"Whoo—shhh~~"
The September wind swept across Sakhalin Island, bringing with it the chill of the Siberian pole. The deep birch forest was the ink of the northern sky, and the bright surface of the Ezo Sea was the white of the southern sky. In that vast scroll of ink-green and white-blue, there was a place where gray, yellow, red, and white blended together, like the midpoint between two parallel horizons that would never meet.
"Awoo! Awoo!…"
When the Flying Eagle rode the cold wind closer, that complex color in the desolate heaven-and-earth suddenly unfolded, turning into a simple, crude yet vibrant tribal port. The gray became harvested potato fields, the yellow a chain of thatched huts and wooden houses, the red the Temple at the center of the port, and the white a pier of white birch wood where ships of all sizes lay moored.
