“Rikuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!” I shouted happily, running at him with open arms. I tripped over a loose rock before I made it over to him and fell flat on my face. “Ow! Darn nature!” Riku laughed at my comical behavior and came over to me.
“You okay Lee?” He asked while holding out a hand. I took it and lifted myself to my feet. I brushed off the dirt that had caught on my clothes.
“Its been a while, hasn’t it Riku?” Luna asked him.
“Yeah, its good to see you two again. By the way, I heard about your clan and village. I’m so sorry,” he apologized.
“We're here now, so it doesn’t matter!” I told him, as if all my worries had vanished just being in his presence.
Riku had snow white hair and beautiful light blue eyes. Or at least, I thought they were beautiful. I’ve always liked Riku, but I began to like him in that way as we got older, and I could tell he felt the same way about me, though we never expressed our feelings to each other, too shy to open up our deep emotions, yet too open to each other to not know.
Riku wore a white long-sleeve shirt with Soule's tribal patterns of light blue on the bottom of the shirt, sleeves, and upper arms. Soule's tribal patterns consisted of triangle, diamond, and rectangular shapes. He also wore a shirt that matched the color of his eyes underneath his long-sleeve shirt. His pants were a medium shade of gray that coincided with the rocks around the waterfall.
Whenever the white wolf clan from Soule came to visit the gray wolves in Himitsu when we were younger, the three of us used to play together. Riku had always liked Luna and I for who we were, whereas most of the other nagual children wouldn’t play with us because we couldn’t shift. Messing around in wolf form was the most fun thing to do for young children, so when all the other kids were playing together as wolves, Luna and I would be left by ourselves.
Until one day when Luna and I were sitting alone, Riku had walked over to us and asked why we weren’t playing with the other kids. We told him about our shifting disability, and like all the other kids, we had expected him to run away from us. Riku's reaction was just the opposite. He said that since we had no other friends, we should become best friends. The three of us would have so much fun, sometimes even more fun than the other children were having, and they would envy us. They would even be so brave as to come over and ask to join in our playtime. Neither Luna nor I knew how to respond, so Riku stood up for us and told them that the games we played were too cool for 'normal' nagual kids to play. So from that moment on the three of us became the 'weird' kids and were best friends for life..
“So what're you here for?” Riku asked, interrupting my childhood memories of us. Then he quickly added,” well, it doesn’t matter, My home is always open to you.”
“Actually, that’s why we came,” replied Luna.
“We need a place to stay since the cats slaughtered our people and burned down Himitsu!” I explained a bit too happily to him.
“So it was the cats who destroyed Himitsu?!” Riku asked, partly in shock, for he already felt that the cats had something to do with it. “I’m sorry, if I had known sooner that it was them who-”
“It doesn’t matter,” Luna cut him off,” whats done is done.
“So can we stay?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. You can stay as long as you like. Just consider Soule your new home.”
“Yay!” I jumped with joy and hugged Riku.
“Well?” Luna said impatiently,” aren’t we going to go inside?”
“Ah, yes,” Riku responded, pulling away from my hug,” lets go.” He led us up the rocky path and we found out that the path was still open behind the waterfall. We stopped right in the middle of where the water fell, and were about to ask where the entrance was when Riku walked on ahead and disappeared behind a slab of rock. We thought he was gone for good until he stuck his head out from behind the rock.
“You wanted to go inside right? Well then come on,” he told us and waved his hand for us to follow him. We walked towards him and the slab of rock that stuck out from the wall to find that there was a hole that was small enough for someone who wasn’t searching for it to notice, but large enough for a person to fit through. We crawled through it single file because it wasn’t wide enough for us to all go in at once, Riku went first, me second, and Luna third. We had to feel our way through the dark tunnel until we emerged into the cavern inside.
“Amazing! Luna, isn’t this awesome?” I exclaimed as I looked at the cavern.
“Yeah, its alright,” she replied nonchalantly.
Soule Sanctuary was almost exactly like we heard and pictured it to be. The walls were rocky and hard, instead of being smooth and flat; it was a spitting image of the outside of the waterfall. If you listened closely enough, you could hear the water flowing down the waterfall, and the sound echoed off of the walls to create a soothing sort of music to the cave.
The houses were built out of stone and sat tightly packed together all around the Sanctuary. On each house there hung at least one lantern to light up the inside of the cavern so that it wasn’t dark. Similar lanterns were strung together and lined up along the walls.
“So what do you think?” Riku asked.
“Its beautiful!!” I declared. Luna shrugged her shoulders in response as if to say that it were just okay and nothing more. Riku started walking further into the village and we followed behind him.
“Shall I take you on a tour so that you can become more familiar with Soule?” He asked us.
“That would be wonder-”I started to say until Luna cut me off.
“Actually, could you take us to a place where we can sleep?” She asked.
“That’s right! We haven’t gotten a good nights sleep in three days!” I added. “Especially cause of our battle with that cat.” At that, Riku stopped in his tracks and turned around to look at us in shock.
“You got into a fight with a cat on your way here? But how? How is that possible when you both look unscathed?!”
“That’s the glory of sisterhood!” I grinned.
“That’s also how we found out that the cats were the ones who killed our clan,” Luna added.
“Hmm, I see. Well, I expected no less. You two never cease to amaze me,” he said and then started walking again with us right behind.”Now, tell me more about that battle of yours.
