This island used to be magical.
When I was five years old—I still remember—I used to visit the shack of an old man who lived by the river, almost every day. Most of the other kids made fun of him because he was fat and didn't leave the shade of his rotting house very often. But I knew what the adults knew: this gentle man was a Dreamer. The musky smell of the moss that stuffed my lungs, the slippery boards of his porch that made my feet and rear damp as I sat, the chill of the spray that came floating from the gaunt waterfall nearby…none of these things bothered me so long as the Dreamer let me watch.
"Now, little Raika," he would ask me as soon as he'd gotten comfortable. "Are you sure that you want to spend the morning with me?" I never once told him no.
His dreams were a delightful enchantment, and with each poetry lesson I received in the village I became more jealous of the Dreamer's creativity. The places his dreams took me to were beyond my imagination, and far beyond the shores of this island. Once, we rode on great furry beasts of the air that flew us above the cloud banks. Another time, we floated effortlessly on a sea of sunshine, the warm rays caressing our backs. At some point he dreamt a chorus of water spirits, whose song flowed like a calm breeze through my crimson hair.
Even five years after that, I was still too young to understand death. I missed the dreams terribly when the Dreamer died, to be sure, but any sorrow I felt for the old man by the river was overshadowed by every ten-year-old's most anticipated ceremony: the acquisition of a seirei. Mine took the form of a swift and unpredictable golden lizard, probably because of my overactive mind that had become wild in the frenzy of dreams. He became my playful friend in place of the Dreamer, and when I was too tired to chase him through the tall wheat fields outside the village, he would dance in my visions while I napped. My seirei companion was best at encouraging me through my tutoring and in sports; skyball practice became a joy with his support. Sometimes, though, I wish he had been able to comfort and calm me more than he did. Together, we were troublemakers. There are too many incidents involving broken windows than I care to recall.
But my seirei excelled at his primary duty, and really, it's the reason all the villagers had to have them. The spirits warned us of the sudden storms that would barrel over the waters and pummel the island periodically, and these were more dangerous than you might think. The Somni Village sits nestled between two steep mountain ridges—the north and south rises—with a narrow bay at one opening. When a storm hits, the shoreline buildings are evacuated since the swells can flood and tear at the lower section of the village. Beyond that, blasts of wind and water weather the slopes at either edge of the village, often creating horrendous landslides that can bury entire households. I knew a girl from my flute chorus who died that way. So when a seirei feels a shift in the weather, everyone retreats to high ground. Even when I sat frightened in a shelter for hours, my lizard companion had the humor to cheer me up and remind me of my imagination. Sometimes, when a storm would come, I would lay with my father in the dark and listen to the rain outside. It made me think of the water hitting the river by the Dreamer's house, and my seirei and I would relive his reveries.
The most horrible storm came upon our village three years ago. My love for dreams and magic was destroyed that year. That was the year everything changed.
Our seirei companions didn't warn us until the moment it came. Most villagers, myself included, had no time to retreat to the shelters. I was eating dinner when my father took me to the center of our house to wait it out. We sat together, huddled, and in my mind my seirei was unable to provide any comfort. I thought he was as scared as I. My father must not have said much that day, because I remember the utter silence as we waited. It seemed like hours.
Finally, despite my tears, he went to look outside. He came back quickly to get me, and when I emerged I found myself staring at our garden, glowing brightly in the summer sun. But my seirei hadn't lied.
In the main road that bisected the village, crowds stood staring at the bay. I learned later that a foreign boat had found refuge in our harbor just in time, before the storm hit, and it was the boat—or rather its people—that the villagers gaped at. From the arms of its crew bloomed a lavender blanket that stretched into the sky and was as wide as the harbor. Behind its translucent shimmer, we could see the storm. Thick streaks of rain bashed against the alien drape, but to no avail; there was a raging, cold monster that had traveled over the sea, only to be caged here at the entrance to our village. The violent clouds eventually dissipated, and the purple shell that had saved the village slowly shrunk to nothingness.
It took me weeks to accept that what I had seen was not a dream.
In fact, the strangers on the boat did not seem to find the incident particularly extraordinary at all, and certainly did not accept our idea of their abilities as magic. They seemed as curious about our traditions as we were of theirs. Eventually, the village council came to realize that they knew more about us than we did. This revelation shocked the people into a wondrous silence, and when the Rectification Lectures began, everyone was listening. I now loathe the interest I had then.
The boat from across the sea carried a new science. I suppose we'd always taken our Dreamers and our seirei for granted, and what we called our collective mind's eye, they called genjutsu. The chakra theory of energy captured the attention of the village and, I guess I must admit, I found the explanations strangely comforting. When the offer came to ally with and learn from these Konoha nin, as they called themselves, almost everyone was excited at the prospect of controlling the powers that, up until now, we had considered mysterious and fantastical.
After years of rebuilding and reforming the village, I know now the price we've paid. In such a short matter of time, the place in which I spent my childhood is utterly gone. When the council believed that an island so small as ours could have a place in the larger world, a new identity wiped out the old. This is now the Village of the Hidden Moon. With the purple flame to protect us, we no longer fear the storms. I no longer consort with seirei; I practice my genjutsu techniques. The dreams I have while I sleep seem oddly hollow. My father was so proud when I was the only girl among the first students to graduate from the children's academy, but I didn't see it as a victory. To me, it was the point of no return; never again would I be fascinated by the magic of our village.
And now I feel like my existence is suddenly cold. My youthful wonder has been transformed into a meticulous discipline. I wept last night when I realized the voyages that the Dreamer by the river provided me could have been utterly destroyed by a simple kai technique. Tomorrow will be my third mission as a genin. I don't know if I'm going to continue this life. It somehow seems as though I've lost so much.
This island used to be magical.
