Wandering Warrior

Round 4

    A hand was petting her hair. Strong, calloused fingers rubbing delicate circles along her scalp, sending wonderful sensations down her spine. She stretched languidly like a cat. Her eyes opened and she yawned for the first time in her life. She found herself looking at the river. Her head was no longer resting on Ryu's canvas sack, rather she was laying in between his legs, her cheek against his thigh. The material of his gi was coarse against her cheek.

    "There is a tournament in Kyoto," he spoke slowly, his voice smooth and calm.

    She frowned but didn't move, he was very comfortable. "A tournament? What is that?"

    "It's a competition where fighters like me try to become the best."

    "You are the best," she smiled sleepily. She closed her eyes and snuggled into his leg.

   He chuckled softly, his fingers working their magic in her hair. "Thank you for thinking that, but I am not."

    There was a tone of finality in his voice that had her opening her eyes. She didn't want to move, and she was slow to sit up.

    "You're leaving my forest?" She whispered understanding what he was getting at. He was silent. He was looking at her and nodded.

    She blinked at him and found that she didn't want him to leave. Sadness was not an emotion she understood very well as she never had cause to be sad before. She was staring at him and he smiled encouragingly at her.

    "I will come back," he promised, looking at her intently.

    "You promise?" She licked her lips. He nodded.

    "Yes."

***********

    That had been over a week ago. She had watched him leave her forest silently. There were a myriad of emotions that had been going through her mind that she was unfamiliar with and had not known how to act. So she had watched, invisible to his eyes, as he left the safety of her woods.

    He had looked back and she had made the leaves on the trees dance. He'd smiled, raised a muscled arm in farewell and had resumed his journey to this tournament he had mentioned. She'd lingered at the border, unable to follow and unable to leave her domain.

    She'd had time to reflect in his absence about what had happened to him when they'd made love and subsequently what had happened to her. That inner power that had drawn her to him had been the cause. She had awakened his power and it had affected her. He'd somehow weakened her, absorbing some of her own power and in exchange giving her human emotions.

    Tears that she had never shed in her life had been dropping from her eyes randomly. She felt extreme sadness, and extreme happiness, anger and joy simultaneously. It was still affecting her now, a week after their brief encounter. She was also lethargic, yawning all the time. The urge to dance had diminished drastically.

    She resolved to speak to him about it when he returned to her forest.

    The weeks turned to months. Spring turned into summer, and summer into fall. The leaves changed colours, from green to red, orange and yellow. The seasons followed the same path. Still she lingered on the edge.

    He did not come.

    Her eyes filled with unfamiliar tears and her own sadness joined that of the trees as they were want to do in autumn. The wind rustled the leaves carrying with it the cries of her forest, begging her to return. Her eyes closed, causing the water filling them to spill down her cheeks. She had ignored her duties for long enough.

    She forced a smile to her lips and she floated away from where she had been keeping vigil. There were trees waiting for her to sing and dance for them, they were always depressed in the fall. There were flowers that needed to be reassured that this winter was not going to be the eternal one, and spring would come back. She had to say goodbye to her fish friends for soon the ice would cover them and separate them.

    There was just too much to do.

***********

    The winter had been a harsh one. Ice storms had battered her forest, breaking many branches from young saplings and wise old oaks. She suffered the loss of many a friend in the months that followed. The cries from her trees did not surprise her.

    There was a pain that had been nagging at her sides for weeks now it seemed. It was like something was digging away at her insides. She scoured her domain for the cause and hadn't found the reasons for it until spring was just around the corner. And what she found terrified her.

    At the far eastern edge of her sanctuary, machinery of the likes she had never seen before had begun appearing. They were great monsters of steel and rubber, claws and teeth meant for grappling with large trees. She counted many men amongst the monsters. Humans from a large city she guessed; they wore suits and hard hats.

    Her curiosity was quickly replaced with fear. She watched horrified from her hiding spot, as the trees she had befriended were felled, stripped of bark and sliced into manageable logs. Giant monsters with wheels drove what remained of her friends away, the ground was torn up, and even the stumps were pulled from the ground.

    She screamed as the smell of sap and gasoline filled her nostrils. The humans were destroying her forest, killing her friends, torturing her family. She understood where the pain was coming from, and she was powerless to stop it.

    Time had stopped for her. The screams of her friends as they were murdered drowned out the sounds of the deadly machines and she fell to her knee, her strength depleted completely as it were. The lethargy that had been affecting her since Ryu's departure reared its ugly head here.

    She found herself rooted to the ground, tears of shock running down her face and gasping for air. The pain in her side intensified the more she watched. She winced as a giant yellow machine with a big claw shovel scraped the ground, raping the earth, tearing the flowers and grass. Her stomach churned and she screamed at nothing... everything...

    It was hours before the humans stopped and left her forest. Their machines and buildings remained. She stumbled out of her hiding spot and walked amongst the ruins that remained. She heard a faint moaning on the wind and made her way towards a pile of logs. The scent of sap was strong here, the blood of her trees littered the ground, dripping off the logs.

    A shaking hand covered her mouth as more tears fell from her eyes unchecked. She sobbed and leaned her head against the fallen trees. She had no idea how long she stood there, beside the logs, but eventually she fled.

    She floated from the devastation and flew as far away as she could from the smell of blood and death. She'd reached the very edge when she floated downward until she sat on the grass. She wrapped her arms about her legs and buried her face in her knees.

    There in the shadow of an old oak almost as old as she was, she cried. Her voice howled like the wind in the midst of a typhoon. Her small shoulders shook violently. Pain, both physical and emotional, ravaged her mind and body until she lost consciousness.

    Unbeknownst to them, the human Empire was on the verge of claiming yet another victim. One that they didn't even know existed.

    Except for one, and he was somewhere in China...