anthropomorphic states in the Soul Society! Wolf people! Yokai! Centaurs But Bad! Snake people (sneople)! Mothmen! Whatever the fuck The Philosopher Wax is! Hell, Zaraki Kenpachi was raised by eagles! More nonhuman persons than you can shake a stick at!
They just stay away from the humans because The Humans are TERRIBLE.
...Not as terrible as my immediate family though, The Young Wolf is willing to gamble. he has to leave his home suddenly, in the middle of the night, frightened and injured. Family feuds are bad enough, but a drought year for a large group of apex carnivores and great-grandmother dying and creating a power vacuum? I'm lucky I got out alive! He reasons, tightening the bandages and wincing.
It doesn't look so bad. he lies to himself, looking at his reflection in the where he had finally collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss the previous night and somehow woke up alive this morning. Great-Grandfather did me a favor, trying to bite me in half like that- a tail would just make it even harder to blend in with the humans!
...Clothes would help more though. He sighs.
One man's trash is another's treasure, and that has never been more true than in the case of wolves that want to live with humans. The Young Wolf nearly weeps with joy when he finds the dump- barely-rotted animal carcasses to eat! broken wood for a fire! and clothes! Big enough to fit him! Alright that's definitely a bloodstain with a big, sort of sword-slash-shaped hole in the middle, but nothing a dunk in the river won't solve!
...Or not. Well, at least being covered in mud is less suspicious than being covered in blood? How does this thing even go on anyway? The garment is so confusing, he almost doesn't hear the humans who came to dump something until they are nearly upon him, and realizing they'll panic if they see his face, he grabs a broken basket and jams it over his head.
"Hey!" one of the humans calls out, seeing the movement. "What're you?" An old man peers around the pile at him, curious.
The Young Wolf sputters- he's heard tales of humans before, but this is the first human he's ever actually seen- The stories tell of their strange dark eyes and flattened faces how their fur is so fine they're nearly bald all over, and this man fits the description perfectly. An old woman- he guesses this one is a Woman, because what little fur she has is longer- she appears behind him, equally curious, then smacks the man under the ear.
"You dummy!" She snaps. "That's a monk!"
"Big damn monk!" The man laughs- indeed, even though he's one of the smallest of his people and not even grown, The Young Wolf towers over him- but still, he extends his open hand. Like the stories say, his claws are blunt and pale and the pads of his paws are soft. "What's yer name, venerable?"
"He can't answer that, he's a monk!" the woman snaps, exasperated. "They got- whatchyamacallit- Vows of Silence!"
"Oh, right!" the old man laughs. "Well, wouldn't matter if you could talk anyhow- my Old Lady's deaf as a post and I'm dumb as a rock! Come on, this is no place for a holy man!" he waved.
"Our home is up this way- it isn't much, but it's better than sleeping in Garbage! You stay with us and I'll fix that ratty old robe right up!" She said, grabbing him by the hand-
-
Ba-San looks down at his hand- it feels strange in hers, but it's not the fine gray fur covering his fingers or the rough pads on his palm or the dark nails that taper to claws.
It's that the hand is bleeding, scraped and cut and one of his nails missing like it had been torn off in a fight.
Ba-San is so old that everyone has forgotten her name and they just call her Ba-San, even her husband (who is so old that everyone has forgotten his name and calls him Jii-san, even his wife), and she didn't get this ancient by being an idiot. She glances up at the broken basket she knows got thrown in here by her neighbor not a week ago and sees the large golden eyes inside, staring down at her.
She's also old enough to know what a frightened child looks like, no matter how tall or what species he is.
She makes a show of squinting at his hand. "Why, your nails are FILTHY! You can wash up at the well out back too." She pats his hand.
"Of course! That's right!" Jii-san laughs. "Like I said- I got gravel for brains! He can sleep in Sajin's bed- Sajin is our Boy, but he's long since left home. It'll be good to have a young person around again!" he says, taking the boy's other hand.
He follows, stumbling awkwardly in the badly-tied robe and like he's been injured, but if he leaves paw-prints behind him, they don't remark upon it.
-
After about a month, the boy has something to confess.
And something to ask.
Ba-San and Jii-San have been kind to him- they let him into their home and fed him and Ba-San didn't fix his robe so much as make an entirely new one "appropriate for a Monk", and Jii-san found a pair of old work gloves for him "so you can do your Good Works without losing another nail". Ba-San always gives him her soup-bones "I don't have the teeth to chew them anymore" and Jii-san always moves over so they can both sleep in the sun-patch that appears in the middle of their home every afternoon.
He's tried to repay them how he can- he's tall enough to fix the holes in the roof of their one-room shack standing flat-footed on the floor, and he carries water from the well every day to wash the stone steps outside and re-painted the red gate out front and every morning he makes them breakfast to wake them up and every night he rubs their tired necks and shoulders.
"Mmm-rr." he tries at breakfast, and they both look up, but it's hard enough practicing human words in the woods behind the shack to the birds, let alone now, at the table with the two people he cares most about in the world.
"You say something, Venerable?" Jii-san asks. "Don't worry- I won't tattle to the abbot on you-" he teases.
"Shush!" Ba-san barks at him. "What is it?"
He sighs, and tries again, focusing on the sounds. "mMnoddamunk."
The two look at each other, then turn back to him and place a hand on each of his.
"...Sorta figur'd the first when you didn't recognize the shrine." Nods Jii-san. "-But that's alright. You take good care of us."
"...Sort of figured the second when I saw your hand on the day we met." Nods Ba-San. "-But that's alright. You're a good person, which is a very different thing than being a Good Human."
The Boy stares at them, stunned, then cringes, embarrassed. Of course! They're old, not stupid. "Aiyee- r-r-r MN! Aiyee LLied." he apologizes, stumbling over the difficult consonant in the middle, determined to conquer it.
"I didn't hear any lies, did you, Jii-san?" asks Ba-san.
"I didn't hear nothin' and my ears even work!" he grins, ears perking up.
The Boy sighs, still exasperated with their antics but mostly relieved.
...Then something Jii-san said caught up with him, and he frowns.
"Aiyee- Aye haffa..." Another tricky consonant. "Aye needa assk ssmmng." he changed tracks. L was enough of a battle for one day, Q and his frustrating wife U could wait.
"Whadday wanna know, Venerable?" Jii-san asked, and Ba-san frowned, turning her ear out behind their home, already suspecting his questions.
He held up two fingers and they nodded, waiting. He'd gotten very good at numbers and pointing already, and until today, that had carried the conversation. "sssHrrine?" he asked.
Jii-san frowned. "...what's your second question?"
"th-Therre'ss ah- Grrrave?" he pointed out behind the shrine, to where a stone stood, with what he now recognized as marks signifying a name carved into it. "wHo?"
Ba-San and Jii-san looked at each other, distraught for some time before Ba-San finally turned back to him, both hands on his.
"...Venerable," She finally spoke. "You had to run away from home in a hurry, didn't you?"
The boy nods.
"-And Jii-san and I were the first people you met that weren't you family, right?" She continues.
He nods again. She purses her lips, agitated.
"Jii-San." She finally speaks. "I think we ought to show him Sajin."
Jii-san sighs and nods, agreeing with her, and stands up. At the back of the house, there is a little cabinet with two boxes they never open, and something covered by a black cloth. Jii-san opens the cabinet and takes out the thing covered by the black cloth, pulling the cloth aside and bringing the thing to the table. It's a flat rectangle, and on it is a drawing of a very strange creature.
It's face is almost perfectly circular, and it's body covered in clothes, like how Humans dress, including a funny hat. What the boy can see of the creature is perfectly smooth and hairless and the same color as not-quite-ripe peaches. It has a long mane of straight dark gray hair growing from the top of its head, and a beard a bit like a billy-goat's
"This is Sajin," Says Jii-san, voice wavering a bit. "He wasn't our son- you can tell, we're not related by blood- but he was Our Boy. He took care of us, like you do now."
"He was Our Boy." nods Ba-San, on the verge of tears. "Then he was Our Man. And then he was Our Old Man, and then-" She stopped, and began to cry in earnest. "-And then he left home, and we buried his body out behind the shrine, and marked his grave, as Humans do."
The boy continued to stare at Sajin's portrait. "...Sajin." he whispered, and the name didn't fight him at all. "...Ihff- if Sajin iss Yumann-?" he looked up at his friends. "Whattrrre You?"
Ba-San beckons him and Jii-san back to the cabinet, and puts her hand on one of The Boxes They Never Open. Jii-San puts his hand on the other, and together, the open the lids just a tiny bit for The Boy to see inside.
He gasps and steps back in horror- the things in the boxes are very much like the skulls he's seen of his people before, but the noses are all smooshed like they didn't grow right, and the eyes are too large and-
-And they're just the right size each to belong to Ba-San and Jii-San.
"We are Koma, Guardian Dogs, and this is our shrine." Says Jii-san, closing the lid on his box as Ba-san closed hers, and placing the drawing of Sajin back on the shelf above them. "We wear clothes and speak like humans because we once took Names, a very long time ago, and thus we are People and we act like People." He explained.
"Nnames?" the boy asks.
"A Name is... a sort of contract, that the humans made up." Says Ba-San, locking the cabinet back up. "Humans can live together in such huge packs and crowded cities because they have Rules- you're not allowed to kill other people except in self-defense. You're not allowed to take food someone else caught. Nobody is allowed to kill a child for any reason, things like that. If you take a Name, it's like saying- 'I am this Person! And I agree to abide by the rules of being a person!', and you have to follow the rules, but everyone else has to follow the rules for you too, because you have a Name. So Humans can live very close to each other, because they all have an understanding that nobody is going to violate those rules."
"It's not just humans that can take names- long ago, some wolves decided to take names, and those wolves became Dogs, that live with humans. They were our ancestors, and like our ancestors, we took Names, and we obeyed the rules, and for that, we were fed and allowed to sleep inside and given soup-bones and let to sleep in the sun-patch, but most of all, we were Loved." Said Jii-san.
"-And just the same, we Loved Sajin. He was Our Boy. And We were His Dogs." Said Ba-san, bursting into tears again. Jii-san held her, tears running down his face as well.
Ba-san cried into Jii-san's shoulder for a long time, and The Boy Who Was A Wolf That Wanted To Live Among The Humans sat in silence, thinking.
"...Cour-could Aye- take a nName?" He asks, slowly.
"You'd have to take two, and learn all the rules-" Nodded Jii-san. "But yes. Anyone who can talk can take a name. And you've been talking my tail off!" he wagged.
"Two?" the boy asked. He didn't need to use his fingers this time.
"Humans have two names- one is the name of that specific human, and one is the name of their family or the place they came from or what they did, as a sort of... Introduction. Humans are very big on introducing themselves and all their friends- though I suppose it makes sense, what with them having names to introduce themselves with."
"You can be a Komamura!" Jii-san said, wagging excitedly. "Ba-san and Jii-san are Koma, and we are your Ba-San and Jii-San, so you must be part of our family, so that makes you Mura, a relative- so you're a Koma-mura!" he nodded.
"Humans also give their children names of revered ancestors, to honor the ancestor, and protect the child." Added Ba-san. "You do Sajin's chores, you sleep in Sajin's bed, you take care of Sajin's Dogs... You must be Sajin!"
"That's your name, if you want it- Komamura Sajin!" Said Jii-san.
The Boy stared at them for a long time, completely still, until they realized that, for the first time since they'd known him, the scarred nub on his backside was wagging too.
"Thank you." Said Sajin, tears streaming down his face too.
--
Many months later, a Monk* leaves the little shrine to Ba-san and Jii-san at the edge of the dump. He leaves his home in no particular rush- if anything, he's lingering- in the middle of a bright morning, hale and with joy in his heart. He waves to his Ba-san and Jii-san as he heads down the road, promising to come back and visit.
"Look at that." says Ba-San. "Our Boy is leaving home again."
"I know," Says Jii-san. "-but this time it'll be alright."
AWIWAM ask if those are still open: are there any tortoises in the soul society? Specifically giant tortoises like the Galapagos tortoises.
Alternatively: which does the cast like more? Tortoises or turtles?
Yeah they got even more and even larger- there's ones wandering around (slowly) that are large enough to build a home on. To avoid stressing the animal too much, these homes are usually made of light wood or bamboo lattices covered in thick felt or animal skins- a good balance between insulation and weight, which also gives these beasts their names-
to be clear you are fifteen thousand generations removed from the invention of stone tools. not from the end of stone tools. modern humans are still using stone tools.
