Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Note: Inspired by a scene in Pierre Bottero's book "La huitième porte", which as far as I know hasn't been translated into English. SHAME. He was an amazing writer.
Escapade
The little boy was making his way through the thicket, following a path only he knew as quietly as he could.
This excursion had to remain a secret.
He walked around a rock and crawled under a bush, careful not to stain his clothes - Okaa-san would not be pleased if he did -, pushed a few more branches aside before reaching the place he had been looking for.
A small clearing, run across by a singing stream. He had discovered it a few months ago while following a tiny grey shrew.
He took off his sandals, enjoying to feeling of the thick moss tickling his feet. The air, cool even though it was midsummer, tickled his nose and chest. The urge to laugh and spin on his heels until he fell was very hard to resist. He did not even try to.
The clearing was right behind the dojo but it was secluded, difficult to access and small enough that adults would never look twice at it. Six years old boys, on the other hand, recognized it for what it really was.
The stories Okaa-san had read him had made it clear: it was the perfect place for fairies to live in.
The perfect place where to hide a treasure.
He got up and walked to a tree on the far end of the clearing, on the other side of the - deliciously freezing - stream. One of its lower branches had broken at its base, which had created a small cavity inside the trunk.
If this was not the best hiding place, he did not know what was.
Blue eyes peered inside it to make sure that everything was still in it. The fluffy white feather was there, as was the branch that looked like a deer's head. Several stones, some pinkish or completely white - he regularly washed them in the stream so that it remained so -, others striped. The scarlet leaf, brighter than Otou-san's hair, from the previous fall. A few coins he had gathered in the streets - Okaa-san had said they were his since he had found them on the ground.
All pieces accounted for. Perfect.
Smiling to himself, the boy took his latest discovery out of the sleeve of his gi. It was hair that he had spotted caught in a bush in the backyard this morning. Otou-san had told him it probably was from the tanuki that lived nearby, and Otou-san never lied.
Which definitely made the hairs precious enough to be added to his collection.
Standing on his toes, the boy placed them under one of the stones before slowly tiptoeing back. He had to make sure that nothing could be seen form the outside of the cavity before leaving - so that the fairies did not have to protect it themselves.
"Kenji!" Otou-san's voice called. He and Okaa-san had been preparing lunch when Kenji had sneaked out; they had to be done now!
His mission accomplished and satisfied with it, Kenji ran back to where his sandals were, hastily putting them on and hurrying back home.
*
**
"Where were you?"
"It's a secret!"
"A secret? I see… Well, come on, go wash your hands. Lunch is ready and your Okaa-san wants to see you practice your kata afterwards."
"Yes! But… Otou-san? Can swordsmen have treasures?"
"Of course they can! They have all kinds of treasures, that they do. Some can be very, very dear to them."
"Really? Good. And, Otou-san?"
"Yes?"
"Do you believe in fairies?"