The morning arrived as softly grey as Eitsu's fur in her fourth life. Tai Kikuryuu had taken Ayame to join the younger disciples of Hanasan after breakfast.

Eitsu and Tsubaki sat alone in their room. The only sound was the whispery patter of light rain.

The box lay between them.

“How many?” Tsubaki asked. Her voice was hoarse.

“Six.”

“I see.”

Eitsu pushed the box closer to the other woman. “Please.”

“I don't want to.”

“Of course you don't.”

With a slightly forced exhalation, Tsubaki reached for the box, slender hands pushing the damaged lid open. “It's open.”

“Please take them out.”

“I... I don't... want...” She gritted her teeth, revulsion and misery chasing their way across her face as she lifted the first pelt out, still shining gold despite the cloudy day.

One by one, she removed each pelt, her hands trembling so badly over the fourth that it dropped from her hands. She lingered over the fifth. Tears began to flow in earnest n the sixth.

In spite of them, a tender smile crossed her lips as she picked up the seventh, a pure white fur.

She saw the eighth, the tiny kitten pelt.

Eitsu lunged forwards reflexively.

Tsubaki's face was terrifyingly pale. She swayed. Eitsu's supernatural hearing could hear her heart judder, stop, start, speed up, cease again.

“No... no... Why is there... eight? Eight...” Tsubaki seized the furs in a frenzy, counting and recounting them, until her eyes returned to the forlorn little pelt in the box. It was only a little bigger than her hand.

An unintelligible wail replaced words. Eitsu tried to grab her hands, but she twisted away, cowering. “NO! Don't touch me!”

She's losing her mind. I've got to help control it.

“No! No!” But Tsubaki wasn't about to let her do anything. She seized the bedclothes, wrapped herself in them and dove into a corner of the room. Eitsu froze, unwilling to forcibly tear the woman from her cocoon to try and treat her.

For the next day, Tsubaki refused to let Eitsu near her, but she called anxiously when the latter tried to leave the room.

What are we doing? The two of us just keep circling around in this same space, trapped.

“Aya-chan, you should stay in another room for a bit. It's only for a little while,” Eitsu assured Ayame, and the poor child could only accept this as fact.

“We'll look after her,” Tai Kikuryuu said.

Eitsu nodded.

Tsubaki stared at the wall.

“This isn't what I wanted for you,” Eitsu told the inert woman that night.

“What makes you think you could hold onto a god?” she shouted at Tsubaki the next morning.

“I'm sorry,” she murmured in the afternoon. “I'm barely even a god right now. There's still so much I'm missing. I don't know who I'm supposed to be.”

She said nothing the next day, merely watched the clouds scudding across the sky.

The last two pelts stared at her like mismatched eyes, laying where they had been left several days before. One pure white, one tiny and brown, the faintest of stripes only just beginning to show.

Propped up in bed, Tsubaki lay slumped over her bent knees. Eitsu sat down beside her, the two pelts in her hands.

There were no words.

She entered into her seventh life.

---

She wandered through a world, gone blind.

Her first understandings were of her mother, her siblings. Their smell. The taste of milk. Their warmth.

And then, as she grew, narrow streets that smelt faintly sulphurous, wet markets filled with stale puddles, sharp calls and soft hands and flung stones and vibrant laughter.

In time, something sweet and gentle tickled her ears. Something sharp and cajoling tickled her nose.

The sweetness made her heart slow and murmur sadly. The sharpness made her heart beat fast and fierce.

She felt more tiredness than her nine months of life would hold. She turned away from the sharp scent of pine, and followed the tender, soothing caress of camellia oil. Something led her along, light kisses on her fur showing her the way. When she tried to return the touch, the soft things moved away.

She walked. The sun shone bright.

She walked. The leaves fell.

She walked. It began to snow.

She walked. The flowers bloomed around her.

And one day, as the sun was setting (she could feel the day growing cooler, the scents change from warm flowers to pale shadow), she halted on the path she was walking, as the vibrations and voices of humans walking came towards her.

“A cat. Move over, kitty.”

“It's blind. It probably can't tell we're here.”

“Are you stupid? That doesn't mean it's deaf!”

“What a shame. It's a pretty cat. How has its fur stayed so white when it's blind?”

“Let me see.”

“Miss?”

“Let me see.”

The evening breeze carried that familiar sweet scent to curl around Eitsu.

She heard someone approach, crouch down before her, take a deep breath.

A whisper: “Eitsu-sama?”

Eitsu stepped forwards into the hands that were held out to her. There was deep sorrow in them, and fear, and desperation.

She was lifted up, and tucked into the folds of a robe, and carried away.

---

They lived.

A year passed. Tsubaki travelled with her dance troupe. Eitsu took on a human form, and learnt to play the koto.

Eitsu never asked why she now slept by Tsubaki's side every night.

Tsubaki never told her why she sometimes cried in her sleep, why she thrashed, why sometimes she jumped as though startled by something that wasn't there.

They combed each other's hair, Tsubaki's long and black (she said), and Eitsu's long and white (she said). Eitsu had no concept of what this meant.

“We should run away,” Tsubaki said one night, under the cover of darkness and the the winter-weight futon. And then, almost immediately, “No, that's stupid.”

“Why do you want to run away? What are you running from?”

“Everything.”

“Sounds tiring.”

“It is.”

“Why is it stupid?”

“Because I don't know when I will need to use this position I've made.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who knows.”

“You do.”

“I don't.”

“Why don't you touch me?”

“What are you talking about? I brushed your hair before we went to bed.”

“You know what I mean.”

“... I don't.”

The futon was heavy. The snow falling outside was heavy. The words unspoken between them were heavy.

Tsubaki had said that snow was white. What colour was the futon? What colour were the missing words? What did 'white' mean?

“I'm tired, Tsubaki. I'm so tired, and I don't know why. My body aches all the time, my head hurts, my heart hurts. And you won't tell me anything.”

“I'm scared.”

“So am I.”

“I've thought about telling you. So many times.”

“So just do it.”

“Should I?”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“You'll hate me.”

“Okay.”

Tsubaki sat up, the futon sliding off her.

“Hey, at least keep me tucked in. It's cold.”

“I first met you twelve years ago.”

Eitsu thought she could hear the crystalline song of the falling snowflakes.

“You lived in a little shrine in a town I no longer remember the name of. No one else seemed to be able to see you. You were as big as a tanuki, golden like sunlight on water. You were... Eitsubyou no Mikoto.”

Eitsu listened to her lives being told back to her, drop by drop, until she was soaked in Tsubaki's memories. But not her own. She didn't remember any of this. Even if she had, would she have understood what this human had been experiencing.

Tsubaki's words slowly trickled to a halt. Her voice was hoarse. “I... love you.”

“No... No, you don't.”

“What?”

Eitsu sat up too and reached for Tsubaki's hands. She could not find them; Tsubaki had pulled back.

“Obsession... No... What did I do? I gave you luck, but... did I make you crazy too? Did I make him crazy?”

“Eitsu-sama... This... I'm not crazy! Can't you hear what I'm saying? I love you! And I know, I know that the things I did were wrong. I'm not asking you to love me back. But how can you say... Why are you dismissing...” Her voice was broken with tears.

Eitsu shook, and it wasn't from the cold. Her whole body vibrated with horror. What have I done?

“Eitsu-sama...”

“I'll make it right.”

“What-” Her question was cut off with a fierce kiss. There was no love there, no tenderness. Tsubaki writhed as though she were drowning, but Eitsu's hands held her face remorselessly. She could feel herself shifting, growing fur, losing it, flying out of her body, plunging into water.

What did I do to this child? I've got to make it right!

“Eits- Stop!”

“No. I've got to undo this.” She followed the threads of madness that wound through Tsubaki's being like a parasite, anxiously tearing them out. She burned and froze, and froze.

She came to in the snow.

Cat-shaped, she tried to wade through the deep drifts, sinking into the soft powder until it was over her back and she could no longer move.

Tsubaki said her hair was white.

Tsubaki said that snow was white.

A white cat, in white snow.

“Ei...sa...”

Huh. In spite of all of that, you're still calling for me?

“Where... re... o...”

What would it be like, if we met again in another life? Would we be able to have a proper relationship this time?

“...leas... Eits...ama...”

It's just an obsession, Tsu-bo. Take my luck, live your life. And I'll live the rest of mine. I have two left, you say?

It's really cold out here.

---

The world was warm.

The world was cold.

She could hear something, a bit muffled, and it didn't mean anything to her anyway.

“Why do you keep going back to her?”

She mewled and wriggled, looking for her mother's warmth. The grip on her tiny body tightened uncomfortably.

“I'm really angry right now, Eitsu. So I'm warning you now, you'd better choose correctly in your last life.”

She felt her body swing through the air.

And then she died.

---

Eitsu put down the last pelt. She opened her eyes to find Tsubaki watching her.

“Eitsu-sama... It's snowing.”