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Koushi's mind blanks for one terrible second.
"Ah, I am no storyteller, but I...ah...will do my best."
He cleared his throat.
"One day, Lady Doji was looking out from her window when she spied an old man sitting in the snow, outside the warmth of the city. He was ragged from travel. Shabby. And he could be seen to shiver. So Lady Doji called her maidservants to summon this beggar to her, to keep him safe and warm, but to her surprise, the maids told her that this man--a monk, as it happens--had refused. Puzzled by this, Lady Doji left the palace and walked down the road, bearing only a blanket of thick wool, she stood in the snow near the little man.
"They tell me that you will not come inside," she said, "Will you not at least accept this warm blanket?"
"Why would I wish to?" The beggar asked.
"To live. The day grows dark, and the night is full of suffering. Do you wish to freeze and die?"
The old man looked up at the Kami, her face as white as the snow. "Die? You say that word with dread, my Lady."
"Are you not afraid of death?" "Rather, my Lady, I am not afraid to live." After a pause to register her puzzlement, he continued. "Look around you, Lady. What do you see."
"The world." The old man laughed. "Is that all? Tell me, do you not see the snow?"
"The snow? Of course I see it. There is snow everywhere." And then, perplexingly, he was not satisfied, but asked whether she truly saw it, asking her to identify a piece of snow, which she did. "It has seven spires from a single point." And they went on like this for a time, identifying snowflakes.
Then, at last, the monk made his point. "In all the snowflakes of all the snowfalls, no two are alike. No two in eternity. If I were to go inside with you, I would never see that snowflake; it's pattern would never occur again."
Doji-kami frowned. "It is only water."
"And life is but a single day, one after another, until years have passed and you have grown old, and then you say, "where have all the days gone?" He chuckled. "How did you spend the morning?" The curious question surprised her. "This morning? Weaving a cloak for my brother." "For blocks and a single spire!" The beggar laughed, pounding his feet upon the ground as he pointed at another flake of snow. "Do you remember each silken string that you wove into the pattern of your brother's cloak?"
"Why no, of course not?"
"Why not?"
"There are hundred in the pattern--thousands in all. Who could remember each one?"
"Yet, I suppose you remember each mistake you made, and the hours it took to correct them."
"Hai, of course."
"Perhaps if you had taken a moment to see every strange, to understand each fiber, you would never have made those mistakes. Like you did not see the snowflake, you ignore what is around you---you ignore the days of life, to see only the years." He snorted. "you cannot change the passing of years, but you can change the passing of hours--and what you choose to do as that time passes. Will it be something you will remember, or will your days pass you by as if they were nothing but a fog of snow?"
Lady Doji stared at the little man. "You are more than a mere beggar," she said, a tear sliding down her cheek, weeping ice.
"But are you more than just one life among many? And when you die, will you be remembered, or will you melt, Lady Doji, and be forgotten forever. If you will not remember the snowflake, who will remember you?"
And Lady Doji and the old man knelt together and watched the snow fall, piece by piece, onto the plains around them.
[[With complements to Ree Soesbee and John Wick]]
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* Ronin * Bushi * Surgeon *
Status: 0.0, Glory: 2.0, Honor: Exceptional
Carries: Daisho, Fan, Medical Bag.
Wears: Sturdy, functional clothing, Snowshoes (outdoors), light armor (where appropriate)
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