(D6, MA, baths) Water outside, water inside

[Kuni Yasu]

"Hunting?" Dark eyes seem even darker, more sunken as she frowns. Does she need to tear strips off a certain Lion's hide? Because she certainly would.

But the grin, and the rest of the conversation add up to other conclusions eventually as she examines the scrapes. "oh... right." an embarrassed pink touches pale cheeks. "No, come up after and I'll give you a salve to soothe them. The kami have already learned what they will. But I doubt anyone's going to be asking them about it."

[Agasha Inoshishi]

As the Kuni sorts through the commentary, Inoshishi goes backing to looking very satisfied with herself.

“Thank you, Kuni-san, I appreciate it. I wish they had a waterfall nearby. Nothing more refreshing than being in here till you’re nice and pink,” she gestures at both of them, “and then diving off a smallish waterfall into a pool below. Then you have the run back up the slope to meditate on all of your bad choices in life.” She giggles.

After a moment, she cocks her head at the Kuni. “Did you know Ishi-san,” she colors, nope, didn’t mean to say that, “er, Matsu-san, at Shiro Hida? How did I not see him!? I mean, I know the Crab are mountains, but he’s still pretty big. “

[Kuni Yasu]

"Kyuden Hida, Shiro Kuni," the Kuni corrects without thinking about it, letting go of Inoshishi's arm and settling back in the water. "And yes, he's been assigned to the Lion embassy there for a bit, so I met him last summer. Don't recall you spending much time among the embassies or the court." The court of Kyuden Hida was a very frustrating thing for actual courtiers, or so she'd heard. Yasu'd been there exactly once, to present herself to a bored-looking functionary keeping an eye on things since, like many days, nobody actually important was holding court that day.

"Some of the locals liked to try getting him to roar like, you know...rumors say the Matsu do. Easy to push into a fight. He's not, and there's some who want the challenge. It's stupid though. We have enough to fight without picking stupid ones."

[Agasha Inoshishi]

Inoshishi hand waves at the correction. “No, I suppose I didn’t. It was very quiet, not a lot of stories. I went…once? Still, you’d think the stars would remember the sun, even only seeing it at dawn.” She looks troubled. “Perhaps it’s like you say and I just didn’t see him.”

She looks at the Kuni out of the corner of her eye. “Do you know more than Matsu-san does about what happened…you know…that day? The story he told…it didn’t add up.” She looks down into the water, hoping she didn’t just screw up massively telling a clear ally of Ishioka that she had questions.

[Kuni Yasu]

Yasu shakes her head, reaching back to secure her hair, feeling a tickling tail of it coming loose. "I know the parts that matter here are that his sister died almost in his arms, and his parents are grieving in messy ways. The rest is for the magistrates, honestly."

She offers an amused snort at the overwrought metaphor. "More like it's tough to see the sun with a dozen torches in your face."

[Agasha Inoshishi]

Inoshishi's eyes slide over to the Kuni again fully. "It certainly wasn't that way at the gate. I saw him on the road as I arrived, and he saw...me, I think. I hope. But he didn't see this" she motions over her still too thin body "as a trophy or something he desired, just as something so different and strange that it opened his eyes. Comparing him to any other man is like comparing a blade of grass to a towering oak. Or, to continue my previous metaphor, when I saw him then, it's like...have you ever stared into the sun until all you can see is spots? And when you look back down, the world looks washed out and dull compared to the glory of Amaterasu? It was like that, but with men."

She get's a dreamy look in her eyes that fades when her nose goes underwater because she isn't paying attention.

"Urp! Whoops, um. Oh, the other thing. There's something in his story that makes my brain itch, like that time I tried to sleep on what I thought were maple leaves but were actual lacquer leaves. It's not leaving me alone. Something about how she struck back when her arm had been struck off. It's not right."

What a turn in conversation.

[Kuni Yasu]

"No, I've never gotten the feeling that Ishioka-san looked at anyone as trophies. Desire though?," she shrugs. "Nothing wrong with it if it's polite." A small smile lifts that touches her eyes as she recalls her first meeting with Tanabe. "I can't say that I've ever found myself that kind of sunblind though, from either the sun, or handsome men. Tanabe's the sun, but it's more the sight of it after last watch, or the warmth heating your skin on a winter day."

She shakes her head as Ino forgets she needs to breathe air. "Hmm, does seem rough to do that, but I've seen Crab berserkers take down ogres when by all rights they should have fallen over dead a good while before. Never mentioned if they survived that. Unless you've got a healer right there, easy to just bleed out from that sort of thing."

[Agasha Inoshishi]

"I don't find that when one looks on another they've just met, it's ever polite, really. Certainly it wasn't aboard that Mantis boat. Which isn't to say that it, or what came after, wasn't thoroughly enjoyable. But it's enjoyable in the same way it's enjoyable to dance or fight or climb a mountain. It's only really fun if you can bathe it off of you when you get home. Ishi-san..." her face softens again, but at least she remembers breathing is important, "he...I would never wash him off, if I could. There's a purity of soul there that I haven't found many places."

For a brief moment, she looks older, weathered, her wind-burned face having seen too much, skin tight against her bones, haunted eyes sunk into her face. As she turns and the light changes, she's back to looking like she always done: Slim but kind, bright-eyed and idealistic, ready to try anything.

Her flitting mind comes back to the previous topic, the slaying of Ishioka's sister. She leans forward, shifting from her back to tiptoes on the floor of the bath, facing the Crab.

"But we don't have beserkers! The tales of the beserk are fascinating and many and their powers are legendary. The Dragon are...not that. The closest we get are us Agasha, and that's just because we are made of the same stuff as our forges and refineries: Fire and iron. The Mirumoto are more like a Kakita than anything else. I've never heard of a one-armed Kakita, but I also haven't studied in Crane land. In the same way, I can't imagine a Mirumoto involved in a street fight would remain standing. Although it would explain where the other sword came from, since presumably Ishi-san's apparently amazing sister would have hit the sword arm."

A look of vague horror crosses her face.

"Yasu-sama, if I ask you a question, will you promise it is never repeated outside this bath?"

[Kuni Yasu]

Yasu leans back against the stone and closes her eyes briefly to avoid rolling them when Ino begins to talk of not washing Ishioka off, and the Matsu's purity. He's a pure enough soul, but she's shared a table and drinks with him and a half-dozen Hida. Nobody pure at that table, she thinks with a small grin, not much getting the talk of dancing being fun if you can bathe it off you later.

But she sits up with a frown, and then a sigh ."You know that not making that sort of promise is pretty high on the list of things I'm trained to not do? Way too much wiggle room for trickery."

"How about I promise to keep it secret unless it's necessary, hmm?"

[Agasha Inoshishi]

Inoshishi physically recoils from the suggestion that she in any way was close to all those icky things.

“I beg your pardon, Kuni-sama!” Training kicks in, and her head is already way underwater before Inoshishi recognizes her mistake. She compounds it, as is natural for a basically non-swimmer, by gasping. Underwater. Where the air isn’t.

Her body, still acting on auto-pilot, whips her out of the water, nearly striking her head on the stone as she coughs out great gobs of water. Her hands go above her head like she was taught as a child as she looks helplessly at the Kuni.