She walks away from the mountain forests for the first time.
But she left her name there, in the care of a careless creature, who accidentally dropped it into the wide, bright blue of the sky the moment she turned her back. And while she has no regrets to this, she can’t help but feel a slight pull of something wanting each time they ask for her, and she has nothing but the wind on her tongue in reply.
Fastest in the world, they had said, a face turned wistful toward the sky. So fast nobody can catch her.
(She doesn’t think to correct them, that she was caught too long ago to know the difference anymore; it was always better to keep that one step ahead, a false step though it may be.)
(She wasn’t fast enough to catch her name, afterall.)
She sets up a little shop in the city at the end of a narrow cobblestone street, where she crafts letters and words into small, mundane utilities. They come to her to finetune traces of time, to sort the minutes they accidentally let fumble from their grasp, and they call her Girl of the Mountain, and she knows this to be a false name, too, and at night she can feel the burden of its falsehood weigh heavy in her too small hands.
“Let me help you with that!” Kanzaki Miki says to her, one day. It’s early morning, sun still slow to crest the horizon, but Miki always wakes with the first birdsong, before the sun and the quiet and the fire that follow her. Miki had found her trying to pick up a spill of minutes she had let slip in a haste that was not hers, and the resulting mess had made the birds sing bewildered.
“Ah,” she starts, trying to push her glasses back up where they had fallen low on her nose as she bent to scoop up the wayward time. Her hands are full, the basket in the crook of her arm too big. “Be careful, you could lose time. But thank you.”
“So this is what M--” but the wind blows a racket of street dust between them, and Miki frowns, hand on hip, at the strong rise of air in their ears. “I can see it, so why can’t I see it?”
“It was lost in the mountains,” she sighs, pressing the last seconds back into their colour-coded tupperware container and snapping the lid shut. “It’s no use. You can just call me what the others call me.”
Miki crosses her arms over her apron; it’s carefully embroidered with her family crest, strength found in the speed of travel and magic, and her arms only serve to underline the resolution of it. “I’ll fix it. I can fix this.” And something about the way the word fix falls from Miki’s mouth brightens the early morning gloom, sets the sun in her eyes.
“I appreciate it, but there was nobody fast enough to find it. It’s gone now, and there are worst things.”
Miki just smiles brighter.
--
There’s a small yellow box waiting for her the next day with the rising of the sun. It’s carefully traced in spells like golden filigree, and when she carefully slips them off, she hears the sound of a bell ringing in the distance, and then sounding right from between her hands.
“What will I do with a bike bell,” she wonders, as she turns it over curiously, and it’s only when she looks again in the bottom of the box that she sees a note there, adorned with the Kanzaki crest.
I’ll help you become the fastest in the world, it says in a round, looped script. I found the perfect frame for you, and something tells me you’ll like the colour blue. Come visit me and I’ll show you how to chase the wind.
She rings the bell once more, and somewhere in the sweetness of its chime, she can finally hear the calling of her name.
FILL: TEAM IMAIZUMI SHUNSUKE/NARUKO SHOUKICHI, G
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She walks away from the mountain forests for the first time.
But she left her name there, in the care of a careless creature, who accidentally dropped it into the wide, bright blue of the sky the moment she turned her back. And while she has no regrets to this, she can’t help but feel a slight pull of something wanting each time they ask for her, and she has nothing but the wind on her tongue in reply.
Fastest in the world, they had said, a face turned wistful toward the sky. So fast nobody can catch her.
(She doesn’t think to correct them, that she was caught too long ago to know the difference anymore; it was always better to keep that one step ahead, a false step though it may be.)
(She wasn’t fast enough to catch her name, afterall.)
She sets up a little shop in the city at the end of a narrow cobblestone street, where she crafts letters and words into small, mundane utilities. They come to her to finetune traces of time, to sort the minutes they accidentally let fumble from their grasp, and they call her Girl of the Mountain, and she knows this to be a false name, too, and at night she can feel the burden of its falsehood weigh heavy in her too small hands.
“Let me help you with that!” Kanzaki Miki says to her, one day. It’s early morning, sun still slow to crest the horizon, but Miki always wakes with the first birdsong, before the sun and the quiet and the fire that follow her. Miki had found her trying to pick up a spill of minutes she had let slip in a haste that was not hers, and the resulting mess had made the birds sing bewildered.
“Ah,” she starts, trying to push her glasses back up where they had fallen low on her nose as she bent to scoop up the wayward time. Her hands are full, the basket in the crook of her arm too big. “Be careful, you could lose time. But thank you.”
“So this is what M--” but the wind blows a racket of street dust between them, and Miki frowns, hand on hip, at the strong rise of air in their ears. “I can see it, so why can’t I see it?”
“It was lost in the mountains,” she sighs, pressing the last seconds back into their colour-coded tupperware container and snapping the lid shut. “It’s no use. You can just call me what the others call me.”
Miki crosses her arms over her apron; it’s carefully embroidered with her family crest, strength found in the speed of travel and magic, and her arms only serve to underline the resolution of it. “I’ll fix it. I can fix this.” And something about the way the word fix falls from Miki’s mouth brightens the early morning gloom, sets the sun in her eyes.
“I appreciate it, but there was nobody fast enough to find it. It’s gone now, and there are worst things.”
Miki just smiles brighter.
--
There’s a small yellow box waiting for her the next day with the rising of the sun. It’s carefully traced in spells like golden filigree, and when she carefully slips them off, she hears the sound of a bell ringing in the distance, and then sounding right from between her hands.
“What will I do with a bike bell,” she wonders, as she turns it over curiously, and it’s only when she looks again in the bottom of the box that she sees a note there, adorned with the Kanzaki crest.
I’ll help you become the fastest in the world, it says in a round, looped script. I found the perfect frame for you, and something tells me you’ll like the colour blue. Come visit me and I’ll show you how to chase the wind.
She rings the bell once more, and somewhere in the sweetness of its chime, she can finally hear the calling of her name.