Chapter 20: Rice Ball Reunion

The field tent was a square of oiled canvas with a lantern and two bedrolls.

It stood at the edge of the camp, at Ibuki's order, with a guard posted twenty paces off who had been told to go deaf.

Tomoe came in with a bowl of rice balls.

She found Shiori sitting on the ground cloth with her coat off and her hands in her lap.

They were still unsteady.

"You haven't eaten," Tomoe said.

"I cannot."

"Try one."

Shiori took it and held it without lifting it.

"I have fought for twenty years," she said. "I have never shaken after. Not once."

"Maybe you're getting old."

"I was afraid."

"Of what? The man had an axe the size of my table, but you cut through him like a radish."

"Not of him."

Shiori looked up.

Her eyes were wet in the lantern light.

"On the slope I heard you shout at someone. I could not reach you through the line."

"I thought, I gave up the seat and the oath for her. Now I will lose her."

She laid the rice ball down.

"I had something to lose," she said. "It was new. It was too heavy."

Tomoe set the bowl aside.

She knelt in front of her, took Shiori's face in both hands, and held it still.

"I'm right here," she said. "I hit a man with a rice pot. He's fine. I'm fine."

"I know."

"Then stop shaking."

"I cannot."

"Then I'll do it for you."

She kissed her.

It was soft and unhurried, and it tasted a little of salt from the plum.

Shiori made a sound against her mouth.

She caught Tomoe around the waist and pulled her in hard.

They tumbled down onto the bedrolls with the lantern swinging.

"Gently," Tomoe whispered.

"I do not know how, tonight."

"Then I'll show you."

She pushed Shiori onto her back and straddled her, and sat there looking down at her in the swaying light.

Shiori stared up at her with her mouth open and her chest rising and falling.

She looked like someone coming out of cold water.

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