If someone had asked Ruru how she expected to spend her mother's birthday, curled up atop a grave was not what she would have said. Yet, here she was, seven years old and already mourning the loss of half her family.

The brother she never had was buried with her greatest friend. Now it was just her and her father, and without the calming presence of her mother, he was absolutely terrifying. Already she was having expectations piled on her as the daughter of the chief. No one would dare say it, but she was astute enough to know they expected her to fill the void left in her mother's wake.

She couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it. These days it was hard for her to function normally, let alone begin training as a warrior on top of all her studies. Her father grew angry whenever she failed to deliver, already upset at her small size. "She will grow eventually" her mother had always said. She was like the goddess of patience, and it seemed like she had been the only thing that could calm her father's temper. Without her, Ruru was defenseless, upset and broken.

Warriors couldn't be broken. She had to get over this. She had to fulfill her destiny.

Even that concept was one her mother had bestowed her from an early age. Every time she spoke of it, she'd be positively glowing as she brought her little angel into her lap and told her how proud she was. "You'll accomplish so many things we cannot even fathom", she'd always said. "You'll be the one to change this world" she said. But now she was dead. And the pressure to deliver to her people, living up to expectations so high she could barely comprehend, was overwhelming. The weight of destiny was beginning to feel a little less glorious and a lot more burdening, and she hadn't even started on anything important.

She didn't know what to do.

…

"That one looks like an abare narwhal." Hina said, pointing at the clouds above them.

Ruru nodded, laying at his side, holding his hand and wearing the smiles reserved only for him.

The two of them had befriended each other due to circumstance and necessity. The fact remained that Ruru was still small for her age, and after two years she was hardly growing. They were trying everything. She ate as much as she could, got as much protein as she needed. She just wasn't growing. This didn't stop her from training, however it made things difficult and when she was training with the monstrous presence that was her father; she sustained a lot of pain and little improvement. Her father was too fast, too harsh, and too impatient to train her the way she needed, but he was too caught up in his pride to understand this. She was convinced he wanted only to hurt her, and from the bottom of her heart she hated him.

That's when she met Hina, nearly as small as her and seen as incompetent. She'd met him by accident, after yet another youth decided to challenge her, going as far as attacking, and Hina came to her aid. This was a problem that would be easily solved if she told her father she was being bullied, as attacking the daughter of the chief would never do, but she was too scared to. She didn't trust her father for anything. So instead she decided she needed to learn how to fight better. Hina needed to train himself, as the pressure on him was just as bad and in a lot of cases worse than her own. He had few friends outside of his family, and was rather shy about his perceived weakness.

And so they became sparring partners, and trained as often as they were able to. Ruru told no one of her new found friendship, and Hina had no one to tell outside his family. So in secret they had trained, and then in times like these they just cherished one another's company. Finding the friendship they harbored priceless, they were grateful for peaceful moments like these.

Pouting, Ruru tossed a rock towards the narwhal cloud, sticking out her tongue. "We'll get you one day…" Though there wasn't much malice in her heart. More just upsettedness.

"When do they want you to become a warrior anyway?" Hina asked curiously.

Ruru let out a huff. "My father? Yesterday. Well...no that's an exaggeration but like….he wants me to devote every minute to honing my strength...the only reason he's as supportive of all my studies as he's been is because mom made them a priority. Now it's all strength training….I hate it."

"Do you not want to be a warrior?"

She frowned, pondering. "Well...in all honesty no. I'm going to do it...because I have to to make everyone happy...but that's not what's important in the grand scheme of things."

"Then what do you want to do?" He asked curiously.

Ruru shrugged. "I dunno yet exactly...but...I want to travel...mama always encouraged me to learn about the outsiders...and well...there's a lot of bad things I've read about them...like the different wars and what they did to people like the Fanalis...but there are good things too. There's entire cultures and countries and people...just...waiting to be discovered...friends and alternate views on life just waiting out there...ya'know?"

Hina stared blankly. "Not...not really no. But I guess it sounds alright...but don't you think you'd just get into trouble?"

Ruru shrugged."Well that's the fun part isn't it?"

Hina rolled his eyes. "You keep thinking like that and I'll have to be the one to bail you out for the rest of eternity."

"I'd like that...yeah...you're good...you can get me outta trouble someday."

"Or you could stay out of trouble...it'd be easier."

Ruru stuck out her tongue. "But where's the fun in that?"

Hina poked her playfully. "You're such a kid!"

"Hey I'm older than you, shortie!"

"Who you callin' shortie?!"

A few playful nudges later and the two of them were laughing and play fighting as any normal children did in their position. For now at least they were still young, and even though things were rough for them, they had each other and that friendship was more valuable than anything. How unfortunate then that even that friendship would become strained.