LAND OF DREAMS: A Kino no Tabi fanfic by yanocchi

Standard disclaimers apply

"Kino. Ki-no-."

Kino woke slowly, rising through sleep like a slowly surfacing diver. Little by little the world around her came into focus through her various senses. The dry leaves beneath her rustled and crunched, releasing their musty scent. As she pushed herself up with one arm she blinked her eyes, meeting the gaze of a nondescript brown bird that perched on Hermes' handlebars.

"Good morning," Kino wryly to her companion.

"It's not morning," Hermes retorted in his usual tone: half playful and half petulant. "It's the middle of the afternoon."

"It's just a greeting," Kino replied, stretching luxuriously. The bird, startled, flew off in a rush of wings. "Shall we move on?"

"Yes, please," Hermes said eagerly. "I don't like running through woods like this. It's hard on my shocks."

Kino paused, her battered coat and hat held close against her chest. It felt like there was something in the air, or maybe on the air, calling to her. An early autumn breeze pushed at the trees around her and tugged at the hem of her coat. What was it? Where was it coming from? A gust sent a yellow leaf spinning between the trees until it landed in Kino's hair. She crossed her eyes momentarily and brushed it away. The spell was broken, and the feeling had passed. Donning her coat, hat and goggles, Kino turned to her partner.

"Okay, let's go," she said, throwing her leg over Hermes' tank with practiced grace. "I'll find a road, just for you."

"Yay!" Hermes replied. Kino started his engine, then carefully began to guide him through the woods.

Though autumn was in the air, most of the trees still wore all their leaves. The sun filtered through to the forest floor slowly. Kino and Hermes seemed to run through a timeless world. The light all around them was thick and golden like honey.

"I had a dream," Kino said.

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"What was it about?"

Kino hesitated, unsure of how to describe it. She twisted the handlebars to the right to avoid a rock, then straightened them again. "I dreamed I was home."

"Home?" Hermes repeated, his tone confused. "Home WHERE? The place where we first met? At Master's?"

Kino shook her head. "That's the odd thing. I don't know where it was. It just felt like home."

"Hmmm," Hermes said pensively. "What did it look like?"

Kino tipped her head to one side in thought, careful to keep one eye forward. "Well, it looked like a lot of different places all at once."

"All at once? How is that possible?" Hermes replied almost accusingly.

"I don't know," Kino told him. "It just did. For example there were soft blankets, and lots of flowers, and the sky was just the right shade of blue. And the food was really good," she added after a moment.

"You think everywhere with good food is good," Hermes laughed.

"Maybe," Kino agreed with a grin. She fell silent then, lost in her thoughts. The young traveler tried to recall what "home" had looked like. She felt like she was chasing scraps of paper that were flying about on a tricky wind. All she could remember were impressions; the sheets were soft, a bowl of warm stew between her hands, a cool breeze against her arms, sunlight illuminating somebody's face, rain on her cheeks, the smell of wet moss on her bare feet... The fact that these images were sometimes contradictory didn't bother Kino much. Lost in the dream, she had felt like years and years had passed.

She suddenly wondered if motorrads dreamt. Sometimes her partner was so human she forgot that he was really a machine. It occurred to her briefly that she could ask Hermes what his dreams were like, but she decided to abstain. It might make her friend uncomfortable, and in truth she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

"Ah! Look! The road!"

Roused once again from her thoughts by her incorrigible partner, Kino turned towards the sunny brown stripe glimpsed through the trees.

Shizu came awake suddenly and completely. What had alerted his highly-trained senses he couldn't say, but he was awake now. He paused for a moment, then sat up and looked around. His dune buggy was parked a few meters away, his gear and supplies just as he had left them when he had dropped off to sleep for a brief nap. His companion lay next to him, paws splayed in blissful sleep. Shizu's mouth quirked at his friend's lack of composure. Normally so proud, Riku looked like a puppy while he slept.

"Riku, time to go," Shizu said as he rose, nudging the dog awake.

"Already?" Riku sighed, shaking stray bits of grass from his thick fur.

Shizu glanced at the sky. "It's been more than an hour. Besides, you can sleep while we drive." The young man had a watch, one he was actually quite fond of, but the warm lassitude of a midafternoon doze dulled the impulse to check the timepiece.

"No, I can't," Riku told his master in a matter of face tone. "Keeping you company while you drive is why I wake up every morning."

"Ah, of course," Shizu replied with a hint of a smile. Riku trotted ahead of his master, his tightly curled tail bouncing jauntily. Shizu retrieved his sword from where he had left it on the grass. He lingered in the bent over position long enough to touch his toes, then straightened and arched his back, relishing the feel of tight muscles stretching.

"I had an interesting dream," Shizu mentioned as he settled himself behind the wheel of his buggy. Riku leapt into the seat beside him, leaping over the framework of the machine rather than make Shizu bother with the door.

"Oh?" the dog replied with a tip of his head.

"I dreamed I was home," Shizu said, starting the engine. The rough, rude noise of the buggy muffled his words, but Riku's sharp ears heard nonetheless. "Except it wasn't the home I remembered." He paused while he guided the buggy back onto the road, then resumed his story. "I didn't recognize anything about the place, but it seemed so familiar."

"It sounds complicated," Riku observed, lifting his nose to the wind. "Take my advice, Shizu-sama, avoid those complicated dreams."

"Oh, and what should I be dreaming about?"

Riku gave his master a canine grin. "Dogs," he replied shortly. It took Shizu a moment to understand what his friend meant and the reason for that grin. When he did understand, he smiled and shook his head.

"Most people say those are the complicated dreams," he remarked.

"Yes, well, what do they know."

ATOGAKI: My first Kino fic and my first non-Avatar fic in... um... (checks) Whatever, it's been a long time. I've only seen the anime, so you purists who have been lucky enough to see the movie(s) and read the novels, don't hurt me! I originally planned to make one big fic out of this, but decided that it needed a bit of a set up prologue sort of thing.

I'm still getting a feel for the characters, so please forgive my early fumbles.

I think this will be more of a challenge for me than writing other fics, because Kino's is a much deeper series. There will be action and romance and all that good stuff, but there will also be heavy doses of introspection and philosophy. I (the author) will make an appearance or two, I think, but only as a minor character so that I can play with some ideas and themes that I particularly like in the series. This will not be like other fics, so adjust your critiques accordingly.