The Samurai and The Stranger
A fog thick like a shade casting a net; A night where nocturnal animals in the thick grass are silent to face regret. The air is chilled, as if the void grows a restless will.
The loom of thread, a spiders web under thy head, and thoughts soon suddenly still..
The pitch bearing a moonless and lightless night; the stars hiding in the overcast clouds.
The shadows of the hills painting the mist, creating the scene like a silhouette of death and silence over the land like a panoramic box or coffin.
It is the season of mid-fall, & the land onward is a roadless path of loose debris and messy grass and leaves, with mountains surrounding like fallen giant's at their last bow..
A swift breeze enters, and exits the furrow of grass like a blink..
The sounds of the night have become even more silent, as a man approaches over the lesser traveled path in the dark; the grass blending like converging shadows mating.
A lone swordsman walks across the land, a wanderer moving like a form with no name or past. Renounced from the order, & left only as a tool to the unrequited.
His sword tested by time, and his soul feeling the hunger in the night air.
This swordsman is more than a wanderer; he is a Samurai.
As the Samurai strides forth, his geta's naturally avoiding the loose rocks as he steps, he looks back in his mind at the vivid flashes of his heart..
The times and tastes of wonderment; lost lives, wives wine, and the fragility of man; all deep in of the heart and heat.
Passion, assassination, and battle.
His spirit and soul all wound and engulfed, all at once stirring like a candle.
The catch of a uneasy wind glances his nose. The Samurai's eyes and heart feel the familiarity and rarity in the air, his fire stirring in hope.
Suddenly the brackish night slowly clears like a ink cascading off of paper, where only faint blacks and muddled greens appear.
The smell of fresh pressed grass in the clean air clearer yet little to no breeze to carry the scents..
The Samurai senses the mood's sudden stir; the grass fresh in the middle of the night, and hints of sulfur trailing the sour sweet grass tainting the air bitter.
Aware of his intuitions, he begins to discern what is in store on this night for him and his blade at his side; softly playing in his mind in a cruel & earnest chortle; the samurai grins like the moon that was not present this night.
His honed training wells into his mind, filling like
an autonomic function of one of his own organs.
His senses akin to the smell's of different tints tinctures & metal's no mater how acrid.
Where this life of battle and honor is wrought, as being and not being; such traits become the validity to distinguish irony from iron & ire and blood.
Where even in the murky night is where honor separates the dead from dread,
where a tome, or a tomb.. and eventually all of the above, all eventually fall into the fire to make ones own fate..
A mid aged strangers voice echoes from a dividing point of the mountain's and hill's, sounding from above below & behind; as if they were a omnipresent ghost with a message perfectly placed inside the Samurai's own head.
“He, is like a fallen star,.. It cut's away the open sky;..
the eye, left open like an opaque wound.. we all bleed down, where none of us ever die”.
The samurai understanding the depth and tone of this message, despite poetic & melodic, but a hazard with a internal depth of deep calm.
A sudden wind is churning like a snowfall upon a broken harvest a breath of time and death stirring upon the air..
The samurai knew; the very testament of malice is inlaid with the thickness of this characters wisdom's.
The crisp air of this domain being thick, & like static rolling across the body a excitement imbuing in his midriff.
The samurai places his mind deep, adhering to his needed devotions alone.
His discipline a rush and sync; purging all deviations and confusions afar to the abyss.
And like the untangling a red ribbon of sin's to be undone, where all his binds to its existence's become meaningless attachment's released to focus.
The samurai's eye widens to catch the night for what it is.
To many it would be a weighted slate of stale fading pitch; where the equality of ones life is their trade.
But for the stranger and the samurai, this night is of romance; to time as a warrior of contest, as self conquest's to his mastery are in battle & mettle.
The samurai's pupils adjust to the blanket of death, he innately prepares his mind & finds his inner peace; inward and out & between the seconds & sands we perceive to fall, time is soft, and sharp;
The stranger is poised & the samurai is composed like a muse and musician all into oneness.
With a set of motion's that seems unplanned to the novice warrior; a plethora of moments are deeply missed from a few seconds passing between one another.
The samurai puts his left hand above the haft of his sword, his palm resting open just above the pommel; he moves to hit the hilt of his own sword with his palm, guiding the side of the hilt to an angle; turning the sheath directly behind his hip.
As the bottom of the weapons sheath swings into position; the samurai moves his left leg behind himself in the shape of a lame L, to catch the very bottom of the sheath with his foot.
When his foot is in contact of the sheath, & his foot shifts slightly to counteract the weight of the weapon & the sheath..
Using the curve of his heel and the strength of his leg combined, he then hoists his sheath upward, freeing it from the loops of metal no longer confining it at his side.
While sheath is moved upward, the samurai's right hand is placed low near his belt;
he extends two fingers to gently stop the vibration of the elliptical rings that once held the sheath in place, otherwise he may alarm the approaching danger more so than just the sound of his footsteps and a few jangles..
During the stilling of vibration's of the rings; the Samurai's left hand moves rhythmically to push mid-center against the midair sheath & sword, causing them to spin interlocked counter clockwise. As the sword and sheath face vertically; he finishes by catching the handle of the sword upright in his right hand; with the sheath still in place over the sword.
The samurai striking a rather unusual stance, which resembles a calm pose as if a moment of silence.
The Stranger on point to blood lust; he lowers his center to the ground like a swift bow, raising his speed while motioning his hand to his blade sheathed behind him rushing forward to an advantage.
The samurai prepares for the beautiful unknown's that await.
The stranger approaches just close enough for the samurai to distinguish his silhouette then from a straight shot inward he circles around the samurai like a miasma..
Like the damp mist surrounding the night of the stage; the stranger can be blown away by the sudden shift in the wind that is fate itself...
The stranger stays swift to his circles but low to the ground like a predator, removing his presence of sounds diminishing his shape in the night backdrop, forming his intent to be hidden.
The samurai thinks to himself the kind of trade of this wonderment before him entails.
Is it an assassin? Or a ninja?
Perhaps,..
this stranger can shift the mood of the air, and is just as swift as he appeared from nowhere. He may even have the skill to even change the speed of his own heart flow, swift rapid strikes, sharp movement's of the feet..
The samurai stifling his rapturous thoughts; he has had enough battles to understand the simple intent of this whomever & however.
And any tantamount he has yet to face as a warrior is equally partial, as all forms are distraction deception & a strike; such is the art of war.
From benign smiling people into the cutthroat devious animal's..
he has dealt with many apprehensions and apparitions.
The samurai continues to ponder..
The ground the stranger is treading is not many steps away, only *13 or so paces away..
As the stranger moves; each step in motion becomes another tell and a closing gap.
He pulls his short sword out flipping it around in hand like a spiral, flickering in what little reflection of light he can to distract the samurai as he circles closer.
The samurai keeping a track of the strangers habits
the samurai thinks to himself.
The loose dirt kicks backwards in each step..
There is a drag every so often, he is somewhat skilled in battle in his perceptive & apprehensive movements.
he's to sloppy for a ninja, his footwork is more of a musing at best, with parlor tricks and fear games.
He must be a hired assassin to switch between obvious, sloppy, and proficient.
The assassin is 10 paces away..
Also this assassin's feet tense; hes kicking up the dirt more as he turns; he will soon rush inward and then relax his step as he strikes..
Doing so he will have more power to the side to take my neck back or vitals properly, but for him to relax at that angle he must be fleet footed.
..9 paces away..
The rush of the assassin seems to be swift; low to the ground, but the steps quicken.
As soon as his steps break rhythm he will lunge..
..8 paces..
Will it be a feint? Will he flash his blade to reach my eyes with a glint of light, only to slash at my legs or stomach.
.7 paces.
To feel another night as a fallen veil.. is such bliss..
“But”.. the Samurai mutters to himself
.6 paces.
The assassins swift steps rush forward closer.. a fast step and a heavy left, so he will lunge with a horizontal blow. A underhand vertical slash will cause him to back step.. or sidestep..
.5 paces
“hes is becoming too predictable to play with anymore”.. the Samurai gruffly expresses to himself..
The Samurai waits for the Assassin's feet to become perpendicular to each other.
And just before the assassin lunges to strike; The samurai winds up, & uses his sword to launch his sheath like a accelerated projectile.
The sheath center wedges in-between the tensed feet of the assassin's mid stride met with a hard hollow klocking sound.
The Assassin instinctively locks his muscles hard into the sheath.
And without forward ground to switch out his leg position into a safe step for a counter;
all the Assassin can see is the seconds from his own obfuscations as he falls forward with his back exposed and legs & core tensed 3 paces away.
The samurai in response to the sound of the sheath moves in a pivoting motion with his heel, rotating himself beside the mid air assailant assassin. The samurai using his centrifugal force thrusts his blade hard forward under the assassins chest.
As the assassin is falling, the blade positioned under the assassin shaves away the cloth like a long flat chisel does to wood in the process flaying the assassins chest; cleaving a few layers off the seam, curling away flaps of matted skin and cloth soaked in blood.
Then the samurai flips the handle in his hand, turning the blade reversed.
Like the twisting of a feather the samurai does the same to the assassin's back peeling the bare skin off like bacon meat.
With a shaved a layer of flesh exposed in the front and the back.
The ground staining out red rivulet's as the assassin rolls, creating a purple haze of grass.
The assassin feeling all of his nerves wrench as his muscles tighten in response, naturally he screams as loud as his own discipline allows;
the assassin is just as seething as the dirt and debris under his wound.
The samurai beguiled by his own handiwork
lectures the the assassin.
“A deep cut will escape all pain by the rush of the river that becomes the spirit”
The assassin remains silent while his pride is left screaming..
the samurai continues..
“I have done this spectacle many a time as I am sure you have noticed.”
The samurai begins to pace in a circle like a distanced shark observing his first bite mocking the assassin intentionally.
He continues on..
“I doubt you will speak of why; and in a few, the rush will subside the pain.”
“So how shall we do this.. quickly?”
“Then give me proof of life, or honor.”
The assassin remains silent..
Despite how trained you are to notionate this, I am sure I can figure why you are hunting me, and I doubt the shogun or emperor has anything to do with it.
“Is it my good looks? The samurai smiles coyly.
The assassin looks the samurai in the eyes with a grimace on his face.
“Is it what I know..?” the samurai deepens in tone while staring the assassin down.
Then the samurai casually riddles off in a rhetoric rapport, mocking the Assassin further.
“Or is it some invalid casual vengeance, placed by some ones ideology of penance and price, plagued to a remorse..
that I couldn't care less of..
the Samurai starts to laugh like a deviant.”
the assassin not amused at the mocking tone of the samurai..
“So..Which is it going to be this time?
You have but a few seconds to displace my mood failed warmonger; or attempt another test of how under the dirt you already are..
seconds pass
“A fog thick like a shade casting a net;
A night where nocturnal animals in the thick grass are silent to face regret.
The air is chilled
as if the void grows a restless will.
The loom of thread
a spiders web under thy head
and my thoughts soon suddenly still..”