D7EA Yin and Yang (expecting)

[Usogawa Narumi]

"Nothing would please this one more than to hear you continue." Defenses were put away, and any further discomfort from the Otter was obfuscated behind a friendly, if tepid, encouraging smile.
She had no quarrel with the other samurai-ko. Though she'd been honest when she told Ishioka that she wouldn't compete for him, either. And everything she'd seen and knew of Inoshishi pointed to the Dragon wearing the golds she already stained her hands, didn't it? Narumi's heart began to sink.

[Agasha Inoshishi]

Inoshishi smiles, leaning in to discuss her life some more.

"Well, when I left Dragon lands, first I went down to Lion lands, did you know how hot they are? So hot! Like, I was sweating without even DOING anything! So I wandered around a lot, met a lot of people, including this one guy that taught me how to whistle this great little song, which is how I met Moshumaru-son. Not then though, I met him later, here. Not the man who taught me how to whistle. I bet you don't care about his name, right? Anyway, so then I went down the Spine of the World mountains, and they're so pretty, but they aren't REAL mountains, they just wish they were. Maybe they're mountains wearing masks, like the Scorpion? The Scorpion LOVED me, they watched me all the time, at one point like 5 of them hung out with me on the road even! Well, not so much hung OUT as hung BACK from me on the road. But whatever, I saw them and I even left mushrooms for them. Hmm, I wonder if they ever ate them?"

She pauses, taking a breath for once, holding out her omnipresent mushroom bag and snagging one for herself. Until Narumi takes one, she'll keep pointedly shaking the bag towards her every few sentences.

"So then I was in Crane lands, but I don't like them very much, it turns out. Mainly because they didn't really seem to like me, so then I went to Sparrow lands, and I like them a lot, but they kept saying I had to work for my food? And I told them I was, that my stories were my work, but they didn't seem to think so. So then I went to Shiro Hida. I don't know HOW I didn't notice our Ishioka-san standing there, but I didn't! I did meet Kuni Yasu, she's so nice. She gave me a really nice fan that I should really use, but I always forget! Besides, if I cover my face how can anyone see what it's doing? The Ikoma taught me that. Oh yeah, when I was in Lion lands, I got into a drinking contest with the Ikoma and a bunch of them drank too much and fell asleep. When they woke up, we wrote a song together about how I'm the Little Dragon That Could...drinkanIkomaUnderthetable. It's a really good song, but they don't like the last three verses because it's all about what I thought about doing while they slept. I didn't even cut ONE topknot, sheesh. Someone couldn't take a joke. So then I was in Crab lands and I wanted to visit the sake place, so I did."

She pauses again, taking a gulping breath and smiling brightly. She hasn't told anyone this story in a long, long time, and while it's disjointed and rambling, she's clearly enjoying it and hoping the Otter is thawing too. She's also hoping the Otter caught the possessive pronoun used, since she doesn't normally speak about herself in plurals.

"So then I caught a mantis boat, and they really don't like it when you call it that, even if they call it a wallowing pig or other much, much worse things. And they told me a LOT of stories, and some of them had audience participation, and some of it was quite lewd! But it was a LOT of fun. And I got to see Crane architecture without seeing any Crane and,"

Not a stop here, so much as a quick glance around, seeing that their surroundings have emptied out nearly entirely from her incessant and loud talking. When she looks back, the innocence is gone, replaced by a VERY satisfied smile as she continues.

"look, I know I'm leaving you hanging on the edge of Crane lands and if you genuinely want to know more about my adventures, I would love love love love to tell you all about them, truly I would. I'd really love it if we could be friends, and so along those lines, I was thinking we should talk about our Ishioka-san and how we can best make him happy."

Boom. No real preamble, no twitches, no negative anything comes through her face. She's still quite happy, excited even.

[Usogawa Narumi]

It takes a few shakes of the mushroom bag before Narumi relented and took one, rolling it in her fingers before it goes in her mouth and she chewed with consideration.
She listens, following along and tracing a map in her mind's eye of the other's travels and nodding along. Following her round about and winding way of talking easily...
Until the ending.

The Otter chokes and coughs, her mask dropping in an instant and her dark eyes go wide, completely caught off guard-- which is probably exactly Ino's intent.
"I- I- What?" Narumi flustered. Colour began creeping in her cheeks.
"Our? Ishioka...san... I never... I didn't... He's by no means mine, what I mean is..."
Shit.
"His happiness means everything to me. Hm." She rubs the back of her neck as her vision went white from her heart threatening to implode. "It sounds like you have a proposal in mind."

[Agasha Inoshishi]

The Otter chokes and coughs, her mask dropping in an instant and her dark eyes go wide, completely caught off guard-- which is probably exactly Ino's intent.

While Inoshishi would never want to make someone choke, not even that holier-than-thou imperial she made choke, this was, mostly, planned for. Titling the bag back to her, she calmly takes a mushroom and chomps on it, waiting for the initial processing to be finished. At least this time she was nestled among comfortable roots and not on her Kami-damned knees on those thrice Kami-damned sharp little sticks.

"I- I- What?" Narumi flustered. Colour began creeping in her cheeks.
"Our? Ishioka...san... I never... I didn't... He's by no means mine, what I mean is..."
Shit.
"His happiness means everything to me. Hm." She rubs the back of her neck as her vision went white from her heart threatening to implode. "It sounds like you have a proposal in mind."

Inoshishi flicks her head, her long hair whipping in front of her, which she grabs with one hand, playing with it somewhat nervously. "You're fast. A lot faster than our Ishi-san. Or me, honestly. I thought...well, that's starting in the middle of the story, not the beginning."

She tilts her head and waves her hand in a blade-fashion, perpendicular to the ground, then parallel to the ground, then back. "I sort of have a plan. I have a maybe plan. I have a plan that involves a lot of technicalities and that may or may not be appealing to you. So let's start at the beginning. Of the plan, not the Empire, or my story, or this miai. Just my plan."

A lot of that ramble is pretty clearly for her own sake, not for Narumi's. She's stealing glances over at the other girl, checking in and hoping she isn't overstepping. In a bad way, at least. Because if there's one thing this plan is, it's overstepping. She gathers her breath and looks up at the other girl, a slight fire in her eyes of determination.

"Most of the time I just talk over interruptions. But this time...I'd like to take my time. I hope you will give me this gift and allow me to present another in it's place at some point."

She takes a deep breath in again, then her plan comes pouring out in fits and starts, like a hose that is unkinked.

"Well, I saw you together a few times, around the edges. And, I'm not...as dumb as I look. I don't know that I'm SMART, per se, but I'm not dumb, and I can listen, and I know my stories. So I'd already determined that if he wanted to be with you, that that was okay. I'd happily be his...well, his other woman."

She's not exactly PROUD of this, but she's certainly not ashamed.

"So then...then I realized that if I felt that way, maybe you did to. And I don't know if you do. But I've been cold and hungry and friendless, and it's...not good." Her arms wrap around her still-to-small ribcage, her eyes mostly downcast, still sneaking a glance now and again. "I wouldn't wish it on anyone, even if I were willing to do that myself to get a glimpse of him now and again. So I started thinking. And I said, 'Inoshishi, you've found a way into and out of Scorpion surveillance, climbed the highest mountains and seen the Wall. Surely a little conundrum like this won't stop you.' And...well, it didn't."

Enough with the careful. Holding her hair in both hands like a katana, she looks up, "I would like to formally adopt you as my sister. I...can't tell you why right now. But if you'll let me, then I can tell you, after you say yes. Please, trust me that I'm a samurai that holds sincerity and compassion as the highest points of Bushido."

She never pled with Ishioka, her sensei or her parents. But her eyes are pleading right now.

[Usogawa Narumi]

Wait. What?
Her eyes narrow as she listens to the set up for Ino's plan. But not out of malice or ill intent... Narumi is thinking, assessing, dissecting, processing.
She allows Ino to speak her truth and lay everything down in front of them.
Narumi's mouth goes dry and she swallows sandpaper. The whiteout threatens to come back, cresting the edges of her vision and this time she wonders if she won't faint.
She puts a hand on the ground flat to steady herself.
Takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before she can't help a sad, self depreciating smile from settling.

"Let me tell you something. I'm training to be a nakodo. That's the irony of my being here. But more ironic than that... is I met Ishioka-san because he came to talk to me about you."
She pushed her lips together into a line for a moment before continuing. "I could tell he loved you already, and that was a few days ago. So... I'm guilty, of knowing he loved someone else... loved you... and falling for him anyway," she smirked and shook her head incredulously.
"And I have... Fallen for him. And I don't know what I'm doing. But he's an honourable samurai. And better than I deserve... So as much as you are willing to step aside for me, I feel the same for you."

Wait.
What.
"I-"
This was a trick, right? Some cruel trick by the jilted lover of the man Narumi loved, too. It was torture.
She deserved it, still.
But searching the Dragon's features leads her down a different path. A liar knows when they're being lied to.
And as far as she could tell...
"You're serious?"

[Agasha Inoshishi]

She pushed her lips together into a line for a moment before continuing. "I could tell he loved you already, and that was a few days ago. So... I'm guilty, of knowing he loved someone else... loved you... and falling for him anyway," she smirked and shook her head incredulously.
"And I have... Fallen for him. And I don't know what I'm doing. But he's an honourable samurai. And better than I deserve... So as much as you are willing to step aside for me, I feel the same for you."

Inoshishi almost starts to say something, then stops, seeing the wheels spinning.

Wait.
What.
"I-"
"You're serious?"

"I am. If it's as you say, then I'm more serious than ever. I won't regret, not ever. If the man...the one I love loves more than me, it's I who must accommodate. It's an odd stance, I know, but it's one that I've come to through studying all the stories of True Love I could. In stories where one is an absolute beast of a Hida and the other a little Asahina, the Asahina cooks more, the Hida doesn't eat less. When the Doji couldn't sleep because the Bayushi daimyo kept putting peas under her pillow, the Shoshuro found more. I could go on..but...if you're as quick as I think you are, you'll say I won't need to.

It's not a wisdom many keep and fewer share, but there are stories in Dragon land about ways around these sorts of" she waves her hand vaguely "issues."

She considers what to say next.

"But to my seriousness. I'm not just serious because of my beliefs. I'm serious because you've had every reason to hate me and you didn't. Aside from this one bit of defensiveness, you've been unfailing courteous, even when I imposed upon you, demanding things of you, and generally acted like the force of Nature Ishi-san says I am. You had every excuse to be mean without regret and you weren't until I, unfairly, pinned you down. And even then, you, in my view, merely held your ground...aggressively. I have made one sister already during my time here. Why not 2? I always wanted a large number of siblings."

She shifts, knowing that what she shares next may put herself in peril since she doesn't have the Otter's word. But trust has to come from somewhere, and if she was very careful, she probably wouldn't get thrown out of the miai regardless.

"Let me...tell you a story." She pauses, long enough for the space she would have filled with name and honorific to pass. "Come with me to the early days of the Empire. One day, two sisters come to a miai, very much like ours. In the fullness of time, one cannot find a match, though many are proposed, and is married within clan, to a wonderful old woman with many children. The other is married to a person from a land so different as to nearly be utterly alien, to be almost as far from her experience as those clans that live off the edge of the world are. She wrote to her mother to protest the idea of her sister coming home. Would she not need her sister? And, if the woman the sister was married to was old and had already sired children, no matter how virile, wouldn't no one see it amiss if the sisters went to this foreign land? So, they did. And, as many young people do, they built a home for the one sister and her husband. The three of them labored and created a proper house. They lived together, ate together, shared as sisters do. Since the one needed the other, the three of them were often seen together, the sisters being escorted by the one sister's husband. And surely, night is when people fear the most. So it was most natural for the sister's to sleep next door to each other and to have a private door for those midnight terrors. And that is how Ki-Rin Obito came to have two Dragons that he called wife."

[Usogawa Narumi]

"This is what i know about you: you're gracious and free spirited. You're exciting and worldly, captivating and alluring. You bring life to Ishioka-san where he thought it was no more. You ...keep him on his toes. You delight him by making him uncomfortable and then turning that on its head so he expands his frame of reference and experience. And he's better for it."
She speaks slowly, carefully choosing every word- and it's in no small part to stop her walls from crumbling. Her sentences short and clipped, knowing full well the longer she keeps talking, the more difficult this will become.

"You made fireworks for him. You're so many things that I am not. And I don't fault you for it. I celebrate it with you. You live as who you are." She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before opening them to find Ino's gaze again.
"You're a better match for him than I am; and the Shika will see it as well, plain as day. You're complimentary souls."
With the Dragon's story, the Otter's heart drops.

"I can't be your sister." Her words barely more than a whisper. "I love him. And you love him. But I can't do that."

[Agasha Inoshishi]

Under the relentless assault of praise, or at least, to her it’s praise, the Dragon colors, even as clipped as the sentences are. As her story finishes and the Otter responds, Inoshishi let’s the silence stretch as she thinks, her hands stroking repetitively through her hair, dislodging some from the clip holding them behind her head. Between her stretching and reposition that always accompany the Dragon’s sitting, she’s edged closer once again.

In an equal whisper, the pointlessness of such for stealth emphasized as her whisper drops into the deserted plaza, “What if it wasn’t just for him? This is a…strange land, compared to the mountain. All this brittle honor, strange differences. I could use a….a guide.” The quick flick of her eyes and blush after her comment certainly seems like that’s all she’s saying, yup yup yup.

[Usogawa Narumi]

She couldn't breathe.
This wasn't happening.
It couldn't be.
After several moments she speaks, struggling to keep her voice steady but soft. Dipping her head towards the other samurai-ko when she moves closer, noting the affection, the vulnerability, but unable to return it. "I'm happy to be your guide, but not in the way you suggest. It... isn't in my nature." She wasn't about to apologize, but she was sorry. Even if Ishioka chose her at the end of the miai, she'd share him with the Dragon. Inoshishi had told her as much, in so many words.

The Otter fought not to break down. She couldn't.
After all, she hadn't drowned once- when she lost her parents to the drop Inoshishi had unwittingly described.
She would not drown now.

[Agasha Inoshishi]

Inoshishi looks away, not wanting to make eye contact with the Otter for a moment as she tries again to steady herself. She really didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t like she knew anything of the girl, not really. But under the feelings of inadequacy, of envy for the graceful manner and manners of the Otter, something else had bloomed. It had started in fear, of course, how could it not? But over time, the image her (red) inner voice had shown her, of of Ishioka and his Otter kissing, had shifted in ways she wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

Still not looking, her voice with a hint of harshness, emotion raw, she says, “Then perhaps I shouldn’t seek a guide or a sister.”

She shifts without thinking, her legs coming up under her chin in an unconscious defensive posture, still not looking at the young Otter. “What should I be seeking instead of you, that is in your nature.” There is far too much rawness in her voice, too much admission of…something. But she’s found that directness often gets answers politeness doesn’t and having arrived somewhere that she knew would change everything about her, she really doesn’t mind if Agasha Inoshishi is seen as a dots or overly emotional or anything else. She won’t be her much longer.