Yuka stretched and warmed up her muscles in the chill dawn air. She was wrapped in her thick fleece poncho with her clothes on under her, but she knew that she'd warm up as she exercised. The hinma that the kirin of Kou had granted her in order to learn to fight the last time she had been in that world had trained her muscles and reflexes in the warriors arts, but after she'd returned, Yuka had taken up her own study. It was one thing to have something merely given to her, and another thing to develop her own strength as well, Yuka wanted something of her own to stand on, and she didn't want to be helpless ever again.

:I've come a decent way,: she allowed herself. :But I still have a lot to learn. I only hope that the skills I have will be enough to protect Kaname while we are on the road.:

Hence the extra training...

Escrima was not a martial art that was mainly slow movements or stationary poses, it was a vigorous dynamic style with a lot of light quick movements. She started usually with a series of warming stretches based on yoga (one thing that she and her step mom actually managed to have in common for once) and then moved on to practicing her footwork; hook-steps, advances, shuffle-steps in patterns both clockwise and counter-clockwise then she added in body-weaving techniques, still concentrating on her lower body movements to get her heartrate up. Then she took a bamboo stick she had found and adjusted for the purpose and added in the basic hand movements against a post in square stance, not moving anywhere, linar strikes for head, temples, collarbones, ribs, knees and feet then repeating the linear strikes with rodunda strikes, two of each still stationary against a stationary target. She then added on the delicate "taps" for wrist-movement strikes against targets, where her arm was extended but the power came from highly controlled wrist movements. Next the disarms, where she slipped in to disarm an opponent, or, with the right leverage, take him down completely or put him in a lock hold.

When Yuka felt sufficiently warmed up with the basic stationary exercizes she put the various movements together into patterns. She combined linear and curving strikes into patterns that attacked, blocked and countered all the while keeping her body moving, weaving in and out of the way with her foot movements, forward, back, turn, reverse, advance, retreat to the side, retreat to the back. Her strong arm wove in and out fluidly; full extension, tucked in, relax the wrists... the stick a constant blur of motion as her body moved in and out of the patterns. Always her empty arm was moving. Escrima was not fencing where they couldn't seem to decide what to do with an extra limb, when her stick was at full extenstion attacking her opponent, her off arm was tucked in close, ready for the block, when her stick blocked, her other arm darted out, going for the disarm, her hands constantly circling each other. After three patterns at a liesurly pace, going for accuracy, Yuka picked up the tempo and made the patern more complicated with more controlled wrist movements, more rodunda strikes to give her a real work out. By the time she was satisfied with herself for the morning, she was usually covered in a light sheen of sweat and interested in a quick dip in the nearby river. It was never very pleasant, but it was the best she got in a place with no indoor plumbing.

Kaname sometimes came and watched her morning practice. He could admire how fluid her movements were, almost like a dance but in no way was it decorative. They both knew without having to say it out loud that what she practiced with renewed intensity every morning would probably be called upon to save thier lives later. Yuka sort of wished that she would have had a little more time to learn more. She had advanced quickly, mainly due to her own athletic ability and the intensity (goaded by the memory of being helpless in this world) and effort she put into her training but she had still had only a little over a year to study it. To pick up an entire style from scratch, even with a lot of practice, that wasn't as long as it sounded. There were still many more advanced techniques that she had not had the chance to learn yet, and in this situation they would have to remain unlearned. What she had would have to be good enough.

It was a week of learning the ins and outs of life in a fishing village. Yuka had grown up in a big, impersonal city so the ways and mentality of a small rural community was a closed book to her. People were people no matter where one went, and like anywhere else they had thier rivalries and thier cliques, their ways of judging socially acceptable behaviour and their ways of celebrating the particular patterns of their lives. Yuka had never once imagined herself going to a village potluck but Kaname had been all for it and had dragged her along whether she liked it or not. There was food and lively music and dancing (and Yuka did indeed find that they had something that was near exactly like the violing she was used to). Every person there recited an impromptu poem or song about something that had happened in thier lives recently, and they all sang the Song of Kings, a blessing and entreaty to the gods that the kirin of Tai would pick a ruler who "would reign a thousand years" with beneficence, wisdom and charity. Kaname had gotten a little emotional around the end and Yuka had silently put an arm around him to comfort him as an older sister might comfort her younger brother.

It was something of a cultural shock to her, she had known that the world they lived in was different, but the last time she'd been there she had been outside of the system and not pulled into the life of a simple village community. There were tears and there was laughter, they all shared the sorrow of their times filled with danger and uncertainty, but stoicly kept on with their lives, despot king or no despot king. As Sen had put it, the tide still came in and the tide still went out. babies were born, Elders were taken, families still needed to be fed and winter staved off. Who sat on a throne hundreds and hundreds of miles away had little effect on the sea. It was probably that sort of thinking that had gotten them and thier ancestors through many a difficult king.

The work they learned in thier time waiting for Sen's nephew Darin to arrive to take them to the port city was the owrk that was common to an ordinary citizen. They learned about their way of life, thier philosophy and they way they veiwed the world and felt about thier place in it. It was different world entirely from what Yuka and Kaname had grown up accustomed to. Thier days had always been ruled by the meticulous tick of the clock counting out the hours and minutes they would perform one function and got to or be at a specific place. The acverage life of a peasant in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms was ruled by the rising and setting of the suns, by the shifting of tides and the changing of the seasons. At first it seemed unusual not to have to worry about "from this time to this time I have to eat breakfast" and "from this time to this time I have to study math" and "I have to be at the station by this time to catch the train, so I have to leave by this time exactly". Life seemed more leisurly, though Yuka and Kaname both were absolutely certain that neighter of them had ever worked so hard in all of thier lives!

There was cleaning and tending and making and mending; fish were to be caught und gutted, lunches and dinners prepared, housework to be attended to. Yuka had stared at Sen in uncomprehending shock at the first time she told her that she was expected to wash the laundry by hand... in a tub! Never before had Yuka missed hot and cold running water from a tap so much as those time when she had to heat up water by the pot ful over the hearth, haul it over to a tub half-filled with soapy cold water and dump it in, then haul yet more water to repeat the process. And she hauled the water dialey, several times a day, to keep up with all of the washing that Sen felt was neccessry. There were no dishwashers of course, so all pots for cooking had to be scrubbed by hand, and a peasant didn't have more than one set of dishes for making and eating meals on, so each dish had to be washed immediately after it was dirtied to make it ready to use for the next meal. By the end of the day, Yuka's neck, back and shoulders ached painfully form all of the unaccustomed work. Sen had given her more than one look of disbelief when Yuka had been forced to admit that she did not know how to do something. As a consequence, she picked up sewing, as well as cleaning and gutting fish and hauling water among her skills. She did get better at cooking over a fire too.

If the villagers found Kaname's abhorrance of blood and general squeamishness to be a bit missish, they were generally too polite to give him greif over it... either that, or enough people had seen Yuka practicing her warriors arts in the morning and were aware of her devoted attachment to her "younger brother" that they weren't going to risk making her angry. Even though they had worked harder than they had ever worked in thier lives keeping up with the average life of a fisherman's family, they both found themselves a bit sad, and a little reluctant to leave, when Darin's ship the Kilike tacked into the little bay. They had grown fond of the close-knit family with so many siblings that they stumbled over each other in the mornings. Even breaking up the inevitable fights was something thet had found to be a new experience. Yuka had liked Sen's earthy good-sense and humorous advice on many subjects ranging from birth to death to childrearing. Life obeying the whims and dictates of the ever-chang9ing sea made uncertainty an certainty, and as a result most tended to have an earthy pragmatism about them, sensible and cautious. She found she was going to miss that for in that short a time Yuka had come to see Sen as a mentor and mother figure far better and more suited to her than her own. Kaname too had taken to life as an ordinary peasant citizen of Tai, even as he slowly seemed to awaken to his Other Self as the kirin of Tai, a fact which they kept carefully to themselves. He remarked to her one day that he believed spending time as an ordinary person would give him a greater persepective when it came to advising his lord.

"Gyousou-sama is a soldier," Taiki confided to her. "He acts like one and he rules like one, even though he had a deep understanding of what is best for people, and of the ways people think and act themselves. I think it would be good for someone in the court to know and truly try to understand the people from thier own point of veiw. When he makes a law about them, I'll be able to say something knowledgeable about it instead of just doing nothing and not understanding what's going on."

Darin, Sen's nephew and the "Captain" of the Kalike (if one could call a person a captian of a very small vessel that can easily be sailed by one person alone) was a handsome young man of about twenty or so. Yuka and Kaname would have both called him a sempai. He had the same dark brown hair and bright blue eyes characteristic features of that part of Tai and in that village, but along with that he had an open face and a warm and genial manner which he clearly was trying to cultivate into charm... as evidenced by the way he tried to flirt with Yuka on first seeing her. He stayed overnight for that evening with the agreement that they would sail with the morning tide and they spent the rest of the night catching up with family business (Sen's and Li's family were a bit wide-spread up and down the coast so Darin had plenty of custom if his work for the unnamed sea captain, smuggling people out of Tai and the despotic rule of the new king, fell through.

"It's a relief to finally be on our way!" Kaname said to Yuka as they stowed thier travel packs under the racks they were to try to sleep on in the tiny closet sized room on board the ship. The two of them offered to help but were told that they'd be in the way if they didn't know what they were doing as Darin set the schooner out to sea. It was a few minutes into the voyage when kaname discovered something terrible... he got seasick. Yuka was the picture of health, rmbling about on deck and investigating all of the nooks and cranies, asking questions of her captain about what this or that did and how it worked but Kaname spent most of the time slumped over the side of the rail or with his head in his hands curcled round his stomach.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" Yuka said about an hour into thier journey when poor Kaname had been reduced to miserable dry heaves.

"Are we there yet?" Kaname asked plaintively, looking just utterly wretched.

"Too bad I didn't think to bring some dramamine tablets or something," Yuka said sympathetically, patting him on the shoulder. "I didn't even think to bring asprin now that I think of it."

kaname couldn't reply, his stomach was trying to expel something that wasn't there.

"Well, just make sure you stay hydrated," Yuka said helplessly, offering him the water bottle with fresh water in it that she'd filled before she left. "You'll be in a really bad state of you get dehydrated, kaname."

"Ghlurk!" was Kaname's reply at the sight of the proffered water.

Yuka waited until the spell passed and tried again with the same result.

"Maybe you should go lay down and see if you can't just sleep through it," Yuka said after the fourth attempt to get him to drink something.

Kaname nodded wearily and she hauled him to his feet and supported him through the rocking and wavering motion of the ship and into the ships cabin where he collapsed onto the bottom bunk and curled up into a puddle of misery.

"The first think I'm going to learn to do afer we rescue his majesy is to get back my proper form so I'll never have to set foot on another ship ever again," Kaname mumbled.

Yuka smiled sympathetically and let him pillow his head on her lap. She ran her fingers soothingly through his hair, which was damp with sweat created by his sea-sickness. After a little while, Kaname at last fell into a sleep where his body's reactions to the sea could not reach him and Yuka left him there to hopefully sleep his way through the journey.

"How's your husband?" Darin asked jovially from behind the wheel as he slightly adjusted the course to take better advantage of the wind.

"He's my brother," Yuka corrected primly. "And he's fianlly asleep, poor thing."

"Some people just don't take well to the sea, as for myself, I don't think I've ever been sick a day in my life," Darin replied easily.

"That's good for you," Yuka replied politely.

Truth to tell, her people skills had always been a bit lacking. Most people didn't quite know how to take her sharp honesty or her abrasive personality, they usualy assumed she was subtly making fun of them, and perhaps they were right, Yuka had never seen the point in not making a truthful observation about a person if she felt they had it coming. Whether they benefitted from it or disliked her because of it was entirely up to them.

"Not big on polite conversation are ya?" the young captain observed.

Yuka grimaced a little.

"That obvious, is it?" she said dryly.

"Only a lot," Darin chuckled. "That's alright, I like a woman who speaks her mind and has a spine. It makes them interesting. As far as I'm concerned, the sea is no place for the weak and delicate, and I always judge a person by the sea."

"So then you don't like my brother I take it," Yuka scowled at him.

"Don't get yer wind up woman," Darin said with a disarming smile. "Got a temper like a summer squall, you do."

Yuka narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, Darin's grin widened.

"And there's the warning lighning, guess I'd better find a safe harbor ta tack into. I think I like you fer that."

Yuka unconsciously pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow, trying to decide where he was going with the flattery.

"Just because Kaname's my brother and I'm not married, doesn't mean I'm looking for what I can get, Mister Darin," Yuka said a little sharply. "If that's your aim, you'd better sight it somewhere else."

Darin mimed a blow to his heart.

"I've seen my auntie gut a fish with more mercy, woman!" he said, laughing.

"I have a name," she replied with a repressing tone, but she was smiling in spite of herself. Darin seemed like he was one of those people that had the effect on people.

"That name being?" he queried.

"You've already been introduced to me, and I don't like having to repeat myself," Yuka replied. "How long until we reach port?"

"We've a fine wind and a following sea," Darin answered in a conversational tone as he expertly trimmed the sail. "Since we sailed out on the earliest tide, and it's such a fine day for sailing, we should be there by high-sun."

Yuka nodded, and tried not to think about the last time she had been on a boat. It had been after her meeting with the former King of Kou and his unfortunate kirin. Kourin had used a hinma to change her face via an incredibly excruciating process that had felt like she imagined that dipping her face in acid might feel, so that Yuka would not be recognized and then sent her out to track down the "evil Kaikyouku" Youko Nakajima. Yuka had caught up to her on board a ship sailing to En and they had fought each other. Yuka's body had been controlled by the hinma that Kourin had placed inside of her (with her own consent) but Yuka's body had already been naturally athletic, and she had discovered that her body had absorbed most of the movements that the Hinma had used in that fight, the fights previous and following it.

:With that second-hand... or is it first hand... do you call it second hand of first hand experience if it's your body, but you are not the one actually performing the moves?: Yuka wondered to herself. :Well anyway, after my exposure to that proffessional level of fighting skill and my own training in my own world I should be able to fight well enough to protect Kaname. I hope:

Yuka knew well enough however that when it came to something important to her or someone she cared about the word "should" had no place in her dictionary. She had to believe with everything in her that she was capable, otherwise she'd start to second-guess herself, and hesitation in a fight like the ones she would be facing would cost her her life, and worse, Kaname's life.

:I won't lose,: Yuka commanded herself, closing her eyes and concentrating her attention inwards. :It is not a matter of try or want, it is a matter of will and must. I won't back down, I won't step back, I will move forward.:

Of course this was not the first time she'd used those words to push herself into doing something she was afraid of. Yuka had terrible stagefright, especially when she'd been younger, but the only way her father and her new step-mother had ever given her the least amount of attention was when she won. Her father had wanted a prodigy with the violin and if Yuka had not been born with such a gift naturally, then she would manufact it by working her fingers to the bone. The musical world, even for a young one, was as cuthroat and viscious as any cometition and it took a certain kind of mentality to succeed in such an environment.

:Too bad all of that training never gave me any real people skills,: Yuka thought with a slight tinge of regret.

If there was ever anything that could make a girl cynical and anti-social it was the back-stabbing world of beauty pageants where a person could never really trust anyone around them. The nice girls got eaten alive before the qualifiers, the only ones who won were the ones who were willing to claw thier way to the top regardless of anyone else around them.

:And people wonder why I'm such a bitch,: Yuka thought to herself with an internal headshake.

It was one reason why she had gotten so badly picked on by her classmates at school. Having been exposed to the sort of back-stabbing machinations that went on in a heavilly competitive environment, yuka had little time or patience for falsity and she could see it all around her. They way people bowed thier heads to each other then whispered about them behind thier backs, the way people used groups and rumors and cruel humor to bully and manipulate other people, all of it had just made her sick. Sadly, while Yuka could read people easily (the result of assessing her competiton and psychologically manipulating them to lose beofre they ever even got out on stage... a good tactic to use if she wanted to win) she couldn't approach them or engage them in ways that came across as ingratiating or charming, usually Yuka came off as verbally abrasive or plain bitchy.

:But I have to admit that I was mostly to blame for my own isolation,: Yuka admitted. :Youko was right when she pointed out that I was shutting people out by burying myself in my books. I didn't even try to make friends. Maybe it was because I didn't want to be a hypocrite, but writing everyone else around me off without even giving them a chance to try and be friends with me is not the way to go either. And she was right to call me on it.:

When they'd been students, Youko had been nice to her, but she hadn't talked to Yuka anyplace where anyone else could see them together. They'd never eaten lunch together or hung out after school, they hadn't had club activities together, so again Yuka had come to think that their friendship was all only in her head and it had hurt her. She had such a hard time letting people in in the first place.

:I think our relationship was always destined to end badly,: Yuka thought with regret. :Just like all of my other ones it seems.:

But now she had Kaname! No-one else seemed to like him much because he unnerved most people. Even his own family felt there was something otherworldly about him. Yuka knew why he was the way he was though and that gave her a way to understand him in a way no-one else would. She also knew that he wouldn't hurt her, as a Kirin emotional violence was just as valid a form of abuse as physically striking someone, and his nature was against it, so Yuka could really trust him with all of her heart and know that he would never stab her in the back. For the first time in her life she had a real friend. One she knew would never hurt her, or deprive her of affection, one she could trust her heart to. She didn't love Kaname in the sense that she wanted a physical relationship with him, but she did truly love him. Yuka would do anything for him, give her life to protect him because she was the one person she could give her heart to and know that she wouldn't have yet another piece of it ripped out and eaten.

:No matter what happens, no matter how dangerous it is or what I have to face, I'll protect Kaname. I swear it!: she promised herself.