Nimbus Summit the debts of ukiyo

images flood her mind—
the orchards in full bloom and snowing with petals; a mountain well guarded by her brothers, as they laugh and joke with one another, racing up the shrine path. father is away on business and they feel a rare freedom.

it is not forbidden for satsu to reminisce, but she resists the memory as it comes. a tension coils through her, snake-like, constrictive.
my father's land.
a half truth; the land was only his so long as his honor remained virtuous. like all men, he was fallible when the circumstances suited him.

i am all that is left of his line. as a woman without any sons, the han fell, to be given to another. she explained. this was not something she had expected to speak of again, let alone to someone so different from her.
satsu breathed evenly a low breath, banishing her brother's faces from her mind before they could become bloody, twisted and grotesque.