Mushishi - Adaption

[sub_divided]

Series: Mushishi
Wordcount: 784
Written for ai_ling's request "Ginko and mushishi" at drabble_trade (exchange # 7).


***

At a certain point on a certain path through a certain forest, a small shrine sits at a crossway. Behind the shrine there is another path, rarely used -- only those who already know it is there are likely to see it at all. In fact the path isn't really a path, because it doesn't go anywhere. It's more like a trail. At the end of the trail, there's a certain rock, which looks no different from any of the other rocks in the area.

Ginko sets his belongings down beside the rock and crouches in front of it. Gingerly, as if the rock were fragile -- though really it's just a rock -- he lifts it up and sets it aside. Underneath is a small, circular hole, about two feet deep. At the bottom is a box. He lifts the box out and brushes off the dirt. Then he looks around for a place to sit. He ends up on the rock, with the box balanced across his legs, extended in front of him.

He opens the lid of the box. There are four or five scrolls inside, bound together with a red string into single bundle. He picks up the bundle, slides out the first scroll, replaces the bundle, and unrolls the scroll. Then he rolls it up again in the other direction. Finally he reads it.

"I stayed a few days in a village where nearly half of the inhabitants could see mushi," the letter begins without preamble. "None of them seemed to attract mushi, thank goodness, or the resonance effects would have been terrible. There's nothing special about the village -- it's a nice, out-of-the-way little place, high in the mountains, with a small population which survives by gathering special plants from the mountain to sell to the lowlanders -- so I couldn't figure out why so many of the people in it should be sensitive.

"At first I thought the village might sit on top of one of the great "rivers", but I did some dowsing, and the nearest vein of any significance lies three whole mountains over. If anything, the village exists in a dead spot. There are mushi in the surrounding forest but they're all the kind that are too small to see with just your eyes. The ones I examined didn't seem harmful to humans. I wondered if there might be something in the air, the water, or the soil in the village, but when I tested them for mushi, all I could find were the usual ones.

"I might have missed something. I've gone "home" to fetch the rest of my equipment, so by the next time I write, I should be able to tell you whether the answer was something more esoteric. Maybe there is no reason. It's not a large village -- an abnormally high proportion of sensitive souls could be a coincidence."

Ginko lowers the scroll, deep in thought. He distrusts coincidences, and something about the letter strikes him as odd. He reads through it again. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with his colleague's reasoning. He reads slower, line by line. Suddenly, he sees it: "There's nothing special about the village."

Human communities where no one farms or fishes are rare. A thousand years ago, they might have been common, but these days, even the smallest settlement in the most inaccessible location is likely to have at least a few fields under cultivation, even if their owners had to carve them out of a mountainside, or re-direct a river.

Towns are bounded by roads. Villages are bounded by fields. What separates this "nothing special" village from the forest that surrounds it? In other words:

The village his colleague discovered is unusually close to nature. Mushi, too, are very close to nature. And Ginko thinks -- but he can't be sure of this thought. It's complex, and it's only coming to him in pieces.

He thinks: living so close to nature, an ability to perceive the natural world would naturally be an advantage. Advantages can be inherited. What if, over time, due to the isolation of the village, one clearly advantageous trait was passed down from parent to child, and then from child to grandchild, and so on? Wouldn't it become more common?

He reaches for his bags, takes out a pen, turns over the scroll to make his reply. Pen hovering over the paper, he hesitates. How to frame what he's thinking in a way that will make sense to another person? He isn't sure he understands it himself. He is so occupied by this question, he nearly misses the small post-script his friend has left him.

"P.S.: Should we meet?"

***

I've had the idea for this story for the longest time. And by "this story," I don't mean the village ^^;;; I mean the letter exchange. Actually, when I was watching Mushishi as it was airing, there was a point -- before any other mushishi had shown up in episodes -- when I thought every mushishi was like Ginko, a magnet for mushi. Ergo, no two mushishi could spend too much time together, because if they were together, the mushi-attracting effect would be magnified, and before long they'd be fending off mushi with sticks.

The original form of this story was: Ginko and another mushishi, who have never met face-to-face, communicate via letters buried near a certain roadside shrine. Ginko often sleeps outdoors because large towns aren't safe -- another mushishi he isn't aware of might also be staying the night. This time he decides to sleep near this shrine. He finds a comfortable spot on the lee side of a large rock.

The next morning, Ginko wakes up, and only then notices that on the other side the rock, there's another person. This person is, of course, a mushishi -- the same mushishi with whom he'd been exchanging letters. The two of them stare at each other a moment, and then they notice that they're both covered in small, glowing, firefly-like mushi. They only have time to introduce themselves before they're forced to take off running in opposite directions.

I thought about writing this for tin's correspondence challenge, but by that point another mushishi had shown up in canon. ^^;;