Through the Wind Country

[aurashinto]

The camp met at a rural intermingling of dirt road and mountainous, thrumming with settling activity. A fire burned, wood cracking and succumbing to the heat to dissipate into ash, the smell of hickory and oak permeating the hastily-formed tent. Upon an iron spit, rotated slowly by Akikami's hand, a small slab of meat cooked. The skin crackled, sizzling from natural oils and spreading a succulent aroma throughout the site. Upon the perimeter, measures to repel wild beasts lay, the fringes unblessed by the scent of the developing food.

The tent was hastily made, picketed to the ground with thin leather strips and wood stakes. The tarp was of a durable cloth, lightweight and malleable, but bearing interwoven threads granting resistance to the elements. The tents flap was open to the elements, and darkness reigned within. Where soon the possibility of snoring could be heard after the meal.

The harmony was set within the depths of night, the moon's luminescence casting a pearly glow upon the earths below. Naught was set askew, the ephemeral moments peaceful, at least before the day broke.

[aurashinto]

Refulgent slits of crimson smolder behind the helm that concealed the creatures head. Ancient, tormented, starved was the facade they reflected out across the boiling, arid desert. Waves of heat danced across a sea of black until he passed to see the moistureless desert sand in its place. A swarthy cloak fluttering to and fro like a banner behind him, he who appeared tyrannous and worn-torn, though little would anyone ever suspect that a broken mind lie within the shell of armor or flesh and bone. He treaded on through the heat, slumped and exhausted.

Why are we here?..

Be silent, coward.

It's so hot..

This is way I endure what you cannot. Hide, weakling.

I...

Silence muffled the two voices as one consciousness lapsed over the other until it was nothing more than a hushed whine in the depths of the darker entity's mind. For him the heat was a minor nuisance, but nothing he could not endure. The madness of a decade drove him across the wastes of Kaze no Kuni where they had traveled to find a means to grow stronger. Weathering the undying heat, treacherous winds, and stumbling across scarce spots of rest, food, and drinkable water was the only thing they had found. Hindsight, the coward offered often between whines, serving to agitate his opposing personality. Though despite the terrible weather, it was because they were together that it was possible to push on, one driving the other passed the brink.

Eventually the desert ended and pathways through mountainous terrain opened before them, offering little protection from the sun, but more means in line of food and water where rains carved rivers and springs throughout the mountains. It was further in where they found their next spot to camp. Beneath a dead slumping tree that hovered out over a small body of water they began to pitch their tent.