Sea of the Wind, Shore of the Maze, Prologue Read Online Free PDF Page B

holding the cold air open with her front paws, she reached out  even further and beckoned to the fruit. And then she saw the fruit begin to drift towards her.
    This was the moment she had been dreaming of for so long! Sanshi tightly grasped the fruit that had  drifted over to her hand. She pulled the fruit towards her and it fell into her embrace. When he neared to the  white hand, it didn't hesitate at all in grabbing hold of his wrist. Different from his cold skin, that hand made  him feel very warm.
    Originally, he had wanted to walk towards the hand because he wanted to find out how someone could  hide in the small crevice between the storehouse and the wall. However, when he got close, the view of his  surroundings suddenly changed in the blink of an eye. It was as if his pupil had been covered by a thin layer  of water, so everything that he saw became blurry, their outlines disappearing.
    After the hand took hold of his wrist, his body felt as if it drifted into the air, as a burst of energy pulled  him toward an unknown place.
    He went through a white space filled with a clear mist. He had no idea where he was, but his intuition  faintly told him that it was a gentle place.
    It was even warmer inside. Moreover, a warm breeze was blowing onto him from a place he didn't  know.
    His feet didn't feel like they were stepping on anything hard, but neither did he feel like they were  stepping on something soft. He thought that perhaps this was what walking on clouds felt like.
    He sensed someone beside him, sturdily holding on to his hand, but he could not see who it was.
    Through the dense fog, he could barely see a milky white figure swaying, but that might have been just his  imagination.
    So it stayed like this for a moment, and then the hand that was holding on to his wrists pulled him in  another direction. He didn't know why, but he wasn't frightened at all. He just obediently went wherever the  hand pulled him.
    In the amount of time it approximately takes to walk through a short hallway, he finally saw the sky  again, as if he had floated to the surface of a pool.
    To suddenly see the dazzling sunlight shocked him momentarily.
    Towering in front of him was a great tree. He had never before seen a snow-white tree trunk that  looked as if it was made with a pure white metal. The tree trunk was very thick, but not very tall. White  branches extended a long way with their ends hanging down.
    Behind the tree, he saw marvelous landscapes for the first time in his life. He also saw a strangely- shaped, enormous green rock and a group of unusually dressed women.
    Also, the strangest of all was the woman who had been holding on to his hand.
    She looked like she was half-human and half-tiger or leopard. Her face was flat and her round eyes  were opened wide and radiating a glimmer that was hard to describe. He should have felt scared, but for a  reason he didn't understand, he was not. On the contrary, he sensed that those eyes were very gentle.
    "Taiki..."
    This word came from the lips of the half-woman, half-beast. However, he didn't understand what it  meant. And he also didn't know that this was the first time she had spoken in ten years.
    "Taiki!"
    She used her soft hands to gently stoke his hair, as her round eyes filled with tears.
    Like he had always done very naturally with his mother, he held her hand and drew closer to her face.
    "Did something happen that hurt you?"
    She shook her head not as if she was saying no to Taiki's question, but that he not worry about her.
    This action was also very similar to something his mother would have done.
    "Taiki? So, is he Taiki?"
    It was because of this human voice that finally triggered a realization of his surroundings. Just when he  was wondering what strange thing had happened to him, a woman approached him.
    "This is very rare."
    "Who are you?"
    The woman kneeled in front of him.
    "I am Gyokuyou. I have probably not seen hair like yours for hundreds of