[CENTER][h1][color=#814b46]SEIMEI KEIKO[/color][/h1][/center][right][sub]tags - [@Hero][@Queen Arya][/sub][/right][hr]

[indent][color=#814b46]"Sounds good to me, Tsu-kun!"[/color]

The saccharine words on Keiko's tongue felt as foreign as the dazzlingly bright smile she wore to accompany them. It was almost enough for her to want to break her little act and see the taste washed away with her usual irreverence. But the results were [i]far[/i] too pleasing for that to come to pass. Though she played at hanging on Tsubasa's every word, the young signkeeper remained acutely attuned to Fumiko's reaction. There was anger at first—a genuine, roiling rage—then surprise, perhaps at the depth of wrath she managed to feel. Surprise quickly became pink-faced embarrassment that flickered for only a few more moments... then the mask returned. The facade that hid away true feelings behind mock serenity and the falsest pleasantries. 

Ordinarily, Keiko would disdain that mask. Given what she had glimpsed beneath? There was only smug satisfaction to be had in its wake. She had found a wound and ground all the salt she could gather on such short notice into it. She could relish in that triumph until it soothed her wounded pride.

[color=00FF36]"Hey, Fumi-chan!"[/color]

The triumph was to be short-lived, however. The sound of the village's most blinding beam of sunlight shook her from her reverie moments too late. Had she been more vigilant, she might have managed to decouple from Tsubasa before they were spotted. Her skin all but crawled at the sight of the knowing smile Haruhi shot them and the comment that followed. She wanted nothing more than to end the charade then and there before the sign-adverse farmer got it in her head that they were a proper [i]couple[/i] and went trundling around the town declaring it to everyone she could find. 

But just as quickly she appeared, she vanished into the ogre's cave beyond, leaving Keiko with little more to do than try to hide how frazzled the potential fallout made her feel.

[color=814b46]"Ah, yeah, let's uhm... Let's... get going, Takamori-san?"[/color]

The squabbling of youth had occupied Keiko's mind such that she had nearly missed the shift in the environment, swift though it was, until the master's niece invited them to head off. Something had changed very starkly while they feuded over the village's most eligible idiot, and it was not until the hoofbeats of the arriving caravan hit her ears that she found herself recognizing the gravity of the situation. Like most of the village's inhabitants, Keiko watched as the armed convoy of men arrived in their humble home, letting her grip on Tsubasa's arm fall slack as she glanced between every one of them.

The horses they rode. The way they dressed. The... [i]things[/i] they held. It was different. All of it was different. 

It was [i]foreign[/i].

And that made it feel wrong. The utopia of Heiseina and the valley it claimed had no place for the unusual. Keiko had been made very aware of that all her life. Her eyes instinctively darted toward the direction they had rode in from. There weren't any hamlets she knew of down that way. No homestead could house so many men and their steeds. All that lay in that direction, far off through the forests and mountains beyond was the edge of the world itself—the old gate that she had only glimpsed from afar.

Her heart skipped a beat as she reconciled with that idea. That the rough-looking man who approached the humble forge had an origin from beyond.

Tsubasa was the first to act, dear, sweet fool that he was. Had her grip not slackened, she might have tried to hold fast to him to keep him from so readily approaching the danger before them. But instead, he disentangled himself from her reach and met the older gentleman with all the confidence in the world. Resisting the urge to curse under her breath, she was left with a choice. Remain, and see how things played out, or follow her instinct and hurry back to her tower home to warn her mother of the storm to come. 

Perhaps to her detriment, curiosity won the day.[/indent]