"Shell, are you saying that the Three Islands Wa Tribal Alliance's three great islands were originally all lands of the Ainu People? That they migrated here a thousand years ago, step by step swallowing up your tribes and territories, turning the hunting grounds of forests and marshes into field after field of farmland?..."
"Mm, ancestor, I don't know. Did the Wajin originally have three great islands? Did they come a thousand years ago?... Those were tribal legends my father told me when I was little... He said the Spirit of the Mountains, the great bear of our ancestors, once spread across north and south! The Spirit of the Ocean that guarded the orcas would sing over the whole world! And from the southernmost island to the northernmost Chishima, it took months, even a full year, to walk. Across such vast lands, everywhere was the hunting ground of the Ainu People, everywhere were villages of the Ainu People, with the Fishing Owl Spirit, the Spirit of the Village, flying above!... Until the Wajin came from the sea, built villages on our hunting grounds, turned marshes into farmland, and enshrined their guardian spirits... The farming Wajin grew more and more numerous, and more and more powerful! They swallowed up the Ainu tribes all along the way and drove us north, until this last land of the Ainu, the Sky God's final sheltered great island, Aynu-mosir Island..."
The cold wind blew, and the soft, low confession flowed along the icebound shore, on the bitterly cold Kamchatka Peninsula, yearning for the warm and fertile ancestral lands of the south. Exploration Captain Zuwaro held the soft girl in his arms, listening to the Ainu People's ancient legends. Thought flickered in his eyes from time to time, and he was planning for a far-reaching future.
"May