“I will fight.” I said.
Aira bowed.
“So, you lift your spirits and search your way through the brush to the next opening where you start to read the summer season’s hints,” he rustled around behind the counter as if plucking at the earth itself. “Here we forage for vegetables in this takiawase course, exploring through meadows, rich-soiled slopes and back into the thick wood.”
I looked to the small brown plate Aira placed in front of me, little bits placed around like a miniature garden with vegetables vaguely recognizable, but representative of what I know to exist.
“You dig your hands into the earth and pull up amazing imo, warabi, kamonasu, daikon, goyu, fukinoto, sansei…sweet potato, fiddlehead, round eggplant, radish, bitter melon, butterbur buds and other mountain vegetables. Each morsel bursting with nutrients, boasting the story of its land’s history. Thousands of years of seeds and bulbs flavoured by the air, water, and soil of the seasons.”
I bit into the lightly cooked and shock-chilled daikon, instantly bitter but subtle in its infiltration.
“Carrying on through the landscape, you collect more vegetables and roots, enjoying bits as you go. Nigami fills your mouth, but you welcome this bitterness, a sign of the highest resolution of a mature Japanese palate. From the earliest times, man has avoided this of the five facets of taste because bitterness and astringency are but the nobler characteristics of deadly poisons. To overcome these most basic instincts and fears is a form of braveness like no other.”
I chewed down on the bitter melon, cringing ever so slightly in wait of something that never came to fruition. These tiny, earthy vegetables shifted me to a rustic, cool place, a place that invited deeper consideration.
“You come upon a village in the highlands, there before you is a dark-skinned creature waiting…” His words trailed off and I saw her, like a treacherous miracle.
These words, these concepts, this representation of myself and of a girl. With another taste from the plate the daikon and eggplant mingled and whirled around and I came face to face with her. Whether in my mind, or some distant place, I did not know.
I couldn’t speak, and she only watched as I watched her. What kind of dream state was this? There was some space between us, but we could only stand staring, no movement to close the gap. She wore nothing on her feet, no makeup on her face. Her hair washed by the wild sea and of course, her skin glowed like a polished violin. The slight expression she wore troubled me, almost angered but apologetic all at once. I fought to move through this reverie, and she came slightly closer before the spell was broken.
“But you must carry onward in your exploration and discovery, so this warm village and cold heart are left behind,” Aira broke through.
An excerpt from somewhere deep within The Sushi Prophecies