Suizen, Stormlost Echo

"Though its scent lingers, the flower's form has long since scattered. Such is the transience of life; such is ephemeral beauty." So were the words of strange wisdom from a stranger, forgotten land. Sages and fools alike pondered the passage of time, each inevitably concluding that indeed, everything is temporary. A gentle, wistful melancholy pervaded their world and was rooted in their hearts; even a shattered vase was all the more beautiful for its cracks, lacquered in liquid gold. The gods of their land, known as kami, were symbolic of such transient cycles. As forces of nature, they were simultaneously fleeting and omnipresent: like the flash of lightning or the swirl of incense smoke. Given form, they were beings and took names; yet among them was a human of such extraordinary circumstance that he was counted among their ranks. None can say who or what the ascended kami Suizen was in life, only that while his flesh was fragile, his spirit was not. He etched his being not only in the roar of thunder, but in the echoing silence that followed. Despite his fearsome symbolism, Suizen is polite and demure, and is said intervene in affairs far more than any other. Not long after, a trickster slipped among the faithful—a centuries-old fox, whose cruel wiles displaced an elderly priest and fooled the followers. Suizen confronted the beast and vanquished him, quenching his ambition forever; neither hide nor hair was seen of the fox thereafter, but the shroud over the land that followed in his wake seemed to portend worse. It would take a slow spiraling end for the two to meet again—but this time, among the ashes of a sunken past beneath the absent moon.