Fukitsu

[Fable]

[[ @SpookySableye Here we go!]]
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▌Chikaze


It was time for another festival where the villagers celebrated the oncoming fall season and visited all the local shrines.  Villagers wore an assortment of masks of varying design, ate tasty foods, made offerings to the various kami, and participated in festival games and dances.  The lit paper lanterns created a gentle luminescence at night and cast strange shadows. Chikaze loved festivals.  She was a kitsune shrine guardian of a local luck kami.  With so many people coming to the shrine she had little time to explore during the festival, but she would manage to sneak away every now and then for some fun.  Her favorite thing was dropping her coin of luck and having a mortal pick it up and flip it.  If they flipped the coin it would randomly bestow the mortal with good or bad luck; either outcome amused her.  If she used the coin herself, it was a way to determine the type of luck a particular person was currently experiencing.  Her current target had just been granted good luck and was excitedly winning one of the festival games causing the street vendor to worry.  She snapped her fingers and the coin reappeared between her fingers; softly sparkling in the light of the lanterns.  She would have continued her entertainment, but her kami was summoning her back to the shrine.  With a dejected sigh she returned obediently.

 

[SpookySableye]

Hinata was currently messing around at the festival going on at his village. So far, it was a blast. The food was amazing, the people were awesome, and there was obvious happiness in the air. The games were also pretty fun, even though he hadn't won a single one of them yet; in fact, the ways he lost some of them were downright humiliating. He tried his best not to take it too seriously though, since he normally had crappy luck with that type of stuff. In fact, his luck overall was normally horrible; he was just happy that it only showed with the games so far. On that thought, Hinata had an idea. Maybe praying for good luck from the kami could help. I should make an offering.


On that thought, he went over to the local shrine to go and pray. Once he got to the shrine, he tripped and fell onto the ground as he was going to kneel down. Dang it, not again. After that, he got up and bumped into another person. "Watch it!!" The man growled angrily. "S-sorry." Hinata replied apologetically as the now pissed off man walked away. After that catastrophe, he finally began to pray. Maybe, just maybe this would end his streak of bad luck he's had for years on end. At this point, that's all he was hoping for.

 

[Fable]

▌Chikaze


Chikaze stretched her arms above her head as she entered the shrine; the spiritual energy washing over her like a warm blanket.  It reinvigorated her.  She would have continued on her way to greet her kami... only she spotted a man trip over essentially himself.  She snickered as she saw him bump clumsily into a man.  He was either just very clumsy or had terrible luck.  She pulled out her coin and gave it a flip to see which way his luck was currently leaning.  The coin didn't even rotate, it just landed back in her palm with a heavy clap showing he had bad luck. She flipped it a few more times and it behaved the same peculiar way.


She moved closer to get a better look at him, circling around him without worry; it wasn't like he could see her anyway.  He would have to be a shinto priest or priestess to even have a chance to get a glance at her if she didn't want them to.  He looked normal enough.  Usually bad luck came from some sort of source; it could be what some called karma, a curse, or even just creating it yourself with believing yourself to have bad luck.  However, this was the worst case of bad luck her coin had reacted to.  How he was even still alive was amazing, maybe even just his small desperate sliver of good luck.  She manifested a lucky bell and rolled it towards him.  She wasn't sure what exactly would happen, but if it helped it was an improvement for him at least.


[I was imagining him picking up the bell and it basically breaking in some way.]

 

[SpookySableye]

After praying at the shrine, Hinata began to go on his merry way to do other things around the village. At least, that was what he originally planned. Right before he walked away from the shrine, he ended up finding a bell of some sort on the ground. He didn't really know why it was there, whose bell it was, or anything like that. Maybe someone dropped it? Honestly, he had no idea where the bell came from, so he decided to hold onto it for now. While he thought of it as a stretch, maybe it would bring him some good luck. After all, it did appear right after he prayed for good luck. He was pretty sure that wasn't the case, but hey; it's possible.


Less than a minute after picking up that small bell, he took it out of his pocket to get a closer look. Immediately after, a bird swooped in and snatched it from his somewhat loose grip. He would have tried grabbing at the bird, but it was too fast, and flew high up before he could get the bell back. "Well that's just great." He mumbled to himself apithetically, hanging his head down in shame, "Could my luck right now possibly get any w-" Hinata stopped himself from finishing that sentence. "No. I'm not gonna jinx myself even more. Not after that."

 

[Fable]

[ I just noticed the notification... ugh, and I thought I had them working! ]


Chikaze couldn't help but laugh at the poor guy's misfortune.  His luck was the worst she had ever encountered that even a lucky bell couldn't help him.  His comment made her laugh so hard her ribs had started to hurt and her lung burned.  Her eyes teared up and she doubled over cackling.  It took her a couple of minutes to catch her breath and to overcome the fit of giggles.  Luckily she hadn't gotten any hiccups or she would have had them for days.  While his bad luck was terribly amusing, she knew that as a guardian of a luck kami's shrine, she had to do something to help him.  She straightened her clothing after getting them rumpled from her fit of laughter and made her way closer to the man.


"You lost my bell."


She made her voice able to be heard, but prevented him from seeing her form.  Just because she was going to help him didn't mean she couldn't have some fun with him first.

 

[SpookySableye]

It didn't take too long after losing the bell to make Hinata feel kind of bad about to whole ordeal. On top of that, he never found the original owner of the bell, if it had one. After all, if some kid were looking for that bell and saw what just happened, wouldn't they feel a bit down as well? For now, Hinata planned to try keeping his mind of the horrible streak of luck earlier. However, that definitely didn't seem like it was going to happen.


"You lost my bell"


Crap.


Hinata bolted up and looking around him, only to find nobody in his vicinity trying to talk to him. Huh, that's kinda weird... He could have swore that someone close by told him that he lost her bell. Even though the voice seemed pretty real, maybe there was a chance they weren't talking to him? Perhaps one of the many kids at the festival was talking to their sibling, or friend, or something along those lines, seeing as nobody around him seemed to want his attention or anything. Reluctantly, Hinata dismissed the voice as something in the crowds, and decided to walk around a little more. Perhaps it could help him clear his mind, and not have him so focused on what happened.

 

[Fable]

Chikaze watched as the young man stiffened at the sound of her voice and proceeded to look around; confused when he couldn't see her.  She loved playing with people.  She had one person believe that they were haunted after she had caught them bullying people for their money.  Now he was constantly worried a vengeful spirit would come after him.  She moved around him while he was looking at one direction to hide behind his line of vision.  She allowed her form to manifest so that he could see her and cleared her throat before speaking again.  She didn't bother trying to make herself appear like a normal girl; she had white hair, fair skin, golden eyes, and wore a red and white kimono. He would be the only one able to see her and she hoped his reaction would be amusing.  The last time she had done this to someone they had looked silly as they ran around trying to understand why no one else could see this strange looking being.


"I said, you lost my bell.  It's incredibly difficult to lose a lucky bell you know.  Your luck must be so bad it transferred to the bell itself."

 

[SpookySableye]

Hinata slowly turned in the direction of the sound only to be greeted by a humanoid with fox ears, white hair, and a red and white kimono. While it may have looked human at first glance, the fox ears were a dead giveaway that it wasn't human at all. Maybe the ears were just for decoration? No, they looked too real. Perhaps it was a spirit of some type? Oh crap... I lost her bell. Is she going to curse me or something?!? This is bad. This is very, very bad. For a moment, he looked terrified, almost as if he were going to have a panic attack right then and there, eyes widened and all. However, he somehow regained his composure a couple seconds after, and tried talking to whoever, or whatever was in front of him.


"Oh, s-so that was your bell?" Hinata asked nervously, knowing that it was hers, "Um, s-sorry about that, hehe. And yeah, you'd be right about my luck being horrible. It's... always like that. I take it you saw what happened earlier?"

 

[Fable]

Chikaze couldn't help but grin at his reaction, her sharp and longer than average canines fully on display.  Her fox ears twitched in amusement as she snickered at his reaction.  At least he hadn't outright attacked her.  That had happened once before and she wasn't permitted to harm humans unless it was absolutely necessary.  She also was more worried that if this particular human tried to harm her he'd end up killing himself just from bad luck alone.


"Oh relax, I won't bite you," she teased, her tail swishing playfully behind her.


"I can make another bell easily.  The main problem is your horrible luck.  You said it's always been like this?  Strange," she brought up a hand to her chin and looked him over with her golden eyes.  She circled around him in a non-threatening manner, simply examining him from every angle trying to understand how such negative luck was possible.


"Here, we're going to try this again.  Take it," she ordered as she waved her hand a produced another small bell.  She set it on the ground because she was scared his bad luck would run off on her if they touched.  The last thing she needed was to lose her own luck.

 

[SpookySableye]

Hinata sighed in relief knowing that the fox woman wasn't going to harm him or anything. For a second, he thought she was going to attack him, or curse him, or something along those lines. However, he wondered why she seemed so interested in his crappy luck. He didn't mind it much at all, he just found it peculiar, especially when she was circling around him as if she were trying to examine his entire body. She honestly didn't seem too scary (at least for now), but he still tried to stay somewhat wary. After all, he had heard some interesting things about fox spirits and the like, which given the fox ears, she could easily be one.


Soon after that, the fox girl waved her hand and created a bell out of thin air. Hinata's facial expression went from confused to somewhat surprised seeing her use magic like this. Maybe she had it hidden in her sleeve or something, but he was near certain that what the girl did was magic. Granted, if he was right about her being a fox spirit, it would make sense, but still; it was kind of cool. The fox girl then set the bell on the ground in front of him. While Hinata was confused to why she didn't just hand it to him normally, he decided not to question it and picked up the bell.


A few seconds passed by, and nothing happened. "Huh. Well that's a good sign." Hinata stated, somewhat pleased, "Either that, or the bad luck will show up later. Hopefully the former, because I'd rather not have the latter for obvious reasons."