[ WP ] Free write . Write the first short story that pops into your head .

She breathes quietly into the night, a light, gentle cloud of mist gathering and dispersing just before her eyes. She shifts her focus from the immediate to the distant. The slant of the roof is precisely the same, the tiles no different, the color a drab gray-green, just as they've always been. She knew the internal layout, the hallways, the rice-paper doors, the lanterns and their heavily scented coals sitting at each hall-junction. They were not only for light, but also for the kami-of-the-corners, this family's particularly favorite god-lets. 
 
 She would have chuckled lightly to herself, should this be the place for such a thing, or should she have the ability to do so any more. Instead her lips curled up at the corners as she rolled the thought around in her mind as one might do a cool fruit drink -- savoring each individual aspect of it, all its notes and tones. 
 
 She called the kami god-lets because she knew the truth. They were real enough, sure, but they were n't any more influential on the world than a leaf might change the nature of the tree on which it grew. They were more the result of the world around it than the cause. 
 
 No, she knew well enough those that would guide, direct, and instruct. She knew well enough those that would shape, and change, and form. They had their own smell. Those with light smelling of cherry blossom, hyacinth, brook-water-rapids-air, and cinnamon. They were truly gorgeous to behold, their very voices embracing you deeply from the inside, with a love and affection and desire-to-please-and-comfort that came in waves, and could sometimes be unbearably gorgeous, but would always subside just before breaking your heart. They were lovely, and their faces would radiate, even as their words spoke clear and beautiful truth, even in its harshness. 
 
 Then, there were those who seemed to suck the light out of a space. The sulfur-burning-charred-charcoal-hearts smelling ones. Their scales glistened with a black that seemed to reflect the light even while absorbing all of it. They blew an endless stream of smoke from each nostril, forming a wispy mustache that one might find on an Old Uncle, or a teacher-from-the-mountaintops. There was a fierce fire behind their eyes, and in their mouths when they opened them to speak, with tongues of flame forming the suggestion of teeth. Their voices felt like fear, and sounded like despair. They were not always full of hate-indeed, they were more cold and controlled and calculating than hateful-but their very nature would force you to look away, their words pummeling you with a sense of less-than-you-should-be and distant-warning-danger. 
 
 It was to one of the second kind that she now turned and looked, her eyes peering from the small slit in the blacker-than-night head wrap she had donned after dressing in her night-movement-clothes. She again thought of the kami, the god-lets, and thanked them for her silent movements on this night. They would like that, she thought. 
 
'You are ready to enter? You are ready to bring their tongues me? There will be no problems?', boomed the great, vast, blackness and fire that was the creature sitting next to her. 
 
 She shook her head no. 
 
 And there would n't be. She had no trouble in her heart at all with what she was about to do. She would gather their heads, bring them back to this dark and foul beast of greatness, and her sons would grow to their fullness around the pools of the beasts of light, knowing only the beauty of their gorgeous love and language. They would serve their benevolent caretakers into eternity, and never know the stain of blood or hate or fire upon their hearts or heads or hands. Her two sons would find only beauty in all of time. 
 
 And all she had to do was this one little thing. 
 
 She stood to stretch her legs before leaping from the top of the tree where she had been crouched. 
 
 She uttered her final words in this realm: 
 
 `` Mother. Father. I'm coming home...''
