Korogaru Inuzuka

Beneath a beam of watery mid-morning sun, Ai remained almost completely still. She had been there when the light overhead had been all but filtered out by an overhanging branch, and yet remained there still, a little ways from the base of an old tree, her sword sheathed on the ground in front of her. Here the woman was scantly inside the country's western border, and only ahead of her did its legendary mountains truly loom.
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Much further and the wanderer's obsidian dress - its thinness and short skirt - might not have served her well enough, but for the time being the chill air swirled about her harmlessly. It, like most things, was passively accepted by Ai, a sensation that only contributed to a harmonious completeness: That of twittering songbirds, of little things rustling in the undergrowth, of the susurration of the surrounding forest, its verdancy beginning to wane with the season and falling into brownness she could not see.
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It was all the same to Ai, just as she was the same as it. The grass beneath her legs, the critters that came to crawl over her high stockings, the lapping of water somewhere nearby; it had encroached slowly on the space Ai usually occupied until she ceased to perceive a distinction between herself and it, her physicality evapourating and her conscious mind becoming merely the smallest peephole through which observation could occur.
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It was perhaps no wonder, then, that in this state a frightened animal, scarpering through the forest, would scuff its hooves across the broad clearing and come to a halt behind her, lowering its head to graze amongst the wooded tendrils for shoots as though Ai were a boulder. At such distance, its thumping heart could be heard. It had apparently already run some ways.
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This roused Ai a little, though not into motion; her mind ballooned open once again, and through the trees she heard the thumping of a much larger animal, its footfalls about the upper limit of weight that mundane land creatures typically reached - most likely a bear, - though she also perceived the presence of a much more volatile creature.
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A person.
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Both of them closed in on her position rapidly and Ai, knowing not the stranger's intent, raised one hand in front of her chest, pointing finger raised as though hushing her heart, and her senses - all but one, - came to blaze with new life right as the others found the glade.

♫ NOW PLAYING: OLAFUR ARNALDS - A2