Anzu
New Member
Word count
There was shuffling and the hollow snap and pop of a fire in the next room. Upon a worn mat half destroyed by moths, a pile of blankets moaned. Rising out of the coverings, the young girl's mouth opened wide, releasing a long, heavy yawn. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with both hands, she stifled another yawn and peeked her eyes open for her first look at the day.
She should have been surprised that the sun hadn't come up yet, and that the small home was still pitch black, but she wasn't. One squinted glance over to her father's equally worn bedroll showed that his blankets were in disarray, and the crackle of fire in the next room proved her theory.
"Still too early..." she murmured to herself, settling back down beneath her covers, allowing her whole body to disappear beneath the old blankets.
She and Ryouta had stayed up late to look at stars. He had promised her Venus after sunset, and Mars before bed. The girl had bet him her morning rice that they wouldn't see both planets on the same night, and she'd lost that bet. Her stomach grumbled at the memory.
The door to the second room opened wide, flooding the black room with dancing firelight. The tall figure silhouetted in the doorway scanned the room quickly, dark eyes glinting in the shifting light. Avoiding the small table, he moved directly to the pile of blankets beneath one of the room's only windows.
"Anzu... Wake up, Anzu-chan."
Grumbling from the curled up girl in the blankets. "Go away, old man. I want to sleep through breakfast so I can forget how hungry I'm going to be."
A pause. Then incessant nudging on the blankets from the man. "Anzu-chaaaan, wake up!"
Waving her hands out of the blankets, she swatted at Ryouta's foot. "I told you to leave me alone," she groused.
The middle-aged man squatted by the belligerent pile, whining childishly. "But nobody can find mushrooms like you can, Anzu-chan!"
Beneath the blankets, the girl smiled. Then, heaving the largest groan that her small body could handle, she moved up out of the warm spot, meeting her father's eyes. "If I go out to get mushrooms, though, I'll be wanting my bowl of breakfast rice back as payment."
Ryouta made a face at her. "Fine. I'll just win it again the next time you bet. You always lose."
A girl cursed with continual bed head, she clawed her fingers through her short orange hair. "Keep saying that, old man. I'll win next time. Why are you up so early, anyway?"
"I couldn't sleep, so I went to the back room to work on something that I'd been tossing around in my head for a while."
"What is it?" Anzu asked, suddenly more awake.
Seeing her excitement, her father veiled his, his face flooding with nonchalance. "Really, it's not important. Just go back to sleep, Anzu-chan. You wouldn't be interested anyway." He distracted himself for a moment, refusing to look at his daughter. When he glanced back at her, though, he couldn't bear it.
He grinned widely at the ginger-haired preteen. "Go get mushrooms, and then I'll show you!"
Grabbing a shabby straw hat at the door, Anzu was gone, running across the dew-covered grass to the mouth of the forest behind their small home. The morning sun's first fingers of light were creeping up into the sky, slowly revealing the thin layer of warm mist she moved so swiftly through.
As lanky as she was for her age, she still moved with the grace of one that had yet to grow beyond their child height. Especially in these woods. She knew this forest inside and out. Every insect, arachnid, and sliming creature that crawled the mossy floor to every chattering and wailing bird in the canopy. Without slowing, she dipped beneath low branches, raising her arms to shield her face against brambles hidden in the brush.
Leaving the mess of brush, Anzu paused, taking a moment to breathe and savor the morning. She had planned on running the whole way, to the mushrooms and back home, but the morning always brought her a calm feeling that very little else could.
Her bare feet padded over the mossy ground, slender, dirty toes taking in the sensation of the thousands of green nubs beneath the soles of her feet. A gentle breeze whispered past her bare calves, ruffling the thin linen of her short yukata.
A small stream crossed her path thirty feet ahead, so she moved on to it, remembering that there was a rotting log nearby where mushrooms grew very well. At the edge of the stream, she craned her neck, spying the white mushrooms growing plentiful on the log across the slow moving water.
Putting the straw hat she held over her short hair, she took up fistfuls of her short yukata and stepped forward into the water. The icy cold of the stream took her by surprise, and a thin gasp escaped her lips. Cold pebbles obeyed the movement of her feet as she began to wade further through the water, the flowing liquid moving lazily southward at mid-thigh.
Shivering against the water, she hurried out the other side, twitching one foot free of water like a perturbed cat. Moving over to the log, she took inventory of the mushrooms she saw. Three different edible kinds growing on this log. Pleased with her find, she took off the straw hat and began to fill it with mushrooms. Picking each small fungi gently by its stem, she dropped it into the hat.
Moment later, hat half full, she cradled it against herself and moved back across the stream, not as surprised by the biting water this time. Gaining her footing against the stones at the bank, she was out of the water and at a run again, homeward bound.
Despite the morning sun glaring in her eyes, and despite the awakening she felt was terribly premature, a smile split her face. She had her mushrooms, her father waiting for her, and a whole bowl of rice with her name on it.
------
Anzu woke suddenly, gasping for breath and gripping her sheets in tight fists. Panting, she stared around the room through wide eyes. A young woman was kneeling by her bed, gazing down at her through silvery blue eyes.
"Are you alright, Anzu...?" she asked, both hands touching the girl's arm. "One of the girls said you were talking in your sleep."
Trying to get her breathing back to normal, she pressed a hand to her chest. She was pale, freckles contrasting harshly with ashy skin. "Ume...it was just a dream... Just a dream..." Her face turned, eyes darkening. "Ryouta..."
Ume's ears pricked at the name, and she instantly pressed a smile through she pain she was feeling for her friend. "Come on, Carrot Head. Time to get up. Fix your messy hair, and lets go find our division houses together."
Trying to push her dream from her mind, Anzu nodded slowly and disengaged herself from her sheets.