Afterword

This was a story of Suwako thinking back on the "cross-species marriage of arahitogami and human" and wanting to give it a happy ending. Once severed and long forgotten by all, it was discovered by this two-fox odd couple. I want to give Iizunamaru-sama more friends, too. The whole fox connection between her and Ran is just too good. I have some ideas stored up, so I'm planning to make this a little series of sorts. Instead of just chasing after cross-species marriage, reuniting cross-species marriages that ended in tragedy... I guess that's a thing too. The rest of this is mostly me commenting on this story or explaining the thoughts behind it. This time around, I started with the concept of doing something with Suwako. The spelling of "Mishaguji-sama" that appears in the subtitle and also the story is actually from the spell card of the same name in Double Spoiler. If I had to say, that was probably the basis of this story.

Mishaguji-sama is a "folk" deity with many roles ranging from safe roads, to agriculture, to hunting. Because they have so many forms, I figure they always changed towards the type of god that the people wanted at the moment. Agriculture when that was important, safe roads when asked by a traveler, and war when people wanted aid in times of violence. So they could get worship, of course. Takeminakata is closely connected too, and Takeminakata being treated as an amalgam of Yasaka Kanako and Moriya Suwako is rather important in Touhou, but I need to talk about other things, so I'll leave that out this time.

If you asked Suwako how she could send a family member, even someone who just married into it, into such a place overflooding with impurity, she definitely couldn't feel good about it, but on the other hand, you wouldn't expect her to follow through on that threat either. In my mind, this is because our value systems have "mellowed out" as we entered the present age. As mentioned, the god in question had a habit of "adopting whatever interpretation suited the humans in question in order to get faith", be it farming or war or anything else, so it's not so strange that she'd follow suit. Maybe she even got worshipped as god of romantic fulfillment somewhere along the way...? By the way, the design of the omori was based on the "Sanagi-suzu" associated with Mishaguji.

"Lovers pulled apart by one of them being conscripted" was the love story staple that I most wanted to draw. I thought it would be impossible to try and work into Touhou of all things, but I managed to draw what I wanted and even made the deadline pretty nicely, so I'm satisfied. I hope you enjoyed it. Well then, until next time.

Another concept involving Suwako here is "the curse of Mishaguji-sama". The story goes that "if you've touched blood and become impure, not just your family but even your animals will be cursed". Something like going to war is out of the question. But if you still ignore this warning and pass under their torii, your horse will collapse on the spot; by the time you reach the shrine, your servant will get into a fight at a party and be killed; you can only take responsibility through suicide, et cetera. There's a similar Chinese story about the god Tàihuì Xīngjūn. The idea of a god chain-cursing your whole clan is just scary, isn't it? Mercy, mercy.