Not far from Zoro's house, there was a pond where he liked to meditate. At least, the pond was generally not far. The damn thing liked to move around.

Some days, he'd step outside the door, walk a few steps and find it, nestled in a thicket of beech and maple that filtered out all but a few rays of sunlight, and he would sit and listen to the sounds of the dragonflies and the small silvery fishes that darted in the water. Sometimes, he would wander for hours, days even, living off of wild honey and mushrooms and the odd tiger that picked a fight with him, before the pond would deign to make an appearance. Zoro did not care.

Everything in the world was always exactly where it needed to be, including the pond. Including himself.

He could just meditate at home, of course, but that did not feel right. The truth was that Zoro's house did not exactly belong to him. One day, he'd stepped out of the temple where he lived to shop for groceries, and when he'd returned with his ten bottles of sake and his bag of rice, the temple had been replaced by an empty house, the neighbourhood by a forest, the road by a cliff. Geographies had a tendency to rearrange themselves around him like that, to form mysterious new constellations that read him his destiny in a language he did not speak. He'd settled in the house, but he would always be waiting for the owner to come back.

(Sometimes, he thought of moving away, but that, also, did not feel right. One day, someone would come, looking to become the world's greatest swordsman. He wanted to be there for them.)

The pond, on this day, was playing hard to get. Zoro had been walking since dawn, stopping only to drink and eat a few rice balls. The trees around him were growing sparser. They failed to keep out the sun, which, in the high Wano summer, was almost intolerably insistent. The mossy soil was dotted with white flowers that he'd never seen before, the air redolent with their sweet haze. He was growing drowsy.

When a massive hinoki tree appeared before him, he was only too glad to pause in the shade of its trunk and settle for a few swigs of sake and a nap.

In his sleep, he saw his old captain, his head crowned with white flames. He heard the familiar laughter. The heat and brightness grew, became unbearable, until he thought they would burn through his remaining eyelid. Gods, like the sun, were not meant to be looked at directly.

He woke up with a start, bathed in sweat, and saw that the shade was gone.

His first reflex was to stand up, groggily, and wipe his eye. How long had he been asleep? He looked at the sun.

It had barely moved since he'd first sat down.

Something was off. His hands inched towards his swords while he looked around him. Had the landscape moved while he'd been asleep? That would have been a new development.

No, not quite right. He recognized these patches of moss, these white flowers, this large hinoki. It was the tree's shadow and only its shadow which had moved. The shadow now stood, improbably, in the middle of the clearing, all by itself, reflecting nothing.

Zoro removed the bottle of sake from his belt and took a tentative sip. Although a proficient drinker, he was not exactly what one might call a connoisseur of alcohol. His personal rating scale ranged from "does the job, no complaints" to "hope you didn't have any plans for that stomach lining." All the same, he thought he should be able to recognize if the drink had been tampered with. It had not.

He scratched his head, shrugged, and stretched out in the shadow's new location, enjoying the feel of the grass against his damp skin. His nap had been interrupted a little too early for his tastes. He could afford to stick around for another hour or so.

He had only just begun to doze away when he became aware that the sunlight, slowly, was creeping across his face again. He opened his eye and saw, at the edge of his field of vision, the shadow moving.

No, not just moving. Unbelievable as it was, the shadow was attempting to tiptoe away from him.

When it had crept a few strides away, he stood up and followed it. His straw sandals moved in the grass without a sound. Twice, the shadow stopped moving, and he had the distinct impression of a head turning to look over a shoulder. He stood perfectly still, holding his breath, until the shadow started moving again.

One step at a time, he eliminated the distance between them.

The shadow froze. "Caught you," he said.

The shadow did not respond or react in any way. It now looked like a perfectly normal shadow, or at least, it would have if it had not been standing in the middle of nowhere. "Come on," he said, attempting gentleness, though it came out as gruff. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

The shadow did not move. With a sigh, he laid down until it covered him again, though he did not close his eye. When it attempted to give him the slip him again, he put out a haki-infused finger and pressed down.

The shadow started and stretched out as far away from him as it could, growing thinner and thinner as it moved away from him. The part that he held under his finger stayed behind, as unsubstantial as air. When the shadow has grown as slender as a twig, there was a brief pause, and then it bounced back, like an overstretched rubber band. There was no sound, though he mentally added a "boing."

"You see there's no use in running away," Zoro said, quite reasonably.

The spool of shadow reformed itself into a vague humanoid shape. Two arm-like appendages wrapped themselves around the limb that he was holding down and pulled, with a comic desperation. He thought of an animal trying to free itself from a leg trap.

After a brief consideration, he pulled out Kitetsu and drove it into the ground, pinning the shadow down like a butterfly. "If you didn't move around so much, I wouldn't have to do this," he said, though he felt increasingly awkward speaking to the thing when he knew there would be no response. "Don't worry, though. I just need you for about an hour, and then I'll be on my way."

The shadow no longer moved. It had accepted its fate, or at least come to see it as inevitable. A swordsman was a force of nature, a creature not to be trifled with, especially at naptime.

Zoro settled down again, hands clasped behind his head, and closed his eye.

The sunlight did not come back. This time, it was the darkness that awakened him, a darkness thicker and heavier than night. It was as though the moon had fallen from the sky and entered a collision path with the earth, blocking all heat and all light from the world.

He opened his eye and saw, looming far above the treetops, a massive shadow. The creature – for it was a creature, he was certain now – had a thick, shapeless body, topped by a massive head. Two round, golden eyes stared down at him. A powerful wave of anger and indignation emanated from the thing that nearly knocked the breath out of him.

He jumped to his feet, picked up Kitetsu and whipped out Enma. He was Zoro, the greatest swordsman in the world, and he feared nothing. He had sliced down mountains and eviscerated demigods. If the moon itself had come down from the sky, he would have cut it in two. He feared no shadow.

Then a familiar voice called out to him, the voice of his long-dead captain. "Run, Zoro," said Luffy.

And because Luffy was the man Zoro had trusted more than anyone else in the entire world, perhaps the only man he'd ever trusted with all of his heart, he ran.

His head was pounding now, the air, sweet and humid, becoming hard to breathe. Small animals scurried out of his way. Branches reached out at him to cut off his path. He slashed through them reflexively, with a silent apology to his swords. The darkness followed him, looked once as though it might overtake him, though with a desperate leap, he stayed ahead.

A stone appeared out of nowhere before him. He tripped and found himself flying into the air, past the thickets, into the sunlight –

And landing, with a splash, into his pond.

When he'd resurfaced, the leaves of the trees were trembling with a newly-risen wind through which he heard a laughter he'd thought lost to him forever. The massive shadow-thing gazed down at him over the treetops and blinked its large golden eyes. Then, ponderously, without a sound, it turned its back to him and walked away.

Later, Zoro would learn of the poisonous flowers that would sometimes lull travellers into a sleep from which they would never awaken. It did not matter. He never saw the clearing again, nor the old hinoki tree.

Some places, it seemed, were not meant to be found.