D3 - The Arguably Not Fanservice Bath (Closed)

[Nozomi]

(OOC: This thread happens only if both Kinsen and Nozomi actually survive the confrontation with the bear, so it's Schroedinger's Hot Springs today.)

Nozomi was exhausted. That was the only way to describe it. She was perfectly capable in a fight. She trained daily with her daughter, and had beaten the senses out of more bandits in her life than she could actually count. The woman was no stranger to a fight, but taking on a bear was the closest thing to fighting an ogre that she had done since the old days. So, bandages wrapped around whatever wounds that would turn into scars later, she made her way into the indoor baths along with one of her traveling companions of the morning.

She'd checked on Mayumi. The girl was fine, and in the next room, bathing with some of the younglings. Flopping down and starting to douse herself with cold water, to scrub the grime off, she glanced over at the Hantei. "Forgive me -sama, but let's not talk about that giant beast that tried to make a lunch of us today, eh? Good for getting the heart pumping, but maybe another topic. You can pick." A dangerous thing to say with Kinsen, she knew. But better than talking about a fight while she still had an adrenaline crash coming later. Still, she wanted to try and be sociable. The woman was Shinsei's friend. Her husband was one of his best friends. She always tried with her, even if she rarely understood the golden stag.

[Hantei Kinsen]

Checking her nails from a precise distance, Kinsen wiggles her fingers in a wave like pattern to check if she managed to clean all of the potential dirt it accrued during the hunt. With a sigh of relief, she looks to Nozomi and raises an eyebrow, checking around Nozomi's middle section for a moment, "I've heard that all the Kami's brides managed to keep their youth. The Imperial Consort himself looks amazingly fit, like the same he did all those years ago."

[Nozomi]

Nozomi glanced back at Kinsen for a moment. It was hard not to be just the slightest bit intimidated. The woman was strong, fiercely strong, not to mention that she carried a faint glow of beauty to her that reminded the monk at times of the radiance that was emitted by her husband in the time before he had given that up to save his sibling. She was human, and yet she was not entirely the same as she had once been. Dousing herself again, she stretched some, not especially concerned at the studious eye of the other while walking towards the bath and setting a towel beside it, starting to ease her foot in.

"You do look as you did the day we met. The closeness of the divine gives you an air... that others do not share," she agreed. "Not that I mind aging. One... grows into it?" there was a faint, dry chuckle in her voice.

[Hantei Kinsen]

“You aged well.” Kinsen says, taking her eyes up to meet Nozomi’s. Her tone of voice carries the same blunt sincerity from the past. “I’ve seen many here that are far worse.”

She opens up a grin and provides a nod, “Thank you for such precise observations, Nozomi-san. I take much pride in keeping my form pleasantly looking and well trained. I believe it is way to provide a good example to the many samurai that are now being formed.”

[Nozomi]

... Ahem. Her cheeks didn't color, but she didn't always know how to take compliments about her appearance. She knew how pale her skin was, how her red eyes stood out. Then again, she was talking to a woman whose eyes shone like the sun and whose hairs were strands of spun gold, a rarity in their lives on its own right. As she settled, she nodded in turn. "Thank you, -sama. I can't say that I have had any special regimen. The road gives me ample scars and callouses to go with my features. But I think I've grown into maturity well enough at least."

As she rested there, shoulders against the lip of the tub, she looked back at the other woman. There was that fascination with aesthetics. She was as caught up in them as Doji, perhaps moreso. "To be perfect in every moment, that they might have something to aspire towards, yes? It seems a very Stag way to live." Admittedly Dawei had never been quite so, but Dawei and she were both old hunters. "I have to imagine your lord husband appreciates the effort. You two always seem to match each other when I see you together." Two very pictures of perfection.

[Hantei Kinsen]

Kinsen's eye glint a bit more when Hantei is mentioned, "You're sweet, Nozomi-san. Thanks for sharing your vision of dear husband and me. Sometimes I feel we are worlds apart. Fortunately it hasn't been the case for a couple of years. It is not perfect in every moment, as you well know. Yet, the fact that we always strive to be so, I believe is, perhaps, is a good thing."

The monk had visited Kinsen years earlier in her secluded "castle" outside the Stag territory, but close enough to be nearby when necessary. So, she might have the full context of the Stag words.

She adds, "Dear husband does appreciate. Even though he rarely tells it so. He's always stoic, as you know, yet I learned how to read his feelings underneath that shining armor. So... to be pleasant and inspiring for him and others is indeed satisfactory, yet knowing I can still do everything I did before –– and more –– does a great benefit for my own ego."

She grins a bit, and looks up to the ceiling, checking the moisture forming small droplets of water, "Talking about being healthy makes me remind of Shinsei-sensei. Is he still in that... shape?"

[Nozomi]

It was the kindest way she could think of to put it. The two of them were always, on the surface at least, so very perfect in all things. She knew now that it was as much a papering over, a surface thing, even if there was a striving inside of themselves to become that within as well as without. "Appearances are always different from reality. Nobody is truly, absolutely perfect save perhaps the Sun and the Moon themselves. But... you seem closer to him in some ways than even when last we saw each other."

She had definitely noticed that there had been a certain hard to describe distance, when Kinsen had kept the children in a separate castle. She'd thought to ask many times in that short visit why they were there. The Stag Lands were safe, after all. The Shadowlands was no direct threat. But she also seemed to know that it also wasn't her place to ask. "Stoic is a good way to describe how he behaves when he is in public, certainly." Stoic and never showing emotion, save in great duress such as when Reiko railed at him in the shadowlands. "Heh. It is nice to know the two of us can still flex our limbs isn't it?"

She chuckled when Shinsei was mentioned. "The little teacher? That man walks around with a boulder on his back that he uses as his own personal chair. He is a walking fortress." A walking fortress who could probably break her if he wasn't careful, even still. "I think that man is a perfect reflection of what the human body is capable of being, but he hates showing it off." She'd seen what was under the hood, though. He was ... muscular wasn't even the word for it. He was honed like stone.

[Hantei Kinsen]

The Golden Stag had her smile open as Nozomi described further her understanding of Hantei and Kinsen herself.

Upon hearing flex, Kinsen can’t avoid but to copy what Nozomi did moments ago and stretch herself with hands up and a sigh of pleasure. “Indeed, it feels good to flex a bit.”

After a chuckle, she mentions,

“Oh! Shinsei-sensei surely steeled his demeanor, I see. Experience does come with benefits, I have to confess. Makes us avoid unwanted attention.” Kinsen says with raised eyebrows in surprise. Shinsei had been quite the opposite of shy when they met all those years back ago. Then, it might had been just with herself.

[Nozomi]

"Neither of us have dulled over the years. Even in times of peace, have to keep the blade sharp, as it were." Not that she actually used a blade in the slightest, other than tending to her hair. She still favored beating fools to death with farming tools over bladed weapons as a rule. But, the principle was always the same.

She chuckled some. "I think as time has gone, the Little Teacher may have realized that he has a knack for commanding a room with little effort. His mere presence tends to draw the eye. So he doesn't try to attract undue attention, unless his voice is needed." He certainly could be rather brash when he wanted to be, and quite unconcerned with people's reactions to his appearance. She remembered the time she'd first learned exactly how physically fit the man had been. It had been... a surprise.

"Experience can be quite the workhorse at times. It's taught me a few lessons in that regard, though I think it helps that most just leave the Order to its work and don't think too much about us." They were more of a curiosity, she was finding, than a major force in the empire. "It makes it easy for me not to stand out at times. But him? Oh no. I think everyone would know he was here once they hear the crow caw."

[Hantei Kinsen]

"Indeed, a surprise." The tall Stag flex a very well toned bicep and starts to laugh a bit out loud.

After a moment to recompose, the says, "The Order." Then, she starts to move closer to Nozomi. "I haven't got yet a well opinionated perspective of it, yet. But coming from Nozomi-san and Shinsei-sensei, I trust there's plenty that we could perhaps do together."

Once she's right in front, Kinsen turns around, showing her back, and slowly slides to the rim so they get shoulder to shoulder.

[Nozomi]

"The movement is still very new, I'll admit. I'm not entirely sure the Teacher is entirely sure how to handle people following after and listening in the way that they are, but we have been trying to put each other to good work in the empire." She nodded as she looked across at Kinsen, thinking for a moment. "I... would like to believe that there is a lot of good your people and the orders can do together. Your lord husband is a great believer in the Teacher's wisdom, as is the Emperor. It's a relationship that I don't want to see lost."

This was dangerously close to politics, but she'd accepted that it had to happen. If she was stuck here, she could do some good. Her eyes fell on the woman's back and she tried to stay good and relaxed. the water helped. "Did you have any questions, maybe?"

[Hantei Kinsen]

"I do, in fact." She turns her head to look at Nozomi's bright red eyes in a profiling perspective. "The heimin need guidance now that we'll start to grow. There's much bad blood in the southern lands still. The change of the tribes to the north left several unsettled, and many not willing to move. We are good to them, but some might not do their best for the Clan as a whole to grow prosper. It is important that they get the correct guidance in following the Kami. I wonder if Shinsei-sensei would be interested in pairing with the Seppun to provide solace and purpose in the south?"

[Nozomi]

That was a complicated issue. For one, Nozomi was not entirely a great lover of the stratification of social norms that had begun to form in the empire, though she'd come to accept that this was what had happened. Perhaps part of her own declarations had been the fact that she'd actively chosen to take on a role in life that left her a peasant. She was an elevated peasant, yes, because of the order's closeness to Shinsei, but she was still a peasant in this order, and the woman in the bath opposite to her, chatting amiably, was infinitely above her in the social order, and her husband beyond both of them alike.

Part of what likely made the people of those lands so reticent was the fact that what the Seidou had felt, what Hida had felt, were going to have been very different from how Hantei felt. Even ten years later, those people had lived their lives under Hida and the Seidou. However ...there were ways. The relationship could be one of symbiosis, not one of dominance.

"I think that he would want the people that Hantei serves over to be safe, secure and well treated, and in turn to treat those over them well. I think he would say the same regardless of the tribe who ruled. But... you aren't wrong. It is not an easy thing asked of them. Hida is ... I do not know him as I knew your husband, and I did not know him that well. But I know that they are vastly different men. Good men. But very different, in how they rule, how they serve, how they treat the people. The people are almost certainly confused. Still coping. Still adjusting." She considered for a moment, frowning a little. "It's possible that the Order could help both sides adjust. We aren't exactly a ... bridge. But we are protectors of the people. There may be ways we can lend our help, lend the Teacher's help. But, what is it that you want with them? For them to serve well, or for the two of your people to grow and thrive together?"

[Hantei Kinsen]

"Isn't serving well a way for the peasantry and the samurai to thrive together?" Kinsen tilts her head a bit, "As for protection, that is what the Stag do at heart. You were there when dear husband showed we go beyond ego, hatred or even death. We, the samurai, serve as protectors of the people, that, in return, serve us with their honest work. All under the mandate of Heaven."

[Nozomi]

She closed her eyes and nodded. No, that was exactly how she expected Kinsen to answer the question. It wasn't even a trick on her part. It sounded like the way that Hantei would answer it, the way that Doji would answer it. But Nozomi also sensed something. The people who instituted this under heaven were also all of them once tribesmen and women. The peasants had been tribesmen, as had all of the samurai. Only the kami themselves were unique, and so the regulation of the order of heaven becoming rigid was nevertheless a group of people who were essentially of the same body. And one day, when her grandchildren were old and gray, she had a suspicion that the egalitarian way Kinsen put it... would become a misguided hand of a clenched iron fist.

"I believe you, that when you say the Stag are the protectors of the people and the empire, you are her protectors. You bear the brunt of the battle. You and Dawei risked your lives. Hantei risked his soul for the sake of everyone. I will never doubt a single one of your resolve to protect the people under you. Those who are the guardians of the land stand above, but remember that you were elevated by Hantei's hand as his chosen. Once, the very people you are the guardians of were also our neighbors, fellow hunters better suited to tilling the land." She breathed slowly, trying to think of it. "I want ... what your husband is helping to create, what Shiba is creating, to last forever. And I want for both those served, and those serving to remember that we are forever all servants together in that same empire under the Lady Sun's eye."

"So, to say that to serve well, all prosper is true. To say that you serve together, each individual in the ways that heaven has given each of you to serve, is also true. The people you guard and shepherd will trust you the more that they sense that their lord is their lord together, as well as their lord over them." She breathed carefully. "And I hope you still want your peasants to be your peasants together with and under you, pledged by will, not happenstance, to give everything to the shared goal you have for those lands."

[Hantei Kinsen]

Kinsen nods, and turns to face Nozomi. "So you do understand. See. The cruel truth is that, from time to time, there is always a minority of troublemakers that scream so loud that they inspire others into following their different and very detrimental way of how things should be done. Instead of, well, having to rip another leader's head off as I did with the Noriaki, I believe that they could be shown the way of all the Heavens, represented by our Wise Emperor and his siblings. If not them, their children. Unfortunately, we, the samurai, are the very people these troublemakers have prejudices about. They would listen better to people that are more connected to them."

[Nozomi]

"There are some. Some who needed to be reminded, or some who are simply angry. It is the nature of people. Some are just like that, and they can create strife where there doesn't need to be." She breathed in and out a little. "There may be a way that we can help, and if our presence is longer term in your midst it will make it easier. Besides telling stories and seeking the truth of the Little Teacher's wisdom, the Orders promote education. Something that can avoid bloodshed, and that can promote the growth of all may be of benefit. I can speak with the Teacher, if you want. I've been meaning to do that anyway."

"And if we can find ways to bridge the gap between those raised up as the defenders of all, and those who support the whole, while still keeping their roles clear, this may help to remove the prejudices before they ever come along." The thought of approaching Shiba about this came to mind. She had the glimmer of an idea, but she held that back. First, she wanted to talk to Shinsei. "Yes, I'd be willing to speak with Shinsei about this. I think it could be valuable for all the clan lands. The Hida would benefit too, if they would have us."

[Hantei Kinsen]

Kinsen visibly narrows her eyes, not entirely following the bridging the gap part. But, understanding that Nozomi is at least majorly favorable to become the bridge, Kinsen simply nods afterwards, "There will be many things to adjust, I am sure. Yet, the major goal of avoiding bloodshed and uniting people under the service of our Wise Emperor will provide motivation to do many great things."

[Nozomi]

On the one hand, she meant exactly what Kinsen wanted her to mean, just with slightly different words. She was just sort of big on making sure 'we work together' was more important than 'you work under me' even if the samurai were 'over the peasants' regardless. Bridging the gap was in part very much what Kinsen said, a simple helping of communication. But Kinsen was right to wonder if she was thinking of more than simply that. She had other thoughts as well, though none of them were aa defiance of the fact that the Samurai were on top. That was a reality that she saw as unavoidable at this point.

"Yes. The goal is Uniting this empire, and avoiding bloodshed while we do that can only help that process," she said, in complete agreement. "And if the monastic orders can help that, then ... good. Finding ways for us to serve in this, to help in ways that we are best suited, can only be a good thing. I'm... glad that we had this talk, Hantei-sama. I am glad that you are reaching out to the Order in this way."

[Hantei Kinsen]

Kinsen nods again, and then turns her back with a happy shot hum. Soon, she points a spot right in the middle of the back her neck with her red coated fingernail, asking softly, "Would you be so kind as to rub here with the sponge?"