Noriko's emotions flutter about and are as cacophonous as a flock of colorful birds all sitting in her one tree. I know they're hers because I know all of mine intimately. Mine are dark and quiet, for the most part, and I've been practicing a lot to control them so they don't rise above the surface. Ever since she told me that they are what drive my physical changes I've worked even harder at it. In the main I can control them as long as I'm in a situation that doesn't make the fear or anger rise (anger has always been slow to rise anyway).

These emotions flicker and flit from here to there, from one to another, and are random from my point of view. But that's how she speaks as well, so I have to wonder if she thinks like she speaks - which she probably does. I'm feeling her conversations with herself. It's worse the closer we are, and I'm grateful she sat in the back of the wagon so I can practice tamping her emotions down while Alef's talking to me. (I guess it's good I got so much practice before at doing so with mine.)

The next town over is called Steny, and it has a large bazaar. The de Gilenee's sold as much of their product as possible to the farmers of the village. The rest is packed in the wagon with us. They'll sell it in Steny and use the proceeds to purchase passage across the ocean to Zago for all six of us.

I've been hired on as a bodyguard, to help Alef protect the Duchess Niana and her daughter, whose real name is Glocia. They've promised me enough pay after we reach the coast to purchase a good sword at the smithies there. I've asked for enough to hopefully also be able to get two knives (one for me and one for Noriko) and a few other things we're likely to need.

"So, since we'd like to be out of Steny as fast as possible...," a hand lands on my shoulder - again. As the commander of his soldiers, Alef has learned habits of camaraderie that make my skin crawl. "...I was hoping to talk you into staging a martial arts demonstration to draw in the crowds."

I look pointedly at his hand. "Why is your hand on my shoulder?"

Alef blinks and after a bit of thinking, removes it. Then I deign to answer him. "You hired me as a bodyguard, not an entertainer or business partner."

Alef's definitely a negotiator. I think he's been protecting political leaders too long. Perhaps that's why he's a good businessman. He starts right in. "If we can't sell our remaining goods, we won't have money. Without money, we won't be able to buy food or pay for a place to stay. Do you want little Noriko to sleep out in the open on the ground? I won't be able to pay you if I can't sell my goods. I'm giving you a free ride, and am even going to buy you a good sword, if we can earn enough. Can't you compromise just a little?"

He's not as good as Noriko, but he has talked himself around to where I wanted him to be. I puff a sigh of resignation. "Fine. If business isn't good, I'll draw people in, but I want a bonus."

His eyes widen, ...as if he thought I was just going to give in? Really? Not only do I hate performing, I don't want to be noticed or remembered, and he's forgetting that Noriko and I are on the run and in hiding, too. He's going to pay dearly, as far as I'm concerned. I've only agreed at all because I happen to agree we want to sell as much as possible as fast as possible at as high a price as we can get.

Alef slumps to rest on his hand and complain at me. "Such a dashing warrior on the outside but such an old woman penny-pincher inside. It's almost frightening."

"You frighten me the way you keep trying to make me work for you for nothing," I say back dryly.

"Actually, I'm scaring myself, acting like such a stingy merchant. I've been a warrior all my life. I never had anything to do with commerce before the coup forced us to flee the country. Now I have to eke out a living as a merchant to support the three of us. Can you imagine how humiliating it is for me to have to beg you to help me?"

I'm hearing the flapping gums of the politician hoping to beg his way out of spending money again. "Quit whining."

He glares at me. "You're impossible."

I give him a knowing look. "Are you sure you were a commander? I would have said politician. They make such good merchants." He closes his mouth and goes from a glare to looking over the countryside. I'm glad he'll be quiet now.

I'm equally glad Noriko has finally changed thoughts from the two of us to other things. Those emotions can be nice, but not when they become as strong or as distracting as they were the first day and even the few days after that. Working in the same field was difficult, at best. That's when we learned distance helped. I took the opposite side of the field, but we still couldn't drag our attention away from each other very well.

She didn't fall asleep as soon as we reached our room for those nights. Just getting through dinner with the farmer's family was terribly difficult. We skipped the first day's meal with them, heading straight back to the house after we talked to Doros. (As I expected, he agreed to come with us, not wanting to be left there alone. We don't need him to be captured and interrogated, either.)

I learned a lot, not just in what a woman really is, but also in this matter of sharing emotions. I learned pretty quickly at that time that most of what I was feeling was actually Noriko's emotions. That made it somewhat easier, actually, since I could temper her fear just as it was rising.

I'm glad I'm not a woman. Now that we're able to have that particular issue resolved it's so easy to tell that, just generally, I'm not as affected by this new connection as she is.

Noriko goes from thinking about us, to general musings, her emotions going to a low ebb. I like those moments, as brief as they usually are. I hope I get more quiet times as she gets used to this...assuming she understands it.

Her next emotion is one that creeps up, then sits there looking sad, because it is sadness. It starts slipping further down into a painful sorrow and my compassion rises - that's a hard one for me to control, particularly when it relates to her. She only gets that feeling when she's missing her family. I already know that from observing her over the last almost year she's been here.

The painful sorrow eases, then is let go and for a time I have some relief. The emotions fluctuate, but quietly, and for a while it feels like when she played with the distances between us. Is she playing with the emotions, now, trying to learn how this connection works in the same way she experimented with the first connection? I hope so. Go faster, Noriko.

I don't really say it to her. It would be unkind, since it wasn't her fault to begin with. I feel her compassion now, and I think I'm right in guessing she's experimenting and playing. That would have been in response to my guilt and slight desperation. The combination in me is similar to depression, since the three go hand in hand and are well practiced by my mind and body. They are the three, plus fear, that are tied to my strong desire to not become the Sky Demon.

"What is that?" Glocia cries out and points.

Alef and I turn to see what she's pointing at. We're relieved it's not an enemy, but what it is is so odd we stare after it in a bit of shock. Alef shudders. "That's a leafy shade caterpillar, but it's ten time as big as a normal one, if not more." He turns back. "That is not good. I've also been noticing that many trees are dying. Something evil is afoot for the world to be changing like this in such odd ways." I agree with him.

I'm feeling fear, a nervous fear with a bit of the shock mixed in, and something else I'm not sure I recognize. "Izark, send comfort down. That's my fear." Oh, is that what it is? Her fear of the strange and unfamiliar?

I look over my shoulder at her, surprised she would tell me. She just looks back at me calmly from where she's resting her head on her arms as she leans over the side of the wagon. She has to sit on the merchandise, so is high enough that's a comfortable position. I don't mind helping her experiment, since I want it to go faster.

I go back to watching where I'm directing the horses and think of how I feel when I wrap my arms around her to comfort her - my compassion and caring concern. It could be she needs that, or it could be she needs me to feel like how I feel when she comforts me, but I want to start here. It would be easier for me to just feel the way I feel naturally, rather than have to reverse things. Noriko allows what I bring to the surface to comfort her fear and relaxes, the fear taking its exit. "Thanks."

"...You understand this?" I ask, wondering how far she's gotten.

"No, not yet. Still experimenting. That was just a good time, since I knew whose it was and you need to learn to tell us apart at that level. You do a good job already, actually, it's just that one confused you. I think you live in fear so often you can't tell when it's mine." It was a different confusion, but such details don't come across the connection. We can only guess or ask. "If we're both afraid at the same time it will be as bad as it was when we were both drowning in love together, only death will be the result."

And that would be why I don't really like this connection. The rest of it is odd. That is dangerous. It was dangerous enough when we were drowning in love, as she's put it. I can't afford to drown in fear. That's how I lose to the Sky Demon.

Noriko's comfort comes to calm my fear that has opened its eyes to look at me. From my perspective, to open up the door to my fear is like looking into a room that is so vast and large and filled with darkness that the boundaries of it are unknowable. But I can stand outside the doorway now and only see it, not have it overwhelm me.

Her comfort comes to stand with me in front of that doorway, like she stands next to me. But slowly, perhaps because I only stand there with the door open, experimenting to see what happens, her feeling changes until it's so large at my back as to equal my fear, and then it's larger.

Because it's larger, I can't hold it at bay and her surety that I am good, that I have nothing to fear from myself, overwhelms me like it does when she speaks it. To really feel that she honestly does believe it to such a degree makes my heart cry and want to sob, like the little boy who wants his mother to hold him and tell him the world is still good, that they are okay, that everything will be alright.

I may need it, but not while sitting on a wagon next to another man who won't understand why tears drip from my eyes. Because she's paying attention, Noriko realizes what she's done. "Sorry," she says softly.

Slowly the certainty and the comfort both are taken back inside her until it's just enough that it's as if she's standing in front of the door next to me, holding my hand. The level of companionship and calm trust. I like that level much better. I hope she can learn to do that with her words, too, once she's learned it here. She has been trying since I explained it to her.

I like being able to feel like I'm holding her hand even when we're apart in distance, so I stay there for a while. I'm surprised when I can tell she's getting tired. Talking makes us tired, too. Is this the same? I give her an emotional "thank you" and let the "hand" go. The comfort eases away, and I do have to agree that just a sudden disappearance is harder. This was gentle. Feeling her emotions that go along with her thoughts can be jarring.

I glance back at Noriko again a little while later and she's sleeping. It must be tiring for the person who had to hold the emotion for an extended time. I should be as careful as I was with learning to see and hear her. I can't tell how much energy of my own that used just by feel. I use Noriko's napping time as my own resting time to recover.

Her severe scold that I don't rest well enough still rings in the back of my head at times like this. I can only be sheepish that she was upset enough to not want to see me have another episode of weakness that would likely have put me into bed for another three to four days, instead of resting for the one more.

Because I was working in the fields all day, I was able to experiment with the energy of plants. The energy of the sun seems intense as far as fire energy goes. Plants can only tolerate a minimal warming from fire energy, or they whither and burn, like the trees are doing more and more the farther away from the village we get. It must have been a protected place.

Plants also can't handle high levels of water energy. A heavy rain is okay, but being flooded for days kills them, and they prefer a series of gentle rains that lets them breathe in between. That's how I learned that they do use air energy as well.

Their roots grip the earth tightly, but also take in earth energy. I can't use it well, but I can sense it, and could tell that it was just tiny amounts constantly taken up. Plants use and store all of the energies, just in very small, gentle amounts. Then, when we eat them, that energy is returned to us. Even though it's small amounts, it adds up to just what we need if we eat the right amount.

I watched the cows after that. They also eat the grain and grasses, so they're getting the same energy. Then we eat them. They use the energy from the plants the same way we do, but it's also being stored inside them. When we eat the meat of those who eat the plants, we're gaining the stored energy from inside them.

I watched the other animals and learned that those we eat store up the same slow energy, and move almost as slowly as the plants. The animals that move quickly, or move frequently, we don't eat. The energy becomes something different inside of them.

Then I watched people. Our bodies also release and store the energy slowly. We aren't compatible with the fast moving energy stored in fast moving creatures, like I'm not compatible with earth because it's too slow. Doros moves as slowly as the earth, so the animals have an affinity with him like they do with the earth.

Energetically speaking, I move fast, even faster than normal children who move very fast for humans. I can release large amounts of energy very quickly. That's the power and energy attacks and shields. I also absorb it much faster, but it's not the same kind of fast as the fast energy of things like song birds. More like my body soaks it up easier than most people's. And I don't need to eat to absorb energy either.

That was one of the pieces of missing things I didn't understand. It took comparing the sun's energy to fire energy to tease out one of them. The sun's energy is not just flame energy. I took my theory to Noriko and she had the reasoned answer from her world for me and it helped a lot.

There's an energy of light. The sun's energy is both heat or flame, and light. We see using light energy, yet our eyes aren't burned. They're two separate and distinct energies. When I understood that, my eyes were opened up to many things I'd seen and not been able to understand.

One of them was when I was considering how to find my final level that Noriko saw. She said my wings had been wings of light. Am I really a creature of light, down deep inside? Is light actually the energy I have the most affinity for of the fast energies, to have that one be the most powerful strength for me? Do I absorb light energy from the world around me? Is that why I don't need to eat to gain energy, and it comes quickly? It's hard to tread in those waters. I can only think of what Noriko said: "You are already light to me."

I also thought of the opposite of light energy: dark energy. I'm quite certain that's the energy I use when I'm in my demon forms. It's the energy I feel swirling around us now, if I've learned it right, that's changing the creatures and trees. As evil rises, the dark energy rises with it. At least they're connected somehow.

Noriko's goodness swirls around her and I've been trying to see what energy she has or uses, if any. She keeps it as closely contained as I do mine, at least now she does. I wonder what I would have seen before, when she didn't know? And I wonder if she is light, like she feels like, if that's how Lord Silent Mask discovered her? Can a being of darkness see and sense a concentrated source of light energy?

It wanted her to be sacrificed to it. To snuff out that much light would benefit evil, but how could light energy be so powerful a food to a dark energy creature? And if I've been a dark energy creature for so long, how can my light energy be even more powerful? Does the light energy "feed" the dark entity to give it the strength it has? My mind hurts following that path upon which I have no answers.

I wish I'd been thinking these things while standing in front of the door to my fear. I wonder if I would have seen the light energy around her if I'd turned around and looked at her, since she was using it to help me, I'm quite sure. The emotions are what the demons eat - the negative ones to feed on the energy of darkness contained within them. So the emotions are meaningful. They point to the type of energy one is using.

That's as far as I can go on that path of thinking, but it's the one I'm meditating on most now that we have this emotion connection. If we've been given lessons, perhaps the entity of light is trying to help us understand this part, and how the emotions can help us to reach our goals.

Eventually I also have to stop thinking and rest, just watching the passing fields. I can only meditate for brief times. Thinking itself takes energy and I do know when I've used too much of that.