Her Dreams of Him

I stood under the rain, the black umbrella held in my right hand, keeping off the torrential downpour.

The water splashed against the muddy ground, speckling my dark trousers with mud. Exhaling, I watched my breath mist in the chilly winter air.

My hand tightened over the wooden box in my left hand as I ran my thumb across the carvings on it: a pair of dragons entwined together, fighting over a pearl.

Depressing the pearl, with a click barely audible over the noise of the downpour, the box opened up.

In it, separated by dividers into multiple categories, were blueprints. Fantasies too impractical for Master to ever have the resources to build. Yet, there they were, his last gift for me, his hopes and dreams entrusted to his youngest disciple.

Each blueprint was exquisite, hiding over a hundred years of expertise within each line. It was his final lesson for me… a lesson I dearly wish he had stayed to teach personally.

Unfortunately, his time had come before I could make it back to the sect from Kunlun.

Closing the box and using my sleeve to wipe my eyes, I walked up to the obsidian gravestone and poured a bottle of his favourite wine over it, hoping the flavour would reach him in the Ghostdom.

Paying my obeisance to the memory of the man who had been like a grandfather to me, I left the umbrella there, shading the gravestone as I turned and made my way back to the sect.

Tucking the box within my clothes to protect it from the rain, I strolled in the deluge, letting the rainwater wash away my tears.

---

In the darkness of the Void, I curled up into a foetal position, surrounding the box, defending it from the insatiable hunger of the nothingness surrounding me.

I shivered as I felt the protective layer of Void Force thin until parts of my skin began to dissolve into the Void as my barrier expired.

Struggling greatly, I finally relinquished the box, consigning it to the fate of oblivion as I concentrated the remnants of my defence around me, weathering the tribulation.

My heart clenched as the last of my Master's physical manifestations vanished.

Sighing, I floated in the Void… until I sensed a weakness in the fabric of reality and with the rest of my power, ripped a slit in it and passed through.

---

---

Pakura jerked awake in her bed as the first rays of dawn illuminated her face through the drawn blinds.

After nearly a month of meditation and introspection according to Lin Feng's soul sutra, she had finally condensed her mindscape and fallen asleep exhausted from her efforts.

As a result, she was finally able to recall her dream with clarity.

She closed her eyes, letting the warmth of the morning sunlight seep into her skin, rejuvenating her and driving away the last vestiges of lethargy.

She walked out of her room and saw that Lin Feng wasn't in the house, probably staying at the forge overnight.

Performing her morning ritual and scarfing down a light breakfast, she too set out towards the forge.

After they had returned from their trip to the Land of Waves, other than his political obligations, Lin Feng had spent the rest of his time building himself a forge from scratch.

Not a very difficult task for one who had built a city in three days.

Then, he had roamed the desert, extracting traces of the hardest metals from the sand and transporting them to the forge with the help of her storage scrolls.

There, he had used the heat from both the four-tails power and her scorch style to melt the metal and form it into a makeshift anvil.

Using the anvil, he had forged two hammerheads. A heavier one for her and a lighter one for him.

She had carved out two shafts from hardwood for the hammers and they had set about beating the imperfections out of the anvil.

Then using the improved anvil, they had reformed the hammerheads in a chained cycle until the anvil and hammers were up to a standard suitable for forging the weapon they had envisioned.

Using their new hammers and anvil, they had created several tongs of varying sizes and grips so they could be used for every occasion.

Since they themselves were the fire hazards, there was no need for a furnace or bellows but they created three quenching tubs.

One was to have pure water for the hard quench, another, oil for the soft quench and the last, salt water for the extremely fast and brittle quenching.

They also created cooling racks with clamps that would ensure that the hot metal didn't distort during the cooling process.

On her way, she passed by the Saguaro of the fallen and stagnated for a moment as her eyes fell upon the Adeniums at the tip of the monument.

Her eyes took on a determined cast and she sped up her footsteps.

---

Lin Feng returned to his room after a harrowing day of discussions.

Pakura had come to the forge and driven him out to fulfil his political obligations as she took over the preparatory work to forge the two legendary blades into a weapon suited for them.

The council members were getting quite exasperating and he often felt like patting them with the palm of his hand.

Rubbing his aching brows, he shook his head ruefully… at least he got the latest information about the troop movements of the other nations and the likely spots for jinchuuriki activity. He had also managed to issue missions for getting the blood of kekkei genkai users, a necessary raw material for the forging process.

In return, he had to agree to visit the Daimyo of Wind for approval to mount the position of Kazekage as he claimed suzerainty over Suna.

Sighing, he walked up to his bed before freezing with his gaze transfixed on an ornate wooden box lying on his work table where he kept his blueprints. The blueprints were missing and the box the only thing on the table.

It had two twining dragons carved on it, tussling for possession of a pearl.

In a daze he walked over and held it up, running a thumb over the grain of the polished wood.

Pressing on the pearl, he opened the box with a click and found the inside divided into compartments with small scale storage seals in each compartment.

Pushing a bit of world vitality into the seals activated them, ejecting one of his blueprints, neatly folded.

As he inspected the box, the corners of his lips curled upwards into a soft smile.