Steps, Mononoke (Kayo/Medicine Seller)
Title: Steps Author/Artist: shiegra Rating: PG13 Word count: 362 Prompt: Mononoke - Medicine Seller/Kayo - courting rituals - calling him strange was an understatement
First come the presents, strange as they are.
Perfume bottles, delicate twists of glass that smell like summer storms and winter evenings, like rich violets, icy sugar and the sharp pinch of ginger, all of them underlaid with the restless crackle of electricity. It raises the hair on the back of her neck whenever she even opens them, never mind applies them, but it is not a bad sensation.
Other things, trinkets and entirely strange, a cascade of delicate amber wires that hangs from her hair and smells like hot desert spices, a spiderweb construction of delicate silver lines that she hangs above her bed, dangling glossy black-blue feathers and catching her nightmares. Sometimes if she wakes up just a little, she sees the rotting ash-dark shadows caught torn and struggling there before the bright sunlight shreds them.
An obi of blood-red silk, patterned with fine gold, not fish or flowers but strange abstract patterns. It is warm to the touch, always; some cold, cold winter nights she sleeps with it wrapped around her and wakes with a different kind of heat trembling in her belly.
His presence seems to be spelled out through these strange gifts, through the heady scent and taste and touch of them, as though always when her senses sing it is with the awareness of his presence. As though he stands behind her, enigmatic and satisfied.
She refuses none of them--but none, except for the dream-catcher and the cloth that captures fire in its fine folds, does she keep close to her at night until he comes himself. When he does, he offers her his hand, fingers curling over the pale palm, his smile a slow, dark-edged promise. She thinks she sees enough in his eyes that if she were sensible, she'd be afraid.
She doesn't. Her hand rises ever so slightly, and then she forces it down.
"Kusuriuri-san," she says, "I have business at the moment."
"Then I will return." He bows to her, folding his arm against him, and allows the smile to unleashe a little. "Perhaps I will see you soon."
Then he comes, smelling of summer thunderstorms, bringing the lightning into her bedroom.