A/N: My first upload in a long time. I can't say how frequently I'll be updating stories, since life is crazy, but I need to do something to keep myself grounded. Just so you know, the characters in this first chapter are just a framing device and won't appear very much in the course of the total story. In fact, they will probably only be in two more chapters: the next one and the last. But next chapter, you will see the Naruto characters you know and love :)

A couple of notes of Japanese...

Konohagakure = Leaf Villiage

Amegakure = Rain Villiage

rokudaime = sixth

nanadaime = seventh

sama = honorific denoting highest respect

Enjoy!

"Konohagakure certainly has a lot of trees."

Tomoya smiled at his older brother. "Ame has trees too, you know."

"Not as many as this. We've been hopping through trees for days and it seems to me that we never get anywhere," Jiro said with exasperation.

The two brothers had been traveling for days from Amegakure. The village hidden in the rain had been slowly reestablished from the ground up during the last hundred years. It was still a young, developing village, but it thrived under its alliance with the village hidden in the leaves. The two villages had once been in conflict with one another, but Konoha's rokudaime hokage had brought peace back to the war-torn bit of land and had offered it aid and friendship as the village strengthened itself and became more and more independent. So, when the brothers had received a message from the nanadaime hokage—the granddaughter of the rokudaime hokage, the savior of their village—asking to meet with them, they could not have refused even if they had wished to.

Still, it was odd. Why would the hokage want to meet with them? It was a perplexing question, and one that had interested Jiro and Tomoya enough to come all the way from the capital of Amegakure...through all of the trees.

The brothers were met at the inner border of the village by a guard dressed in the uniform of a jounin. Their arrival had obviously been prepared for. It was overwhelming for the two writers to be treated like foreign dignitaries.

After the great ninja war, the ninja system had slowly begun to give way to a different way of life. Constant preparation for conflict and the survival-of-the-fittest, needs-of-the-many mentality had started to take a backseat to other pursuits and individual expression and development. It was a slow, ongoing process to change centuries of tradition and status quo...but the ninja world was changing.

Ame, in an attempt to regain and rebuild their lost culture, had turned to the Hisou brothers—whose talents for storytelling and writing had been practically unnecessary in the old order of the ninja world—to compile a collection of folktales native to their village. The brothers had, gladly, collected the stories with great care...even adding a bit of their personal touch to some of the tales. The book had become quite popular among the citizens of Amegakure and even some in neighboring villages. But what in their simple anthology could have attracted such apt attention from the nanadaime hokage herself?

Jiro and Tomoya were led inside the Hokage Tower and let into the main office. Both bowed deeply in front of the hokage's wooden desk. The guard who had escorted them there spoke in a calm, authorotative voice. "The Hisou brothers, hokage-sama," he introduced.

"Hello gentlemen," a gracious, wise voice sounded. "Thank you so much for coming."

The brothers lifted their heads, looking into two kind, blue-green eyes. The nanadaime hokage, Mari Shuseki, was up there in years, but only a few small wrinkles framed her eyes and mouth. Her hair had lightened over the years into a creamy white color, still tinged with a bit of pink. The years had aged her, but most of the signs of her years were in her eyes—a vast wealth of knowledge, compassion, and understanding.

She motioned for the two men to sit across from her and they complied, in awe of the aura of power and benevolence that radiated from the elder woman. "I'm sure you must be wondering," she began, taking a sip of the tea on her desk, "why a woman of my age would request an audience with the authors of children's stories." Her tone was not condescending, but gently amused.

"Your letter was most intriguing, hokage-sama," Jiro responded with a respectful nod.

"I found your collection of folktales quite brilliant, actually," she complimented sincerely.

"Thank you," Tomoya accepted the compliment with a proud smile.

"But I must say..." the brothers looked over at the woman, surprised by the sudden hardness that had slipped into her voice, "I was terribly disturbed when I read your version of 'The Little Cinder Girl'."

Both of the brothers' hearts dropped. That was the tale that they had changed the most. Even though the stories they had gathered were, at their heart, "fairy tales", the brothers had wanted to make the tales as believable and relatable to the human experience as possible. So, they had dropped many of the fantastical elements of that particular story in favor of more mundane plot elements. They had known that many people wouldn't be happy with their take on the story, but the two of them had been very proud of it. To hear that the nanadaime hokage disapproved of it...

Tomoya tried to cover up his embarrassment with a laugh. "Well, there are some that claim that the traditional version with it' fairy godmother and magic pumpkin would be closer to the truth."

"Some say the slipper was made of fur," Jiro spoke almost reverently. He believed sincerely that the story had truth at the heart of it, and he had wanted to bring that truth to life. "Others insist it was glass." He sighed. "I guess we'll never know."

As his eyes observed the room, as a writer was want to do, Tomoya's eyes landed on a simplistically lovely painting in the corner of the room. The sunlight coming through the window hit the canvas just right to make the emerald eyes of the piece's subject—a young woman with pink hair and a sad, sweet smile—look alive. Her gaze drew him in and the younger brother was immediately fascinated. "Forgive me, hokage-sama, but might I inquire about the painting? She's really quite...extraordinary."

A knowing smile spread back over Mari's face, all trace of her earlier hardness gone as she gestured for her guard to bring over a silver box. "Her name was Haruno Sakura. And this..." out of the box, she withdrew a gem-studded shoe with a transparent heel, "was her glass slipper." Tomoya's eyes widened as he mouthed It can't be... The hokage noticed this and nodded, still smiling. "Perhaps you would allow me to set the record straight?"

"Then it's true!" Jiro exclaimed excitedly. "The story..." he looked over at his younger brother with eyes full of hope and expectation. Tomoya was still completely stunned by the revelation. Had Jiro really been right? Had the "Cinder Girl" actually lived? His gaze jolted back to the painting, as if expecting it to speak to him.

But it was the elderly hokage that spoke instead. "Yes, quite true...Now then, what is that phrase you use?" Mari paused to think. "Oh yes. 'Once upon a time...' there lived a young girl who loved her father very much..."