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The sun is slipping below the horizon line. Autumn takes its payment for the changing season in shallow scrapes on Miko’s knees while she kneels. It’s cold. The breeze is sharper at the top of the hill, beyond the shrine gate she passed through while the sun was still high. Her school uniform isn’t warm enough for nighttime on the stone temple bluff, any warmth gained from her pale yellow sweater quickly lost through the blue skirt that quivers in the wind every few breaths.
The bells dangling behind and above her head sway with the swirling fallen leaves, a copper stream of crumbling natural debris, sharp edges barely missing her open eyes that she can’t seem to keep closed. She can’t keep them closed, but she can’t look, either. Not at the light radiating out from behind her, curling into shadows around her legs. Not at the masked faces of the twin figures standing in front of her, flanking her, unmoving, unwavering, expectant.
Miko digs her nails into her thighs and breathes. She can breathe. Her knees ache and her thighs and hips cramp from kneeling and her eyes sting, but she stays still and thinks and breathes because she can.
She bows her head lower because she can.
She presses her forehead to the stones beneath her because she can.
She cries because she can’t.
Can’t ignore the burning of her sclera. Can’t ignore the beings surrounding her. Can’t find her words. Can’t make herself stand. Not until they receive her thanks.
They aren’t angry. Not anymore. She can feel warmth beginning to combat the chill of the air as darkness creeps up from the city skyline, stars faint and negligible, as if the light the beings give off is spreading across her skin, enveloping her.
Her bottom lip hurts, chewed raw what feels like hours ago
She forgets to breathe. A hand with sharp claws punctuating inhumanly long digits manipulates her by the shoulder, hot, accompanied by the smell of overheated laundry as its nails catch on her sweater while pulling her torso up, relieving the ache in her head from how hard she was pushing it into the ground.
Miko is afraid.
The hand is on her throat. Her vision is too blurred for its function. Her bones creak inside her, trying to break free from the muscles contracting around them.
Miko is afraid.
The beings around her speak in formless words that sound muffled and warped. Still, she listens.
There are more hands now, palms flat against her stomach, back, neck, shoulders, thighs. They’re heating up, and they remind her of a cattle brand.
Miko is afraid.
A wind-chilled bell swings back and forth in front of her face, twin guardians with pits for eyes staring at her, expecting. Suggesting. Demanding.
Eat.
Their voices sound like the ringing of the shrine bells, the fluttering of gohei in the wind. Not like voices at all.
Eat.
The bell is cold against the tender skin of her lips.
Miko is afraid.
Eat.
The bell is unyielding. The ridges and holes catch on her tongue. The day is ending and Miko is losing her sense of time. She remembers she promised her brother she would make dinner tonight. She promised curry.
Miko is afraid.
The bell hurts. It lodges in her throat. The sounds she makes scare her, like the wheezing of a dying cat, a boot to its throat.
She swallows. Drool accumulates and does nothing. The bell doesn’t move. She wants to vomit.
She swallows.
The bell shrinks. Slowly. One swallow at a time, until it disappears entirely.
The light above her head gets closer, long hairs of the deity hovering there falling around her face like a wig.
Pray, it says.
And Miko does.
That night during dinner, each mouthful of food rings in her throat on its way down.