Sometime during the night, the rain stopped.
A bright moon hung in the sky. The river of stars, misty as clouds and dazzling in seven colors, stretched from the rolling mountains across the heavens and down into the lake. Fluorescent flying fish drifted freely into the reflected starry river.
Inside the earthen Thatched Hut, moonlight slanted through the cracks in the window.
It fell across the peacefully sleeping Fisher Girl's face. Her lashes trembled slightly beneath her eyelids. She was dreaming.
Countless words flashed before her eyes in the dream.
A knife had appeared in her hand, straight with an angled point. Its heavy weight felt incredibly real. She could not tell whether it was a dream or reality, and then she began practicing knife techniques.
It was nothing like the performances on the streets of town.
There were no fancy forms. She simply swung the blade with force and chopped downward, simple and direct—one-handed, two-handed...
It truly felt as though she were there in person. She could sense every detail of her muscles exerting force with each movement, even feeling the friction between her feet and the ground.
Again and again, she practiced the most basic movements of knife techniques.
Gradually, the motions of drawing her blade became ingrained in her memory, and her knife techniques grew increasingly natural and fluid.
Half-asleep, she heard a rooster crow.
The dream ebbed away like the tide. The Fisher Girl opened her eyes. Dawn was nearly breaking.
Poor folk had to rise early and work; they could not laze in bed. Yet when she got up, the pain all over her body nearly made her fall.
She was more exhausted than after a full day's work. She did not want to get up, but daylight had come, and she needed to fetch