Saori Hironaka crouched shivering in the smelly, dark and more importantly dusty space under the stage. She wasn’t truly a snake, her body generated heat, but with so much of her body unclothed, she rather felt the cold.

She’d come down to the beach in the early morning, hoping to ease the dreadful itching of her moult by sand bathing. The area behind the open air stage was perfect for it, private and dry. Only, that morning, people had started to arrive very early on, setting up for the fair she’d forgotten about.

Her car was only a few hundred yards away, across the open beach, but she couldn’t risk being seen. So she did the only thing she could, and hid under the stage, where she’d been all day.

And then… a tall English gentleman had found her, and he’d seemed delighted! Saori had heard the rumours about an English man, living at the old temple. She didn’t go out much, but she had friends, some of whom had gone to his new moon festival. They’d told her he was Inari’s new Herald...and she hadn’t entirely believed it.

But he had spoken to her, exclaiming in delight at seeing her, and he’d correctly worked out not only that she was no threat, but why she was there… and in that moment she decided she could happily trust him with her life.

Which, truthfully, was exactly what she was doing.

She’d had three asthma attacks already that day, hiding in the dusty, mouldy, space under the stage. She’d only packed her morning dose of ventolin and a spare, plus her emergency albuterol in case of a really bad attack. Those had run out about mid afternoon, hours ago.

There was tap on the door and a cheerful voice she recognised.

“Only me! I’ve got you a dose of albuterol and some corticosteroid to take. I’m hoping your metabolism is enough alike for those to work.”

“Yes.”

Paul came in and handed her three single-use injection vials of the corticosteroid. Saori recognised it as being the generic form of the one she was prescribed. She moved the front of her robe aside to locate one of the big veins around her belly button, and injected herself.

Only then did she notice that Paul was watching. She blushed and twitched her robe back.

“Huh.. so.. viviparous then.”

“What?”

“You have a belly button, implies an umbilical cord and live birth, right?”

She blinked, surprised and baffled by the clinical or scientific interest rather than sexual, and for the lack of any other response, nodded.

“Ok, I’ll be outside, I need to see in order to build you a nebuliser, and I hope Rin will be back shortly with some more medicine because I had no luck finding magnesium sulphate.”

Saori blinked. Her eyes were getting irritated by the dust as well, but it was more out of surprise. Most people hadn’t heard of that being used to treat asthma.

“You know, a lot about, asthma… do you suffer from it too?”

“No, but I’ve seen it a lot. The Americans used depleted uranium ammo during the Gulf wars, one of the side effects of breathing uranium oxide dust from that is asthma. Also, since it’s a highly toxic heavy metal, lung cancer and eventually death.”

“You were.. a soldier.. fighting there?”

“Good heavens no. I was a smuggler. Food and medicine in, people out… free of charge of course. Which generally meant I got shot at by one side or the other… bad days both at the same time. Good days I had both sides pretending they didn’t see me. Great days were when I brought food for everyone… you’d be surprised just how willing everyone is to cease fire if there’s a good meal in the offering.”

Saori couldn’t help wheezing in laughter… Paul stuck his head around the edge of the door, looking at her in concern. She shook her head…

“The fame.. of your.. pizza.. has spread.”

“Ah! You heard about that then?”

Saori nodded, grinning.

“I have.. friends who.. get out.. more.”

“Of course. You said you live at the temple, are your parents there?”

Saori shook her head.

“Orphan. Raised by monks.”

“I see… Ok, this is done. Do you want to try a shot of the albuterol?”

Saori nodded, and then looked at what Paul had built. The main body was a modified water bottle, with a cut off section of a heavy rubber beach ball as a mask to go over her nose and mouth. At the other end of the water bottle was a small battery powered fan, and a child’s squeaky toy was inserted into the side of the bottle for some reason she couldn’t understand.

“Ok, I didn’t have a puffer inhaler so I improvised. You squeeze the air out of the penguin, insert the straw on the medicine bottle into the valve at the bottom of the penguin, let go, which will draw air and the medicine into the toy, then inhale at the same time as you squeeze the toy again. It’s got a couple of one way valves, so it’ll puff the medicine into the air stream from the fan. Got it?”

Saori nodded, surprised. This contraption built out of junk worked the same way as the sophisticated constant flow inhalers at the clinic!

She pressed the surprisingly comfortable and well fitting mask to her face, and followed Paul’s instructions. As always, the first ‘hit’ made her cough, but she waved Paul’s assistance away as it quickly settled down. Cautiously she breathed in, already feeling her lungs easing a bit as her airways opened up. She nodded and bowed at Paul slightly.

Just then Rin came running up, skidding to a stop, and huffing like they had asthma.

“Got..an..inhaler. Meds too.”

“Well done! Saori..?”

She inched her way out, just showing enough of upper body to pass as human. Rin handed her the inhaler and she retreated. She could hear him talking to Paul, even though he whispered.

“Hoi. She really is a Naga!”

“Yeah, so?”

“But they’re supposed to be all gone! I mean… they can’t hide. You can’t put a spell on a naga so disguises don’t work and they’re super sensitive to magic fading as well. Their bodies need it to keep working.”

“Huh, I wonder if that’s why she has asthma?”

“Uh.. also Paul-san.. Naga are one of the evil yokai races.”

“Oh bullshit… so are Oni and we get along just fine with them. Besides, she was raised by Buddhist monks, how evil could she possibly be?!”

“One of these days Paul-san, you are going to trust the wrong person.”

“Still here. Trust me, there are monsters who are human, that are far worse than any yokai I’ve seen so far. Hmm... I wonder if she has a car? She looked old enough to drive.”

“Huh? How would a Naga drive?”

“Same as anyone else I imagine. A bit of adaptive tech to make the pedals easier to move using coils of her body and take out the lower part of the seat and she’d be fine. After all, from the waist up she could pass as human at a distance.”

“Huh… you think so?”

“Yeah, she had to have got here somehow, and I doubt she walked through town. Ok, Rin… you know those beach wheelchairs up by the entrance? Go grab one of those and a stack of blankets.”

“Ok!

There was silence outside for a bit, and then Paul spoke.

“You know... you don’t have to keep pretending you can’t hear me.”

Saori used to joke about her scales standing on end when surprised or frightened. But the shiver that went down her length felt like they were trying to do just that.

“How… how did you know?!”

“I can hear you breathing, and like just about everyone, your breathing slows down when you’re listening, unconsciously falling into sync with the rhythm of the speech.”

“Oh! I never knew that.”

She slid forward until she was just inside the open doorway, half hidden by shadows. Paul was sitting, his knees drawn up, back against the wall by the door. He looked up as she appeared and smiled at her.

“I didn’t know nagas had a reputation for being evil, or I would have said that’s a load of crap sooner. Is that why you tried to drive me away at first?”

“Yes… I was taught not to trust people unless I had to.”

“Right. Do the monks at the temple treat you well?”

“Oh yes! You can’t defeat evil by beating it out of someone! They’ve only ever shown me love and respect and kindness! Hey, Paul-san, you know I’m not going to fit in a wheelchair?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I might have to ‘vandalise’ it slightly to make it work. But I have a plan B.”

“Which is?”

“We hide you in plain sight. Rin goes ahead with the chair, I walk alongside you holding an arm so it looks like I’m helping you ‘walk’ and you move like someone in a snake costume.”

Saori squeaked in alarm.

“What!? You want me to go out there, in full view of everyone, and just slither up to my car!”

“Pretty much. Except you’ll be moving your lower body, at least the bit between hips and ground, like someone in a long tight skirt shuffling along. Actually, it would work better if we have Rin on one side, and me on the other, supposedly helping you.”

“You’re crazy! That’s..that’s...” Saori paused as she thought about it… “That’s diabolically clever!”

“Yup, it’s just dark enough nobody would be too sure of what they saw. Most of them will be waiting around for the fireworks and not looking this way, and if you do it right, you’ll look like just another costumed festival go-er.”

“Just one thing, I don’t think I can move the way you said, and actually move myself.”

“That’s why I said we’d need both of us, one either side. We’ll lift and carry you. You concentrate on the acting the part.”

Just then Rin came trundling up, pushing the beach wheelchair, it’s wide, fat yellow tires floating over the loose sand. Paul eyed that, and then Saori.

“Hmm, how tightly can you coil your lower body?”

“Not as much as I could this morning, coughing has pulled muscles everywhere.”

“Ok, plan B it is.”

“What’s plan B, Paul-san?”

Paul glanced at Rin, and explained.

“Hide in plain sight. You and I take an arm each, lift and drag Saori. She moves her lower body so it looks like she’s shuffling along in a snake costume. The twilight should do the rest.”

Rin looked at Saori, and sighed.

“Hope your car isn’t too far way… er, you do have a car?”

Saori nodded.

“I do, and no it’s not. I was here first thing so it’s right by the entrance. It’s bright yellow, you can’t miss it.”

Rin glanced sidelong at Paul, and grinned.

“Bet you didn’t guess her car was bright yellow!”

“Yeah, I would’ve said green.”

Saori stared at Paul wide-eyed in disbelief...

“I.. I wanted green but they didn’t have it… How did you...?”

Rin and Saori stared at Paul in mutual disbelief, open mouthed. Paul smiled fractionally, held his hand as if he was smoking an invisible pipe, and adopting a rather more precise and ‘cut-glass’ English accent said.

“Come come, you don’t expect me to explain all my secrets, do you Watson?”

They had to wait a couple of minutes while Rin and Saori got over their laughter.

Rin and Paul managed to get Saori to her car with only one minor incident, a semi-drunken party of revellers had yelled at her saying ‘nice costume!’ and it had taken her a moment to remember to say thanks. Paul had felt her flinch at first, expecting something else, and she’d had to pause to get her breathing back under control again.

Saori kept an emergency back-up inhaler in her car, and a supply of her medicines. So once they were there she could use those. Paul let her sit in the car, draping a couple of the blankets Rin had snagged, over the side windows as if she was changing costumes inside. Rin had volunteered to go get her some water and something to eat.

“Are you going to be ok to drive home like this?”

“I’m ok now.. it’s been a terrible day, all I want to do is go home, soak in the bath tub and try to pretend it never happened.”

“Fair enough.. by the way, if that patchiness is still a problem, use a loofa sponge on it, that should help.”

“Thank you, I’ll try that. You’ve been very kind and helpful, I’m sure my guardians will wish to thank you as well.”

“Ah, just doing what I can to make the world a slightly less horrible place, that’s all.”

“That sounds almost like something the monks would say...”

Paul chuckled.

“Quote from the Tao of The Dude actually, which probably means nothing to you, but next time you’re near a computer, search for it, or Dudeist Priest. Also, just a suggestion, but maybe an emergency mobile phone might be a good idea.”

“Agreed! I don’t have one because I don’t go out hardly at all, but perhaps I should for the few times I do. I could’ve called for help or at least let my guardians know where I was.”

“Exactly...speaking of which, you can borrow mine now to let them know.”

“Oh! Yes, thank you.”

Paul handed her his phone and then went to sit on the nearby wall to give her some privacy. He waved at Rin as they came trotting up again. Rin came over and sat next to Paul.

“I’d hang on a minute Rin, she’s phoning home.”

“Oh. Of course. She has people who care about her.”

Rin looked at the bottle of water and the sandwich they were carrying, and put those down on the wall. Paul, studied Rin for a second, and put an arm around their shoulders.

“Hey, you know I care little fox.”

“Mmhm.. still not used to that. Maybe never will be. But… I kinda like it that way.”

Paul nodded slowly.

“Fair enough. You know Inari cares too.”

“No. She doesn’t. She doesn’t even know me.”

Paul shook his head.

“She doesn’t remember, but from what you both said, she recognised you, a hundred years later and after you’d grown up… and she still knew who you were just from a split second’s glimpse side on, in an alleyway at night.”

Rin paused, blinking. That was… not something Rin had thought of before, but Paul was right. Inari had done that. In fact, Rin hadn’t even recognised her at first…

“I.. hadn’t thought of that. But you’re right. But that’s all. She doesn’t remember anything else about me. If it wasn’t for that, we’d be strangers. She.. she doesn’t trust me. You saw that, she assumed it was my fault there was a fight.”

“I know Rin… I’m not excusing her for that, but I think something happened to her, something she doesn’t remember happening, that’s damaged her memory, erasing parts since she seems to have no problems remembering things now. I think whatever it was also made her more fearful. Up until I came along, she was a shut-in. She was so fearful of the outside world… still is really, as she’s only just beginning to get over it with help. But that fear puts her temper on edge too.”

Rin nodded silently, and after a moment said thoughtfully.

“She’s changed too… she used to be calmer. Now she’s... volatile. Unpredictable. It’s like all her emotions are turned up to eleven.”

Paul nodded slowly, then frowned.

“Hang on… that sounds, horribly familiar. Rin… Kami are ageless as well as immortal, right?”

“As far as I know yes… why?”

“Ok, if you ignore her physical appearance, then her symptoms sound a lot like the onset of senile dementia or maybe Alzheimer’s. Which is a terrible thought...”

“You’re right. That IS horrible. It’s also not true! She’s Inari, she can’t age like that.”

“It might not be ageing. Remember I wondered if Saori’s asthma might not be a symptom of low-level magic deficiency? Perhaps Inari’s symptoms have the same cause. Maybe she was exposed to a dead area, and doesn’t remember it, but that’s what’s caused this change in her.. or it might be an accumulative effect from chronic under-powering. Kind of like the effects of low-level oxygen starvation or the lack of certain sorts of trace nutrients in a persons diet.”

Rin was silent for a long while, thinking. Then they slowly nodded.

“Yeah… you might have a point. Something’s changed her. How do we heal her?”

“I’m hoping continued exposure to high concentrations of mana will help… but I don’t know. It might not be reversible. There might be another cause for it as well, one we don’t know about. It’s also possible that it is the result of age… she is thousands of years old, and on our time scale, a life span of thousands of years looks a lot like immortality.”

“But she can’t age and die! She’s already done that. Several times. Kami can’t die, they come back. Or at least, continue to hang around on the Celestial Planes if they don’t return to the mortal world. That’s what makes them Gods and Goddesses. You can’t have a dead god, it’s impossible. And you can’t age if you can’t die because ageing is like bits of you dying before all of you does.”

“Huh. I think you just described cell apoptosis and senescence in non-scientific terms, and argued why immortality means you can’t have those. Ok, I take your point, it’s probably not ageing then, just something that’s mimicking the symptoms of it. At least, the ones in humans.”

“Uh-huh… and if you can stop it, she’ll heal. Even if it means she has to die and come back again, renewed and perfect. Resurrection for her is like... restoring to a previously saved back up.”

Paul frowned thoughtfully.

“Psychologically as well? Because if we don’t know what’s happened, we can’t say for sure it has a physical cause and not a mental one.”

“I… I don’t know. It’s never been an issue before as far as I know. Other Okami have gone mad, some got better, some didn’t.”

“I’m curious, what did they do with the ones that didn’t get better? I’d imagine a mad god isn’t good news for anyone.”

“Most were harmless… delusions and obsessions that could be tolerated. But no, one or two were violent, or so Inari used to tell us cubs. Those... had to be destroyed.”

“How on earth do you destroy something that cannot die?”

“I don’t know. By making it so it can be killed, Inari said… but she never said how.”

Paul nodded slowly.

“No. I don’t suppose she would, nor would any of them even if they did know how. But if she had a brush with something like that by accident... or she tried to deliberately commit suicide and failed, it could explain what’s happened to her.”

“You think she would?”

“Yes. Not long after we first met she explained that the magic fading away meant she’d fade… something that sounded very like dementia actually. I think if she thought that was her fate, she’d try to die first, while she was still able to think rationally. Which by the way, is why we are NOT going to mention any of this to her, and continue to act like nothing’s changed.”

“Oh. Hell. Yes of course Paul-san. My lips are sealed.”

“Although, if it’s any consolation, whatever happened, I think she’s getting better maybe. And at least some of her current emotional volatility is more because she’s in a physical body with teenage hormones, than anything else.”

Rin laughed.

“That would do it too!”

Paul glanced up the road, and frowned, peering against the streetlights.

“I think Saori’s guardian is on the way here… or at least there’s what looks like a Buddhist monk on a moped heading this way...”

“Monks ride mopeds?”

Paul shrugged.

“Well, this one does… and why not?”

Rin had no answer for that...