• Chapter 1-Chaplen valley of Tromaina forests, Day 38 of the Bentri Calendar

    It was a small little ordinary wooden cottage. Almost picturesque with a thatched roof, a small flowing river going past the small one-floor cottage with various flowerbeds along the stone path leading into the house. It looked beautiful and yet something was undeniably wrong with this beautiful picture. Suddenly it was all to clear.
    “Yaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” the excited bawl pierced the early morning air. Inside the small cabin was a young man, in his late twenties, and rather bad and inexperienced healing girl with determined eyes that rivaled even the greatest of warriors. The man was tall with lightly tanned skin, observant amber eyes, and long black hair, that always getting in his face, when not tied up. Dressed in red robes with strange lettering bordering the cuffs and ends, his hair was tied in a small ponytail in the nape of his neck and the tip of it only ended at the tip of his broad shoulders.
    The girl was small for her age and she was barely seven. She had long black hair kept back with a yellow headband a few chunks of the hair were kept in a small side ponytail, that was held together using jade beads. She had sad, yet resolute eyes that gave her the appearance of knowing the inconsolable sadness of seeing all the people and things that you hold dear being taken from you in one foul swoop. She wore a small summer dress as she dressed the man’s, Iruka’s, wound.
    “Please don’t yell. It makes this job even harder than it even already is for me.” The small girl said with a quiet tone of voice that could probably silence even the end of time if she so said to. “I’m not very good at healing so even dressing this simple wound is a challenge.”
    “Fine…” the Iruka stated with an obvious edge of dislike to having to keep quiet when in pain. Nevertheless, he could not complain because this small girl had saved both of their lives.
    She then continued to clean and dress the wound on his leg. She took such care in making sure it was prefect and done just right. “Okay that is it. Iruka just don’t walk too much today, that means not leaving the village limits. Tomorrow you should be able to leave. Also, don’t go into the deep forests where there are no paths. Any one who does doesn’t live in those forests.”
    “Okay… but hey Kimi do you have any maps or books that can tell where I am so that I can figure out where I am. I’m heading out tomorrow.” Iruka inquired.
    “Sure, but I can’t read them so I don’t know if any of the books we have will have what you need.” Kimi answered after a moment’s hesitation. She walked in to a small cupboard and pulled out a few books and some papers.
    “Um… here I hope that these can help. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Feel free to read, if you can or go for a walk just be here in eight hours time for dinner.” Kimi stated as she pulled on her cloak and went out the door.
    Iruka began to read and thought to himself, “I wonder how that girl can keep her composure so well after the death of her mother, father and brother. Well I think she had a brother, she’s mentioned him a few times, but I don’t even know his name. I wonder what I should do through. I can’t leave a little girl all by herself in a village full of the corpses of her family, and friends.”
    “Maybe I should take her back with me to Grandmaster. He’d like to meet a girl like this. Kimi has natural ability to be a great Karin. I think that I might try to take her back to Mt. Taki with me to meet the grandmaster.”
    He spent the next hour trying to find a map in one of the books and he eventually found one. After studying it for the next hour and prepared his supplies for tomorrow’s journey he decided to take the walk that Kimi had suggested. As he walked he could feel the pain in his leg. It had been deeply cut by the rocks and rubble in the remains of the house he had been crashed into when fighting the forest Kelsher.
    The forest along the path was beautiful. The sky was not seen through the green canopy that covered the forest creating a twilight glow that encompassed this part of the forest. There was underbrush but little of it as most, had been taken to be burned years ago during hard winters. There were few animals besides the squirrels and birds, but of these there was abundance. In ten minutes, he had seen more birds of different species than even after his ten years of traveling the world. In this place where horrifying damage and death had come there was still beauty and life and no matter what, because of these birds there would always be.
    It was spring. The birds and squirrels were active than they were normally. It also meant that the trees were a bloom with flowers of all colors, sizes, and variations and wild berries and fruits lined the trees.
    Iruka reached up and grabbed a handful of wild cherries and walked down the forest’s dirt path occasionally eating one of the cherries he had grabbed. As he walked, he came upon the same stream that ran past the cottage, albeit upstream of the house. Here the river was much faster and swifter than back at the cottage. He sat and just rested a while. His leg was killing him. It wasn’t infected but it hurt a lot due to the swelling the cut had created.
    As Iruka sat he swore that he heard someone yell far away, but he just shoved away the notion. There was no one there but the young girl, Kimimi-Aiwa, and himself. He stayed sitting just soaking in the peace and quiet holding the feeling that came with it close to him. Moments like these were infrequent and far between for the Karin. Suddenly a scream of terror punched through the quiet.
    The girl, Kimi, was caught in the deep center of current! She went right past him and continued down the harsh river’s path. She screamed again. Caught in the river’s deepest current she struggled to keep her head aloft of the river. Iruka ran with the river being able to just keep up with the small child’s quick movement through the water. He grabbed a large sturdy branch of a tree and held it in his hands. Iruka held it out to the center of the river near the girl. She tried to grab it but her wet hands kept slipping on the wood.
    As Kimi tried to grab the branch Iruka saw the approaching rapids. They were huge. Gigantic sprays of white foam traveling faster than the swift water that traveled through rocks and the narrow passage of water and at the very end of the rapids was a powerful end of water going straight vertically down, a waterfall. If the girl even survived the rapids, she would be killed any way by the waterfall.
    Kimi too saw this and her successive tries to grab the branch became even more rapid. Yet, she still could not grab the branch. As her doom lurched even closer and closer the fear of her, own death showed in her eyes. The fear that gripped her and could end up destroying any hope of ever grab the branch. Kimi began to just attack the limb of the tree in order to grab it.
    Iruka saw her fear and jumped into the river. He swam out to the small afraid girl. He grabbed her with one arm and held her close to him and then began try to beat the current. The water was thick, dense, and never relenting. With one leg injured and holding the small girl it was even harder to get out of the pressure of that the water created. Iruka struggled to kick and he began to see less of a distance between him and shore.
    Suddenly Iruka’s body crashed into a large rock. Holding Kimi tightly in his arms Iruka used the rock as an anchor to make it easier to swim through the hard rapids. The rock was watery and slippery and the river water constantly bombarded it. The water threatened to separate Iruka’s hand from the only anchor he and Kimi had. He slowly began to swim back towards the shore.
    He continued the hard swimming and until he could stand and not be pulled back into the current by its force. He went up onto the shore and lay down exhausted. Kimi had fainted he saw. When she was asleep, she looked so tiny and fragile like any other girl her age should be. Kimi was a seven-year-old girl and fate had teased and tried to destroy her for nothing. Iruka realized that she needed to come with him. She was still a child. She would die without the help and guidance of others. There was no future for the girl here anyway; at least that was what he believed. Iruka would soon learn that there was more to the girl then met the eye. He would try to get Kimi into the Karin apprentice selection process.
    He picked her up very gently and began to carry her back to the cottage. Kimi needed sleep. This was not a good day for her, not with nearly dieing and all.
    When they had nearly gotten back to the cottage, Kimi awoke and her first thought was only that Iruka would be nice to have as a father. He was gentle, kind, and a good worker. He would make a great father if he weren’t already one. He carried her back to the cottage with such care and kindness. He had even risked his own life to save her. Kimi then proceeded to fall back into her slumber in his strong, caring arms. Right before she fell asleep, her last thoughts were if I ever meet my own father I hope that he is like Iruka.
    When Iruka reached the cottage, he laid her on her bed and then prepared extra supplies for tomorrow and rekindled and fed the fire. Iruka then fell asleep.