Nakahama

Getting here without a car had been a bit of a journey: rented electic bike to the monorail station in town, then a shorter ride from the monorail to the beach. The destination is worth the trip, however. Sorato recalls reading of no seriously dangerous biting wildlife in the littoral zone, so he slips off his sandals as he steps off the end of the road, where the pavement dissolves into pebbles and then into white sand. The sand above the tide line is pitted and runnelled from the morning's rain, still cool under his feet. Smiling to himself and humming something indistinct, he strolls toward the tideline, heading vaguely eastward toward the (locally-)famous Ningyo's Pool.

Not too far away, Katsumi is cheerfully planting a beach umbrella into the sand, while Kurumi unfurls some beach towels. Their employer seems to be nowhere in sight, until the roar of a large wave begins approaching the shore...



Ah. There he is.

Sorato waves amiably toward the two retainers and their distant master. His ambling path along the shore crosses quite close to their spot, just below the tideline, where he stops within greeting distance to crouch down and poke at what seems to be a bit of sea wrack washed up on the white sand.

"Agasha-san!" Kazushi calls out as he reaches the shore. "Come to enjoy the sun while it lasts?"

"Thought I'd explore the shore while there's some distinction between 'in the water' and 'out of it,'" Sorato agrees amicably. He finishes messing around with the pile of wrack--a process that seems to involve snipping off a few pieces of seaweed and sealing them into little glass vials--before standing up straight to bow in greeting.

"Collecting samples?" asks the Scorpion, noticing the vials.

Rubbing his hand along the side seam of his board shorts to brush away the sand still clinging to his fingers, Sorato nods. "Yes, that's right. The Atsumaru Kelp Data Project has a shocking lack of specimens from Green Carp, if you can believe it." From the tone of his voice this information is genuinely a bit surprising (at least to him).

"Hm. Are there a lot of unique lifeforms on this world?" Kazushi asks.

"Yes, of course." By way of illustration, Sorato shuffles a foot in the sand, sending a flock of tiny, papery-looking invertebrates to skittering and scattering under his approving eye. "That's true on most every world that's habitable without domes. And some that aren't. Green Crab is notably rich, though."

Kazushi shrugs.

"I'm used to the animals and plants back home," he says, "and hadn't noticed too much of a difference so far, although I don't have an eye for such things. I'm beginning to learn that such is a common failing among people from the capital, though, as we tend to ignore, dismiss, and underestimate the differences between the worlds of the Empire. Nothing matters as much as where we came from, and that sort of thing..."

"The capital?" Sorato cocks his head. "You mean the World of Dreams? Or...Old Rokugan?" A smoother talker might not let on that he isn't sure whether Kazushi is talking about the de facto Scorpion capital or the Imperial capital, but the Phoenix doesn't seem bothered.

"'Old' Rokugan," Kazushi responds with a nod, "although it's not nearly as backward as many people seem to think it is. Outside of the designated historical sites, of course."

"It's never sounded backward to me. Maybe somewhat stiff, by reputation. That isn't the same as backward, though." Sorato plops down on the sand, long legs folded tailor-fashion, and looks out at the waves. "The diversity of other planets doesn't make the old world less special. It's all part of the same celestial order, one part revealing the other."


((Sorry, lost this one!))

"You're about the only person who's thought that way," Kazushi says with a sigh. "Everyone else I've talked to seems to think I live in a centuries-old house with paper walls and no electricity, let alone climate control and other such necessities."

A laugh colors Sorato's light voice. "Those people should read more. Maybe not watch so many historical dramas." He picks up a fragment of some seashell and turns it over, rubbing away stuck-on sand with his fingertips. "Everything changes and grows. Why should the old world be different?" After a moment he adds, "Did you know the speckled moths of the Isawa Mori are a different color now than they were before the Age of Stars?"

"I did not," admits the Scorpion, "although I'm not surprised. Everything changes, given time and cause."

"Exactly!" Sorato says brightly. "In this case, it happened when the home provinces replaced wood stoves and combustion power plants with spirit reactors. No soot on surfaces, so the moths needed lighter speckles to hide from birds. That's only one example. Self-evidently silly to imagine the homeworld hasn't changed in all that time." He chuckles, holding his seashell up to the sunlight. "Is Green Carp your first outer world? Or one of a bunch?"

"The first," Kazushi answers, "likely of many. I think the Department's wanting me to broaden my horizons, and to tell the truth, I'm enjoying it here a lot more than I thought I was going to. I imagine you've been all over, though?"

"Some. Mostly survey and frontier colony planets, aside from the Tadaka system," Sorato says, naming the Phoenix home solar system. Having looked his fill at his bit of shell, he skips it out over the water, managing two bounces before it sinks. "Mostly I get sent to places less developed than Green Carp. But it's an oddity. An old, settled world with lots of wild places left."

He glances at Kazushi, brows arcing upward. "You weren't expecting to enjoy it?"

"I'm not sure what I expected," the Scorpion admits. "I think I expected to be appalled at the absence of Rokugan's very structured way of life, or perplexed by unusual geography or life forms. Instead, I've found it quite comfortable."