The Jemenju Faces

To start your life, you realize you have to start a story. When I came to the spirit world I never realized how my life would turn out. Before- I often mislead myself: until I truly think about it, life is your own story you have to write yourself. Somedays it often feels as if there is a storyteller above, who controls at sits and laughs at us as we struggle to manage our lives. Until one fateful day, one moment, we live to find out our life is just an endless story, a tale to which we have to figure out which chapter holds our very own secret message. Meaning, our own self doubt, the creature which snickers in your mind is just your simple demon- a kami, who is the one eating away your interception on your truest definite well being, you as your own person of a story which you have chosen to write. Exceptionally most people would tell a tale of two young ones who are infatuated with how each others hair looks or how they're eyes glisten under the setting stars, instead you listen to the demon and you write 457 pages on a worthless script on how you will compose world peace which seems to bore us all, because firstly you just mentioned in the first half of your novel that you are a cat lover, yet you love mice as well, and you ramble on endlessly to the emperor how your crops are dying.

I looked over at Satsu, we were miles away down beside a tall oak tree, it grew the lightest sent of wavering fruit with speckled light, I whisper in Satsus ear.

"Just wait a few moments." He tells me. My stomach growls with anticipation. My mouth tastes the watering inside of the unknown fruit, which you slowly take a bite into it and before you know it, you have eaten it leaving the seed in the palm of your hand. Another to which I point out, a tale of me: a heroine, wanting a speckled fruit set under the stars. Not like stars, it is now daytime, I wanted to add that for dramatic sense of romanticism.

As I think about it, a lot of tales are mainly about strong men and woman of folklore; usually a woman who has an odd obsession with something and becomes accused of it, and the man either (as so they say) saving her life, or changing her for her own good. Which is never the wise decision. According to me, anyway. Yet for Satsu, he is actually rather different, he's more of like a partner in crime who I have admiration for. Someone who actually seems to take interest in me, not that I'm a woman of lore, who secretly is in love with the cherry blossoms in bloom and becomes a monster within a matter of seconds. More as a woman, (perhaps I am fantasizing with myself.) yet as me, a loner, and independent woman with higher means who wishes to be alone yet meets someone who also wants to be alone which they try to be alone together. Until moments, a kami smacks them in the shin or their horrific mother who has the need to protect their offspring. (I'm not even going to go into further detail with this one.) Yet I am only in a world where I have seemed to forget what time is, or my age for that matter or how I look.

"Age? Why would you wonder about that?" Satsus voice overheard my thoughts. 'Thanks Satsu.' I think. He chuckles under his breath as we land. The grass wavers as Satsus claws heaved him up from the ground, I breathe in for fresh air, my lungs largen as I breathe out. I open my mouth slightly.

"Age I mean, that used to matter a lot in the human world." I say.

"Oh I've forgotten you age quite fast in that world." Satsu replied.

"How so?" I look at him with curiosity.

"One minute your adolescent, the next minute you're an old crone picking weeds by a nearby shrine." Satsus is in his main form. "Which, actually here in this world age doesn't mend with looks as much. When you first came into this world, you looked much younger. Evan had I. Yet now we grown, not because of time yet because of our inner maturity and our mindset."

"Meaning we age according to how we think and act?"

"Perhaps." He nods. We're walking now; we're almost towards the large tree I've been mentioning in past tense. The fruit is alluring, we walk closer, yet we have little time until we get there.

"So, about you... Leaving. Are you sure? Maybe... You shouldn't." He says; I look at him. "Why?"

"Maybe your life won't be the best. It'll go back again, you'll be alone, since your mentor passed away. And..."

His words trail off, he looks down again.

"Tell me, Satsu." I say harshly.

"...And I don't know. Never mind."

"Here we go again." An outburst of uneeded words came to me, I felt aggravated.

"Again with what?" He looks at me. All we came here for was for fruit, yet for Satsu he wanted to be difficult.

"You always seem like your afraid of telling what your heart tells you."

"Why? How? I'm just declaring that maybe you should stay here. You know too much for the human world."

"Because, just because I live outside of the spiritual realm doesn't mean I'm not of my own kind." My words release within and out of me, Satsu stops walking.

"I'll just be another person you'll lose."

My footsteps forward, yet I slowly motion a step back, my mind is blank; no thoughts ermerged. A silence overcame us. I look down, and then I proceeded to walk.

"I know."

We are at the tree now, Satsu and I looked up at the round luminous fruit that seemed as if they were waiting all their lives for us. They looked almost like round plums, although they weren't, since they sparkled under the shade of the branches. Satsu looks at me, and crouches down for me to get up on his shoulders.

"We need to get some of the fruit, get on." Satsu inclined for me to get the fruit for ourselves.

"Why couldn't you transform into a dragon and fly to get the fruit that way?" I ask.

"Shh!" Satsu whispered, and looked around him. What is going on with him now?

"What?"

"They'll hear us."

"Who?"

"The faces."

"What faces?" I ask, this time sternly. Satsu heaves a sigh, and then breathes out.

"Jinmenju." Satsu informed, "They are human faces who can hear you. They are inside of the flowers beside the speckled fruit." Satsu droned.

"So can we still eat them?" I ask.

"Of course. Just get on, if I transform they'll notice me and for sure they'll punish us for taking away fruit." Satsu crouches down and slumps his shoulders. "Get on."

I climb on top of Satsus back, and he stands up. I reach my hand towards one of the speckled fruit.

"Now lightly, if you tug it too hard the faces will sense you." Satsu warned. My hand reaches out towards the fruit, I pluck it slightly, yet it wouldn't budge. This time I lightly twisted the fruit to snap the stem in some way, until I notice a face in a flower, their eyes lightly opening from a midday nap. I gasp, causing myself to fall over off of Satsus back, and roll down in the grass.

"What happened?" Satsu walks over to me, and asks. His eyes looks worried yet his attitude seemed as if he was starving to eat a pack of unwanted wolves. I felt the same way.

"I saw a face, they were waking up." I explain.

" I suppose we should find food somewhere else." Satsu walks away sadly, I think for a moment, until I call out with an idea.

"Satsu!"

"What?" Satsu turns around. I blabbed on what words to say until I finally thought of something.

"We should climb up the tree together, grab the speckled fruit and run."

Satsu stands there and thinks for a moment. He looks unsure of himself, until he walks pass me towards the tree.

"Let's go."

I run up to catch up to him, and we reach the tree. I look up at the speckled fruit, beside the fruit there are faces, and they have all woken up from their slumber.

"Ach, someone, what a nice day!" Says one.

"A beautiful day." Says another.

"Horrible." Remarks a face, all of the faces looked down upon one.

"You're the one who is horrible," says a feminine looking face, her cheeks were roses and her lips were just as pink as her petals. "You just are."

The grumpy looking face looked down sadly. The feminine face looked at him fondly, feeling bad for what she had said, yet she looked away saying no more.

"Everyone be kind, at least try to be." Says a grandfather flower. His wrinkles peered down beneath his cheeks, as his beard grew long. Everyone looked at each other, as I reach in slowly for a speckled fruit as Satsu had done the same. The faces talked amongst another as we got one by one.

"We're trying. Yet it is him who makes everything so melancholy!" A little flower cried. "He is always such a lowly soul; I cannot deal with living let alone being with all of you all my life!"

I looked over at Satsu. He nodded and pointed at the speckled fruit. The flowers were distracted, so I quickly climbed toward the speckled fruit as the faces argued endlessly.

"You fool!"

"You pansy." The faces were in uproar; my hand lifts to the speckled fruit until I saw something in the corner of my eye. It was the grumpy looking flower, he grunted and opened his mouth.

"Grab the fruit gently and if you hit it lightly with the tip of your finger in the middle, it will fall. Be easy with it now." The grumpy flower told me. I looked at him with surprise. He didn't tell on me or told the others that I was stealing the fruit, yet he stayed silent as I hit the fruit in the middle and it fell right into my hand.

"Thank you." I told him. He blushed slightly, a one sided smile was shone. I hold the fruit in my hand as I step down, until a flower gasped as they caught sight of me.

"A human!" It cried, I fell down the branches and fell to the ground. Satsu was in the verge of pulling the fruit, yet failed as he was spotted too.

"Another one!"

They all looked at Satsu and me angrily, except the grumpy one who just sat in thought. The flowers growl, and each of their leaves shook with anger and pity.

"These fruit are sacred." They said, "take one you will have bad luck for forty years!"

"We all know that isn't true." Said the grumpy one. The flowers look down at him, and hissed. "You know nothing, you depressing soul."

For moments the flowers told off the depressed flower, blaming and throwing needles towards him. Satsu and I looked at each other feeling horribly, until the flowers grew silent after a voice was heard.

"Enough!" Said the feminine flower. "What I said about him is not true. He is actually a great, Great Spirit who keeps our tree alive. He is amazing. And is highly intelligent."

The grumpy looking flower looked at her in awe. His eyes widen as he looks at her, with compassion and love.

"Really?"

"...Of course." She said. Everyone gaped, looking at her in complete dismay. The grumpy flower motions for her closeness, yet she was sitting at the bottom, as he was ways up high.

"I am always just angry because I want to be close to you, yet I was placed and born here." The feminine flower said. Everyone gasped, and cried their helpless cries.

"She's telling the truth!"

"And I am!" She cries. "Here humans, take two pieces of fruit with no penalty. You deserve the nourishment. I sense many crises and problems you will face is coming, so please take these and devour them well."

As we take the fruit, the flowers cried at the two helpless faces. The grumpy face looked down sadly, while the feminine face fought back. The words she said were this:

"You judge a face by how it acts, yet you never see the truth behind them. You never take the time to know him, you just know him by his face not by himself. And I am the one to blame. Me, I could have said kind things yet I didn't. I was a fool, a helpless fool. Because you judge his face, that causes him the way he is, an overbearing sadness he cannot control. Yet he deserves far much more I assure of it."

After these words Satsu transforms into a dragon. The flowers all look at one another, and they huddle up, cuddling win the grumpy face, forgetting the flaws that awaits behind him.