#fumito

  Yoshitsu let his weakened hearing be at rest and leaned his head back against the straw pillow, another sigh blending with the wind whispering and grasping the hut as rain started drumming above him. He let his mind wander, absent-mindedly let his right hand slip off the covers and carefully felt around in the darkness beneath his bed until his fingertips grazed something muddy and cold.

The touch made his heart skip a beat, and he withdrew his hand, shifted to his left side and closed his eyes. Tried to suppress the shiver that ran through his body from the touch, to suppress the tears that unwillingly pressed on tired eyes that hadn’t shed tears for many years.

He wondered why it was that he ever since returning to the village, would wake up at storms. Regardless how silently they passed by, if the floor boards or turf roof barely creaked around him, if the rain grazing the roof only passed by in a hushed whisper, he would find his eyes shut open to scan the surrounding space, his heart beating a little faster, his breath slightly agitated, his forehead slightly sweaty.

It usually didn’t linger for long. These night scares would last a few seconds perhaps, before the reality at hand eased his body into returning to sleep, and he would awake fully rested in the morning as if it hadn’t occurred, as if those nightly scares were but a dream themselves. They were not so much a physical nuisance to him than they were reminders of an event so far back in time that memories of the event themselves had become weaker than memories of the storms were.

  Until yesterday, that was.

  Yoshitsu lifted a wrinkled hand to graze the corner of his eye that had turned wet, and felt a headache brewing as he once again visited those memories that had come crashing down on him the minute he’d laid eyes on the shield.

The shield. It had been there all along. Hidden only a dozen miles or so from his hometown. Along with his peculiar skin markings, it preserved the fact that his memories were real. That it had all really happened. That it wasn’t just a crazy dream from his childhood. Or an idea his senile mind had fabricated in his later years.

“Trico…”

  A shiver ran through his body at the name. He had said it several times the day before, telling the village children of the story. But somehow, saying it now, in the silent darkness, with no awoken soul nearby, it shook him even further.

  How many years had passed since the last time he had spoken the name? Years? Decades?

  He recalled a time when he had said it several times a day. Not only while traveling with the creature, but afterwards as well. All the days he had spent searching for Trico after he disappeared. As he was telling the village children of his story, the days after his and Trico’s journey ended had still been a blur, but now, as if the memories all came back in fragments, he saw more and more clearly the days following his return to the village and Trico’s disappearance.

   -----------

He couldn’t have told at first if he had been dreaming. His body was burning up, his head was beating. He felt as if he were swimming somewhere, in a river of something warm, something throbbing. It engulfed him, wrapped a safe cocoon around him and made him at ease. Then something had pulled him out of the river, out of the dream.

He heard roaring.

Trico’s roaring. Men shouting.

Men?

A bright sun scorched down on Yoshitsu and offered little more but a blinding light as he attempted to open his eyes. He felt a pair of strong arms holding him. There were more of Trico’s roaring. They had sounded threatening at first, his usual roars when he had attacked the moving armours hunting his boy. Suddenly, Trico’s roars had turned to whimpers. Yoshitsu knew that sound too. It was the sound he made when those cursed armours would plant a spear in his side or in his leg. Trico’s recurring payment for protecting Yoshitsu. Only these weren’t cursed armours this time. Surrounding Yoshitsu were the shouts of ordinary men.

But the same thing was happening. They were hurting Trico.

  Yoshitsu tried squirming. The pair of arms held him tightly and didn’t ease their grip. He still couldn’t tell if this was a dream or reality. His head continued pounding, a bright sun kept him from properly opening his eyes, and even if he did, he was sure his dizziness would make him fall over, throw up, or faint. Or perhaps wake him up from the strange dream.  

  Another loud whimper from Trico. Yoshitsu’s heart hurt. Regardless if this was dream or reality, he couldn’t stand hearing it, couldn’t stand the anguished pain of his friend. Trico had suffered enough because of him. It had to be enough. But Yoshitsu was in no condition to leap onto Trico’s feathers and tell him to get them out of here.

Not this time.

“Go… Trico…”

He felt the words, hoarse and pained, leave his mouth. The strain he felt from speaking let him further know that this might be real. That Trico was really there. That he was really being attacked by people. And that he was really telling Trico to leave.  

“Trico… hurry…”

Another stabbing sound. Another whimper filled the air. The angry shouts of men grew more agitated.

Please…

Yoshitsu felt tears pressing on his eyes now. There was no way this pain was fake. This had to be real.

“Go… Trico… Flee…!”

He gathered what strength he managed into that last word. For a moment, the shouts and whimpers silenced. A gasp rushed through the crowd around him. Thuds of large feet gripped the ground. Feet that suddenly, the boy could feel, stomped towards him. Then it stopped. The sun was cut off by a massive shadow sweeping over him, before galloping feet once again shook the earth.

“It’s getting away!”

“Stop it!”

Just as Yoshitsu had started to realize it wasn’t a dream, did he feel the numbing dizziness return. His mind once again returned to the state of intermediate between dream and reality, this time, closer to the former, as he felt his body succumbing to an overwhelming urge to fall asleep. Or was he fainting? He couldn’t tell. Still, in his last moments of consciousness, Yoshitsu made one last attempt to open his eyes, and barely caught a glimpse of a Trico… his Trico…?… flying high above, roaring down at the world, before disappearing amidst golden clouds.  

    Afterwards, Yoshitsu recalled, the village doctors had told him that he had been asleep for three days.

The shock, the wounds, the exhaustion of the whole event, they figured, had put him in a coma they had feared would prove too much on his young body, and that his life might just have drained out from him. But after three days, he woke up, and after having adjusted his eyes to the light that almost felt alien to him now, having sipped the warm water they carefully poured him, eaten the porridge and bread crusts that made his empty stomach nearly ache of satisfaction, only then did he realize it had all been real and that he was really home.

  And that was when he started crying.

 Yoshitsu unintentionally let out at a chuckle at the sudden memory of this, but indeed, down and down his child self’s tears had poured, till his cheeks had been red and his eyes puffy and glowing of the emotions overflowing his heart. He would sob loudly, like a toddler, boring his head into the pillow to silence his pitiful voice when he eventually grew shameful of his displays that would happen more than once.

“Poor child, the trauma he must have gone through.” The village doctors, and by extension, anyone who could hear him or come see to him would comment. “We can only imagine the horror” was another one. “To be trapped within that beast’s stomach…!” he overheard a day they were talking in murmurs outside his room.  “Perhaps he has nightmares every night that causes this crying…”

  Another three days after he had woken up passed, and Yoshitsu’s uncontrollable outbursts finally calmed down. The tears still occasionally pressed on his eyes, but he breathed slowly and gathered his mind and only let them fall when night time came. Having received his supper on the fifth night since waking up, now consisting of more proper nourishment such as wild boar meat and buttered rice, (apparently too much food immediately following a coma was damaging, the doctors believed), he let his head fall back on the matted pillow and let out a long sigh, trying to focus his body into being at rest, to finally enjoy the fact that he was at home, lying safely on a bed, surrounded by his own kin.

He had wondered for some time, perhaps ever since the day he woke up, if he should tell them… or some of them, for starters, of the truth. Of the real reason he was crying. But how would it sound to them?

How would it sound that he wasn’t crying out of any trauma the Trico had inflicted on him? How would it sound that he was crying because… he missed the Trico?

That he missed the Trico because it had been his friend?

Surely, he had no good answer. The doctors would have thought he’d suffered some head trauma in the process, or dismissed it as the imaginative talk of a ten-year old. He didn’t want them laughing at him. He didn’t want them looking at him like he was crazy. He didn’t want the memory of the adventure and his precious friendship with Trico sullied by the disbelieving, disapproving eyes of adults.

So he kept silent.

  A week had passed since he woke up from his coma, and Yoshitsu could finally step out the hut. Step back into the world. Yoshitsu breathed deeply and even felt an unconscious smile spread at the sensation of sun rays warming his face, a light breeze playing with his hair, wet grass tickling his feet. It was strange, he thought, looking around to find the ordinary life of his village not having changed. The other children were playing by the oak trees, throwing a leather ball and slipping in the mud from the previous day’s rainfall. Some adults were scolding them for the mess they made of their clothes, others had already returned with baskets of newly washed clothes from the nearby river. From somewhere behind the huts, the scent of cooked fish reached Yoshitsu’s nose and he made a face.

Even as it was all so familiar to him, Yoshitsu still couldn’t shake the feeling that he had stepped into a strange world. What he saw was home, but at the same time, it didn’t feel like home. He looked at the villagers, both young and old, and wondered how he could ever… feel like them again. To just feel… “normal”, to not having experienced anything extraordinary, anything life-changing, as he had. During the days he has traversed the valley with Trico, both he and Trico had been close to dying several times, and from those moments, Yoshitsu realized he had felt more alive than ever. Yes, he was only ten, but he still felt a confidence thinking he’d still lived through more those few days than any of the villager’s had, even if they were of fifty or seventy years old.

  This thought made something inside Yoshitsu burst with uncontrollable joy, and before he knew it, he had already run into the woods, away from the village. His legs were weak and clumsy at first, having been passive for so many days, and he stumbled and fell at least twice, barely noticing from the mental high he rode as he just got back up and kept running.

Soon his legs remembered their strength and carried him further into the woods, over creeks, between old pine- and oak trees, across golden wheat fields. Not really sure how long he had run for, the endeavour eventually caught up with him as Yoshitsu fell to his knees to catch a breather and wipe some sweat from his forehead. Looking ahead, he saw the hill he remembered was here, towering a few dozen feet above him, peaked by a hundred year old maple tree waving its lush leaves in the summer wind.

Yoshitsu knew this spot was the highest in many miles, and he took a deep breath before resolving to climb it before he’d collapse of the exhaustion he realized hit him after the spontaneous high was wearing off. Reaching the top and leaning against the furrowed bark of the old tree, Yoshitsu squinted his eyes to find he could still see the village in the distance, but it was far enough away that they wouldn’t hear him if he shouted.

And so that was what he did.

 “Trico!”

  He jolted at how hoarse his voice was. Only now did he think of how he hadn’t spoken properly but for a few whispers and moans to his nurses when asking for food or hinting that he wanted to be left alone, and suddenly shouting nearly felt as if something teared in his throat. But figuring it a natural result of how long he had been passive, same as with his legs, he ignored it and repeated:

“Trico!”

He paused and scouted the forests and fields in every direction covering the horizon, nearly holding his breath so not to disturb any sounds that would come in response.

He wasn’t really sure what to expect.  

A part of Yoshitsu had all this time believed that Trico had just fled out of the immediate threat of the villagers, and that he would hide nearby and wait for his boy to come get him again. To tell him that it was safe and that he could come out of hiding. That they could play and be together again. They had been through so much, Trico wouldn’t just leave him, would he?

“Tricooo!”

Another pressing silence followed, only broken by the wind rustling the maple leaves above him and a chirping sparrow from somewhere down below. Having listened for another minute, Yoshitsu cleared his throat and tried again. If Trico was hiding somewhere, this would be the spot he would hear him from, Yoshitsu was certain of.

Two hours passed of shouting, listening and waiting. Yoshitsu eventually sat down, leaning against the maple with his arms crossed as he rubbed himself to keep warm while the sun was closing in on the horizon, leaving only a red light caressing the hilltop with the tree and him. Yoshitsu lowered his gaze and felt utterly discouraged, the opposite of two hours ago. The joy and confidence he had felt at believing himself such an experienced, out of the ordinary ten-year old slowly vanished with the sinking of the sun, the approaching dark and cold protruding through his body making him feel small and scared, and right now all he wanted was to get back to his home.

  As he got up, tears pressed on his eyes, and Yoshitsu rubbed them in frustration while trotting down the path from the hilltop. Whether they were tears from annoyance at still feeling like a scared child, or from sadness that Trico hadn’t shown up, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was he couldn’t stop them from rolling down his cheeks while he ran as fast as he could home before the darkness would engulf him.

  Yoshitsu wasn’t going to give up though. For the next few days, he continued to come to the hilltop, to shout and to listen for Trico, for an hour or two, before returning home, then repeating it the next day. Sometimes he would even go early in the morning, then try again late in the evening. So long as he got back before the sun set, he didn’t mind taking the trip twice a day. After two weeks had passed, however, Yoshitsu felt his enthusiasm dampen somehow, as well as his family worrying what he was doing out in the woods for so long every day. He would simply have to give them a story of just being a normal, curios ten-year old out exploring, certainly not that he was trying to call back the creature that had kidnapped him and countless others.

  So he lessened his trips to every second day, then three times a week. By the time two months had passed, the trips were down to twice a week.

  As Yoshitsu was sitting by the maple tree the day that marked about two months since the first time he came there, he rested his eyes on the horizon, scouting for any response to his shouts as usual while trying not too hard to think of what his father had told him the other day.

“That Trico, it looked in pretty bad shape when it brought you back.”

Yoshitsu picked at his food with his chopstick, not feeling like looking his father in the eye at the topic being brought up.

“The villagers planted some spears in it too before it flew off, for all we know it might be dead by now.”

Yoshitsu had paused his movement and stopped breathing for a second. His heart had dropped like an anvil in his chest. It wasn’t true.

It had to be true.  

No. He had seen the damage Trico had endured. All the spears he had suffered while protecting him. There was no way Trico would die by a few more.

But what about all that terrible beating he had suffered from the other Tricos?

But he had flown him all the way home, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have done that if he was dying... could he?

But then, why wasn’t Trico answering to his calls? Why had he left him, just like that? Hadn’t their journey meant more to Trico than a few village men being enough to chase him away forever?

Yoshitsu had to excuse himself from the table and retreat to his room with his thoughts, feeling tears starting to press on his eyes again and not wanting to worry his father further than he’d already done. It was enough crying now.

  Yoshitsu lied facing the wall with his arms wrapped around his legs, staring at the tiny worm marks in the wood in front of him. Just as he had exited the dining room with his father’s confused words at his back, Yoshitsu had realized something he had completely forgotten up until then.

After all, wasn’t he the one who had told Trico to leave?

The ten-year old pondered if this realization didn’t make him see things clearer. After all, why would Trico come back? He and the creature had formed a strong bond, yes, but Trico still wasn’t a pet. He wasn’t a dog that would come to Yoshitsu’s beck and call and fetch a stick and (perhaps thankfully) sleep by his bed. Trico was a wild animal. A wild animal that had simply returned to his home and, Yoshitsu found himself hoping, his own kin. He didn’t know what had happened at the end of the fight with the other Tricos, he only vaguely remembered trying to use the shield to destroy the Master of the Valley. After that, his mind was blank. But seeing as Trico had taken him home, it had to mean he had succeeded and the other Tricos weren’t hostile anymore.

So he could hope, at least. Yoshitsu realized that it should become apparent if no Tricos came around anymore to kidnap people. Before, those dreaded events would happen every second or third month, no exceptions. Now, two months had passed since Yoshitsu hopefully had destroyed the device that, it turned out, had mind-controlled the innocent Tricos to do its bidding, and apart from “his” Trico, no other Tricos had showed up since either.

Yoshitsu decided. If another month passed with no Trico appearances, he would tell the villagers what had happened. Not everything, that was. He still didn’t feel the courage to tell them he befriended one of the Tricos. In Yoshitsu’s mind, telling them that he had found the Master of the Valley and destroyed it, seemed more likely to be believed. After all, even if the villagers wouldn’t initially believe it, it would be proved either way by the disappearance of the Tricos. His friendship with the one Trico, however, could not be proved.  No matter how badly he might wish it. Not if his Trico was never returning.

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  If trees were alive, the century old maple tree would surely be curios of the little boy visiting it so often, the boy found himself thinking from time to time. Perhaps the maple even spread the news on to the birds, snails and beetles residing on its branches, who would then carry it on to other trees. Yoshitsu even wondered if that was how forests would spread news to other forests?

  One day, the old maple tree might be curios of the 18-year old man standing in place of the little boy. An 18-year old who was twice the height of the ten-year old, with dark locks nearly reaching his shoulders and a chin covered in light brown fuzz. But the eyes that gazed at the branches covered in the blooming buds of that year’s leaves, were a familiar shade of blue, and the hand reaching out to caress the moss covered bark bore unmistakably familiar markings resembling tattoos.

  Running his hand down the furrowed bark that Yoshitsu thought, contrary to him, had not aged more at all, he breathed in what scent he could of the familiar surroundings while letting his eyes once again wander the horizon in front of him. It wasn’t like a long time had passed since he last was here. He would still occasionally come here to the place that had become more of a secret getaway than anything else.

  Yoshitsu had stopped calling for Trico years ago, but still felt like scouting the horizon sometimes and listen for any peculiar sounds if only out of habit. He came here now to read his books, attempt drawings of the landscape, or simply be alone with his thoughts. At times, he had also come to be alone from all the attention and awe he had garnered over the years due to having been “the boy who lived”. Not only had he survived and returned from being kidnapped by a Trico, said Trico had also been the last time anyone had ever seen one. Naturally, this curios fact would cause the villagers, both young and old, to believe there was something supernatural to Yoshitsu, or that he was a “gift from God” in the shape of a human child who’d rid them all of the Trico plague. Whatever it was, he could very well be without all the unwanted attention it had given him, and so the maple tree hill had been a good place to retreat to simply enjoy some peace and quiet.

Not to mention how ridiculous it was. He was an ordinary child who had simply been lucky enough to befriend the Trico that kidnapped him, and ultimately got access to the Master of the Valley which allowed him to destroy it. He supposed the shield and the lightning it summoned from Trico’s tail qualified as supernatural, but how would explaining that detail, upon it only being possible by the friendship he and the creature had, have sounded like? It was well enough that the villagers believed there was something about him that had allowed him to live and save them all from the Tricos. So long as they hadn’t gotten too up in arms about it, acted too worshipping, or afraid, of him, he didn’t mind them making up their own theories. He had regardless not felt ready yet to tell the true tale. Not even after eight years had passed.

  And now he was getting ready to leave this place.  

  For a long time, Yoshitsu had decided. While he had long since come to terms with possibly never seeing Trico again, their adventure together had to mean something. Having gone through that experience, there was no way Yoshitsu could just stay in the village his whole life. There was no way he’d had his greatest adventure at the age of ten. His adventure with Trico had taught him that; there was so much more to life if one dared explore it. It couldn’t go to waste.

  So he knew that as soon as he’d come of age, he would leave the village to travel. Therefore, this day that marked his eighteenth year, would be the last time he came to this hill, and to this tree, in a very uncertain amount of time. Yoshitsu wondered if he would he be gone years? Decades?

He reached his hand inside his tunic to grab something. Pulling the small, grey object out, he held it tightly between his thumb and index finger so the wind wouldn’t grab it, and kept his gaze at it for several seconds.

Yoshitsu had found the Trico feather not long after his then daily trips here as a ten-year old had started, stuck in a raspberry bush just on his path to the hill one day, nearly looking like it was waving him to it as it was caressed by the wind. Having held on to it for eight years, it was obviously in a worn down shape, missing several of its barbs and the once black middle had faded to white. It was still unmistakably Trico’s feather, however, and had been safely kept in a wooden box in his room all this time, but somehow Yoshitsu felt that now that he was leaving, this was the place it should be.  

“Watch over it for me, won’t you?” He gently ran two other fingers over the feather for a last touch, before edging it underneath the bark a place it had cracked so that the feather leaned upright, giving the spot next to it a few pats again as if to encourage his words to the tree. Yoshitsu didn’t imagine that the feather would always stay there, but believing it would stay for a few days at least, felt enough, that it remained until he was at least out of this area.

“I guess this is it.” Yoshitsu lingered his hand on the tree for a few more seconds, before backing up and pull on the strap around his shoulder to adjust the leather bag he was bringing. He had already bid goodbye to his father and everyone in the village. The maple tree was his last stop. Last, but not least, as they said. Letting his eyes wander the horizon one last time and breathing in another whiff of air faintly scented of the maple tree, Yoshitsu realized there couldn’t be any harm in doing it one last time before he left. Even though he hadn’t done it in years. Now seemed a good time for (as far as he knew) a really final farewell.

“Trico! Did you hear that? I’m leaving!”

Yoshitsu paused and, contrary to his younger self, felt more amused at his shouts now than hopeful. At the same time, he realized his voice had changed since he was a young boy, and pondered that if Trico had heard him now, would he even recognize him anymore? Somehow that thought sparked a little desperation in Yoshitsu, and he cupped his mouth, closed his eyes and shouted with all his might.

“I DON’T KNOW WHEN I’LL BE BACK! BUT I’LL TAKE CARE OF MYSELF! TRICO, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF TOO, OKAY?!”

One final time, more out of habit than anything, Yoshitsu listened for a response, and one final time, received none. Yoshitsu sighed while letting out a tiny smile, straightening his back again and grabbing at his shoulder strap. He then said, in what was barely above a whisper: “Lead a good life, friend.”

And then, like he had done that very first time he came here as a ten-year old, he took off running down the hill. But unlike that time, he wasn’t a frightened child whose cheeks soaked of tears while running for home. He was now an adult running with a giant smile on his face, not running for his home, but headed for the big world. And for the first time, he felt as though his memories of Trico took a backseat to everything he was feeling, and to everything he wanted to see. And he welcomed that bittersweet sensation with every fibre of his being for every step he took.

End part one...

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Author’s note: Since many probably wonder, the reason I've named the boy "Yoshitsu" is based on a comment from The Last Guardian's director where he said that the boy's name is spoken by one of the villagers in the final cutscene, which sounds like this name. And I figured that naming him would make things easier than refer to him as "boy" the whole story. :p

Anyway,  this was originally going to be a oneshot, but it just ended up getting longer than I thought that I ultimately found it best to split it into two parts. If you reached all the way here, I sincerely hope you enjoyed it so far and will stay tuned for the continuation and ending. :) And of course feel free to leave a review, they’re much appreciated! :)