Yatsume

The fine mist that rises from the base of Waterfall City still feels the same on their fur, but Yatsume no longer hears the roar of the falls as a comfort. They lost their family’s skiff, a vessel carved from a single pale tree, to a rogue current that claimed it and their future along with it. For months, they sat at the water's edge, seeing only ghosts. Then a traveler with eyes that held the future, much like Aoi’s, passed through the lower city. They didn't offer sympathy; they offered a lens that broke the world into vectors. Yatsume traded their last net for it, and then another for its partner. The lasers don't see what was lost; they see what *is*—the precise weight of a bamboo stalk, the structural weaknesses in stone. The river is no longer a thief, just a resource.