Koi-ish

In a time where wishes were on the verge of being forgotten, a young priestess was preparing the offering to her village’s god. It was a vicious god in need of sustenance to satisfy him from terrorizing the village as he had hundreds of years before, but Maya was the romantic sort, and chose to believe he was not fierce at all but had been struck by heartache when his lover had died. She wondered if she too would have wanted to destroy anything in her path if her heart was broken. But she was young and not yet in love and as it was the boys her age in her village were more interested in things or a darker nature like the war beyond the mountains. So, here she was on another autumn kissed morning, preparing rice, sweets and wine for the shrine.

Maya had heard of villages with shrines, larger than the house where the head man lived, but hers was of the rural sort, a little red gate that marked the way down a short path to a little building with an offering box and altar. On a bright day, like today, when the sky above was the blue of dreams and the maple trees’ leaves fringed with the gold and red of the new season, it was impossible not to adore the most sacred place of the village. She tended to the offering and placed them before the altar, swept the path’s stones, with the broom she had crafted from the thinnest branches until alas it was time for her favourite part of the day.

She unpacked her little lunch tied in a handkerchief and carried it to the little pond off to the right of the shrine. “Come out little koi,” she called to the rippling waters. And as she peered into the chilled waters the graceful form of a pearly, gold and red calico koi emerged with his feathery tails and fins. As always she had to resist reaching out to stroke his shining scales and instead she broke apart bits of her ice ball and tossed them into the waters. He ate them right away and looked at her expectantly for more. She giggled and obliged.

The god of the village was a dragon. He had protected them always, until he had fallen for a young woman, in the village. He grew infatuated, as she did with him. The villagers afraid that the girl would offend the god did the only thing that made sense hundreds of years ago, they removed her from the picture.  The dragon was heartbroken and attacked until in his grief he fell deep asleep and the trees grew around him and the villagers forgot everything but to grant him offerings to appease him. Maya would never tell anyone but she hated the story, but if that’s what allowed her to serve him in such a beautiful place than she would.

She had been kneeling next to the pond, but as the sun peaked over the trees and fell over her, warming her patch of grass, she felt she had a little time before the afternoons ceremonies, so she allowed herself to lie down and drift off. It was not the cold that awoke her, for the sun had now sunk beneath the tree line again, but soft fingers trailing along her cheek. She felt so peaceful she allowed her eyes to remain closed a while longer as the finger explored her lips and the skin beneath her fringe and her hair tied at the base of her neck and the tiny triangle of skin left bare where her robes crossed before her chest and then they fluttered over her eyelashes so she blinked but there was no one there. She heard a splash, a rustle in the trees and the sound of villagers coming up the path through the gate but nothing more.

Hastily she got to her feet, packaged her meal and said farewell to her koi fish. She loved him and she didn’t know it but he loved her too.