Alexa certainly knew that yokai existed. She, like everyone else living on a planet under the control of the Stateship, had been taught about them in middle school, and then again in high school when she had chosen to take history class as an elective. There had been mentions of the types of yokai, such as the kitsune, the kappa, oni, and of course, the tengu, but every lesson had never failed to make a point: that they were rare on the worlds that humanity colonised, relegated to the deep wilds beyond the colony-cities of Frindalis. She had certainly never seen a yokai with her own eyes, much less one up close, and as far as she knew, even depictions by the United Coalition Front were rare. They were campfire stories and cautionary tales and while fanciful rumours existed of them living among the UCF, she could not have imagined finding herself kneeling in front of one, almost two metres tall, wings spread wide as if to obscure the forest behind it.

On that moonless night, she could do nothing but stare. The tengu’s robes were baggy, straight out of an old samurai movie, but from the way the fabric rested she could still tell it was a lean, lanky creature, knotted with musculature. A sheathed blade rested through its sash, the handle worn from years of use. One wrong move and this creature would no doubt would cut her down, faster than any of them could possibly react.

And yet it just stood there, motionless, as its slitted eyes scanned them, as a hawk might regard a rabbit below.

Kurt was the first to stand, rising to meet the tengu, the top of his head only coming up to the tip of its hooked beak. “Apologies for summoning you.” He bowed with his head. “But there is an urgent matter to discuss that concerns the tengu.”

Plural, she thought. From where she was, its eyes were solely on Kurt now, scanning him up and down.

And then it spoke.

“I do not recognise you, human.” The Angloc was near perfect, without as much of a hint of an accent. In a way, that was jarring to her. “Which House do you represent?”

“I do not represent any of the Lower Houses.” Kurt kept his hands clasped together in front of himself. “I merely represent the interests of myself and my companions.” He broadly gestured towards Alexa and Aerin behind him.

“Independent? Is this meeting not protected by the agreement?” The tengu looked towards the convention behind them.

There was something in that single look that Alexa couldn’t identify at a glance. It wasn’t hate, she knew that much. Wariness? Fear? Longing?

“I bring no harm to the yokai of Kan'nanrei. I merely wish to inform you of the fate of one of your kin.”

The tengu took a step towards Kurt, who didn’t flinch. “No yokai have set foot in human territory, as per the agreement. You are mistaken.”

“He’s not lying.” Aerin rose to her feet. “We retrieved a body from deep within Kan'hokurei. They were a tengu warrior, as you are.”

The images of the ritual seal and the hardened candle wax and red string, they all came back to Alexa.

The wings on the tengu’s back shifted in the same way a human might shift in their seat. Its beady eyes locked onto Aerin instead. “You are a presumptuous ape. Kan'hokurei is not inhabited by our kind. The house of Ix forbade it.”

“Not for three hundred years,” Aerin said. “But before that, your ancestors lived in the north. I believe it’s from that period.”

“In three centuries even a tengu would have faded to ash.”

“Not if it was inside a spaceship,” Kurt said. “This is no trick, honoured one. We just want to return what is yours. Your people deserve their funerary rites.”

The tengu leaned towards Kurt, stopping inches from his face. “You used a signal encoded in the agreement. Independents do not know of this.”

“The Stateship and I have a long history too.” Kurt stood firm. “Ask yourself this: if I wanted to test you or lure you into a trap, why would I secretly encode it into a balloon and not just use a transmitter?”

Alexa’s eyes were drawn up and behind, towards the phoenix-zeppelin. She hadn’t noticed anything was off with the way it lit up. Moments, later, she was looking at the convention again, automatically plotting an escape route.

“It is true that our people inhabited the northern ridge before your arrival.” The tengu stepped back, getting out of Kurt’s face. It looked around for a moment, before returning its attention to them. “On your life, do you swear that the Houses are not listening?”

Kurt held his hands up. “I’m unarmed, and we’re alone. They’re distracted on other planets, and there are few of them here.”

Air blew out through the tengu’s nostrils, at the end of its curved beak. “We have tales of this. Old stories from the centuries before. An arrival, before the apes and the Houses came. I cannot recall the exact words, but it speaks of a tomb from the stars. An accursed place that was sealed. Buried.”

Buried. Alexa shivered, even though there was no wind.

“Your elders should know more, then?” Kurt asked.

The tengu nodded. “They are the ones which record these stories over the ages. I will have to consult with them.”

“Then I have a deal for you. We will bring your kin to your people, and she can discuss the truth with the elders.” He pointed at Aerin.

“They do not speak this human tongue.”

Aerin spoke up, but it was in a jumble of Xingram that Alexa couldn’t understand. Near the end though, she caught a single word: “Baekho”. It had never come up in a discussion between them, but as far as Alexa knew, that was her ancestry under the UCF’s umbrella.

The tengu tilted its head, surprised. “Most unanticipated. I was led to believe most of your lineages had fled to the stars.”

“There’s still some of us here. And I know the old ways.” Aerin snapped her fingers, producing a brief flame at the tips of her fingers.

Looking between Aerin and Kurt, the tengu seemed less tense than it had when it arrived. “Then I will pass this offer onto the clan. Deliberation may take a few nights.”

“Do you have a means of contacting us?” Kurt crossed his arms.

“We…have our ways,” the tengu said, stepping back in between the bushes, becoming obscured by the shade of the copse once more. “I shall take my leave, human.”

Kurt gave a deep bow.

With a fluttering of black wings, the tengu was gone, launching itself through the trees and into the night sky. Alexa could see the shape of its wings for a few seconds when it was still close enough, but in an instant, it blended into the darkness and vanished.

Aerin sighed. “Fuck you. Putting me on the spot like that.” She punched Kurt in the arm.

“Ow!” He hopped away. “You did well! I knew you’d have no problems!”

“Yeah, doesn’t mean you get to ambush me with that shit on my day off,” she spat. Her hardened expression turned into a soft smile as she faced Alexa. “Are you okay?”

Alexa stared at the spot where the tengu had been in the sky before she lost sight of it, mouth slightly agape.

“Lexi?”

She looked down at Aerin. Calm, nonplussed, confident Aerin. “Please explain to me what the hell just happened?”

Any novelty the balloon convention still held was all but decimated at that point, and so the three parted ways after Kurt had thrown Aerin more clunky credit hexagon and herded them back down from Mastiff’s Mound, past the statue of the hound that had been erected to honour its history, and down to the parking lot. Less than a minute later, they were in the back of his classic sedan, speeding off down the hillside towards central Hecate.

Alexa had seen and heard Kurt point at the driver and said something about a familial relation, but her mind was dancing with the trove of new information it had just been fed. All she heard was Aerin’s recounting, as they made it out of South Ashina and ran parallel to the overground line, retracing her route earlier that evening.

“You’ve heard of the reservations, right?” Aerin asked.

“Maybe? It wasn’t really the focus of my classes.”

“There’s certain areas on the mountains and on the other side of the Vestin that are for yokai habitation. Probably hundreds of small areas all over the continent.”

“How come I’ve never seen one until now? That agreement thing?”

“Uhuh. I haven’t read it because it’s pure legalese, but the short of it is that we don’t mess with them, they don’t mess with us.”

“Why, was there a war?”

Aerin shrugged. “If there was, it wasn’t with humanity. We’d know. But would you really be surprised, with everything the-” She glanced over to the driver, and then lowered her voice. “-the Stateship is capable of?”

“I…don’t know what the Stateship is capable of.”

“I don’t think anyone does.”

Alexa turned to look out the window, estimating where they were based on a noodle shop in the city centre she recognised, just as their car slipped into a patch of light traffic. “Did you see them work out there?”

“Out where?”

“On the other planets. You said you went all over. What was it like?”

Aerin sucked in a breath. “Where do I start? I didn’t go to Earth, but I was on Mars before the trouble with the Federation started. Just sightseeing, and then suddenly, there’s MODUS people everywhere trying to evacuate us before the fighting from Earth reached the colony. This was Aurelia, not Vespera.”

“What’s MODUS?”

“You haven’t seen the news?”

Alexa played with the edge of her seatbelt. “I don’t really like to listen to that stuff. It gets…I don’t know, it gets to me.”

“I don’t know what it stands for but it’s a Stateship organisation. They’re the ones actually doing the fighting.”

“I thought the Union Admiralty was fighting?”

“They are, and back in Sol I think it was Geoagris Systems as well. Turns out you can’t make a profit if someone else is trying to kill all of your customers. But MODUS is who makes all the strategies.”

“Well so much for the embargo around Earth.”

“That was before they were established. It was a bad idea anyway, and Booker knew that. Oh yeah, I met him…” Aerin turned away.

Alexa furrowed her brow. “Who?”

“Booker Warrington, the leader of MODUS. I don’t know him, I just saw him during the evac. Hell of a guy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a leader like…that.” Her eyes were…sparkling?

“Oh my god, you have a crush on him!” Alexa blurted, trying not to laugh.

“I do not!” Aerin protested, playfully slapping Alexa’s shoulder. “Someone told me he’s a really old vampire. Imagine the age gap! And the baggage.”

“Yeah I think I have enough of that.”

“I just really like how proactive he is. Like you can see why the Stateship got him instead of using one of their own people. You know, that lady stepping on Kurt’s toes gives me the creeps.”

“Me too,” Alexa said lazily, resting her head against the window. “I didn’t sleep much last night, I think it’s catching up to me.”

Aerin’s hand crept over hers on the empty seat between them. “We have tomorrow all to ourselves. I can have someone carry my bags over from the hotel.”

“You’re staying over again?” She smiled, knowing full well what the answer was.

“You missed me, didn’t you?”

The hand moved like a spider, climbing past her hand and up the side of her shorts.

Alexa caught it before it could reach the inner part of her leg. “I’m not really a fan of broadcasting.”

“Ah.” Aerin pulled her hand back. “You saw nothing, driver.”

“My name is Hanlon Whitlock,” the driver said flatly. “And I’m not your driver, I’m just doing my uncle a favour.”

“...oh.” Alexa straightened up. “Sorry, I didn’t catch it the first time.“

“Please try not to do anything that’ll…damage the seats. This isn’t my car either, and the leather is very expensive.”

“We won’t do anything.” Aerin beamed, grabbing Alexa’s hand again.

Central Hecate went by in a neon-bathed flash, and soon enough they had passed Via Apicus and the Forum where Alexa got her few groceries. In no time at all, they had turned the corner next to the park, and were on Globi street once more.

Hanlon silently parked outside of Alexa’s house, and as soon as they got off, peeled off without as much as a word to either of them.

“He’s jealous,” Aerin said, breaking into a laugh.

Alexa laughed, too.

They laughed together all the way to the front door, where the drowsy Alexa fumbled to get her keys to unlock it, and then they burst inside, going separate ways. Aerin went to the living room to toss her windbreaker, and Alexa to the bathroom to pep herself up.

A splash of water brought reality back into focus for her, and she walked back out, throwing her shoulder bag onto her couch-slash-bed.

Aerin unzipped her windbreaker and slung it over a chair in the corner, revealing a top almost exactly like the one she had worn earlier in the week. She was staring at the painting on the easel. “Oh, you’ve made progress.”

“You like it?” Alexa walked up to her, leaning against her.

“It’s still missing something.”

“Lots of details to go.”

They turned to each other, and their faces were close. Alexa felt Aerin’s warm break brush onto her face. Her plump limps, stained with only a light layer of lipstick, dominated Alexa’s entire field of vision.

“Are we really going to do this?” Aerin asked softly.

“Do you want to?”

Alexa cupped her face in her hands. “We both know my answer. I don’t think you’ve given me yours.”

“...it’s been a long time.”

“It might be a long time again once this whole project is over.”

Aerin stared deep into her eyes. “Then let’s not waste this chance.”

Alexa leaned in. The moments they lips meshed together, it was like her body was an oil drum, and Aerin was the spark that lit it all aflame. The conflagration overcame her whole body, flushing her almost like a fever, but this was tingly, and nice and warm like nothing else she had tried.

Except perhaps, the first time, years ago in their shared flat at the university.

In seconds Aerin had dragged her to the stairs, fully intending to take it to the only real bed upstairs, but Alexa pulled away as she felt the lowest step.

“Wait,” she gasped, the air in her lungs critically depleted.

“Yeah?”

“Shouldn’t we take a shower?”

“I took one before I left the motel. I was out all day.”

“...same. I woke up late.”

Aerin grinned, and dove back in for another session, before turning and pulling her by the hand up the steps. At the top, they were back to being tangled in each other as they pushed through the door, and Aerin kicked it closed.

And yet, in their fiery obsession with one another, neither had noticed that the attic hatch was once again jawed open all the way, with the ladder pulled down.