What sea scent tastes like

Within only a few minutes, the congregation of fishermen and the lone young monk-to-be set off, departing from the vast sky bridge before the mighty ninja capital of the Lightning Country.

Kumogakure fades into the distance with every curve down the rocky mountain passage as the group of carts departs into the sunset.

The fishermen had taken Damon in without any further distrust or complication.

He sat inside the back of one of their wagons, a well fitted wooden box endowed with drapes, tapestires and carpets, with a single exit towards the front of the carriage.

Even though the men had sold their wares, the distinct smell of fish and seaweed lingered within.

No matter, the silver-haired boy cheerfully sang a rhythmic chant, a hymn to bless their voyage, capturing the attention of those few men who decided to sit with him and listen to his melodious hum and repeated phrasings.

They would be traveling well into the night; it was almost 170 kilometers to the shores of the west, a journey these experienced merchants undertook every two weeks.

Damon had been studying the comings and goings of merchants for a while now as he plotted the assassination of his tyrant master.

He had overheard one of them explain their route at an inn near the city center whilst he began following them. He knew they would not stop until just before early dawn at a village deep in the lowlands and break camp again at noon. This way, with a short break in between, they would reach their destination late the next day. Their homeland was a small, irrelevant village in the west, known only for its lucrative fishing enterprises. But Damon had set his eyes on a monastery very close to their port town, one that he had heard about from his father's tales of travel.

It was a undertaking plotted through and through and through; Damon was sure about his exploits.

He also knew that by now, he was a wanted man, a criminal, a fugitive. He imagined in his mind how the body of the young lord would have been found—a corpse laying cold in his own blood, the scream of the panicked servant who stumbled upon him, first slowly creaking open the door when no one would answer their calls from within.

He also imagined the fury of the Lord of the family, the Lord's house so closely knit to the descendants of the royal family, the local Daimyo.

He envisioned the stampede of guards that would be called in to investigate, the questioning that would ensue, and then at some point, the realization of his absence—the fact his room was empty, his belongings gone, a silent confession, a declaration without words, the taking of responsibility for his heinous criminal act.

Theres no going back now…

And then? What would happen then? His papers would be uncovered in some old office, dusted off and inspected. His days of training in the ninja academy would become clear, his chakra-wielding capabilities judged, his heritage questioned. His mother would be interrogated, no doubt. Damon wondered, what would she tell them?

The archetype of person he was? His plainness, his religious aptitude? What else? There wasn't much more he imagined his mother knew about him. One thing he did know was that she would sell him out the moment she got the chance to distance herself from her outlaw son. She underestimated him, misjudged him, had no clue of the anger he harboured within, the greater mission he felt destined to seek out.

He only hoped they wouldn't come for his Senseis and the monastery—the men who had given their love, their time, their diligence to train him in their arts, to share their wisdom and beliefs. He knew they would consider their trust betrayed.

Like father, like son, huh?

They were the only ones he wished spared from the ordeal.

All this made it clear to him, so clear, that now he needed to protect himself. That for a long time to come, this would be his priority. Before he could even attempt to grasp his true goals—those that would deliver the justice he saw fit onto the world—he would need the power to defend himself, to survive, to stay alive.

He was now a fugitive, and as such, he was also a target. To make things worse, he was the lowest of the low in terms of pecking order within his criminal rank. He wouldn't be able to defend himself any time soon. So for now, he would have to hide, conceal, and blend into his surroundings.

For this reason, he decided the first skill he would have to master in order to increase his chance of survival was chakra suppression. He wouldn't be recognised as a threat if he didn't posses any chakra, if he would be persecuted as a missing nin, than suppressing it would aid him in staying undetected. From there, he could focus on other techniques that would aid him in slipping past, fitting in, and otherwise tricking his environment.

He did have one advantage for this undertaking: Until recently Damon dident know he harboured the ability to wield chakra in the first place. But had had accomplished supernatural feats before,  like walking on water or exhibiting superior strength, he wanted to attribute these gifts to his devotion of the gods. A blessing cast upon him, and perhaps it was, for a boy with no particular clan or heritage to be blessed with a knack for chakra control was an anomaly, to say the least.

Maybe it was from his constant meditation or his naturally calm nature, but to reign the flow of chakra within, the ability to steer it at his whims, was incredibly natural.

And so he sat in the back of the cart, the men beside him having long fallen asleep, entranced by the melodies which the boy had sung into the moonlit night.

Sitting on his legs, his arms folded neatly on top of them, his breathing a perfect harmony of lifting and releasing, he focused. He focused on the focus—to breathe the chakra that flowed through every inch of his body, to compress it with every release into a smaller, denser form: a storm to a gust, a gust to a breeze, a breeze to nothing but a breath of air, and lastly, not even that. Emptiness, harmonious voidness, inner peace.

And so Damon honed his skills far into the night, a meditation that felt like days, though only a few hours passed as the carriage made its way through the highlands.

Those moments before dawn, like those before sunset, bring with them an air you cannot find at any other time of the day. The fog rolls down from the hills, the dew drops into the wet grass, the scent mixed into the cold air—that first breath of morning.

Damon awoke. He had slept while sitting, something that occurred ever so often when one spent as much time as he had meditating in one position. His neck ached, his legs too, so he got up and hushed out to the cart driver.

The man sat on a small bench leaned against a supportive piece of wood nailed to the back of the carriage, and two large brown horses trotted along the muddy dirt road down the highlands towards the ocean.

“Have you seen the ocean before, young monk?” the bald fisherman asked.

Damon shook his head. “I was once told that if I got up early, at such an hour as this, and stared from the peak of the monastery near the Dragon’s Ravine, I could see the azure of the sea on the horizon.” He gave the man a weak smile and concluded, “But I never did. I pray it will fill my soul with the same peace that poets describe in their haikus.”

The monk laughed wholeheartedly, waking some of the other members of their troupe in the back.

“Oh, it will, young monk, it will. There’s nothing like your first whiff of sea salt, let me tell ya.”

Damon joined in on his cheerful, full-fledged chuckle. “Let us pray we travel safely until we can catch that first breath you described.”

As the two enjoyed their company in the early air of the grasslands they traveled through, the caravan became slower. There were five carts in total, them being squeezed somewhere in the middle. Damon wasn't quite able to determine their position in the chain when they first started their journey. But the slowdown must have been coming from the peak leading the group.

“Ahh yes, we must be reaching the Nansuke Inn. Don't let it trouble you, boy. We will rest here, change drivers, and break camp again later in the day. We've just made it about halfway now, ya know. Lay down in the grass once it’s dry. We’ll get ya some grub and before ya know it, we’ll be back on the road.”

Damon nodded eagerly. “Ohh, a nap against a tree trunk sounds wonderful. It is, after all, in harmony with nature that we gain harmony within… ya know!”

The bulky merchant erupted in roaring laughter once again at the boy’s poor attempt to grasp his western accent.

The group slowly drove into a cottage-like inn, a large two-story main house with a traditional design and friendly staff aiding weary travelers that came through these lands. There was a large entrance gate and an even larger farm beside the main yard along with a wooden fence to keep the local wildlife away from their field, where they grew various vegetables.

The wagons parked, and the group of a dozen or so men with varying degrees of sleepiness emerged and made their way inside. Damon followed at first, walking into the well-maintained but clearly worn down dining hall with large wooden tables and chairs, paper drapes, and a stone oven. It smelled fantastic, promising a wonderful breakfast.

The group indulged in a hearty meal: Tamagoyaki, rice, fresh Natto, and an astoundingly good Miso soup breathed fresh, rejuvenating wind into the traveler's.

A short while after, the sun emerged from its dreary slumber and beamed onto the meadows below. Damon lay in the grass, the scent of the fresh dewed pastures lingering about.

He chewed on some vividly green blades of grass. His eyes were closed; he was at it again—controlling the flow of his chakra through the flow of his own thoughts.

He recalled the diagram from the academy, the way chakra had certain relevant points through which it streamed with more or less restraint. His hand lay on his gut; he wanted to feel every rise and fall. He imagined a flame before his mental eye. He wouldn’t opt to simply bury it in sand; no, he would slowly drown it of oxygen. With every breath, he starved it more. He wanted to throttle it, calm it, tame it, until it was but a kindling, then a hot coal, then just the thought of heat.

Damon rested in the plains, practicing his chakra suppression until he heard a voice call out to him.

“Young monk! Hurry it up, will ya? We’re setting off!”

Damon perched up and left the comfort of his shaded rest to catch up with his carriage. And so, they were on the road again by mid-noon.

There’s a funny thing about meditation—the idea to be perfectly content with time flowing past a body that does nothing but breathe. It’s hard to get bored once you’re accustomed to it. Which Damon was. Many kids his age might have gotten impatient or frustrated simply sitting at the back of a wooden carriage, rolling over hills and marshlands, but Damon kept cool. He prayed twice, taught those men who lent them their ears a few chants catering to good fortune while traveling, and otherwise simply sat in thought or in practice, contemplating his new life as a fugitive on the run and the ability to suppress his chakra.

And then suddenly he caught a whiff of it. Something in the air had changed. His silver-shining head emerged into the evening breeze, and there it was.

Until the horizon, a vastness of azure, sparkling and crashing waves, a tapestry of liquid movement, and a smell, more like a taste, that lingered in the air and on his tongue unlike anything he had witnessed before.

The scent of the sea; they were about to reach their destination.

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Damon Kenzaku wrote:

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