Fujiwara Takako watched the fog swallow the gardens. Delicate cherry blossoms and lush gardenia disappeared in spurts, vivid colors leeching out to gray. Takako pressed her face to the shoji, close enough to touch the wooden frame with her lips. The screen was parted the barest amount. Takako did not dare open it further. Lady Fujiwara herself had ordered the house blinded, in accordance to an ill omen divined by an Onmyōji in her acquaintance.

Takako let out a quiet sigh. The isolation was certainly ill-timed, coinciding as it did with the height of the cherry blossom season. It seemed that every noble house was holding a celebration this year. Lady Fujiwara spent long hours secluded in her rooms, her mood growing darker with each invitation their forced isolation demanded she decline. Takako would not have thought her mother capable of such restraint. Had misfortune been predicted by one of the Yin Yang Bureau's stiff-robbed officials, Lady Fujiwara would have likely disregarded dreams of catastrophe in favor of more immediate and pleasant pursuits.

The warning had come from Abe no Seimei, and his words were not leaves to be carried upon the winds of fancy.

Takako knew little of Lord Seimei. The Onmyōji visited the compound only rarely, and held himself with the least amount of ritual Takako had ever observed in a man of his station. Takako found his easygoing nature agreeable. Lady Fujiwara certainly held the man in high regard, and did not stand to hear an ill word spoken about him.

Of those, there were many. The servants whispered whenever Lord Seimei visited. Sometimes, Takako listened. Stories concerning Abe no Seimei were outlandish and far from kind, painting the man everything from a charlatan to a demon's child. Takako well knew the kind of bitterness natural talent and skill born through diligence inspired in lesser men. Nonetheless, she was enthralled by the possibility that someone in her acquaintance was more than he seemed.

A soft rumble had Takako backing away from the parted screen in a hurry. She glanced around the room, cheeks flushed with guilt. The notion that Lord Seimei had heard her needled into her thoughts and would not leave, ridiculous as it were. The outer hall was empty. Silence reigned over the house, as complete as it was in the dead of night.

The rumbling sound repeated. Takako turned toward the screen, her heart beating like a trapped butterfly in her chest. She braced herself on her knees and leaned forward.

The shoji snapped open.

Takako fell. The house shook around her - BAM! something went, BAM! Takako tried to stand, but found her legs tangled in the skirts of her kimono. She could not see. She could not hear, ears filled with a resounding bam-bam-ta-ta-tam.

A drum, Takako thought.

"Is someone there?" she called out. Her voice was snatched away as soon as it left her lips, the sound melting into the fog.

The drum fell silent. Bam, it started again, quieter; bam-bam-ta-ta-tam. Takako pushed to her knees. She had fallen out of the main hall, so she must be on the veranda just outside it. All she needed to do was take a step, two at most, and she would be back inside the house.

"Do you need help, miss?"

Takako looked up. A man had appeared in the fog. His dress was foreign, heavy brocade and soft satin that lent him a noble air. Long black hair fell in neat lines around his handsome face. He smiled at Takako and offered his hand. Takako hid her face behind the sleeve of her kimono, flustered beyond speech. She had never been alone with a stranger before, let alone a man.

"There is no need for that. We have already seen each other, have we not?" the man bid, not unkindly.

The sharp whistle of a flute cut through the silence between them. Takako turned toward the sound, wishing to hear it more clearly.

"Do you like music?" the man asked, taking note of her interest.

Takako nodded. Her eyes skirted the man's mouth and went no higher.

"Do you play?"

Takako's voice emerged as a whisper. "My mother had me learn the shamisen."

"A difficult instrument to master. We happen to have one, but no one to play it. Would you mind lending us your talent?"

"We?" Takako repeated.

"Yes. My family is hosting a flower viewing party nearby. I lost my way in the fog, but now that there is music, I am certain we can find a path to them."

"I should not leave the grounds without permission," Takako said, but her heart was not in her words.

"It is really not far at all," the man promised.

A biwa joined the ensemble. The notes it plucked from the air came quickly, like dancing feet. There was little delicacy to the song but so much energy, so much joy. A world away from the somber tones Takako had grown up hearing.

The man took a step back. The fog swallowed him, prompting Takako to dart forward with a startled gasp. Her feet found the edge of the veranda.

"Down here."

Takako looked down. The man stood half a story below her, in the garden proper. He opened his arms.

"Come. I will catch you."

Takako hesitated. The fog dragged at the ends of her kimono and pulled her forward. Gay voices rang in the near distance, warm with laughter. Takako's heart danced to the rhythm of their joy. She bunched her hands in her kimono, raising the uppermost layers so she could walk.

A barrier made of light bloomed between her and the garden before she could take a single step.

Takako fell back with a gasp. "Seimei-sama!"

Abe no Seimei bowed his head in greeting. He did not lower the arm he had thrust in front of Takako, or address his sudden appearance. The Onmyōji's eyes were fixed on the man standing below the veranda.

"Strange time for visitors, Fujiwara-san," Seimei said mildly.

"Oh, I was not..." Takako shook her head. She could not hear the biwa, or the flute. The drum slowed and slowed. The chirping of birds and rustling of insects smothered its beat.

"She would be happier with us," said the man in the garden. His voice sounded different; sharper, higher in pitch. Meaner.

"Every creature must be with its kind," Seimei replied.

The stranger snarled. "Then you belong nowhere, child of Kuzunoha."

Seimei raised his fingers to his lips. The chant he murmured warmed Takako, lent color to her cheeks and strength to her limbs. In the garden, the man's body blurred from sight. A large silver fox crouched in his place, its teeth bared. Takako's voice froze in her chest.

"Begone," Seimei commanded.

The beast melted into the fog with a thin, unhappy cry. Takako fell to her knees. She bowed low and whispered her gratitude, the words threatening to dissolve into terrified sobs. Seimei knelt at her side, the man's presence a silent comfort.

Takako composed herself at length. She sat properly, not a little embarrassed despite the strange circumstances that had brought upon her fright. Seimei spoke before Takako could decide whether to offer the man an apology or a greeting.

"Spring is a time of change, Fujiwara-san. It is not impossible to don a new hide if it is now."

"I am happy as I am!" Takako cried. She regretted her tone a moment later, but could not bring herself to take back a single word.

Seimei smiled. His eyes creased up, accentuating the sharp lines of his face. "Then you are happier than most," he said.

Takako remembered the fox-man's words, and wondered. Kuzunoha was a familiar name, summoned whenever Lord Seimei displayed uncommon genius in his work. A fox-child, people whispered, wrapped in human skin.

"Is it difficult?" she asked at last, "Seeing the world as it is, rather than as it ought to be?"

"To the contrary. I find pretense most dull."

There was warmth in Seimei's voice. Takako glanced at the man again, and contained a startled chuckle. The Onmyōji lord sat with his feet swinging freely off the veranda, gazing into the garden with undisguised pleasure. After a moment of consideration, Takako slipped her own legs free from the rigid seiza she had naturally assumed in the man's presence. The beat of that lost, distant drum thrummed under her skin.

They watched the sun set over the gardens together. The last wisps of fog glinted silver with the dying light, caught in the branches of blooming cherry trees.