Snippet #1857967

"Titles bear no meaning to me, and if the Yanki have a palate for yet another taste of their own blood, I will oblige to assist them," she replied, simply, as though she planned to serve tea to dinner guests. "And, I will make no move to stand in your way as long as your intentions are honorable."

Her gaze shifted slightly from the boy who had introduced himself as 'Kenji', to the lighter-skinned, clearly American, his indistinguishable features denoting the mixed blood of generations of interbreeding.

"Yuu Hoshiko," she offered another light bow to each of them, her staff, at a diagonal across her back, tilting with the lean of her body.

The Yuu surname wasn't common knowledge in Okinawa, but the family ties to the family line of Mikos and Shinto warrior ancestry was no large secret, either.

Hoshiko, still keeping a wary eye, alert to her surroundings, said, "There is change on the wind. I felt it arrive with the dawn, even as I awoke. Omoikane has led you both here for a reason."

...

Through the partially open Shōji screen, they could see an elderly man outside, diminutive in stature, his shoulder-length white hair pulled up high, squinting in the afternoon sun as he trimmed hedges with a pair of gardening shears.