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CyclingTortoise• 𝚂𝚊𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚞 •
Saishu woke with the sunrise, though this was not so much a feat of rugged samurai discipline as he would have any hypothetical onlooker believe. In truth, when he was a samurai, Saishu enjoyed his bed more when he woke up in the morning than when he would lay his head down at night, and would often wrap himself in his cool silken sheets, pat his futon for his faithful companion Jōjō to curl around his feet, and pontificate until nearly noon. As the son of Endoyuki's daimyo, heir to Endoyuki village and the next in line to be ruler of three rice paddies and an inn, his youthful duties were more centered on training, studying, and keeping his time otherwise gainfully occupied than with the grueling preparation of a soldier. The Tazugane were samurai, but they were by no means a large or influential clan counted on to lead armies with a war drum -- Like many, their purpose was to maintain the status quo by ruling a small number of serfs and ensuring that Shogun Yukizaru would have skilled, loyal swordsmen even in the most rural villages. The shogun could sleep soundly that his laws were obeyed in the backwater hamlets he had never seen, and one family from each of those backwater hamlets could sleep soundly on silk sheets.
Of his old life, one of the things he missed most, more than banquets, his swords, or his faithful hound, were his silk sheets and soft crane-feather futon. In his lucidity of entering the waking realm, Saishu began to wonder if he would ever rest on feathers again. He certainly hadn't woken up on any. By the time he remembered where he had found shelter from last night's storm -- a cobweb-ridden shack that had perhaps once been a stable -- the pain had returned. More than he missed his bed, or even his face, he missed when he did not exist in a state of constant anguish. He crawled out from the dusty table he passed out beneath, itching at a sore on his shoulder and beginning the steps of relieving the pain of his burns, ripping a bandage from his chest and beginning to unwrap it as delicately as if it were his own skin. To be fair, given that his burns were clean through his flesh and nearer to his muscle and fat, it was his skin. He could more painlessly replace his dressings if he took his time and did not look at his wounds, so that was his method used. He hated the glimpses of his skin. He looked like a plucked and boiled chicken, covered in thousands of tiny recesses where he once had fine black hair.
By the time Saishu had removed the bandages from his chest and legs, the sun had risen and he had heard the first initial sounds of early morning outside the thin walls of his shelter -- Namely, a few oxcarts over the hours, and the shuffling of sandals across the dirt road. By the time he had removed the bandages from his arms and face, it appeared to be the late morning. The sun shone through a crack in the ceiling's rotten planks as well as it did the cracks in the walls, and the hours between hearing noises outside became minutes. Among the grumbling of merchants passing through the forest path Saishu had found himself on, he had heard the word "festival" four times, and "toll" twice. A wave of paranoia slowly crept through him, and he began to fear that his shack was perhaps a tollbooth, and that one of the local lord's men would be arriving at any moment to his station. He could only imagine it. A fat, middle-aged guard tiredly traipsing through the forest towards the shed he would sit in while awaiting passerbys, eating a dumpling and planning his actions for whatever festival was taking place, swinging open the door to reveal Saishu's naked, skinless body. The sheer level of embarrassment and the stain such a death would put on his honor scared him more than the prospect of being stabbed in the gut by a frightened guard, and so he began to bandage himself at a greater speed.
By the time Saishu made his way from the shed, it was high noon, and the only sign of the weeping monstrosity that had been in the shack hours ago was a tall pile of bandages, off-white on one side and dark red on the other. He was still as mummified as ever, but his pain had greatly subsided. If there was one thing Saishu's burns had taught him, it was that on the road, cleanliness was paramount to staying alive. There were no physicians living in his keep to treat him at a moment's notice, and no local herbalist he could depend on for treating even the smallest of his cuts. Moreso than he needed a physician at the moment, or any kind of herbalist, Saishu needed a cook. The agony of his wounds had been replaced by a hollow, gnawing pain in his rumbling stomach. Try as he might, he couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, though he was smart enough to know how grave a problem that was. He had enough ryu in his pockets for a bowl of rice, though bowls of rice weren't exactly abundant in a misty afternoon forest. All he could do was follow the path, and so, he did. He followed it for nearly an hour, taking slow, measured steps. Saishu, for all the cartwheels he had practiced as a boy, and all the races he had beaten his younger brothers in, had the pace of an old man on his way to tea. An early old man.
