The leaves rustled behind the ebony and ivory haired girl making her head snap to the side to look behind her. Of course she had known that she wasn't alone for around the past hour or so; ever since she began her hike away from the little village. She was used to traveling old and forgotten paths of the forest with the occasional lost traveler, but this person was different. She could sense it in purely in their presence; that and the fact that the mushi had grown more apt to try to get near her ever since she sensed that she wasn't alone.

They came up to her circling around her ankles and sitting on her bare feet as she kept on walking. Some of them were odd looking and some a little scary, but they were more of pests than anything else at the moment.

She stopped for a moment, trying to center on the persons' energy that seemed to be attracting so many mushi even though she had just recently soaked herself in incense smoke. With a slight sigh she plopped onto the green and brown floor, batting some of the little beasts away from her.

Her body was tired from the battle she'd fought in only a night ago and needed a rest anyway. Her eyes drooped as her hand reached around in her bag for some a few incense stick to lite, it would keep most of them at bay for at least a little while.

"I guess I'll just have to buy some more when I get to another town," she yawned stretching and closing her eyes for a few seconds, enjoying the familiar sounds of nature for a few moments before it was interrupted again by the annoyance lagging on behind her. The person hadn't made any actual noise, but their life force was so strong it distracted her from what she needed to be doing.

She wasn't avoiding this person for any real reasons besides the fact that she would most likely get incessant questioning about why her hair was cropped short like a man's, spiked up in the front, and why it was pure black and white. It would either be that or they would get too scared of her to even look her in the eyes.

Then again she didn't really like it when people looked directly into her eyes. She would see things about them; their joy and happiness, their pain and suffering. She felt like she was intruding every time she looked.

But enough of being dramatic and serious as I'm sure our main character wouldn't enjoy that too much. She isn't really the most serious all the time herself, even so the facts about her hair and the whole thing with the eyes and seeing people emotions and fragments of their past is true. On with the story (now in first person)!

I kneeled on the ground in the clearing and lit the sticks quickly and with ease. The smoke kept away the mushi and even though it would've been much easier to smoke, I couldn't get over the wave of sickness I always felt when I tried.

As I stood up I heard something rustling in the bushes behind me. A light wind swept through the trees, blowing out two of my sticks. The wind blew on, making the remaining candle flicker. I crouched down as fast as I could by a tree that was blocking some of the wind and cupped my hand around the delicate thing as if I was holding onto it for dear life.

"C'mon stay lit, stay lit, stay lit…" I mumbled some incoherent words to myself trying to cheer the candle on in its fight to retain a single spark.

"That could explain it," I could tell that it was a young man, somewhere in his twenties, by the sound of his voice. "Do you need any help?"

I refused to look up at him, instead focusing on the tiny, dying ember that rested on top on the stick. Muttering something that sounded like 'No.' under my breath I focused on the spark of life still left. But alas, even as I tried to lightly blow a bit of tender life into the damned thing, it went out.

I stood up, finally looking at the man. My eyes grazed over one of his not quite locking on it. Most of the time I had my power under control, but if someone took me by surprise or I wasn't distracting myself then I could see. It did help though that he only had one eye though. I couldn't see through his hair that covered that part of his face, but I could tell that it wasn't there.

He had bright white hair kind of like her and oddly colored green eyes. He had a monotone way of speaking and an almost stocky build. He was wear a white shirt, brown pants, and a long trench coat that nearly touched the forest floor. He was taller and paler than most and was carrying a box looking bag strapped to his shoulders. All in all he reminded me of myself in a way.

"What are you doing out here?" He glanced at the three discarded incense sticks that lied on the ground. His voice was muffled by the cigarette that was hanging loosely from one side of his mouth.

"Going… somewhere," I relied dully turning my back on him. "Do you have any food to sell?" I wasn't really sure where I was going, I just had a general idea.

"No, and where might somewhere be exactly?" He began walking towards me until we were side by side.

"What does it matter?" We began walking, both looking straight ahead.

"Just curious… and wondering if you had heard any… weird stories about the place." I knew that question. I asked that a lot, too. I'm also a Mushi Master, and by the looks of him so was this guy.

"Yeah… I heard some stories about this town a ways away. By the sounds of it the disturbances are being caused by some kind of mushi." I knew that he would ask more, but I didn't go on.

"Hmm," he made a funny little grunting noise in the back of his throat, "What kind of disturbances?"

"It might as well tell you everything seeing as how we'll be walking for a while, huh?"

"Who said I was going to walk with you the rest of the way?" He didn't say it with any venom, it more so of a statement of circumstances if that's what you want to call it. Nonetheless, I knew that he was curious and he was obviously a nomad who didn't seem to have a specific destination at the moment.

"Well if you're not gonna' walk with me then there's no point in you knowing." I speed up a little bit, just a few paces ahead of him. He heaved out a sigh.

"Fine," he was by my side again, "Tell me." I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and then looked straight ahead again.

"The village is in this giant clearing in the woods and only about a hundred people live there. Last year this little boy was acting weird; he would walk into the woods all alone in the middle of the night and show up days later passed out on the outskirts of town. He never remembered any of what had happened either. The thing that the villagers found weird was that every time he came back he would be in perfectly good health except for the fact that there were some intricate markings on his stomach that no one could make any sense of.

"This went on for a while until the boy became sick and weak and was nearly dead. Then it seems that it may have transferred itself to another person. This time it was a girl, a little older than the boy, the same things happened with her except this time there was something different. Her hair began to get little streaks of blue-gray in them until she was finally weakened to the point of death.

"I've heard that it's passed to three more people and all of them have died. The only person who's lived is that little boy. I don't know what the markings look like, and I haven't met anyone reliable enough to tell me what they look like. And before you ask the boy is eleven, the girl was fifteen, the woman after her was twenty three, the man after her was in his late twenties, and I can only assume the person after him was in his thirties."

He didn't say anything for a few moments. I looked out to the horizon; the sun would disappear in only about half an hour. My throat was parched from talking so much that I had to open up my canteen and take a few sips of the cool water.

"Don't you think fifteen is a bit young to be dealing with such a force as the mushi?" I stopped suddenly. How could he think I'm fifteen?! I haven't been called fifteen in about four years.

"You're a bad age guesser." I said simply. I had been training to be a Mushi Master since I was ten and became an 'official' one when I was fifteen. That was four years ago, almost five.

He stopped a few steps ahead of me and turned to face me. I knew that I was a bit short and underdeveloped in some places, but I still had hips and I figured I at least acted nineteen.

"You look fifteen."

"I'm nineteen… almost twenty. How old are you?" I started walking again. He turned his back to me and began a slow pace as well.

"I'm twenty two… almost twenty three. What's your name?" We were walking side by side again at the same pace.

"… You can call me R. And yours?" I couldn't bring myself to tell him my actual name.

He hesitated. "Ginko… that's not really your name, is it?" He said matter-of-factly.

I chuckled under my breath and half smiled. "You caught me; my parents weren't that boring with their name choice. My real name is Ruri."

The sun had nearly set. I needed to start setting up camp before it was completely dark out.

I dropped my bag and pulled out a little bundle of hay. "Use this to get the fire started," I snapped as I began looking around for sticks that could be used for the fire. After about fifteen minutes the fire was blazing, we were tucked into our separate sleeping rolls, and the sun had set.

"Why did you decided to come with me," I finally asked.

"Because I'm a Mushi Master, so I figure they'll trust me more than a teenager with a hobby. I'm just helping you."

"I'm a Mushi Master too, you know."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't…" I rolled over and tucked myself further into my blankets.

"Jerk," I muttered. I drifted off to sleep in the somewhat awkward silence than ensued.