[OOC: This story is told from Natsumi's perspective, so all posts in this thread where it says "I" are made with the assumption that Natsumi is the narrator.]

You're probably wondering by this point why I seem to have departed from Ataiyo in my writings. The land was remarkably similar to my own homeland before its destruction, after all; so much so that I could say I simply didn't want to talk about it for fear of dredging up bad memories and one would fault me for that decision. Yet, the problem with this assumption is that I didn't really hate the country I came from nor did I, by extension, ever hate its mirror image. There's not really an excuse filled with malice as to why I haven't discussed Ataiyo in so long. It's simply the fact that that place became very personal to me after a certain series of events took place, enough that I kept my experiences close to the vest.

Before I get into the beginnings of this saga, however, I think it's only fair that I explain something I have neglected to mention about myself thus far. While my first visitation to Revaliir portrayed me as a scholar and archaeologist, that personality was actually a shadow of a much younger me. The real me hadn't been that way for many years by the time I reached Revaliir. It's true that I was still a spy by that point and so data gathering was my primary responsibility, but assignments for my job came infrequently at best. On my off time, I didn't move between unexplored worlds without reason. In fact, I was rarely in unfamiliar terrain for more than fleeting moments in the grand scheme of my life.

This lack of novelty combined with my primary directive as a spy – i.e. to absorb the knowledge of entire worlds after infiltrating them – contributed to a very dismal existence very quickly. In any given world, I would possess an entire universe of knowledge readily accessible and at my fingertips, and yet I would be completely devoid of any ambition to use it! Because, even if I didn't remember a theorem or law off the top of my head, I could easily look it up whenever and wherever I wanted. After that, all I had to do was apply the theorems in order to solve and explain every phenomenon in a given world. Science and magic became boring with this setup: mundane. Nothing was ever a surprise because I essentially became a grandmaster overnight, leaving nothing but efficiency practice to strive toward.

Yet there's one thing, I discovered, that I could never master no matter how much data I gathered on it: art. Art, you see, is in the eye of the beholder. You can never paint a perfect picture or craft a perfect sculpture, because everyone has different tastes.  Paint for a lifetime, and you might be respected, but a novice could still easily outdo you with a new and interesting take. Or, perhaps, you could offend a culture simply because your painting does not keep up with changing social trends.

Art, in general, appealed to me because of the fact that the reaction and style was always different. This especially became true after the long vacations started to set in, and the practice even became therapeutic. I would frequently abscond to various places in the worlds I visited, pursuing my craft as I went. I painted landscapes as well as people, usually disguising myself as the most common race of an area while doing so. My style was more naturalistic than anything, so I wanted the world to show me its docile face rather than a fearful or suspicious one. My favorite persona to use, in fact, was a middle aged man with a white afro and beard, whose calm demeanor could soothe even the most savage of beasts.

The story of Ataiyo mentioned earlier began on a day I was using that favorite facade of mine. I was standing on a river bank at the southern edge of the Menomori forest, painting a landscape of trees and clouds. My canvas was situated facing the Tori mountain range that separated Railoch from Ataiyo, and the Glaciem snow was still perfectly covering the mountain tops in front of me like little white hats. Since I was dressed as a man, I was also wearing an overcoat and vest, with a pair common trousers and shirt underneath to portray myself as well off but not nobleman status.

That day was actually something special. It was the first time I met Robin.

During that Glaciem, the Mori family had just finished training their newest generation of warriors. The traditions of Ataiyo had changed much over the years since the region's founding, but some of the older families still maintained their traditions since the first generation. For Mori, one such tradition was to train their members in tune with the seasons. Training began at an early age in Ignis to signify the hot blood of youth they aimed to temper and was always scheduled to end on the first day of Terra several years after initiation. By ending in Terra, the family signified the birth of new warriors after the hard, survival training of Glaciem was complete.

When I was painting down by the riverbank, the first day of Terra had just begun. Robin was among the recruits who graduated that season, and she had collected her graduation gifts at dawn. As was customary for all graduates of the Mori dojo, she received a set of blue lacquered armor as well as a pair of katanas. Immediately after suiting up with these armaments, she was ordered to report to her new charge that she was expected to serve until the day she died.

That was how I met her for the first time. The lord that Robin was serving had decided to go on a hunting trip that day, and his company happened by my canvas on their way home. The bulkiest of the warriors carried the carcass of a wild hog that the company had hunted: one large enough feed an entire family for days. Robin was relegated to the rear guard of this party, and wearing a mask depicting an oni. I found out later that this was her superior's way of designating the rookie of the group, but you couldn't tell from looking at her that day. She carried herself with the pride of a veteran.

I still remember exactly how the conversation between her lord and me went that day. He purposefully stopped on the trek home once he noticed my landscape portrait, and shouted out before approaching me with Robin and the others in tow.

"Good morning, fair painter! Capturing the Tori Mountains, are we?" He was a young thing, barely out of his youth and probably the son of a wealthy noble. I would have never guessed during our initial meeting that the hunting trip he had just returned from was the last of his life.

Of course, there was little reason to believe that the young lord would die within the year, given what I saw of him during our riverbank meeting. He was full of energy and curiosity, and seemed remarkably carefree for Ataiyan nobility. His laid back demeanor would have made him a town favorite among peasants, even if it probably perturbed his parents who wanted him to act like his class.

When this inquisitive boy spoke to me, I got the sense that he meant no harm. He even waited for my acknowledgement before coming closer, so I responded to his courtesy with some of my own.

"Yes, the mountains finally have their little white hats from Glaciem, so I decided to come out here to enjoy a little scenery." I turned to face the hunters with my pallet still in hand and a smile on my face. The white hairs of my beard gave off the illusion that I'd just been in the snow, and I received more than my fair share of puzzled glances from the men in front of me. Afros weren't common in that area of the world, let alone white ones. The hairstyle added a bit of mystery to me whilst still making me seem human, and I did so love the nuances it brought to conversation. "You're welcome to watch if you want. I certainly don't mind."

The young lord approached at that point, flanked by a large man on his right. He marveled at the painting for a bit, acting like a child who wasn't accustomed to art in general. The man was his 'captain of the guard', and he brought Robin along with him during the approach in order to guard their master from both sides.

Unfortunately, that 'captain,' as I would later find out, was not just approaching out of curiosity like the nobleman had. He was less than thrilled with my presence, and had come to voice his disdain. He merely brought Robin along because he wanted to intimidate her into agreeing with him: rookie hazing, as it were. I didn't learn about that till later, nor did I really expect it from the sudden and drastic shift that our meeting took.

"How much do you sell these for?" The captain had asked his question in a gruff voice while his ward continued in admiration. The two of us had a relatively terse atmosphere going on from that one question that should have been uneventful. Because I was painting, the temptation to throw him into the river for being rude was lessened, but his emotions were definitely less constrained than mine. He could barely veil his disdain after I responded with the truth, let alone before I had even answered him.

"Oh, something like this is more for my enjoyment. I take commissions, but those aren't the only things I paint."

Enjoyment, I said, but the ill-tempered guard was having none of it.

"You enjoy making garbage?" As you can see, no sooner had I "invited him to my fire" – as it were – had he seen fit to comment that said fire was small and ugly. I was accustomed to art critics, particularly bad ones given my long history of painting, but I also recognized that this person was just being rude. And he continued to be that way for the remainder of our meeting. "Can you believe this guy, rookie?"

That was supposed to be Robin's cue to join in, but she looked startled when the samurai brought her into the conflict. Her shoulders perked up, and she frantically looked up at the intimidating man with a surprised expression under that mask.

"Me," she asked, to which the 'captain' responded incredulously and sarcastically?

"No, the other rookie. Yes, you, tenderfoot!" Robin hurriedly drew closer to my painting at that point, driven on by fear of punishment, and looked through the eyeholes of her mask at the titanium white and phthalo blue that covered the canvas. I had only just started the composition, so there wasn't much beyond a horizon and some happy clouds. She didn't really have an eye for art at that point, but even she recognized that it was far too early to judge.

"Well," she began timidly, "he seems to have just started, and the sky already looks nice with the clouds. With all due respect, sir, I wouldn't call it garbage when he's not even finished." As you can imagine, the captain didn't like hearing that response from Robin one bit. He was silently fuming beneath his armor for a good few moments before finally regaining his composure.

"Leave it to a rookie to demonstrate that she knows nothing about art. With strokes like that, this man couldn't even sell a painting if he wanted to. The artists in Nisshoki are far superior to this crude vagrant's attempts." But, of course, the man would soon regret those words of his. His lord, for all his child-like curiosity, demonstrated some backbone once he realized how persistent this guard of his was being. He stopped admiring my painting at that point, and then turned to the man on his right.

"That's enough, Kenshiro." The samurai regarded his boss in disbelief once he heard this, but didn't speak for fear of dishonoring himself. "Your subordinate is right that it's too early to judge the portrait when it's only being started. I may not know art, but I know when someone's trying too hard to curry favor with my family."

"Sir," Kenshiro asked when greeted by this thinly veiled accusation from his master?

"Your brother just opened up an art gallery and is trying to get a contract going with my parents to commemorate their 20th wedding anniversary with a large portrait: something that stands to make him quite a few kin." There was a very tense pause at this point before the nobleman continued, and the tall-statured Kenshiro looked very uncomfortable after how easily the man had pinpointed his hidden agenda. Robin had actually moved over toward me in order to avoid getting in between those two, but wasn't speaking for fear of incurring wrath from those on high. She just watched the cold war unfolding before us. "If you continue to be rude or if you even think about punishing your subordinate for not going along with you here, I'll make sure my parents never hire your brother. Do I make myself clear?"

There was another pause then, like Kenshiro was trying to find a way to salvage the situation, but, in the end, he gave up.

"Yes, sir."

Seeing the samurai so dejected after being thoroughly reprimanded was a sweet delight for me, and it only got sweeter when he opened himself up for a coup de grace. Kenshiro couldn't leave well enough alone, and had to keep selling his story despite his lord's obvious displeasure."But I still think that you could find better artists in town, Lord Miyano. Surely a vagrant can't paint."  

The young Miyano regarded Kenshiro with no small amount of disdain for the fact that he was still talking, but his displeasure eased when I spoke up in his place.

"Anyone can paint," I said with a jovial tone still intact. My external mood appeared completely unfazed by the brute in front of me, and most people in his group were either envious or amazed that I spoke so freely in front of a much taller and intimidating man. Regardless of the reactions from that company, however, I continued to speak my mind without pause. "There's no special talent to it. Your only limitation is your imagination."

Motioning to my canvas, I picked up my utensils and started in once more. The hunters looked on as I took the paint knife and constructed the base of the Tori mountains from a mixture of prussian blue, midnight black, van dyke brown, and alizarin crimson. I smoothed out the initial tops of those mountains with a two inch brush, creating downward slopes and the appearance of mist at the bottom to mirror some light fog like we had that morning. Then, after cleaning off the brush and knife, I used the latter to apply a thin coat of titanium white to the eastern side of the mountains. The western side received a similar treatment, but with phthalo blue mixed into the titanium white in order to create a shadow effect. Finally, I took the dry, two inch brush and tapped along the base of the mountains to finish off the mist effect I was going for.

In total, that portion of the landscape took me about five minutes to create, and all of my guests, save for Kenshiro, were impressed with the result. Miyano went back to his observations with renewed enthusiasm once he witnessed the change. This was just before I spoke up once more while motioning toward Robin.

"My only advantage in comparison to someone like your rookie here is in time, and that's not really an advantage because anyone can improve their time. Like all crafts in life, speed takes practice."

Before that point, Robin and Miyano had been musing over my landscape with hushed admiration. Eventually, Miyano was the first to break that silence, beginning his comment with, "It's," but Robin, much to the young lord's surprise, finished his thought for him.

"Beautiful." Robin caught herself after she subconsciously said what she was thinking, but not before her colleagues snickered. Kenshiro just stewed, especially when I pointed out that even a "tenderfoot" like his subordinate could learn to paint as well as his brother. Of course, Robin, being far too modest for her own good, also doubted her ability at the time. I still remember the shock in her voice when she heard my explanation of advantage, and how, back then, she tried to politely tell me I was wrong. "Oh no, no," she had exclaimed! "I couldn't paint like that. Your portrait is gorgeous even though it's incomplete! I don't wish to offend you or painters like you."

Had that been the last word between us, Robin and I would likely have never met again. Yet fate had other plans in mind for the two of us. Miyano got an idea in his head, you see, something that would later cost him his life. He decided to poke Kenshiro further, and looked squarely at Robin before speaking up.

"Mmm, I think that can be remedied," he began before I could say anything else. Robin regarded this sudden change in her lord quizzically, her mask hiding the innocent expression underneath it.

"My lord," she asked? Yet Miyano just turned toward me before revealing his intention.

"What say you, painter? Would you be willing to teach my newest addition how to paint as a testament to your philosophy? If she learns well enough, I may even ask you for a commission a month from now."

Of course, as you can expect, Kenshiro's face paled at this suggestion from his superior. His expression was absolutely livid, and he could hardly contain himself from shouting.

"Lord Miyano! You can't be serious!" Yet the nobleman he was raising his voice to was deadly serious. He merely regaled his subordinate with a conniving smile, and then continued in the face of protest even as Robin started slumping in an effort to hide.

"But I am. I will set aside time every day for our newest addition to come learn from the good painter. If I am satisfied with her progress a month from now, I will recommend this man to my parents for their wedding anniversary. Is that alright with you, good painter?"

I thought very little of the arrangement at the time it was offered, not fully realizing its potential repercussions. Back then, I was simply eyeing the commission as a way to shut up a loud-mouthed asshole – aka Kenshiro –, so I took it without a second thought.

"I don't mind that at all. By all means." Miyano smiled widely at this response of mine before signalling his men to follow him away from the river.

"Then the training starts now!" He started walking away almost instantaneously, metaphorically dragging behind him an utterly defeated Kenshiro. Just before he was out of sight, though, he reiterated the terms of the deal. "Every day from now until the end of Crescere, the rookie will join you here on this riverbank. I expect her to be able to draw a fantastic portrait by the end of her stay with you. Please do not disappoint."

And just like that, they were gone. Only Robin was left in their wake, utterly confused about what had just happened to her. She was dumbstruck at the speed with which she was given a new assignment, though I didn't leave her stuck in that mindset for long before introducing myself.

"Your lord certainly holds great confidence in someone he didn't even ask the name of," I said while setting my palette and implements down in the silence. Afterward, I approached Robin slowly, and then offered my hand to her in greeting. "Honestly, though, I often go by monikers rather than my actual name when it comes to paintings. You can call me Shiro, like the color; and, as your teacher that you're stuck with for the rest of the month, I'd ask that you take your mask off when introducing yourself to me. You can put it back on when you leave, just not while you're painting."

[OOC: From here on, I will no longer keep Natsumi's and Robin's dialogue completely isolated between posts. Robin's dialogue is bolded and italicized, whereas Natsumi's is just bolded.]

As her companions started walking away, Robin's speech became little more than gibberish.

"B-but I- huh?" She had been sucked into an agreement that had no input from her and with little time to react. Her hand reached toward Miyano's back just as he was dropping out of sight, but he was already long gone by the time she had a chance to do anything else. My greeting was only thing that shocked her back to reality, at which point she dropped her outstretched palm.

Robin was still very shy back then, so she took some time in answering me once the two of us were alone. Eventually, she cautiously raised her hands up to her face and slowly removed the oni mask from it. She carefully set that mask down on the table next to my easel, and then awkwardly grasped my hand.

"Hello, Shiro," she said somewhat quietly in the morning sun. She was clearly uncomfortable commenting on her current employer, so she skipped over that bit of my introduction entirely. Instead, she went straight to her name. "My name is Robin: Robin Taiyo Mori of the Ataiyan, Mori warrior clan. It's nice to meet you."

I recognized the name Mori immediately, for reasons that I have already described. Unfortunately, I can't say that my reaction to it was anything less than hurtful and shortsighted.

"That's an old name," I said back then. "You must be very proud." Nowadays, I would feel awful if I made a comment like that to Robin. Her "family" had long abused her and kept her from having a normal life. Honor and Stockholm syndrome were the only reasons she never said anything about it, even if she was still visibly uncomfortable whenever someone brought up their name.

"I-I suppose, but can we focus on painting instead of my family? A month isn't that much time for me to learn." She was stuttering while speaking, and trying to avoid eye contact with me as soon as I had opened my mouth. Being an abuse victim myself, I recognized the signs, but didn't feel right prying into her situation at the time; at least not without an open invitation. I tried to ignore it, to keep my own mask on, but it was difficult not to see the similarities between us even as I forced the outward appearance of exuberance.

"You are right," I exclaimed through my thinly veiled sympathy! I pushed aside my worry in favor of teaching my student of circumstance, and quickly jotted down everything I needed for the coming month. There was a long shopping list we had to get through, and each item on that list needed to be fetched the very first day. With little time to lose, I grabbed Robin's hand and sprinted toward town with her in tow. "So I guess we had better go get you an easel! You can't very well paint without a canvas and supplies!"

Shocked yet again, Robin was hard pressed to keep up with the sudden change of pace.

"Whoa! Wait," she shouted! Eventually, she caught up to speed, but not before realizing that painting with me as her teacher wasn't going to be some dainty exercise reserves for frail people. The two of us spent the rest of the day shopping for her tools, and she went home very sore that night from carrying everything back to the riverbank.
 

[OOC: I don't own the picture here. ]

Over the next month, Robin and I spent nearly every minute of daylight together. While her noble master had specified "some time" at the beginning of our arrangement, he actually designated a significant portion of Robin's day to her time with me. From dawn to dusk, Robin and I were together on that riverbank: painting, having meals, conversing and even exercising. Based on appearances alone, I would have thought that this behavior on Miyano's part was just his way of being enthusiastic about my painting philosophy. In reality, he was using Robin to get even with Kenshiro.

Despite the fact that the senior warrior was sworn to be Miyano's guardian for life, Miyano didn't much care for Kenshiro or his family. The two of them argued behind closed doors constantly, often getting very animated. In fact, the arguments got so fierce during Robin's training that, during one incident, Kenshiro actually took a swipe at Miyano with his own sword. The nobleman managed to escape the scuffle with only a few scratches, but Kenshiro quickly found himself exiled afterward.

I wouldn't have known anything about this situation had a couple of Horitshi guardsmen not come to visit Robin and me about halfway through the month. They wanted to check up on us, because Kenshiro had apparently made threats against the Miyano household just before disappearing in the aftermath of his assault. He was a wanted criminal because of his actions, with an undeniable grudge against Robin and me for the recent painting incident. Yet, as I told the guardsmen that day, Kenshiro hadn't shown up at all since the day I met Robin. It was as if he had simply vanished without a trace, and so the guards left us alone.
    
Meanwhile, Robin and I were growing closer every day regardless of whatever was going on in the world of Nisshokian nobility. Throughout the course of Crescere, I started to develop a fondness for her, and I grew to enjoy helping her break out of her shell. She talked to me about cooking and her love of food, as well as her favorite sushi roll recipe. In exchange, I told her stories about previous, odd jobs I had had over my years in painting. For obvious reasons, I avoided anything incriminating in those stories, but I tried to be as open and friendly as possible.

The month went on like this for most of its duration, and Robin eventually rewarded me with something that I didn't even know I wanted in the first place. Near the end of our stay together, I actually saw her genuinely smile for the first time. Before that point, all of her smiles had felt forced like she was trying to hide the misery she was actually feeling. Yet, once she felt comfortable enough around me to give a true smile, I couldn't help but notice how infectious it was.



It was at that point that I decided to make my last day with her something she could remember. I started working on a portrait of Robin, specifically one that captured her smile along with the tears of laughter that had accompanied it. Day and night, I slaved over that painting, taking care to hide it from Robin's gaze until the final moment. Then, when that day arrived, I left it out on the riverbank facing the same way that Robin always came in the morning. I even put out a bento box filled with her favorite sushi roll that I had learned to prepare on my own, waiting for her to arrive so that the two of us could have a small celebration after a month of hard work.

…But, unlike all the other days, Robin never showed up. Her bento box remained untouched for at least an hour after she was scheduled to arrive, and I was left observing the painting alone. I grew worried about this sudden change – especially since I didn't know Robin as a flake – so I quickly went looking for her further up the riverbank. I found nothing, of course, but, when I returned, I saw nothing but destruction.

In the span of 15 minutes that I had been away, someone had trampled over my studio. Robin's easel was snapped in two, her paint supplies scattered everywhere. The lunch I had prepared for her was emptied out onto the ground, stamped into the dirt and inedible. And the portrait, the one I had worked hard on to show Robin the beauty of her own smile, was vandalized beyond repair.

I picked up the only brush that had been left untouched in that place when I found it, and saw the same black paint on its bristles that had been used to twist Robin's smile into a frown. It smelled of the men that had been with Kenshiro exactly one month ago, and I felt my anger growing just looking at it. My teeth clenched in that morning sun, same as my grip around the brush. The only difference between the two was that the wood snapped long before my jaw hurt.

Earlier that morning, Robin had been stopped at the entrance to the Miyano estate by the eldest son of the family – the same one who had handed her off to me exactly one month prior. Around that time, he had been left in charge of his family's household while his parents were away on vacation; but, as of Robin's final day, his supervision took a turn for the worse. His younger sister, Naoko, had been missing for almost half a day, and he was beginning to worry that something had happened to her. In the hopes of finding his sibling before his parents returned home the next day, he started enlisting the help of every guard in his estate for a grand search of the grounds. That list of personnel included Robin, and so she was drafted into the search before she even had a chance to leave for the day.

Teams were formed to search for Naoko, and they scoured the family grounds looking for anything suspicious. But all investigations revealed no sign of the missing heiress. There was no ransom note; no blood; not even a single hint of struggle. Miyano was left to sweat for almost an hour as this search continued without any hint of good news to come. He was too afraid to contact the city guardsmen, however, because that would make the incident a matter of public record. News of such a high profile kidnapping would surely reach his parents on their way back home, bringing dishonor and shame to him as well as them for their decision to trust him.

Yet as the morning dragged on, the eldest son started to believe that notifying the authorities was the inevitable outcome of his situation. It was far better, he thought, to lose face than to lose a sibling, and so he made up his mind to send for Nisshokian law enforcement nearly one hour after his search began.

Before he could give that order, though, a courier pigeon arrived at his family's coop with a message.

'I have Naoko Miyano,' the blood soaked parchment read. 'If you want to see her again, Ichirou Miyano and Robin Mori shall come to the Han'nichi warehouse immediately. If I see anyone other than those two, you'll never see Naoko again.' There was no name on this note, nor was there time to contact a penmanship expert to determine who wrote it. Despite the lack information, however, Ichirou suspected that the kidnapper was actually Kenshiro. The author's word choice was similar to that old samurai, and the request he made struck the Miyano heir as suspicious. 'Who else,' he thought, 'would specifically ask for Robin: a rookie guard that had only recently joined the family?'

Ichirou could tell that this invitation was a trap, but he had little choice other than to accept. If he wanted to save his sister, he would have to put his faith in Robin, and so the two of them suited up in armor as quickly as they could, preparing for the inevitable ambush. They started out toward the Han'nichi warehouse once their preparations were complete, but were subsequently stopped at the gate. A couple of the men that had been with them on the riverbank exactly month before were waiting to bar their exit at the southern entrance of the estate. These two men practically begged Ichirou to help, and so the eldest son, after suffering much of their badgering, agreed to their request on the condition that they stayed out of sight until he gave the family signal. The two guards submitted to this demand, thereby allowing the quartet to move south through the city without any further delay.