Kuni and the Magical Kitsuneudon
Kitsuneudon
Mundane, nonmagical kitsuneudon is a beloved comfort dish across the continent, and is even gaining attention in Khayyam and the Kula'Wongai. It is a thick wheat noodle soup with a broth of kombu (seaweed), katsuobushi (dried tuna flakes) and sometimes miso, topped with seasoned & fried tofu pockets, fish cakes and scallions.
Tofu in particular is associated with kitsune (fox spirits) due to another classic myth where the fox goddess Inari O-Mikami raided the heavenly pantries of O-Aru to gift barley, fruit and soybeans to the First Mortals of Waking Materia. A story for another time.The Tale
The Son
Kunimaru, called Kuni for short, was a boy who lived alone with his father near an alpine lake on a mountain. His father tended the crops about the household while Kuni fished at the lake. He was a kind-hearted boy, and enjoyed throwing spare bits of fish to the local foxes when he roasted one for his midday meal.
But there came a time where the weather grew dry and the ground uncooperative. Some months they barely grew enough yams, turnips or azuki beans to accompany the fish Kunimaru caught, let alone trade in town for rice and other supplies.
Slowly but surely, Kuni's aging father fell into a state of unrest, then sickness. The boy's days became long and his nights short: under daylight he tended the crops, cared for his father and made trips to the lake when able; by night he did his best to sleep through his father's pained mumblings. Most of the rants were incoherent, but at times narratives emerged: one that struck Kuni most vividly was a dream (or memory?) his father had from childhood, when he got lost and encountered an old udon hut in the middle of the forest. Kuni pieced it together as best he could: it seems the smell was so inviting, his father traded his day's gatherings for a small bowl of the noodle soup. Charmed by the boy, the chef -- a mysteriously cloaked old lady -- took out her chopsticks and, with an air of reverence, placed upon the noodles a perfectly golden-fried pocket of tofu. She claimed, with a whisper, that it was made from the blessed soybeans of Inari O-Mikami's own grove, hidden in the in-betweens of the world.
Even if his father was not to survive, Kuni longed to give him one more bit of happiness, something as beloved as this soup clearly was.The Fox
The next day, as he fished, Kunimaru was exhausted and ill of temper. As a fox approached, expectant, the boy flew in a brief rage, sending the animal a chunk of stone instead of fish. The stone skipped off a nearby boulder, and the fox disappeared silently into the forest. Kuni felt an immediate pang of guilt. He remembered his father's dream-memory of the kitsuneudon, and how foxes were able to travel those in-betweens of the world, where the old women claimed the ingredients came from. How disappointed his ailing father would be in him.
As the week passed, his father's health deteriorated further, but every day Kuni made the trek to the lake to make an offering of fish to the fox he had insulted. Finally, on the third day, the fox again emerged from the treeline, sniffing the air downwind of Kuni's roasted lunch. The boy's heart rose.
"Ogitsunesan," Kuni called out, decorating the fox's name in polite formality. "Heed me, if you're able. My father is very sick, and dreams only of a meal he once had, made from the blessed ingredients of Inari O-Mikami's own grove. I humbly request your wisdom. Is there any truth to the story? Can the Fox Goddess's blessings be found even here, in this remote place?"
But the fox turned away silently, leaving the boy to his regrets.The Grove
On the fourth day, Kunimaru heard the screams of animals in mortal combat, but also pained voices in an odd timbre.
A woman's voice: "Please. I know not of what you speak. This will avail you nothing. Begone."
"The hairless apes are smart and foxes are liars," barked a male voice. "This one knows what you hide! From the man-pup's own mouth! Groves in the Old Places! Divine fruits and fat squirrels! This one will receive!"
"Receive my curse," the woman rasped. More bestial screams followed.
Kunimaru crested a final rise to see the fox, backed against a line of boulders, with a great badger towering over it, claws bloodied. Both animals were startled by the boy's arrival, but after a brief pause, the badger made to descend upon the fox once again.
"Enough! Away with you!" cried Kunimaru. Holding his walking staff above his head like a katana, he charged the beast. He rapidly realized it was the largest badger he had ever seen, easily the size of a mastiff, but it was too late now for his bravery to falter. He walloped the monster on its side, feeling a rib crack.
The badger turned on Kuni with deep yowl, leaving the fox and shuffled towards him intimidatingly, but the cries of an angry badger were not as frightening as the pained cries of his sleeping father, and so Kuni clouted it again, this time over the head. Its great, flexible body twisted with pain, throwing up a mighty dirt cloud. Heart beating in his ears, Kuni held the stick high, ready for the beast to emerge from the plume of dust, but instead he heard the shuffling of ferns and the pained growls fading into the distance.
After a moment's silence, broken only by Kuni's heavy breathing, the boy knelt forward, reaching a hand out to the fox. It started away, but did not disappear this time. Wordlessly, the fox limped off, albeit in a way that invited Kuni to follow. They seemed to travel not only deeper into the forest but also sideways in an odd, indescribable sense. Colours and angles and smells grew increasingly unfamiliar. The ambient noise of the forest descended into a quiet hush. Kuni saw flora even his keen herbalist's eye didn't recognize.
After some unknowable passing of time, they arrived. Though he only knew it from the tales, Kuni recognized it immediately: it was one of the first groves to grow when Inari sowed the earth with seeds stolen from the heavenly stores of O-Aru. The boys wide eyes beheld wild buckwheat, carrot stalks up to his hips, fruits glittering with health, soybean plants rose so tall and healthily they looked like trees. Kuni heaped his thanks and blessings onto the Humble Fox, gathered some ingredients, and returned home.Father
As carefully and slowly as he was willing to risk given his father's deterioration, Kunimaru got to work preparing the meal. He used all the dried fish and seaweed they had left and set them to simmer for the dashi. He ground and kneaded the buckwheat into a fine dough, chopped it into thick noodles and set them aside. Finally, he crushed, boiled and separated out the tofu from the soybeans. While the noodles boiled, he fried the tofu lovingly, adding a sprinkle of allspice they save only for the most sacred of holidays.
He turned to find his father conscious, enticed awake by the smell.
"Father," Kuni cried, "What an adventure I just had. I was at the lake when I heard a fox and badger fighting and --" but from the look on his father's face, the boy could tell he was not in a wakeful enough state to understand. "But never mind," Kuni continued, "know that you're still blessed by the gods, father, even after all this time."
"Blessed... by the gods...?" The old man mumbled, dreamlike. "Why... that is no secret. I have a son, you see... and every day... he reminds me..." His father's voice trailed off again. Tears running down his cheeks, Kuni sat his father upright and fed him the udon. The old man returned to sleep, with a great smile on his face.
Some time during the night, smile still on his face, his father's soul left its shell. Kuni spent the morning crying, then weakly set to work on the burial. When finished, he returned to bed and slept for two days. And when he emerged on the third day, what a sight he beheld: around the location of his father's burial arose young but vibrantly healthy stocks of soybean and buckwheat, carrot and radish, and one of a type he didn't even recognize. The bounty of the Harvest Goddess would continue to greet him every year thereafter, and on that site grew an udon shop that would attract tourists from across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.
That was a long time ago, of course: Kunimaru and the udon shop are long gone. But some have sworn that they got lost in that forest, only to find the shop still there, offering the most divine noodles to grace one's tongue...
I love what has been done here, its a beautiful story that clearly comes to my mind as its told. I want to know more about the mystical udon shop!
So kind of you to say oaster2000, thank you ; ;
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