"Night dew, tea fragrance; tasting tea beneath the moon. As the breeze brushes the leaves, sweet nectar enters my heart..."
"Main God as my witness! This 'tea' truly tastes fresh and fragrant, with a sweet aftertaste. Though it isn't as rich as the plateau's flower tea, nor as calming as the priest's Divine Smoke... it has a flavor all its own, making one feel leisurely, as if drifting among the clouds~"
The setting sun gradually sank away, and the bright moon rose from the eastern mountains, illuminating the fleet by the sea. The samurai of both sides had faced off for an entire day, and now they had finally eased their minds, each side lighting fires and cooking across a river from the other.
And right beside the river water, a bonfire heated a copper kettle, in which Ezo stream water was boiling. Zuwaro and Morino Kiyoshi sat facing one another, each holding a porcelain cup. The warrior monk Shiba Eido knelt in the grass, carefully whisking the compressed tea and filling their cups. Though Zuwaro could not understand the technique, he still found it very pleasing to the eye, as if it followed its own set of rules.
"Morino, this samurai of yours who prepares tea... seems rather different from the other samurai, with a bit of an aristocratic air?..."
"Zuwaro, your eye really is sharp... Eido is a descendant of the famed Shiba family. His grandfather was Jibu no Taifu, Shiba Yoshikado... And in the Shiba Clan's successive Shogunate upheavals, they chose the wrong road every single time... In just thirty years, the Shiba Clan went from being the strongest and foremost of the Three Kanrei to declining into puppets of the various guardian daimyo..."
"Buddha have mercy! Back when the Shiba Clan was powerful, they were always