9: Fresh Observations

Midafternoon found Kana finally setting out on her journey, descending the pathway away from the temple at a brisk pace. It had taken quite a bit of restraint to put it off for this long, in retrospect. Even so, she had diligently catalogued a mental list of the resources available to her and brainstormed some goals for items and amenities to gather. Or perhaps daydreamed was a better word.

The more she thought about her situation, the more she realized that she really had no good baseline to work with. All she could really come up with were better versions of the basics she either already had access to or incidentally encountered while in captivity.

Clothing, shelter, means with which to defend herself, a way to bathe, freedom from her cell.

Her material desires really were basic at this point. Kana couldn't help but feel wry about it.

What she had really craved was freedom, and was still disoriented now that she had it. For Kana, that was another pressing reason for her little reconnoitering diversion. Her perspective lacked scope.

It was for tactical advantage certainly, to get a feel for the landscape and establish a home turf advantage. To calm her mind as well, spending time around nature and embracing her uneasy freedom. Gathering supplies and improving her arsenal too, especially when it came to suitable clothing. She was still going barefoot after all. Even if her skin was stronger and tougher now, her feet would still ache.

She could come up with reasons all day, but in the end she was just starting to feel claustrophobic and paranoid without knowing much about the outside. It showed in every endeavor she attempted and colored all of her thoughts. Being cooped up inside for so long had been thoroughly disgruntling.

As she ran along the cobbled path, it gradually transitioned into a wide and beaten dirt trail. Soon after the transition, she passed through a sort of gated threshold where the swirling mists broke and visibility expanded vastly.

The change afforded her an unfettered view for tens of kilometers all around.

Amid sudden and strong gusts of wind, Kana basked in unobstructed sunlight like she had never felt before, awed with all of her senses. She never thought that the mere warmth of the sun on her face could feel so emotional.

The temple on Mt. Shumisen was surely build atop the summit of the highest mountain in the whole vicinity, easily several kilometers tall. Great rolling peaks weaved all around rivers below where she stood, dropping off into hills and then a forested valley. Interspersed in the forests were tall and naturally formed stone pillars that peeked through the treetops.

Kana stood at such a high altitude that she soon realized the mists she had been passing through were in fact the normal cloud cover over the valley breaking against Shumisen. Some of the sibling peaks below had smokey clouds flowing around their slopes, but none anywhere near as densely.

The path continued on ahead, winding all throughout the terrain below. It was often obstructed from view by something or another, but it clearly continued all the way down into the valley. Anyone posted up here on watch or as a guard would have a substantial early warning of anyone approaching.

In a way, that was reassuring. The temple was a very defensible place to serve as a base of operations. She would have the high ground! To say nothing of the hidden chambers within...

This place was very much as remote as it gets. She supposed that's why a group of cultists set up shop here.

After briefly consulting with the sky and the map she'd brought along in her cloak's pocket, Kana verified that she was looking southeast, towards the smaller Land of Grass.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, she made her way down the path with a quick, yet leisurely pace. Even with several detours to inspect areas that might be good hiding places, and since she did not feel a need to rest with her level of vitality, her progress was rather impressive. By evening she had passed through a few more gateways and arrived at the forested valley floor.

From here she allowed herself to stray from the path, fascinated by the flora and fauna around. New sights and sounds, scents and touches abounded. Brilliant wildflowers. Grand and dignified tree trunks. Strange and skittish wildlife. She had read of a few such things from scrolls at the temple, but much like with performing ninjutsu, the descriptions on faded paper simply could not compare to experiencing it for real.

It was the first time since she awakened that she feel so at home, so free. The temple gardens were one thing, but they were simply on a different order of magnitude compared to the comforting vastness of nature. No walls and enclosures. No oppressions and restrictions.

It was as if every tree and plant that stretched out and around, the plantlife itself, was receptive to her in a strange and fundamental way. Kana briefly allowed her chakra to extend out in a sort of haze and connect with this feeling, producing another and more subtle feeling of resonance within her.

Forests like this gave her feelings of security, however faint.

Leaping up into the trees, she rested in the boughs and basked in these feelings for a while before continuing on by dashing from branch to branch above the path...

Along the way she occasionally ran into fruit-bearing trees, mentally noting their locations and storing a few different fruits on her person. She refrained from sampling them, however, uncertain if they were safe or even edible. She didn't really feel hungry enough to risk it yet, but she would surely have to eat something eventually. And it was rather apparent now that there was nothing edible to be found on Mt. Shumisen itself.

If the map she'd read was accurate, the path southeast from Mt. Shumisen would curve more easterly until it intersected a main thoroughfare in the Grass country. That would bring her within the vicinity of civilization, where she could hopefully learn more.

As evening turned into dusk and then night, Kana continued in a zigzag pattern that loosely followed on and around the road. Not needing to sleep allowed her to power on through the night easily, bringing with it another set of fresh experiences. The nocturnal insects and animals let out sounds that had a strangely calming effect as well, enough that she almost felt sort of drowzy, or perhaps just lazy? It was more like an inclination to doze rather than feeling compelled. There was a unique scent to it all, too, that only added to the effect.

She had traveled a significant distance by now, but the time it took her to traverse it was much longer than it needed to be. Her pace was essentially a leisurely stroll after all, on top of taking an inefficient serpentine route. If needed, Kana felt she could move much much faster. Her chakra twinged with a resonance at that thought, too, which was only further confirmation. That would be another avenue to explore sometime later.

But it was fun going as she were, and Kana was in no hurry to cut her outing short without at least acquiring some form of boon or supplies. She couldn't recall ever having experienced nature like this before.

For a while after she lost herself searching her memories, trying to reacquaint herself with a time before her captivity. If possible, she didn't want the time she lost to solely define her, instead hoping to regain a semblance of whoever she may used to have been.

She had definitely come from somewhere though, presumably a home and family, before she was brought to a lair of cultists and locked away. She found her hands had absentmindedly reached behind to touch her hair clasp as her thoughts wandered.

More than a possession, it was a gift, she now recalled, but she was at a loss as to who had given it to her. It must have been someone very important to her young self for her to treasure it so much. Even if its meaning to her had changed, its origins had not.

It was already her best lead, her best connection to her past. Finding whomever gave it to her was still her best shot.

In some ways, thoughts about her past felt sad, as reminders of what she might have lost. But more than anything, it made her feel empty. Hollow. Missing something, the absence of which somehow affected her heart. The only way that could be true after all the moreness she gained recently, is if it was something lost from before her time in captivity that had not been regained.

But it had been too long for those vague memories to be clear. She had lived like this for as long as she knew, alone in her own company, caring for herself alone. That was a mentality from a world the size of a cell, a world in solitude. Just a few days out in the real world had been so liberating that her incarceration felt just that much more dismaying. She never wanted to feel that way again, it would just be too crushing.

By this time, a day and much of the night has passed by, so Kana had gotten quite used to the sounds, sights, and scents of nature. She was more or less acclimated to the environment, able to accurately identify her surroundings with her base senses. For someone who had spent such a large percentage of her life in a cage, it was important to be wary and attentive to such things.

Additionally, Kana reached a treeline where the forest transitioned into a wide grass field, forcing her down from the treetops and onto the ground again. The path continued on through the wildgrass where an intersection with a much wider road appeared.

Of more immediate note though, was a sort of glow and haze on the horizon to the south. Squinting very closely revealed pillars of smoke billowing up, illuminated only by the faint waning moon's light.

Smoke meant fire, and that much smoke meant lots of it. And it was near a plain of grass as well. If it spread, then this area was bound to get very unpleasant very fast. Though Kana suspected that she'd be able to deal with it using her newfound ninjutsu prowess, whatever lay to the south was doubtless some serious trouble. It would be extremely unwise to go looking for trouble when lacking so much in experience and supplies.

If she were to go by her understanding of the map, then that direction would be very near the southern border of the country, where the Land of Grass met with the Land of Fire and Land of Rain. There was nothing for it but to head north up the thoroughfare instead. For her current goals it hardly mattered which country she was in, but going south looked to be a bad idea at the moment. Observing the situation around here for a few days might allow more options to open up, however.

Belatedly, Kana wondered about using her chakra to sense for more information. She had done so in a sort of crude and primal way when she had just woken up on that altar, looking for human auras and signatures. Her various distractions and ruminations somehow kept her from addressing the topic more recently.

Standing at the road's intersection, Kana closed her eyes and raised a hand in front of her with index and middle finger extended, though not totally certain why. She intuitively felt and channeled her chakra to activate the sensing technique.

The change was like flipping a switch, a switch which then exploded in her face. Instantly her mind blanked, flooded with a stupidly enormous amount of information. Far too much to even make sense.

"Gah- "

The overwhelming sensation of stabbing sharply around her brain for just a few fractions of a second caused her to gasp out in pain, dispelling the technique.

For a moment she knelt, bracing herself on the ground with a hand and trying to steady her mind.

The technique hadn't failed, no. It had certainly worked, just way too well.

Every shred of chakra, every movement of every insect, every sway of grass. All of it in a region perhaps a hundred kilometers in diameter had all flowed back to her and condensed into garbled nonsense. It was far, far too much to handle. There was no way she could keep it active for more than a few seconds, and even then it would cause immense pain. She was lucky she hadn't been rendered unconscious instantly.

For some reason, her chakra had an extreme affinity with the sensory type as well, picking up far more detail than she could ever want. And clearly she had no idea how to even use it properly, certainly not enough to tame that obscene flow of information.

Finally regaining her footing, Kana resigned herself not to attempt sensing again too soon. She had made the mistake of channeling her chakra in a very refined and precise way, utilizing her strong control like she usually did for her ninjutsu. That must have affected her sensory capacity somehow. Given time and training she ought to be able to figure it out, but out in the middle of a roadway with fire nearby was not the place to do so.

Holding a palm to her forehead, Kana felt the beginnings of a headache start to form. She'd really messed up on this one.

Fastening her cloak's hood up to conceal her hair and much of her face, she made her way northward sporting a vacant expression and a subdued attitude. Scouting out civilization would probably have to be the last item on the agenda now. The throbbing in her head had rather stolen her enthusiasm, so now she just wanted to get it over with and find somewhere to rest.

Plumes of smoke still rose in ever thicker and blacker towers on the southern horizon.