In no way do I own any of the characters from Princess Mononoke and it is not my anime so no one sue me or anything …….. please?
In a small village in Eastern Japan near to where the Amishi people were banished;
Ruri was picking reeds down by the great river like her mother had told her to. The river was deep and wide and very important to her village because without it life could simply not exist. It was also a sacred place where supposedly if you went down there late at night you could see Kodama gathering round the trees on the other side of the bank.
Ruri looked down at the water rippling gently around her feet as she sat serenely on the bank. After a while the sun seemed to fade away as night approached and a strange feeling washed all around her. She had wanted to stay out that night and hide in the bulrushes and then, when midnight came she would watch the Kodama playing on the bank. Her mother had agreed to let her do this because their village was a safe enough place and she didn't see what harm it would do her. At least it would prove to her that all the silly things Master Jiro had been teaching her about the lands in the west of giant animal gods, and a great forest spirit who is god of us all (but who was killed by the ignorance of the humans who lived in iron town) and those stupid "kodamas", were not real.
It was getting very late (near to midnight) and Ruri had seen nothing yet and she was getting tired, when she heard a strange rattling on the other side of the river. She peeped out from the reeds and there on the other side of the bank looking directly at her was a small white Kodama rattling its head from side to side. She stared in awe at it but then it seemed to vanish. Master Jiro had told her that less Kodama were around these days because the forest spirit was no longer living in the sacred forests of the west (but his presence was everywhere). A strong wind had picked up and leaves were blowing all around her. She no longer felt afraid so she stood up and stared across the bank and realised that there were Kodamas in all the trees clicking their skulls up to the sky. She felt a strong mystical presence approaching from the dense woodland across the river. Now there were millions of Kodamas surrounding the opening of the forest and the wind was so strong the trees were beginning to strain to keep a hold of their place in the ground but both Ruri and the Kodamas seemed to dismiss the wind.
And then she saw it. Gently walking through the trees at a slow steady pace. It towered over everything and yet it looked so gentle. The feeling in the air was so magical and Ruri loved it. Now the thing she had been staring up at had reached the river but it didn't cross it just stared right back at Ruri boring deep into her soul with those mystical eyes. Ruri pushed through the reeds so she was directly in front of the water and she began to walk across the river towards the other bank. She wasn't wading through it at all she was just walking across it. Walking on the water. And each time she placed her foot down in a new space of water she didn't suddenly fall in or sink she just rippled the surface lightly. She didn't understand how a human could do what she was doing now. Walking on water was impossible. But yet that was exactly what she was doing. She stopped in the middle of the river and looked back up at its eyes. The wind had completely stopped and the Kodamas had stopped rattling. Then she slowly made her way across to the bank and it scooped her up in it's giant hand and paced back into the forest with her and the Kodamas followed them back into the forest. Ruri was now one with it. They were one. Ruri and. The nightwalker.