Her pinky stump throbbed when the weather changed, and sometimes when weather not of this world changed. She didn't think it was actually the scar that did that, just her own mental projection--a storm of a kind was the reason she'd had her finger cut, and so she projected her subconscious detection onto the scars. She could always rationalize away that she'd seen certain signs, because in hindsight, no matter what kind of storm it was, there were always signs.

Except this time.

She'd listened when her pinky started throbbing worse than it had ever before, and she'd gone and hidden in the o-san's restroom, taking her sword and lifting up the tatami mat and quickly carving out a hole in the floor so she could hide under the floorboards with the tatami mat settling back over the floor.


Inspiration: Short story titled, "Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony Who Saves The World." True fax.
Story Potential: High. I wanted to keep writing.
Notes: Some sort of ceremonial knife was used and some of the knife's specialness rubbed off. Plus this fits in with the "great sacrifice is required for power" sort of thing. After whatever entirely unforeseen, hint-free disaster this may be, her next step will be to find the specialist who removed the finger, to find out what's going on. Don't keep the o-san part. That's not even a word. Unless somebody's name is o. Though Osan is a city, and apparently also means giving birth.

The steps of the ritual were the same from generation to generation. Little changed, and so all knew their part. The father, the grandfather, the son; the mother, the grandmother, the daughter. It had all continued unchanged and in perfect harmony until the day that she was born. It was a shock unprecedented in the history of the family. To have a child born neither son nor daughter would ruin the ritual. Should he sweep the ritual floor clean, or slaughter the fowl? She simply shrugged her shoulders when his parents asked her when he was about fifteen, the age of the ritual, whether she felt more girl or boy. He felt neither, and both, and varied what she answered to according to whim, time of day, and--

Inspiration: Time ticked over, and for some reason, I tend to randomly start writing about "steps of the dance," but I wanted to avoid that, and it became ritual.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Though I kinda like the idea of indeterminate gender being the reason that family traditional ritual/magic becomes messed with.