A Pearl in the Snow Ch. 01

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Once we neared Aikawa near dusk, conditions if at possible became even worse. The road was quickly becoming covered with ice and snow and the wind seemed to drive both nearly horizontally over the road, reducing the bus driver's view to mere feet. Most of the other passengers got off in Aikawa, to stay here for the duration of the storm. Shinju asked the driver if he thought he could reach my hotel, and giving the name of the small village nearby (not hers, but also close to it), the driver nodded his head saying "Hai" emphatically. Apparently an excellent Saki factory was very nearby (the island has at least seven famous ones, including the famous 'Alcohol Republic' town of Mano, further south) and he would love to put up his feet there for the storm. He would persevere!

Off we went again, and at times I was sure that we were no longer actually driving on the road in the snowy darkness, and certainly no one else was out on the road that evening. He continued to drive slowly and with a visibility of only a few feet, and somehow he kept us out of the ditches (and out of the Sea of Japan) until we finally made it to our destination at last!

Our most fortunate and skilled driver bid us farewell and drove back down the road to his awaiting (and well earned) liquid rewards, and Shinju went to get us rooms, and she returned a few minutes later saying that she got us one. I had asked her to check on rooms (plural) but either they were all taken (unlikely, as we seemed to be the only ones there) or else my kind young lady had other plans for the evening, because she returned bearing only that single room key.

The room was small and had traditional floor mat beds and a central charcoal heater (dangerous things in a snow storm that can quickly cover over window air vents). We cracked a window open the least amount we dared to, keeping fresh air in (and hopefully CO poisoning out) but we were going to be cold, even with the heater. Shinju went to ask for additional blankets and checked on the availability of dinner, both of which were soon bestowed upon us with abundance.

The dinner of fresh seafood was fabulous, the best I'd ever eaten, and we had several choices of cooked and raw sashimi fish and I was introduced to sushi for the first time and was soon eating it like a native. We also had a few warming drops of one of the local Saki's. It was good, but an acquired taste, and I determined to start acquiring it right away. Shinju would never let me pour my own cup and always insisted upon serving me at every available opportunity. I was becoming fonder of this very beautiful and seemingly very traditional woman with every moment, and it helped that few cups of the warming local brew was soon numbing the pained tightness in my knee down to a more tolerable throbbing dull roar.

Our delightful meal done, we returned to our room and its warm blankets and snuggled up together close; fully dressed since it was too cold to even consider undressing even a bit. You could cut the sexual tension with a knife, and each of us seemed to be stuck for conversation topics. We kissed gently a few times while cuddling, and she allowed my hand to grasp and even cup one of her breasts, but somehow neither of us seemed willing to progress from there.

I got the unsaid impression that she was amenable to doing nearly anything with me short of us actually having sex together. Something inside her seemed to be holding her back, reining in her very obvious desires. She was quite apparently very attracted to me, as I was to her, but something was preventing her from hitting the 'go' button.

Stuck at a romantic impasse, and with my leg now starting to severely throb and stiffen due to the cold, I muttered that it was "too bad it was too late to go find those hot springs". She seized upon that thought at once, and declared her own interest in finding them, even in the middle of a snowstorm and the dead of night. So wrapping a single blanket around us the best we could, we got simple directions from the innkeeper (simplicity itself - just follow the stone steps around the back of the Inn and up the mountainside) and off we went.

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After the first twenty steps or so, I was sure we had made a bad tactical decision. The wind was blowing a gale and the snow was getting deep enough that finding the next stone step to take was no longer a certainty. By the fiftieth step my bad leg was in active revolt and pretty much refused to participate any further and it locked up on me nearly entirely. At the one hundredth step, Shinju's teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Had I even suspected that there were about four hundred more steps to go, we both would have immediately quit and slid our way back to the comparative warmth of our room. How we made to the top at all I have no clue, but I suspect we were both starting to suffer from hypothermia and were no longer quite rational even by the mid-way point.

Getting to the top, we found a nice old Torii gate and snow shrouded hedges that seemed to suggest two paths, one to an old run-down and rustic temple to the left and another that led straight ahead to an either large pond or small lake whose hot waters steamed in obvious invitation to us. We lurched to the waters and within moments I had stepped out of my shoes, socks and pants, setting them onto a nearby stone bench, and started to step into the hot water. It seemed boiling to me at first, compared with the frigidity of the arctic blizzard air around us, but it got nicer the more I moved into it, and by the time the waters reached my knees I was in heaven. Soon my jacket, sweater and shirt followed my other clothes on the bench and I was naked and up to my frosty nose in the hot soothing waters.

Shinju continued to violently shiver outside in the cold, but when I turned to face her and beckoned her to join me, her indecision was gone and she flung off her own clothes as fast as her frozen hands would allow and soon she was once again in my arms, her shivers soon gone entirely. We just stood as deep in the water as we could while holding each others nude bodies tightly.

I had taken a little bit of a look at her figure as she splashed in to join me, and I was much appreciative. She had the usual Asian smallish but very firm breasts, possibly a small B cup in size, with extremely dark and prominent nipples. Her hips were good and she had a mostly flat stomach with just a soft hint of feminine roundness. Her ass looked pert with well defined soft cheeks, and her pubic region was mostly smooth with just a hint of sparse hair on her mound. In the shrouded blizzard moonlight, she appeared to be the most beautiful and radiant creature I had ever seen. I would never be ashamed to admit to being her lover for all time, should she accept me.

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We held each other without moving or speaking for some great length time, and perhaps around midnight or some early hour of the morning the wind seemed to lessen, as a small break in the storm seemed to occur. Now we could see fairly clearly all around us to the edges of the pond and the trees and small building nearby, including the temple further to our left. There seemed to be a 'glow' to everything with the snow reflecting all of the sparse moon and starlight around us, and we noticed to our dismay that we were not at all alone in the area. A priest, obviously from the nearby temple, was seated lost in mediation on a large stone at the far edge of the pond from where we were at. The rising steam from the hot water seemed to make him foggy and hard to distinguish.

We quickly considered making our apologies for our after hours intrusion upon their property, let alone giving the appearance of nude cavorting on what must be holy waters for them, but the meditating priest appeared to bear us no attention whatsoever. We decided instead to leave the pond and hastily dress, and leave the priest to his mediations and return to our room quickly while the storm was abated. We broke from our hug and I gave her a last kiss on her lips and took her hand to make our first steps out of the water when something began to happen.

Another figure, whom was equally foggy due to the rising steam, appeared next to the priest and began laughing at him and berating him. The priest's eyes opened briefly and he smiled and then shut them again resuming his devotions. This new figure, seemed to be much taller and was perhaps wearing some sort of hairy fur coat and leggings, and looked to be a sort of local 'wild man', perhaps living nearby on the mountain and apparently had a grudge against the priests of this temple. His laughter continued and he bent down regularly and seemed to throw whatever objects he could find at close hand at the kneeling praying priest, who continued to bear his attacker no mind at all. Sticks, snow covered leaves and rocks soon began to pelt the unresisting priest.

I was enraged at this treatment of any holy man, especially one of such a pure pacifistic nature, and I could see Shinju's eyes darken with rage and disbelief as well at this maltreatment. We were now about waist deep in the water, and we could now reach some stones that we could feel under our feet. Without thinking or discussion we each reached for a rock and threw them at the wild man, but none seemed to hit or even bother him much, and he ignored us and continued to harass the priest, but never quite actually touching him physically with his hands.

Shinju started to mutter a Buddhist or Shinto prayer while I reached down into the waters to find a good rock to nail that bastard with. Unseen, my hands seemed to find just that 'right' rock, and as I pried it out of the mud underneath with both hands I felt something bright and heavy fall into my hands. It had been apparently stuck on the underside of the rock and the water had released the mud adhering it.

My chosen rock was hurled and seemed to hit the man right on his hairy matted head, but after a brief glare at me, paid me no further attention. In anger and desperation, I now threw that dirty glittering object I had just found at him as well. That also struck him hard and right on target as well, but it bounced off of him and landed right into the lap of the meditating priest.

The priest's eyes opened, and when he looked upon the object in his lap he just smiled. The wild man's eyes now seemed filled with shock and horror and he began crying "Iie! Iie! (No! No!) and soon fled the poolside and disappeared wailing into the mountainside.

This was very odd indeed.

The priest continued to smile at the object I had indirectly thrown to him and for the first time, his eyes met ours. Smiling he stood up and walked around to the right side of the waters edge towards us. Shinju left the waters at once and naked in the cold winters air she ran to meet him and threw herself at the Priests feet, continuing to chant her prayer as she did. The priest seemed to not to notice or pay any heed to her naked condition and he blessed her, bidding her to arise. He then softly seem to speak with her for several minutes, during which time I decided that at least one of us ought to be dressed a bit more properly for him, and I started to try pull my pants on, but hadn't quite gotten finished yet when the Priest came to my side.

He gave me also a brief blessing on my head, and then appearing to notice the severe trouble I had getting my left knee to bend enough to get my pants leg on, he knelt before me and placed both his hands onto my ailing knee and ever so softly recited a fairly long prayer. With a parting smile, he took Shinju's hand and placed it into mine and offered us a final last blessing together before he serenely turned and left us, heading towards the temple.

Our temporary respite from the storm now seemed over, and the swirling snow laden winds began to pick up once more and we lost sight of the Priest at the doorway to the temple.

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We took this as our immediate cue to hurry up and both get dressed as fast as possible, but before we had our jackets on all hell seemed to break loose. The temple bell began to bong repeatedly and lights soon came on inside the temple, and we decided that now was a very good time indeed to leave, but we hadn't made it quite to that first top step before a shouting voice told us to stop.

Ok, now we were going to be in for it, scolded for our late night trespassing and skinny-dipping at the very least, but the elderly man that ran to our side had other immediate ideas. He insisted that we follow him into the small temple and ushered us into a small room that was at least somewhat warm, and offered us each Saki. When we had drunk, he showed us an object; it was the yellow glittery object that I had found under the rock in the water, and we (Shinju doing all of the talking) told him of the other priest we had met and his disagreeable enemy that we had driven off.

This excited the old priest very much and he offered us more Saki before he ran off to gather his two junior priests and together they conferred at some great length. After chatting again with Shinju to confirm a point or two, they again held another lengthy conference. At length, the old priest returned and offered us a small bedroom at the temple for the night and a brazier was lit for us in the room to provide some heat.

Despite the renewed force of the blizzard outside, we both felt quite warmed up inside from the heat of the waters, and we both stripped naked for bed. Shinju now showing no signs of reluctance whatsoever, took me immediately into her arms and began to now kiss me as lover would, and not as just a 'dear friend'. Soon before either of us was quite aware of what we were doing I was on top of her kissing her breasts and my rock hard cock was poised at the entrance to her love canal.

"Do you want me to stop?" I asked her, but her only reply was to kiss me harder and to wrap her legs around my waist, pushing me inside her.

Her cunt was small and delicate, with small vaginal lips and a prominent protruding round clit head that reminded me in the fire lit gloom of a small glistening pearl. My Shinju was indeed well named! She was extremely tight but apparently no virgin, and her experienced cunt muscles seemed to know just how to grasp and wrap around my cock so tightly that even well lubricated as she seemed to be, it was difficult to thrust in and out of her at first.

We began to fuck in earnest but softly and quietly, neither of us wanted to disturb any of the priests, and I wasn't at all certain that it was at all good etiquette to be fucking inside a holy temple. Her cries of increasing joy and pleasure were soft, but very welcome to my ears, and our slow and very gentle lovemaking began to gradually increase, but never quite to the level of a lusty romp. She soon appeared as if she was close to reaching an orgasm just from the gentle friction of our gentle coupling alone and as it began her eyes looked into mine and begged me to cum with her, she wanted to feel my ejaculation inside her as she felt her own orgasm. This I accomplished with a few accelerated strokes that planted my sperm as deeply inside her as I could shoot it.

Resting in each others arms, we continued to kiss and I asked her what the priest we had met in the waters had said to her. She smiled but declined to answer, saying that it was "very personal", but she did hint that he had inferred to her that she would 'never know a single days unhappiness if she accepted her fate always willingly', which apparently also included accepting me as her lover. I wisely decided to let my woman keep her secrets, and I would keep her instead.

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We dozed for a bit, but never quite managed to get any actual sleep, and just as daylight started to fill the room, my lover decided that before dressing for the day she would enjoy her first taste of me. Specifically, she inhaled my cock into her mouth and soon began to softly suck it with a talent that amazed me. She was certainly no stranger to cock sucking, and her tongue did a hundred little things that drove me nearly wild with pleasure that could not possibly have been learned from just a few simple love experiences. Soon I could withhold it no longer and I exploded my cum into her questing talented mouth, and looking me directly in the eyes she swallowed every drop and then licked me spotlessly clean. That led to me grabbing her cute little ass and pulling her twat over my mouth and began to give her little pearl a good proper tongue bath of its own.

Her clit was apparently extremely sensitive as well as being good sized, and nearly immediately after I took her clit in my mouth she began a series of tiny small orgasms that began to build up to the extent that only my re-hardened cock in her mouth was preventing her from screaming quite loudly.

I'm sure she was making a good deal of noise that could be clearly heard into the main temple room, because at length there was a loud throat clearing and a knock on the thin paper covered door of our room. The young priest gave us a full minute to get covered up before the door opened and he invited us to breakfast, and we needed nearly every second of it, otherwise he would have had an excellent view of my lover fully deep throating my entire cock and gulping down another load of my cum.

Breakfast was cold fish and rice, but they were used to it and I was much too polite (and hungry) to balk. Afterwards, the elder priest (he was technically really the Head Priest for this temple but the practical difference was rather slight), sat down with us and told us a long and unusual story; the barest details of which were as follows.

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Sometime in the mid-seventeenth century, just after the Sado gold mines near Aikawa had been discovered, a young Shinto priest named Hiraku felt the calling to travel the "Path of a Thousand Shrines" to determine which one was to become his home for life. He traveled across Japan for many years without finding his 'home', and one winter's day discovered these very hot springs and knew in his heart that here was where he was meant to built his small temple and reside for this remainder of his life. But to hire the wood workers and stone carvers necessary would take money that he did not have.

He traveled the villages of the island but found no wealthy benefactors, and at length came before the Imperial Supervisor of the Mine and asked if he could labor within the mine and keeping only a small percentage of what he gathered as his payment. The Supervisor was a very pious man and did not much like the idea of a holy man laboring next to chained prisoners of the Emperor, but assented to the request and allowed the Priest to join the miners. In a year he had gathered just enough gold to pay his workman to construct the Temple, with a tiny amount left over to provide for his minimal needs.

The last nail had yet to be driven in the new temple when a most fierce stranger appeared and demanded to know what the Priest was doing at "his" hot springs. The stranger was in fact an Oni, a powerful demonic spirit of the area that would be impossible to drive off unless placated. His demands were quite straightforward, he demanded one hundred gold Koban bars (a square coin of about an ounce each) of the new gold or he would destroy the temple.

Hiraku bowed his head and agreed but asked for ten years in which to gather the payment. He returned to the gold mine and labored without rest for those ten years until he had the last coin stamped and marked for his payment. Upon his return, exactly ten years to the day since his departure, Hiraku offered his payment to the Oni, completing his bargain.

Seeing that Hiraku had somehow against all odds managed this impossible payment, the Oni became increasing angry with every coin he was given. He had insisted that the coins be counted out to him one at a time, and his rage became greater with each coin that was given to him. As the last gold coins were being placed into his hand the Oni, in a furious rage, tossed them all into the hot waters of the pond.