Nami did not ask many people to join her during her weather reading.
This was not because she wanted to conceal what she was doing – all members of the crew could ask her any time, and she would explain, as patiently as a person whose life was saved by weather.
The problem was that if anyone stayed to learn from Nami, she would not be able to tolerate being with him/her for such a long period.
The weather reading demanded spending quite some time standing at one certain angle and observing the behavior of clouds.
This could also include measuring the temperature gradient with hands and writing in a notebook whenever a certain bird gives a specific sound.
Most people simply could not watch Nami do her work for long.
It had never happened to Nami that a man joined her to do the weather reading during her time as a navigator.
However, Nami suggested that Kael should join her on the third evening.
As they were having dinner in Sanji’s cooking at the camp on the cliff overlooking the bay – Nami remembered Sanji mentioning that at this angle of the sun he had to serve her up here – Kael appeared with a bowl of food and seated himself near her without asking her permission.
This pleased Nami, and the fact that he was silently enjoying the dish also appealed to her – she already discovered that the most talkative members of the crew did not actually have anything useful to say.
Nami enjoyed her food.
The sun slowly lowered, the sea got golden, and the atmosphere seemed calm enough.
“I’m going to do my weather reading.”
“Mhm.”
“You can come along.”
This did not cause him any troubles.
In fact, Nami had somehow been prepared for his refusal.
Only then she noticed how nervous she actually was of his reaction to her proposition.
She guided him to the place she started doing her readings since the second day.
This was the highest place on the cliff, it had a good view in all three possible directions and was quite convenient for writing notes.
First of all, Nami put her materials there – a notebook, two sharpened pencils with different points and a wooden box containing all the instruments she was able to carry on land.
She then knelt on the canvas she had previously placed.
Kael sat cross-legged a respectful distance away.
“I will not speak during this.
You will distract me.”
“Noted.”
And the work began.
Nami observed the clouds in the west during several minutes.
There were three layers in the atmosphere: the lowest one was the bank of clouds Nami tracked since the morning that was about to disappear before sunset; the middle one was a sign that the front she feared yesterday might occur would happen in several days; finally, the high altitude clouds.
Nami wrote her observations.
Then she turned to observe the southern part of the sky.
She put a hand up and measured the temperature gradient that proved to be a little lower compared to previous day but not by much – in fact, it was a little bit less hot now.
She wrote her observations.
Then she turned to the sky above and noticed that there was no cloud cover.
The winds ran from east, the moon was almost invisible but the position in the sky suggested that there would be higher tides compared to yesterday but a little bit lower compared to tomorrow.
She wrote everything down.
Forty minutes had already passed, and Nami almost forgot about the presence of Kael next to her.
She closed the notebook around her finger and looked at him.
He did not change his position.
His eyes carried the same depth she saw in him that morning when he started speaking about the weather.
It was clear that Kael did what she did but through a window she had no access to.
For some day, Nami tried to imagine how it was from his point of view: the upper atmosphere, its colors and the front that was going to appear in several days.
“Tell me what you see.”
Kael told.
At first he spoke of the front – Nami knew about it as well, of course, but he managed to convey his knowledge about the front through other senses – feeling the mass, the place where the cold air fell down in it, knowing that the place was thirty miles away from the bay and it would occur later that day after tomorrow.
He described it in a way she had never seen before.
Then he told about everything that would happen after the front.
He spoke about the weather that was to follow, describing the wind from east-southeast and the sunset in details.
Then he mentioned another, smaller front that was coming and broke up in the water surface.
Finally, he predicted a wind shift in seven days that would cause a long dry spell that continued into next week.
He went on.
Kael told Nami that a storm system was forming at this time two thousand miles from their current position.
It was not a storm yet, but a combination of conditions necessary for it to occur in the following days and move north-northwest until it hit the high pressure system of the next archipelago, where it turned eastward and developed further, becoming a serious storm at the day she called day fifteen.
And he did not stop here.
Kael specified where this storm would be on day nineteen.
It was already known for him that there was a narrow passage between two uncharted islands and it would cross the eye wall of the storm at noon on that day.
If any ship entered that channel at that time, he warned, it would be endangered severely, but the eastern route around the islands, which would add a day to their travel, guaranteed a sufficient safety margin.
He stopped after this warning.
Nami could not continue writing his predictions after hearing the first ones.
Instead, she listened to him silently with an opened notebook and a pencil in her hand, waiting for him to finish.
After a couple of seconds of silence, she asked:
“How far can you see?”
“In time?
About several weeks.
Perhaps a little longer if I force myself.”
Nami thought for a while.
“It costs me,” Nami started saying, trying not to show her shock.
“A few weeks is comfortable.”
Kael let the words sink in without confirming them.
Nami looked at her notebook.
She glanced through the latest page, which contained predictions she had received in the last forty minutes.
On the next page, she wrote a date she used since many years.
This date was not connected to navigation, but it was the starting point of her personal logging.
She wrote the date and then a line.
Then Nami wrote that the man was right in everything he told her, but she did not know how to react on this knowledge and the fact that it was conveyed to her.
She wrote: The man is giving me the information, but he is not watching me receive it.
He does not tell me what to do with it and gives it to me as a gift, leaving me the freedom of using it.
Nami wrote that and closed the notebook.
She did not show it to Kael.
He did not move and watched the horizon towards west, where the sun was setting at this moment, and his face showed satisfaction of a person who spent all energy he could spend on something and now could rest.
“What do you do with the gift?”
Kael thought for a while.
“I do not really do anything.
Most of the time I am just observing and conveying my vision for other people to use it.”
“Such as me.”
“Yes.”
“Why.”
He turned to look at her and showed a sincere expression.
“Because you’ll use it well.”
Nami did not know how to react to that.
She did not dare to speak – her voice would betray her.
Gathering her notebook and her instruments, she stood and left.
Kael accompanied her.
When reaching the camp, they silently parted.
From outside she could hear Sanji singing and the laughter of Luffy who probably joked at Usopp.
She could also hear the practising of Zoro behind the tents.
And she could also hear the sound of the sea.
What she could not hear anymore was Kael.
Probably he was still on the top of the cliff, watching the sunset.
Nami returned to her tent.
She sat on the edge of her sleeping place with the book on her knees.
However, she did not open it.
Nami lied down.
She did not open the book.
She slept.