The morning air was crisp and cold when Masako awoke, sitting up and blinking blearily against the light filtering into the cave. The ronin was already gone from her spot across the fire, but this time Masako knew better than to expect the worst of her travel companion. 


Picking herself up off the cave floor, Masako dusted her clothes off and toed out the last embers of the fire before exiting the cave. Akane wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, so Masako decided against wandering off. Doing so would probably incur the ronin’s wrath as well as a lecture on self-preservation and danger seeing as they’d just barely escaped a wolf the previous day.


Masako sat down on a rock outside the cave, thinking. She’d now spent almost four days on the road, meaning that she still had a long way to go if she wanted to make it to the North. Estimating her position, Masako deduced that the pair was mostly likely somewhere between the major cities of Torokami to the south and Shinkawa to the north. Shinkawa was the next major city Masako would have to pass through, and she planned on stopping there and picking up a few supplies for the road—namely a bag, a water carrier, and some dried food for emergencies. However, stopping at a major city may be a fatal error seeing as “Masako Takeya” would probably have been reported missing. As the daughter of a major Daimyo, her name would most likely at least have been mentioned to the guards at every major city.


Deciding that she’d ask Akane on her expertise—in clever phrasing, hopefully—Masako picked up a nearby stick and attempted to draw the map of Shinma from memory, maneuvering the twig to carve lines into the looser dirt.


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