The Retreating Storm

The Storm God stood on the high cliffs that overlooked the land, his eyes narrowed, and his arms spread. His chest heaved as clouds churned violently and thunder rolled overhead. The earth itself was bracing itself beneath his call. And yet, much to his frustrations, the rainfall was uneven and unruly. The rain fell in heavy sheets, battering the barren trees before ceasing completely and then starting all over again. Lightning cracked loudly, striking far too close to the boats on the water and the villages below. A cedar tree split and splintered, smoking as a branch fell across the river.

Below, faint cries rose from the valley—mortals scrambling to shelter, praying as thunder rattled through the hills. Their fear cut through the Storm God’s chest like a blade. He had always taken pride in their reverence for rain’s gift and lightning’s warning. But now their fear was not reverence. It was sheer terror.

Raikuro’s jaw tightened, rain mixed with sweat streaming down his broad face. He exhaled sharply, as though he could force the storm to obey with sheer will alone. Instead, the sky answered with another uncontrolled, jagged bolt that lit up the sky and almost caused more harm.

“Enough.” Mizuchi’s voice cut through the tumult like a wave crashing on the shore. The Water God’s robes clung to his thin frame, completely soaked through, but his eyes were hard. “I will not continue to watch you endanger the mortals you claim to protect.”

Raikuro’s own glare was sharp enough to split stones. “This is my storm, Mizuchi. Do not mistake a mere stumble for failure.”

“Stumble?” Mizuchi’s usual serenity had been replaced with irritation. “This week alone, you have capsized two ships, shattered trees, and destroyed a home—and almost damaged several more. How long will you continue to refuse to accept that you are no longer the master of what you command? You cannot be restored on your own and if you cannot set aside pride, your powers will remain fragmented forever.”

As if agreeing with Mizuchi, the sky groaned, another rumble rattling the peaks of the lands. For the first time, Raikuro’s eyes flickered downward to his trembling hands. His fingers curled into fists, wishing to crush his own weakness.

Amayori’s voice cut in from behind them, sharper than the thunder in the sky above. "Brother." She strode forward, her eyes glinting with the stubborn fire only a younger sister could wield against her elder. "You know he is correct. You can feel it just as clearly as the rest of us. Our powers have returned, yes, but they are unwieldy after years of disuse. They faded when the Silence descended upon the land, choking our abilities and weakening our divine essence. They are wild and untamed now. And you—" 

She stepped closer, close enough that he had no choice but to meet her eyes. "You cannot control them without help."

Raikuro hesitated, feeling the weight of her words like an anchor pulling him towards a decision he feared. The path before him was one of acceptance and relinquishing control. It loomed like a threshold he was too proud to cross. What would it mean for him, the great Storm God, to admit a need for assistance, to turn away from the legacy of infinite power he once commanded with ease? The thought stung as sharp as the lightning from his storms, yet echoed with a whisper of truth he found difficult to silence. But he would not relinquish control, not yet.

Raikuro bared his teeth, his dark eyes flashing with annoyance. “You would have me crawl to that mortal-born girl that does not even belong here? You would have me admit that I, one of the eldest gods, must bend to her hands?”

Amayori did not flinch, nor did she back down. Her hair, bright as the sun at noon, whipped around her as she snapped back, “If you call it crawling, then get on your hands and knees and crawl! Pride will drown this land faster than any flood. And Mizuchi, who is older and wiser than you, might I add, cannot control the overload you create from your stubbornness.”

Raikuro opened his mouth, but Amayori tightened her jaw. “You saw what she has done; we all saw it. Without Shion, we would still be powerless. Without Shion, the Silence would swallow up the land, killing off the people in another century. If that! Izumo would have rotted away. She has earned her place among us; you just don’t want to admit that the scribe was right.”

For a heartbeat, the storm stilled, and a shaft of sunlight pierced through the chaos, breaking apart the clouds. Raikuro’s jaw worked, his wide chest rising and falling with the weight of words unspoken.

Mizuchi exhaled through his nose and gently placed a hand on Amayori’s shoulder as he stared at Raikuro. “If you refuse Shion’s assistance, you will destroy everything you swore to protect, as well as yourself. Stubbornness and strength may resemble each other, but they are not to be mistaken for one another, Raikuro.”

The rain eased to a gentle mist, but the Storm God did not relent easily. His gaze turned toward the distant temple where Shion resided, shadows flickering in his eyes.

“Shijima no Kami reborn…” he muttered with disgust, as if the words were a bitter medicine. “We shall see if silence can truly master thunder.”

“The objective is not to master,” Mizuchi began, signing flow to guide the cracked limbs downstream. “It is to teach.”

Raikuro’s reply came in a low, thunderous growl, his exhaustion evident. “I do not learn from others. I teach and I command.”

Amayori exchanged glances with Mizuchi, who shrugged, pushing his hair off his shoulder, “He will see reason. When the storm within him tears itself apart, he will have no choice.”

For a long time, there was a tense silence amongst the three gods. The only sound was the patter of rain softening against the parched earth. Raikuro straightened slowly, his storm-dark eyes narrowing toward the Moon Temple once more.

Amayori, however, did not push further. Instead, a trace of hope softened her voice, “Better he sees before it comes to that, but oh well. My brother, you will see. And that is the point.”

Above them, the clouds broke apart further, spilling sunlight over the drenched cliffs. Yet as Amayori and Mizuchi walked away to leave Raikuro to his thoughts, the horizon still held a rim of black storm, waiting for the god to try and tame it once more.—​The rain arrived before Raikuro, accompanied by the sharp scent of wet dirt mingling with incense from the temple, creating a heady aroma in the air. Lightning crackled overhead, its brilliance casting fleeting shadows against the temple walls as thunder rolled like drums of war across the temple. Shion raised her head, the soft glow of candlelight reflecting in her eyes, and held her hand out the window as droplets covered her arm with heavy insistence.

The slap of mud underfoot was audible in the courtyard where Amayori had hesitated the day prior, now churned with water and mud. Each bolt of lightning illuminated the towering figure as he descended the temple’s steps, his form outlined starkly against the turbulent sky.

Shion closed the window and headed into the main hall of the small Moon Temple. Shosei had already gathered there with Yuue and Hikari, Yahata trailing quietly behind them. He crossed his arms over his chest, and Hikari hugged Shion’s leg. Shion gently brushed her hand through the girl’s hair and gave a reassuring smile.

Raikuro’s presence dwarfed even Yahata’s. His broad shoulders were cloaked in a dark hoari that was soaked and tattered. His spiked hair glistened with small rain droplets, and his dark gray eyes locked on Shion as though she were the one trespassing. He strode forward, each step accompanied by the soft growl of thunder, his aura oppressive enough to make Hikari run and hide behind Shosei’s robes.

“So,” Raikuro rumbled, his voice booming. “The outsider lives. And more than that, she disrupts our balance by becoming the second mortal to ascend to godhood.”

Yahata stepped forward swiftly, his sword half-raised. Raikuro’s gaze flicked from Shion toward him, condemning. “And you—fallen War God, shame of our kin. To think that you would kneel for her. Do you believe that your weakness now absolves you of what your followers did to Shijima’s faithful?”

Yahata’s jaw tightened, but his silence in that moment spoke volumes.

Raikuro’s expression twisted with contempt and a hint of pain as he looked at Shion. "The Silence began with the death of your kind. And now you impose yourself on our world, showing no signs of returning to yours." His words were laced with bitterness, memories of a time when his once serene storms were used to protect and nurture crops. Now, they were mournfully destructive and difficult to control.

"Do not believe that you will convince me that the Silence will end with you. I remember when my efforts to save these villages from drought turned futile. When the clouds I summoned evaporated to nothingness, the villagers were left scorched and eventually starved. Ever since, hope became a fool's dream."

Before, Shion’s hands would have trembled, but not anymore. She had people who believed in her. While it was true that she had no desire to go home, it was because she had nothing and no one to return to. She lifted her hands and signed with fierce confidence, “I am not Silence. I am hope. And I belong here.”

“Hope?” Raikuro barked a laugh like a clap of thunder, tossing his head back before glaring back down at her. “Hope did not stop famine, and hope does not mend rivers. ‘Hope’ is nothing more than a word that mortals cling to when they believe the gods have abandoned them.”

Mizuchi strode into the temple with a calm demeanor and a sense of grace. “And yet, Raikuro, it was her hands that did mend my waters. The divine lake around my temple lives again; the rivers breathe and babble. You saw them yourself. And how else would you explain the reawakening of our powers with her arrival here?”

“Storms do not bend; water does, and it always has,” Raikuro snarled.

Outside, lightning tore across the sky, visible from the temple's now-open doors. Hikari screamed and held onto Shosei even more tightly, who scooped the child up into his arms and held her close. Yahata stepped closer, ready to intervene if needed, and even Yuue’s body was tense.

Instead, Shion stepped forward, refusing to relent. She held Raikuro’s gaze as she slowly stepped backward out the door and into the courtyard, her copper hair instantly clinging to her face. She raised her hands again. “Protect.”

“Is she insane?” Shosei asked, more in awe than anything else.

“Perhaps,” Yahata replied tensely from beside him, watching with anxious yet affectionate. His posture was still tense, ready to rush outside at any moment.

“Trust the process,” Mizuchi told them both, taking Hikari from Shosei.

“She knows what she faces,” Yuue added.

A shield of pale light enveloped her body, shielding her from the rain that now harmlessly pattered against it. Thunder rolled and lightning crackled, but the barrier did not break.

Raikuro’s laughter fell flat, and his eyes narrowed. He surged forward, conjuring up a gale that howled sharply through the courtyard, whipping Shion’s robes and hair about and sending loose stones tumbling. Her shield held, as did her gaze.

Any fear she had been replaced with her resolve and the promise she had made to herself to become hope.

Each heavy gust of wind tangled her hair, each crack of thunder reverberated through her skeleton, but her shield stayed.

“You will only destroy it all at this rate,” she signed, straining against the wind. She shifted her weight before signing more. “Hear me.”

Suddenly, Raikuro faltered, and the gale eased; the thunder grew to a distant mutter rather than a roar. The two deities stared at one another, breath fogging in the cool air. Rain streaked down Raikuro’s face like tears he refused to shed over the past two millennia.

Yuue stepped into the courtyard first, lifting the hem of her robes as she did so. Her voice gently broke the silence as she spoke, “Raikuro, my brother. Please, just listen to her. Do you not feel the storm inside you answering her?”

Raikuro closed his eyes tightly. The clouds above shifted, thinning just enough for a shaft of moonlight to pierce through. The moon, much higher in the sky, illuminated the fragile sprout that Amayori’s warmth had coaxed into being. As if heralding a new dawn, a large rainbow arched across the horizon, its colors vibrant against the retreating storm. The sight echoed the promise of renewal, a whisper of transformation through nature's timeless symbols. The tiny plant swayed under the rain, but it did not break—much like Shion.

As Raikuro’s eyes opened, there was doubt in his gaze. There was no doubt in Shion, nor in what his sister had said, but doubt in himself.

“Storms have potential to break, but they also cleanse,” Shion signed, looking at him with a gentle gaze that was wise beyond her years.

Raikuro swallowed hard. The longer he stared at her, he saw it; it was the faint outline of Shijima no Kami. Slowly, his massive hands curled into fists at his sides, then loosened again. The storm receded further and the moon’s light shone even brighter as stars twinkled above. The oppressive weight of his existence lightened somewhat, and with it, the air itself seemed easier to breathe. He neither knelt nor bowed before her.

 When he finally spoke, however, his voice was no longer thunderous. It was instead the low hum of distant rain. “You are not what I expected, girl. Perhaps you are Hope. Perhaps. Leave room in your schedule to train me first thing in the morning.”

He turned sharply and strode away, leaving Yuue, Yahata, and Shion in the soft drizzling rain as Mizuchi, Shosei, and Hikari watched on from the temple’s entryway.

She knew it was enough. No, it was more than enough. A storm did not need to vanish in an instant; it only needed to learn to pass.

In the distant valleys, a new peace settled in, where the storm's ferocity had reigned in terror. The villagers cautiously emerged from their shelters, their faces upturned to the softened sky, curious. Children began to laugh and play in the puddles left behind by the rain, their giggles echoing through the streets as they splashed about. Lanterns were relit in homes, casting a warm and welcoming glow across the village, while relief washed over the faces of the elders who understood the significance of this storm. It marked a new beginning, a gentle promise of harmony between nature and the divine