“Who are you?” Ben couldn’t take being left out of the conversation any longer.

            “Forgive me, master. Come to where it is safe, and I will explain what I can,” the monk said, then turned and began walking through the trees.

            They didn’t walk long before they went through a bamboo grove that opened into a small clearing. Here there was a small stream that opened into a pond, coy and lilies floating in the water. Next to the pond, a familiar mossy rock, but no torii and nothing else from the shrine she had visited during tanabata.

            “...

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