Sea of the Wind, Shore of the Maze, Prologue

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.
    They walked slowly and spent a long time passing through the cave before she saw a set of stairs  where the top of the arc-shaped cliff wall met the dirt below their feet.
    "You will be called Sanshi!"
    The old woman finally spoke.
    "San, Shi. From now on, everyone will call you Sanshi."
    She silently took steps upward on the stone stairs and listened at the same time to the old woman  speak.
    "Your surname will be Haku, for this is the rule for all nyokai hatched upon Mt. Hou."
    The stone stairs made a big turn, and after she went up the steps a bit, she suddenly saw a ray of light.
    "The reason you can have a surname is because you carry on your back a very important mission. You  must never forget this."
    She nodded her head. As to what this very important mission was, she didn't need the old woman to tell  her, for it was already very clear to her.
    Once again, she firmly engraved into her mind the mission that she was to shoulder as she silently  walked up the stone steps. After ascending a ways, the field of vision in front of her opened up. It turned out  that the higher the stone steps went, the wider they became, and at the end, there was a square cave opening.
    She stopped walking.
    She lifted her head and looked out of the opening, seeing only the pale blue sky and the trunk and  branches of a dazzlingly big white tree reaching up into the sky.
    The tears that were so hard to stop before started flowing again though she tried to stifle them.
    The old woman patted her back again.
    "All right, you should go."
    She took a few strides and then began to run, using the four legs that had just been hatched to run for  the first time.
    As soon as she leapt from the cave opening, sunlight splashed upon her body and pierced her eyes so  that she began to cry again. She ran straight to a spot under the tree.
    Her egg had originally formed among the roots of the tree. Compared to the long and slender roots, the  trunk itself appeared to be short and thick. The long branches reached from the mossy stone steps to the sky,  and on one of the snow-white branches, there grew a golden fruit.
    "Taiki!"
    She said something for the first time.
    The golden fruit had grown in the same