Shishou has apple petals in her hair and an orange-pink hanfu with black pumps. She eats a red-and-yellow apple, wiping the juice from the corner of her lips, and smiles at him, tossing one of them in his direction. She lets out a giggle as the apple jumps out of his small hands and hits her forehead. Then he thinks he doesn't like that part of her.
Shishou has a young face and clear skin: no scars or freckles; no grimm or oils. She can tell him her opinion with a single glance of her burning eyes, standing between him and the elders: imperceptibly, barely perceptibly, with a turn of her hip and a natural movement of her shoulder; smiling so false, so wrong, but it for some reason only he notices. She teaches him to speak, not in speeches and polite phrases, like other teachers, but in common everyday life, so that he can say "hello" to his sister, without adding anything superfluous, as others hammer in with sticks. Then he thinks it was an unnecessary and boring pastime.
Shishou has a strong grip on the hilt and superhuman strength when she slice through mountains; the blade reflects the sun in the glare, but he does not squint his eyes, never needed to, just as the forest will never hurt him. She tells him that there is a whole world outside the village, other villages, other mountains, other people, and forests. She tells him about the ocean: a place vast, blue, boundless, and not belonging to them.
"We don't belong to the sea", she wove the words into his braids, brushing his hair back as he counted the night fireflies. "We are not children of the sea, no matter what anyone tries to tell you. It is beautiful and attractive, but not for us. There is no land in the sea, and the sun will be your enemy, not your protector", Shishou's fingers slide past not only his strands, she weaves her green, green hair into his, not seeing the difference.
He counted twenty-eight fireflies by the paper lantern and nine by the pond.
"What happens if I go out to sea?"
The stars in the sky are unusually dim, so he remembers shishou the laughter as sad.
"You will never find your way back, doomed to wander forever".
The sun of East Blue, Grand Line, New World, Wano burns his skin, no forest has welcomed him, promising the laws of the food chain, and his eyes have not seen anything in the dark for a long time, feeling blind. He remembered the first days, months, years away from home. Far from the mountains; constellations closer than from sea level, and with the smell of plowed earth. The sun destroys his eyes and skin, and it is impossible to see clearly beyond ten meters. This body didn't belong to him (it never had), but to feel so helpless was terrible.
Kuina, hundreds and thousands of defeats, was a blessing. He learned from her, just as he had learned from losing with Shishou: test yourself, find your limits, overcome them, don't do anything stupid. Well, the latter will be difficult.
Kuina's technique was good, not as skilled as Sensei's, and not as accurate as his sister's—
Her black hair is pulled back into a severe bun, her bangs tickle her nose, her sharp gray eyes analyze his for importance, and a cold grin slides over her thin lips.
"You know we're not allowed to talk, young master, don't you?"
"Teach me".
—but she's insanely good. And it will get even better.
Even if, years later, he could laugh out loud at it, standing on his feet only because of Wado, somewhere in West Blue, because the roads are moving, and already the fourth sea out of four believes that women are weak.
This is ridiculous. Incredibly funny, and shishou and onyo-san laugh with him in the chime of the three earrings, and Kuina echoes in the hidden blade. It's so funny that he can't stop for ten minutes and then can't move for another two hours.
Zoro grew up in a place where women were stronger than men. Where priestesses were revered and desired more than priests; where a woman with his hair was born once in ten or even twenty generations, and was stronger than men in prosperity ten times; where female warriors were more common, despite the fact that only a quarter of the population was not inclined to martial arts. An island where his blood was expected to be strong enough to (in an ideal world, as shishou used to curse) give the priestess an heiress with their hair and eyes.
"How low," Shishou would tell him when she caught him in a class with one of the teachers, and he didn't understand how exactly he should give shishou another child.
For a moment, he thought it was possible to kill with a look.
The amount of dirt he had heard about the elders would never leave his ears, which, surprisingly, could be useful in the port taverns.
The sea was still strange, even though he had sailed from Sensei five years ago, and in total, more than seven years of sailing, he had experienced scurvy, hunger, dehydration, his stomach absorbed the sea water, his skin was covered with burns, and the fish was not bad and raw. The sea had always tried to kill him, but even so, he was... grateful.
The sea had carried him as far away from home as possible.
No one here has ever heard of his home, or even of the land of the samurai. And no one cared what color his hair was (they thought it was dyed, but that's another story), and no one doubted his origin. The marines didn't care that he was from the enemy theory, wearing on his head the ardent sign of his homeland.
And no one cares.
And it was amazing.
— My name is Monkey D. Luffy and I will be the Pirate King!
And then the sea became his constant satellite, pitting him against the stupidest captain in the world and the one he would die for without a second thought. The sea has brought to other people, to nakama, to adventure, leading to a dream and a future death, because the probability of Luffy passing by his island is zero. The sea roars below deck and sprinkles salt in his hair, unknown to anyone, but strange even on the Grand Line people do not believe in his powers without using the Fruit, and Chopper is adamant that his body is not enough just sleep for treatment.
Oh, Zoro knows he's not immortal. Shishou's torso was cut open, organs spilled out, blood and flesh soaked, bones licked until he couldn't move, but he knows, he saw it in the apologetic eyes and the muffled words, she was still alive.
Being children of the sun and the earth means having strange green hair and orange eyes that will disappear when you leave home. Being children of the sun and the earth means giving yourself and your life to others, for the sake of others, protecting and protecting them, regardless of their knowledge about it. Being children of the sun and the earth means to have incredible physical characteristics and an inhuman life span.
If all had been well, if the island had not bound him to it, if his life had not been given away from the moment of his first breath — he might have lived three hundred years, being the greatest swordsman in the world.
In the chime of earrings Shishou clicks his tongue as the salt eats into his skin, and behind him, Luffy insists that all he needs to heal is meat — he clenches his fists and looks over the side at the supposedly evil, calamity sea.
" This is stupid, how can the sea make me lose my way?" he decides, as their hair is tangled in the edge, in braids and fates, mirroring the amber of their eyes.
"I agree", Shishou smiles, touching his forehead with dry lips. "Like it's a minus".
He's nineteen, six months to twenty, and in his head, his sister's voice darkly counts down the days as Kuina holds his hand back from the hilt of the Wado, and the image of shishou turns white and red.
