Waiko

The most flustered samurai-in-training in The Heart of the Forest is, without question, Waiko. They carry a past forged under the same immense pressure that created Daiyamondo, arriving with the dust of a harsher world clinging to their shoulders. They came to find focus, to live by a rigid code where discipline was survival. Then they were assigned a training partner: a local whose primary skills were berry-juggling and napping in sunbeams. Waiko attempts to meditate; their partner interrupts to ask if clouds taste like anything. Waiko practices kata; their partner critiques their form while balancing a pear on their head. The shades hide their eyes, but they cannot hide the perpetually shocked expression of someone whose honor code has no chapter on dealing with such joyful, baffling chaos.