Misaki

Misaki loves to wander around the forest alone with her own thoughts...but she's not truly alone. She can hear the thoughts of the wind as it whispers among the trees like a friend's stories, feel the touch of the sunlight piercing through sun-dappled canopies like a loved one's embrace and taste the sweet scent of the flowers like a treat given by a friend. She seems a little too shy and quiet but her tiny cat mask gives away the childlike demeanor everybody wants her to hide. She is her own person and that is enough to make her feel free.

"Briefly like spring time,

I have come, but I will go.

Life is too fleeting."

Tora

She is named Tora. To defend one's land is her duty and it takes up too much of her time. Sometimes she wonders if it was better to have been an ordinary person, tilling farm or making rice, singing songs with her friends and eating with her family at the dinner table. But this is the life that she's been given. She is grateful, but she feels her days and her nights are too short -- life is but similar to the passing of sakura blossoms. She will never know just when the blades or the arrows of her enemies will end her days. In this she feels sorrow but also gratitude -- to die for your people and your country is enough to make the hardship and unpredictability of warfare easier to overcome.

Growing up with six older brothers, all Hagumi wanted was to fit right in with the guys. She took up arms and fought in the skirmishes along with them. But that was only in her wildest of dreams. She's stuck feeding the chickens and cooking dinner at home. Not that she hated doing all the women's work, but she longed for adventure... sans the killing. One day she was forced to do what she had imagined doing -- she must fight to protect her brothers' innocence. Oh great, I was just joking, she thought nervously. Well, I could handle a broom so why not a spear? She's quite sure she could do it. After all those daydreams and watching numerous training and sparring with the scarecrow, she could survive the battlefield, right?

She loves the garden and everything in it. Well, maybe not all -- she's terrified of centipedes! She'll let the sun shine on your plants even brighter and the wind nicer but remember to leave some herbs for her to cook with! Oh and her name is...a secret, she says! But the wind and the birds know, she said. If we know how to listen quietly, then we'd know her name.