A Brief Stint in the Woods(?)

Sitting on a log in a training ground consisting mostly of greenery--despite the surrounding sand and stone, Mei couldn’t help but notice the strange contrast. Yet, despite that, the strangeness of this particular training area, Mei found the place incredibly peaceful. She came here often, sometimes to train, sometimes to relax, but always to think. The only sounds were those few animals that could be contained, those few insects that were truly necessary, and the gentle wind that filtered in from the desert that surrounded.

It was cooler here, but the air felt heavier and though some complained about the humidity, Mei honestly found it soothing. Like a weighted blanket, but almost intangible, untouchable. Her lips twitched at the thought and a faint smile touched her eyes, though her lips remained unmoved.

Her awareness of even those tiny reactions reminded her of her mother, which brought the slightest of frowns down upon her brow. Mei remembered when the woman who had raised her had called her an unfeeling serpent, a simple creature without thoughts in its skull. Her frown eased, for the irony of her mother of all people calling someone else a snake was not at all lost on her.

Yes, that woman had truly hated her more each year, hated how her daughter pulled away bit-by-bit, slowly gaining independence and finding ways to make herself as unappealing a target as possible.

Mei shook her head, slowly, then rose,  a single chuckle bubbling up from her throat. She swallowed, pushing the mirth down and focused on her breath.


Clearing her mind of noise, Mei focused inwards, then drew upon her chakra. Ponderous, it moved slowly through her body, finding its way to the tips of her fingers where she let it go. Just as she’d been practicing, she found that she was getting better at controlling how much of her chakra she drew upon, it was by the barest of degrees, but nonetheless it was something she’d accomplished for herself by herself.

Refocusing, she attempted to mould the chakra, drawing upon her only affinity to mix it with her chakra, painting it with new color. As she closed her eyes—focusing—she found herself able to visualize the process.

A gently pulsing influx of aspectless energy, joined by a calm, heavy roiling mass of multicolored elemental essence. Absently she knew that her peers, and even many of her teachers—when she’d had the chance to discuss the earth affinity with them—saw it as an earthy brown. It seemed that she was different, for to her earth chakra glittered with a variable cascade of color each likely representing its own mineral, some crystalline, others not. She found the energy beautiful and eminently reliable. Solid, immovable, but changing with the slowness of time or the exertion of energy matched with patience and skill.

She knew her element wasn’t superior to any other per se, at least not on a literal level, but she held it in high regard all the same. It was likely just her own personal bias, but it honestly didn’t matter to her terribly what the reason was. Ultimately she simply felt how she felt and that was it.

Smiling, Mei tried to let just a trickle of the elemental chakra out now that the two had begun to mix, but she found it difficult, impossible even, and then the entire process collapsed. Sweat broke out on her brow and lines of tension appeared as her muscled clenched reflexively as if trying to increase her grip on the energies within her. All to no avail as the affinity slipped away, leaving only unfolded chakra behind, using gently and utterly unchanged as if nothing at all had occurred. Sighing, she let that energy go as well, allowing it to retreat back into her pool where it would mostly remain. She spent some time then with her eyes closed, simply taking in the sounds of that curated and cultivated life. The whisper of wind through leaves, the scurrying of small creatures up trees or from branch-to-branch, the calls of birds, exotic and strange here in the desert where few winged things naturally dwelled in abundance.

Then she focused and felt the beat of her heart and the pulsing rush of blood through her veins. She felt the gentle tickling strands of her dark azure hair, the softness of her clothes against skin and each other. Another breath and Mei noticed her chest expand as her diaphragm pulled air back into her lungs. She held it, savoring the taste of sweet air and relishing in the smells of abundant life.

Slowly, she felt the calm return, serenity beyond anything she ever could have had in her long tumultuous childhood. She searched for the things she had done rather than focusing on the one’s she hadn’t.

Refining her chakra control, that she’d managed, and calling upon her element as well while still regulating the first. She reflected back on the process now, where things had fallen apart, called up the imagery, and then patiently began dissecting it. With deep breaths and a mind empty beyond those singularly important imaginings.

As she meticulously took apart each step of the process and sorted the details each in their own directory, she happened upon a discrepancy. The frequency.

It was the resonant frequency of each, their rhythms didn’t match and so when she’d began the process one had almost seemed to repel the other. Or, perhaps it had simply slipped away, going out of her control in the process.

Satisfied with this knowledge, Mei let her breathing even out to something closer to her norm and after five minutes of letting her mind gradually return to a more relaxed—and less focused—state, she opened her eyes.

Feeling grateful for the relative silence and solitude, Mei rose from her seat on the stump she’d chosen as her perch. Mei oriented herself, taking one last deep breath before lunging forwards and then jumping several feet up as she moved, letting her feet touch a tree, adhere with Surface Walking, before she pushed off from her new orientation. With skillful use of her chakra she managed to swiftly switch between the two applications of the technique to jump between tree trunks at speed—at least until she miscalculated and found herself hurtling towards two trees too close to slip between. Reacting quickly, Mei performed handseals—her chakra rising to the occasion in an instant.


Still moving through the air at speed, her body shrunk down and flattened, becoming a huge—but incredibly thin—arrow-like object. The change completing just in time, Mei’s new form slipped through the gap between the twin trunks, before hurtling onwards.

That done, she oriented herself while still in flight, then released the jutsu at the last instant, her hand shooting out to catch a branch above and to her right. With her momentum such as it was, she spun upwards as if her arm were itself a lever, before she lost her grip on the rough bark of the wood. This sent her upwards in an arc, barely giving her time to realign herself with the ground before she met it in a rolling landing. Stopping as the roll completed, Mei let her breathing slow, one knee and one hand pressed flat to the moss-covered ground, supporting her as she rested.

Then, when she’d recovered, Mei rose to her feet and began to walk, noting that the sun had moved a considerable distance across the sky. As she moved she brushed aside tall ferns and low hanging branches, on occasion skirting around a thorny bush or avoiding the loud buzzing that surely indicated the nearness of some stinging insect colony. All the while she kept her mind centered and clear, focusing only on the intricacies of her body’s senses and on the metaphysical movements of her chakra network. Mei made the trek to the center of the training ground—this artificial oasis (one of two)—frequently, so much so that anyone who paid attention to her routines would know it was likely her favorite place.

Though it was never truly quiet in the forest, the noises were so different from those in the city outside—she preferred them. Further, it was a place she knew her mother would never follow her—even if she did know that Mei went there with significant regularity. Mei had never figured out precisely why that was, but she had her theories. First among them was likely that her mother considered herself far too civilized and noble to subject herself to the wilderness. She’d likely call the place worse than the savage dunes of the desert that surrounded them on all sides. Another of her theories was simply that despite her mother’s talents she was no sensor nin or expert tracker and so she would almost certainly have a very hard time ever finding Mei in the forest. She liked this one less as it meant her mother had likely tried to pursue her into this, her sanctuary away from things. At the same time, the image of her mom struggling her way through the brush, snapping at insects, and cursing at the humidity brought her some small amusement that she could not dismiss.

These two were easily her favorites, though she knew that the most likely of her theories was that her mother simply had never looked hard enough for her. That the woman simply considered such an act below her ‘station,’ and that—in her narcissistic way—she expected her daughter to return. The idea of such was discomforting and it reminded her of the insidious nature of her mother, of her pettiness and easily injured pride. Exhaling through her nose, Mei looked up as she pushed aside a branch, finding that she had arrived at the edge of the forest.

Knowing that she had the whole day ahead of her, she took another deep breath and then let her emotions go. She’d gotten very good at it over the years. She’d had to, really, there just hadn’t been a better way. It was either learn to let go, or be truly and abjectly miserable for a very…very long time. So she’d chosen the high road, as it were.

Not that she’d forgiven the woman, that at least was beyond her. At least for now.

Moving away from those thoughts, Mei made her way through the village, passing markets and stalls—merchants trying to get the attention of passersby—as well as children running about. Some few were young shinobi, if their garb was anything to go by. The sight gave Mei mixed feelings, but she smiled nonetheless, waving when some of them caught her eye.

She stopped at a stall or two, occasionally even going into a shop, as she picked up groceries for later. Mei liked to stay on top of things, especially with how little there had always been to eat at her childhood home. Besides, she wanted to stay healthy, after all it helped the complexion, improved her quality of life, and honestly made her job significantly easier.

After she’d taken care of her errands and greeted some of her neighbors, Meiyaku made her way up the stairs of her small porch before opening the door to her house and leaving behind the sweltering dry heat of the day. Inside it was cool, but not cold. She’d had a friend design several fuinjutsu for her windows and doors, such that hot air that passed any threshold in her house would find itself deprived of a sizable amount of thermal energy as it did so.

It was a clever bit of work and she hoped that one day she might be half as good as him at the art. Granted, apparently the technique was more complex than she gave it credit for, after all night in the desert could be frigidly cold and yet she never noticed. Like many other things, she had a theory, but this one was fairly straightforward. Mei thought that what the seal actually did was first detect the temperature of the air as it touched the outer edge of the pattern, then add or siphon thermal energy from the air as it passed through the middle, before being checked a second time by a second inner layer of seals, at which point it would be adjusted more if necessary, or simply pass by the final layer which probably acted as some kind of insulator.

She knew that he’d explained it to her, but honestly at the time she’d simply been too impressed to engage in the details and so she remembered only scant fragments of his explanation. By observing the seals carefully—studying them really—and writing down the parts of his explanation she did remember she’d cobbled together an explanation that made some degree of sense at the very least.

Opening her icebox and cupboards, Mei swiftly put away her groceries, before heading back out. She’d decided that she was going to spend some more time at the training grounds, even if it meant her mother might barge in on her there. Still, it was hard to say if that would happen at all. Either way, she had work to do and that was simply the best place to do it.

Spoiler:

Approved.