Chapter Text
The first thing he did was tear it apart. Why wouldn’t he? It was the only reminder of his life before.
The wind gently blew, rustling the long grass on either side of the road. The ramshackle town in the distance was farther than it looked; it was at least two days’ journey, and he was on foot.
The second thing he did was find himself unarmed in the face of thieves. So he reassembled it and defended himself. The blade turned red that day as the screams for mercy rang through the alleyway.
The wind shifted his cloak, a simple thing, yet enough to fully wrap around him one-and-a-half times, and long enough to hang just below his mid-calf. His arms hung at his sides, keeping them perfectly still so he looked more ghost than man. After all, wasn’t he?
The third thing he did was find himself banned from that town. Turns out they didn’t want his kind around there. So he wandered. And he was called Ronin. Swordsman-Without-A-Master. Wanderer. He was called by many names. But no one used his true name. Because even he did not speak it now.
He had few provisions. He lived off the land, killing the beasts that roamed the plains, roasting their flesh over fire. Thank goodness they were edible. He drank from the bodies of water he stumbled across, filling his waterskins so he could survive until the next pond or stream or puddle or rainstorm.
As the night fell, he tamped down a little plot of the long grass, then wrapped his cloak tighter around himself, pulled his hood up, curled up, and went to sleep. He was not afraid of the beasts of the field, no matter how vicious they were rumored to be. After all, no beast would attack the apex predator.