The ground was warm, and the blades of grass tickled her feet as she walked across the lawn. The breeze played with her hair, strands dancing across her face, tickling her nose and then leaping out of reach before she could brush them away. The fabric of her skirt stroked her legs with every step, raising goose-bumps as it teased around her thighs. She put one hand on the smooth wood of the railing, running it back and forth along and across the grain as she looked up at the shrine.

The slight give of the steps under her feet was reassuring, as the shrine supported her, and even seemed to give her a little push upwards, as if to say that she should go inside. The metal fittings on the doors were cool to the touch, sheltered by the eaves, and the doors swung open to her lightest touch, barely seeming to push back at all. Inside the shrine the cool air embraced her, and the lines of the joins between the boards created the only contrast as they creased the skin of her feet. Unlike the doors, the heavy silk curtains weighed her hands down as she moved them aside, and the fabric brushed all down her back as she let them fall behind her, making her shiver.

The embroidery on the inner curtains was hard under her fingers, the curtains themselves almost stiff as she pulled them aside. She put one knee onto the platform, and the she could feel the edges of all the piled layers of silk, each a line of ice against her skin. Tamao’s skin was smooth under her hands, the slick warmth of polished stone mixed with a coolness that was almost metallic. Her hair fell forward, reaching out to touch his body, and she felt the ends brushing over it.

It was time to leave, and as she stepped out of the doors the warmth of the sun on her skin melted something inside her, and pure joy sprang up in her heart. As her right foot touched the path, one stone as cool as the next was warm, she was suddenly struck by a wave of heat from behind, far more intense than the light of the sun.

Turning, she ran back into the heat, the doors now crumbling beneath her fingers as burning pain started in her fingertips, spreading slowly up her arms. The curtains reached out to seize her, wrapping her arms and legs in agony, and as she seized the inner curtains she felt burning rivers coursing over her body, her head consumed with agony as her hair burned away, every strand a fiery needle thrust into her scalp.

She reach out, with hands that felt nothing but pain, pain that vanished in an instant as she touched the skin of the kami. She wrapped her arms around the great cylinder of his body, and the pain fled from the rest of her. His skin was pressed against hers, stone cool and metal hot, but although the heat was even greater than the fire, it did not burn. The floor started to shift under her feet, fragments of charred wood shifting over each other, and her stomach lurched as she started to fall.