Storm and Smoke: Mugen
by
Silvrethorn
She never forgot him, the young man who stood beside the boats staring out to sea. She never forgot him though she lived ninety years, and even in the blindness of old age she saw him still, the details of his face and clothes blurred by time, but his eyes--oh, his eyes.
She should have asked him for help. She was alone, her village's sole survivor, a small, frightened child cowering in the bottom of her dead father's fishing boat. He was a man, young, but with a man's resources. She had only to move, to make a noise to attract his attention, but his eyes warned her away--eyes the color of gunsmoke, hard as the crack of a gunshot. There was no mercy in those eyes, no more than in the empty, gray sea that filled their gaze, and the girl remained silent and still, alone in a gray world, watching the wind stir the stranger's hair as storm clouds built above the breakers.
Watching his eyes, gray as the sea.
The sea, gray as the clouds.
The clouds, gray as the storm raging in the stranger's eyes.
