Author's Note: Hey guys. It's been a while since I've posted on fanfiction. I thought I may as well post a few drabbles. This one will be on it's own, because it's a quasi side-along story to Samurai101's Wind Over Tide, which is a lovely AU story that you should go read. This would be something like Shisui's origin story.

At the same time, though, this was a thought-process drabble. I've had Shisui running around screaming in my head about headcanon and the Mist village, and I ended up writing something for it. It's not much and I don't think it's too interesting, but it's pretty fun!

Warnings are for language; mentions of violence, sex and cannibalism; heavier descriptions of burning bodies; shrine desecration; and a delusional kid who thinks his mother is a water spirit (after all, what else could move that fast). Right, onto the drabble.

The streets of Kiri were a bad place to grow up for any number of reasons.

The first was the lack of shits anyone gave for a kid on his own. Maybe to steal food, maybe just to have someone to beat up - which was why Shisui didn't trust anyone taller than him anymore -, or maybe for something termed as sex. He'd seen if from some of his hiding places in alleys, and it was weird to watch. Interesting and gross all at once, like newborn kittens, but it seemed pretty painful too. They always groaned, so he drew his own conclusions.

But, no one offered him anything. No home no food no nothing, so he just stole for the sake of surviving, and slept where he could. It was easier to get food in the city, but safer to sleep out in the coves. Shisui had tried going back and forth, but he'd nearly died one night. Food was the most important thing, even if the people in the city were scary.

They hated Shisui's red eyes, just like Mama had told him they would. Some kids had seen him with them, once, and had tried to kill him dead, just like Mama's body. He'd gotten away, but had barely survived the rain that night. He couldn't move too far for a while, actually. It just went to show how much they hated clanners. Shisui knew he was a clanner, his mama had told him, but only halfway. He said he didn't feel like one, and she warned him that they were evil and conniving.

It isn't your fault that you were born to them, my son, but you must learn to avoid them. He thought she was right. If he ever saw anyone with red eyes, he would go away, flicker just like she taught him to. He would run and they wouldn't catch him.

One of the worst parts, other than the all-consuming hunger, was people getting burned at stake. His mama had made him watch a few times, just so he could learn what would happen if they caught him. Bad Things, yes. Most of the executions were for adults and ordered by some boss called the Mizukage, but crowds brought other people to be burned, too. They would throw coins at the executioner, and then throw someone - didn't matter how old - up there with them. If enough coins were piled up, he would tie them up and light them on fire, and sometimes when your stomach was eating itself, the smell of anything burning could make you hungry.

Shisui would later learn that when people were hungry enough, the crows were left with only bones.

Sometimes he stole money from the shrines. He didn't like it, because Mama had always told him to respect the shrines, but he just got so hungry... The only good one to take money from was on the outskirts of the city, for travellers. The others were too well-kept by the priests and such, so there wasn't any money to take at the end of the day.

Besides, his mother was a spirit too. Even if he wasn't totally a spirit, he had rights to a little bit of the prayer money, right?

(If his mom was a spirit who could flicker faster than sound, why was she DEAD? Why were her guts all open and her chest rotting out, leaving a swampy much that smelled bad and left him smelling nasty for days when he got close to her. Why had the crows plucked out her eyeballs and her nose and her tongue instead of picking up her body and taking her to the ocean like they were did in the stories? Why hadn't Mama gotten up and RAN?)

He didn't know. The ways of the spirits weren't his to think over.

Shisui gnawed on his bone to get the last scraps of meat off, and hoped that a coin would roll his way. The crowd had another screaming body to burn.