Close shot of a Japanese girl, 8 years old, standing on the safe side of a large wooden temple gate in feudal Japan at dawn. Character Sora: small, pale blue kimono now dirty and torn from weeks of travel, dark hair loose, large dark eyes. She is looking through or past the gate at something — someone — in the distance. She has raised one small hand, not quite a wave. Her expression is the hardest thing to describe: not crying, not smiling, not blank. She is eight years old and she understands something she should not have to understand yet. Dawn light behind her. The gate frame is the visual border. Cinematic, film grain, warm dawn light contrasting the cold of the road beyond. --ar 21:9