She snorts "Motto of every ship ever, I think. 'make it work!'. Nothing like watching someone cobble together a life support fix with bags off a month's worth of rations, some straws, and a handful of souvenir coins from Miyabi."

Pushing off of the rock, she angle for the 'stone' garden she'd heard someone mention. "I kind of hope this miai isn't quite that desperately put together. But my angle of view is kind of small."

Hundreds of small mushrooms in various states of growth were planted in tidy rings that resembled raked stones. The thin dividers that kept them in their 'lanes' were reasonably camoflaged, and the lichen-encrusted boulder in the middle fit the ancient form of garden well.

"What're your parents like Kuchiki-sama? Any useful lessons on this whole marriage business from watching them?" Or terrible examples to avoid, but she wasn't going to say that.

Tsugiharu considered the question.

"Well, coincidentally enough, my parents met from one of those engineering miracles. She was a ronin serving double duty on a tiny trading ship as navigator and engineer. Pirates attacked severely damaging the ship, and exposing the crew outside of engineering to hard vacuum. At the last moment she managed to open the way as far as she could get the ship to move, which happened to be the Hive."

He paused a moment.

"Most people would have given up at that point. I mean, you're looking at being one dead ronin away from a free and clear salvage claim right? But the cargo was intact, and she informed the port that if they didn't want to salvage it at the atomic level, they'd have to deal with her.

My father was at the port that day, and he found her story very interesting. He really wanted to know how she had manage to jump the little ship that far without other shugenja. Which was also not something one could learn if she was reduced to the atomic level.

Negotiations ensued. Eventually a deal was struck. One pledge of loyalty to the Spider from her for one unexploded trade ship for the Spider. The secrets of the jump though, she held out for marriage for that."

Well...that had her undivided attention. From your mother was a Navigator? to the kind of desperate jump trainees whispered about at night after digging out rumors from historic scrolls to something out of a swashbuckling pillow book.

She doesn't even answer for several breaths, letting the buzz of insects and rustle of birds fill the quiet.

And in the end just grasps at the first question again. "Your mother was a Navigator? There's...not a lot of ronin Navigators, so she's pretty extraordinary even before desperate runs on the Way."

Tsugiharu nods.

"Indeed. She never talks about why she was a ronin, because the Spider have her full devotion, and she has left that life behind. But a stronger woman I've yet to meet, whether it's tackling a particularly thorny engineering problem or raising five kids. And she encouraged such Strength in all her children. 'You have my bloodline and my guidance. The rest of the path is up to you." he said.

"A lot to live up to." she says solemnly.

"And five kids? That had to be something, running around with that many siblings."

Tsugiharu thought about how best to put it.

"Hm, motivational you could say. The younger children trying to surpass how their older siblings performed at their age, the older children trying to set the bar as high as possible so they would never be surpassed. But at the end of the day, we're stronger, both as individuals and as a family." he mused.

It was interesting how the light of the garden changed as the time passed, made especially more so with the UV glasses. Tsugiharu wasn't going to stare in to the sun with them, but it was interesting nonetheless.

He took a moment. After all, he was charged with coming up with interesting questions.

"Hm. If there was one question you could ask your past life, what would it be?"

That sounded a lot more competitive than most of the people she knew seemed to be with their siblings. Looking at the Spider, she was surprised to note that there were bits here and there that reflected something in the spectrum picked up by the visors. Accidental, most likely...at least she didn't think Spider were any more likely to see those spectrums than any other samurai.

"Seems a bit rough, honestly. But I've never had a sibling to compare to, though, so maybe a lot of them are like that. Any of you follow the Navigator's Way?"

And then she laughs at the question, taken by surprise. "Do I get to know what or who my past life was? Because I'd ask really different questions of a general or a fisher."

He shook his head.

"Hm, no. Perhaps one of the youngest will feel the call to do so. Or perhaps I'll suddenly decide that medical research is overrated and throw myself into that for five or more more years. The latter is slightly less likely."

He pondered the clarification.

"Hmmm, for the purposes of the question, let's say you don't know. Whomever they were, when Emma-O judged them they became you. That's the extent of what's known."

She thinks about that. "I mean, I want to know who they are. But asking that will just get me something like 'a farmer, a priest, or chui of the 5th legion, and that's not really what I want to know about anyone. So...I'd want to know what they're excited or passionate about in that life."

"Maybe nothing. Maybe my last life was miserable beyond belief. But I think it's probably hard to develop your karma enough to return to the wheel as a shugenja if you're that miserable."

She quirks a smile, looking the Spider up and down. "You're not about to tell me that you're part of some odd sect of Emma-O or the Lords of Death with some kind of access to their records of all that, are you?"

"Hmm, but if I revealed that I was, Nakuchi-san, and revealed that your previous life was a frustrated novel writer obsessed with writing a story about a tall woman with a talking magic jade nodachi, would that substantially shift the way that you viewed the world?" he asked.

He chuckled.

"Not that either is true. Well, at least the first part for certain."

"I'm not sure that would change much," she shrugs. "I mean...I have to imagine I have been many things, have always imagined that if I considered it. Learning that I'd been something akin to a writer on a world we've never heard of who wrote the tales we are living? That would be quite a shift in what I believe is true of the heavens and the Celestial Order."

She too has read the occasional fanciful pillow book.

Tsugiharu nodded.

"Hai, that is true enough. While our lives may be books, whether a single tale, or an anthology of related stories, we can only see the chapter we're in right now." he offered.