.
She turned with the weight of a snowstorm to cast her eyes on him, to be in his presence and really see him.
He had the smile of a child, but his eyes... knowing, wondering, and all the while confident and joyful.
.
"Have you ever seen a forest like this before, Himura?" Akira asked, turning to look at his young companion.
"Not in the winter," Shinta mumbled. And then louder - "It looks like the snow is coming down harder." He frowned up at the sky to make his point. Snowflakes were swirling gently down around them singly and in clumps from clouds high above the pine trees. Shinta could well imagine the miserable night ahead of them if the weather didn't let up or they couldn't find shelter before dark set in.
"Listen," Akira commanded. He abruptly stopped walking, and Shinta, behind him, halted. "You can hear the snow falling on the branches. It's tiny ice crystals, you know."
"Hn... We should see about building a shelter while there's still light."
Akira bowed his head in acknowledgment, chuckling slightly. "Yes, I suppose this trek is a bit longer than what our map let on. But don't lose hope; there's supposed to be a woodcutter's hut somewhere around here. We should try to find that before we start fooling around with twigs and things."
Shinta tried not to glower in the direction of his foster brother; it was a losing battle. Kiyosato-sempai had been raised all his life in the daimyo's mansion and would never dream of spending a night on the cold earth. They would probably freeze to death before they found the mythical hut on sempai's dubious map.
Shinta was so busy contemplating the injustices of being an indebted orphan to the daimyo's family that he almost ran straight into Akira when the older boy suddenly stopped moving. In his defense, the snowfall had picked up to the point of making it hard to see.
"Did you see it? Shinta?"
Eh? "The hut?" But Akira's voice had been... shaky, and he had called Shinta by his personal name.
"N...No... Never mind." Akira breathed audibly and then, shaking his head to himself, continued walking.
Darkness fell quickly after that, and at the same time the storm waned and died. Shinta had been at the point of arguing for a bed of pine needles once again when the clouds cleared and the moon shone through from almost directly over their heads. It cast an otherwordly light on the snow that blanketed the ground and the branches of trees and the hooded cloaks of the two young men. The woodcutter's hut appeared dead ahead of them, a ragged jumble of damp shadows and glowing, snow-covered boards.
Shinta collapsed into a corner, sensible enough to grab a half-frozen blanket and fling it over himself but too tired to even open his eyes when he heard Akira fasten the rickety door shut.
.
It was no use. He had slept heavily for a short period of time, but lying still like that the warmth had crept out of him and no amount of shivering was putting it back. The young traveler resigned himself to wakefulness.
Blinking in the dark, feeling the cold, it took Shinta a few moments to notice something wrong. He could hear the storm raging again, fiercer than ever, but that wasn't it.
Where is Kiyosato-sempai?
Truly puzzled and beginning to become worried, Shinta stood up and started examining the small confines of the hut. A shriveled lump of blankets wedged against the corner... No... Unless Kiyosato-sempai had shrunk.
Perhaps... He wouldn't have... Something must have drawn him out...
Shinta could hear the wind whistling through cracks in the walls, could see the flimsy door shake with the force of the storm. Snow was forming a little pile along its edge.
But if sempai wasn't inside the hut...
Shinta grabbed his sword and went out to investigate.
He stepped outside and could barely recognize the landscape as belonging to a human realm.
It was the middle of the night but there was so much light. Shadows moved behind the clouds - hazy, twisting shapes of green and red light. Snow billowed everywhere around him, disorienting him though he had only taken a few steps from the hut. The eerie lights and the whistling wind were dazzling Shinta's mind.
I have to find Kiyosato-sempai.
Determined, he clutched his cloak tighter around him and moved in the direction where the strange lights seemed brightest.
.
In every shadow of every old pine tree, he saw the huddled form of his foster brother, cloak half-buried by snow. In every swirl of snow he thought he heard a faint cry for help. But something told him these imaginings weren't real and he pressed onward, moving urgently despite the blizzard that tugged at his legs and blinded his vision. The snakes of light danced above him, and in front him, the moon once more guided his path through the trees - a hazy halo of light like an eye, watching him.
The wind that had been moving the clouds and the snow so furiously was dying now, seemed to diminish with every step Shinta took. By the time he stood in the shadow of a great tree at the edge of a clearing, there was a veritable hush in the air.
Not that Shinta noticed. All his comprehension had narrowed to the sense of sight - the vision in front of him and he couldn't believe his eyes.
.