"Fuyumi Ono - Juuni Kokki Novel - Sea Of The Wind, Shore Of The Maze" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ono Fuyumi)

She propped up her upper body. These ideas were still flooding her mind, and they simultaneously spread into every
corner of her body.
She straightened her waist, as if she was letting water that had dripped onto her body trickle onto every surface. She
lifted her head and closed her eyes. Teardrops slid down from the corners of her eyes and dribbled into her damp hair.
She tried to move her feet, which did not yet have any strength in them, and bumped into the wet soil and golden
shards next to her feet.
The shards once belonged to the egg shell that protected her, and the liquid that had originally filled the egg had
already been absorbed by the soil. She had just hatched from inside the shell, and the golden egg that had contained
her had fallen down from a branch, breaking into pieces all over the ground.
She stared at the shards of the golden egg, and after a little bit, lifted her head again to look at the white branch in
front of her. As if it were made of white silver, the long branch extended beyond the top of her head and outward. The
root was sturdily set into the high cliff wall.
On the branch, there were still a few little, round golden fruits. Although no one had told her, she already knew by
intuition that there were still unhatched lives inside all the fruits, and not too long ago, she herself had also waited like
this in the fruit to be hatched.
This is how life is actually created.
--Taiki.
She used her strength to prop up her four legs and stood up, while she cried once again.
Her tears flowed only to protect her two eyes, which had been exposed to the outside air for the first time, but the
feeling of the warm, wet tears slipping down made her feel as if the only name that she held in her mind was slowly
seeping into the very depths of her body.
She wordlessly called out "Taiki! Taiki!" and again tears welled up in her eyes.
She stood up straight and discovered that her hair was hooked on a branch. The four legs on the lower half of her
body stood firmly on the ground, whereupon she used the two hands on the upper half of her body to push aside the
branch.
 "You've hatched?"
Suddenly hearing someone speak, she turned her head to look for the source of the sound.
It was very dim all around. Only the branch above her head gave off a white glow.
After waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she then saw that she was in an enormous cave.
This was a particularly big cave in the shape of a half-circle with a white tree dangling in the middle. Those branches
that were hanging over her, were actually the roots of the tree. These roots had cut through the cliff wall and hung
very intricately from a place extremely high in the cave and reached all the way down to her feet.
"Yes."
Suddenly, the sound was even closer.
"You look like a very good nyokai."
She looked around again.
This time, she immediately found the person to whom the voice belonged. It was a hunchbacked old woman who was
standing only a few steps from her.
This short old woman's height only reached her chest. The old woman reached out with her two gnarled hands and
lightly stroked her hair.
"You are female."
And then the old woman stroked her cheeks.
"You have the neck of a fish."
Then she patted her wrists.
"The upper half of your body is human..."
The hand that had rested on her back slid down and she lightly patted her tail bone.
"...the lower half of your body is that of a leopard, and your tail is that of a lizard. What a terrific mix!"
Finally, the old woman softly pressed on the backbone that connected both parts of her body.
"All right, stop crying. Come with me."
So she followed the old woman. With every step, her tears fell to the dry earth and left little black dots.