Fire in a Tea Cup

Just outside the gates, the birds chirped their morning songs. Animals peeked out of their burrows awaking to greet the new day. Even the wind seemed excited.

“How ironic,” the woman thought as she walked through the halls. Inside the temple, just a few feet from all that life was the overwhelming feeling of bereavement. Not a single cheery sound was made inside the walls. Even the crickets that masked themselves in the reeds chirped slowly and mournfully as if in respect for the lost. Besides the muted hum of crickets the only two things that dared make a sound were the occasional creaking of floorboards as the monks made their daily rounds, and the chants they sang as they walked. The breeze carefully lifted the notes and carried them thought the grounds; almost as if it were a newly born child and the winds were afraid of any harm that may come to it. Like a lullaby the chants flowed up and down, swaying like the sea. Serenity was the purpose of these hypnotizing chants. The monks wanted peace and serenity to flow through the temple and its permanent guests.

This was a temple for the dead, but not for the everyday person. This was a temple for the warriors who died in the great war of Onigumo three years ago.

“It was not a war,” seethed the woman as she continued to striding through the halls, “it was a slaughter.” These thoughts irritated her as she flowed through the halls turning left and right as if by instinct. She knew the temple like the back of her hand.Who wouldn’t after coming to the temple single every day for the past three years?

For three years the woman had been labeled as a widow. For three years the villagers shunned her for the way her husband died. For three, long, tiring years she has drank her morning tea with an empty cup at the head of the table as her only companion.

Soon the woman came to a doorway hidden deep within the temple. The light that would flood the hallway as she slid open the door did not exist. Instead darkness seeped out and cloaked her as she glided into the hidden room. “Hello, dear husband,” she sneered in the direction of the dark figure towards the back of the room. As she neared all the details showed. The slenderness of his neck, the perfectly symmetrical curves of his body, and the gleam of polished brass across his face. “What a lovely urn for my dear husband,” she spat out dear as if it were poison . The fact was that her husband was truly dead. He died in a fire, saving a woman he loved.