Vincent Diamante wrote:

And Giving Fuji - diamante@cs.analog.org
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-  - - --p r o l o g u e-- - -  -

   "I'm so...so tired.  So tired..."  Rimururu stared at the fire in
earnest, struggling to keep her eyes open.  It was a beautiful sight,
hypnotic dance of red and orange reaching up and kissing the black sky
with their embers.  She poked around her knee and winced.  Rimururu
slid herself a bit closer to the fire.  Her older sister was telling
Shizumaru a story which she had not heard before, so she tried her best
to sit upright and listened attentively over the crackle of flaming
wood.  Nakoruru began to recount an encounter she had with a warrior
on a small island to the south.  He was a man of great movements who

"of great movements"?  Insert laxative joke here.  

allowed himself to be filled with anger and evil to complement his
strength in motion.  For Genjuro, for that was indeed his name, there
was nothing in death which could affect the being as death was simply
a lack of feeling.  No good, no evil could come about through death,
he reasoned, and so he focused on the physical and emotional, bringing
about suffering upon those he met and relishing in what he brought
to both commoners and those able with sword.

   "He wasn't living, and he doesn't live," Nakoruru said.

   Shizumaru shuddered at the thought.  To face a man who desired pain
and suffering and dealt in its barter!  No, no he would never meet such
a person, no, no, a monster.  Nakoruru exaggerates...no!  She speaks
truth in all cases.  A demon who floats on clouds.  A giant who wielded
a pillar of stone.  A fish's back upon which a person could stand and
travel from land to land.  Oh yes, this story was far more plausible.
A murderer, a killer.  Yes, far too plausible.  As eloquent as
Nakoruru's description was, he still was one who killed.  No,
tortured.  Torture was infinitely less preferable to death.  He knew
that from personal experience.

   "I really don't know why, but I've not seen Genjuro for two years,"
Nakoruru said, "but he!  He was a giant man of little leverage!
Mamahaha!"  A falcon darted from a nearby tree and alighted on a
nearby log.  "We'll be home soon," she said.  "I'm sure you know what
I want to say."  She stared at the bird as it raised a considerable
ruckus.  "Mamahaha, you know I need to stay here with them."  He (for
Mamahaha was, indeed, a he) flew to Nakoruru's shoulder and chirped
almost silently into her ear.  "Yes.  There.  Don't worry."  He flew
out of sight and northward.

   Shizumaru shook his head.  "I'll never understand what you can
hear.  How they talk."  He laid his head down, using his umbrella as a
stiff pillow.

   "I hear chirping," she said.

   Rimururu yawned and stood and walked away from the fire.  "No more
stories," she said.  She walked until a great wolf, a gray wolf lay
before her.  "Shikuruu?" she whispered.  The wolf's ears perked up.
Rimururu knelt down beside him and lay her head upon his warm belly.

   She slept until, a fire burned.

No comma after "until".

I'm not going to say that this prologue is bad, it could be very good.
However, my personal reaction was that it becomes irritatingly opaque
as it goes on.