<div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Maseko</div><div class="spoiler_body">Sheet (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=283917) and Description (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=234223.msg11532337#msg11532337)</div></div><hr/><br/>Not even Maseko was entirely immune to tradition.  She released Kotone's hand as she knelt in her place, without any regret for the loss of contact from her sister, and she felt no more discomfort kneeling here than she had kneeling for her prayer.  She was no stranger to tea ceremony as practiced in Rokugan, but it had been years since she had last been able to partake- the Mantis and Crab both were more used to introspective meditation than attempting to arrange the necessities of the ceremony- but she had been able to sit for a ceremony with her parents shortly after she had first traveled to the Islands of Silk and Spice.<br/><br/>This was more real to her, perhaps because she had since learned the power of ritual.  Perhaps because it was being performed by and for her<em>new</em>family for the first time, after the first day of travel together.<br/><br/>The heat of her cheeks disappeared in the firelight, her Scorpion features stricken into sharp relief by the orange light. She performed the ritual ablution of her hands and mouth, the cool water and her inner heat meeting, mixing, and yet not clashing, and as she passed the cloth and bowl to Kotone her expression was blank, her face a mask of cooling iron.  Her eyes were on the fire, which she saw and did not see, just as she saw and did not see each of the others cleanse themselves in the same way, her mind as blank as her expression, and she could feel the dull thud of her slowing pulse as it traveled throughout her body.<br/><br/>She was aware and was not aware of the bowl and towel that Keitaro passed to her, and perhaps her void stirred and spoke to her.  It was the most natural thing in the world to drink her portion from the bowl, clean it, and pass them to Kotone, and she was not aware of doing so, though she tasted the tea without bitterness.  The heat of the tea washed away the coolness left behind by the damp cloth and blended with her need, diluting it and drowning it in her void.  Her eyes, empty and dark in the firelight, stared unseeing as she suddenly became<em>aware</em>of one thought.<br/><br/><em>Void circles a fire<br/>Two shugenja, two bushi,<br/>Bushi serves them all.<br/></em><br/>Was it mystically significant that, seemingly by accident, two shugenja would be served first in a circle of equals? Was this a sign of things to come that, in this place that the Kami had blessed, these people would sit<em>just so,</em>their first evening as family?  Did it mean something that Shiori, served last by Keitaro, herself offered the bowl and the towel back to him?  Of them all, they had history together, and the symmetry of<em>her</em>serving<em>him</em>closed the circle with a symmetry that spoke of no accident.<br/><br/>Shiori, moved by the ceremony, expressed gratitude in a way that spoke to that history- and Maseko was aware that this was right and proper, merely an extension of the pattern that she had perceived.  Maseko herself, still iron, said nothing and did not move.<br/><hr/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">OOC</div><div class="spoiler_body">It is true that patterns can be seen anywhere you choose to look, but this seemed worthy  of note.</div></div>