I awoke to the soft snore of Agro. I looked at his forehead, where there was once a sharp, white slash, and noticed his fur had really started to turn gray. All I could see now was a gray oval. He had been with us since when I was a baby. He used to take care of me when I learned how to walk and wouldn't let me leave until I had eaten all of my food. I remember when I was really small and he used to bend over so I could get on him. Although I was nowhere near his towering head, I was now taller than sister Mono. She had told me that where she came from they had a regular cycle of seasons, and each turn was called a year. According to her, I was around fifteen years old which coincided with the number of circular depressions on my horns, so I believed her despite how strange the concept sounded.

The leaves on the ground crunched under my feet as I tried to get up without disturbing Agro's slumber. I picked up my, now dry, torch and put the rest of my items in my bag and headed off once again. My plan was to run over to the closest pillar of light and figure out what was actually happening. I sneaked away from Agro knowing that as soon as he noticed me missing, he would frantically try to find me. However, I planned to be back before he would wake up. All I wanted to do was see the pillar of light.

Sister Mono had never taken me to any of the pillars and had always made a point to circle around them. I would think to ask her about them every time but the crease on her brow and the worry in her eyes told me that I would not get the answer I wanted if I simply asked. She would probably come up with a fake explanation for them, the same way she said that the reason there isn't a night here is because this is where the sun "lives" and the reason she doesn't have horns because she is a girl. And she would say it with a smile so fake and condescending that I would get angry.

That truly was my only problem with both Agro and sister Mono. Neither of them believed I was capable of anything more than carrying things for them. I wanted to prove that I could do useful things. I wanted to go with sister Mono when she left on her hunts to go find supplies or special things without telling. I wanted Agro to stop treating me like a little kid and worrying about where I was all the time. I was capable of doing things on my own. The last time that we went to the sea, sister Mono was having a hard time with a school of fish and dropped our fishing net into the water. I got up and dived off from our raft to fetch it for her. When I surfaced, all I got was a scolding about the dangers of the sea and I was banned from getting on the raft again until I had proved that I was responsible enough to fish with her. Then, she dropped me off at the shore and told me to take our haul back to our house.

As I was leaving, I decided to stop off at the nearby shrine. It was made of solid slabs of limestone, a stone that was found only by the shore of the sea. I marveled at how the shrine was built, because I couldn't think of a way that the stones could have been moved easily. Yet still, the unrelenting woods had taken over the shrine and it was now covered in leaves and grass. I kneeled at the front and clasped my hands together, the way I had seen sister Mono do every time she was leaving. "Please let things go my way," I whispered to the shrine. As if in response, a cool wind blew through the woods and ruffled my hair. I smiled and ran to the edge of the woods.

Author's note

PM me if you can read Japanese and are willing to help me get permission to use the image of Wander from this website ( k - sara . skr .jp/ (remove all spaces in the link)). Also, leave a review whether you liked it or not. Thanks for reading!