The Kitsune's Curse
サスケ & ナルコ
A thousand years ago, love was found, a wedding planned, and a murder was committed; since that day, Konohagakure was cursed in recompense till that murdered soul was born again. SasuFemNaru. Kitsune/Japanese Folklore Influence. Angsty-Twisted-Style Happy Ending.
Chapter One
~ Sayuri; ~
小百合
My love will grow black if your heart gets stolen;
just promise to keep your heart.
One day I'll come back if the door's still open.
Forever and after, my love.
Just promise to keep your heart broken.
At first glance, Konohagakure was a picturesque mountain village.
It had rich farmland, surrounded by woodland, the Nakano river a silvery ribbon that glinted through its rich greenery in the sunlight. Many would believe that the spirit that protected the village was a benevolent, kind being, and that the village prospered.
However, first glances were not what they appeared, for Konoha was a cursed village.
When the time came for crops to be harvested, droughts would set in, leaving only the minimum needed by the village to survive. The river would shrink within its banks leaving only enough for the villagers to live roughly.
All because the village ancestors had cause such great anger and grief for their guardian spirit, known by name no more, but still greatly feared.
A thousand thousand years previously, when the village had once flourished under the care of their guardian spirit, Konohagakure became a victim of some small pranks by a nine-tailed fox spirit after one of the farmers had disturbed her home in the local forest making more space for his cattle.
Though harmless, the pranks caused a great many problems for the villagers, and so they appealed to their guardian to appease the fox after their attempts to tick and capture the creature themselves failed, forgetting to mention that they had disturbed her forest home without care or due respect.
On behalf of the villagers under his care, the spirit approached the forest, and attempted to reason with her. After explaining her own complaints to him, the spirit was torn; his villagers were suffering, but the fox had been robbed of her home when the farmer chopped down the trees for his animals to have more space.
Eventually, he appeased her by insisting on the villagers that they provide her with offerings in compensation, and she agreed to stay at the home he held on the edge of the village (where few bothered him unless something of importance came along) until her own home had recovered.
The villagers had no problem with this, and frequently left offerings of azukimeshi and abura-age, which spirits like she were known to be partial to, at a new Hokura in the forest, though few noticed the small arguments the two spirits would have when the fox girl claimed the morsels.
The years passed without incident, and the forest stared to grow back, signifying the return of the vixen Kitsune spirit to her home... but when the time came for her to leave, something very unexpected happened.
The village guardian asked her to stay with him, saying his temple mansion home would be lonely without company, and she happily complied.
During the time in which the forest took to re-grow, the spirit became dearly fond of her. Often would the villagers go looking for him with some news or trouble, only to find him speaking with her in some secret spot - not so secluded as to cause unwelcome rumour, but enough to offer some privacy.
He would either give or leave flowers for her on the Hokura that had been built, ones that spoke volumes and made his affection for her clear. The villagers watched on half-amused, half-curious to the outcome of his attempt at courtship. Especially when she persistently left yellow tulips on the steps of his own shrine, a clear sign that his intent was one sided.
She was very stubborn, and so she continued to leave the yellow tulips for him, but a close watcher would see her little game with him, for she would still take a great delight in arranging the flowers left on her little shrine, or taking their seeds and scattering them in the forest.
They would dance together with smiles and excitement during harvest festivals, or the wedding of a particularly blessed couple, walk often along the riverbank, and exchange small words with the old man who sold good rice to the village on his travels together. And of course, the spirit never failed to give her flowers each and every day.
She was always especially pleased with the Wasurenagusa; one villager, a fisherman on the river, saw the exchange of the little flowers between the two spirits on the riverbank. After smelling the blossoms, detecting a scent no human could have found in them, she allowed her companion some more... affectionate exchanges.
They did of course argue on occasion, and the village would usually suffer some unpleasant rain or wind till it was settled. The two would always avoid each other during these times, as both were incredibly stubborn types, and the villagers would see the two grumpy spirits sulking at their disagreement around the village.
They would later hear the happy laughter when the female spirit appeared at her shrine, and would find a heaped pile of flowery apology awaiting her; lavender, kuchinashi, red white and yellow tsubaki, or as once appeared, a strange, foreign flower that one passing farmer swore set her dainty face aflame.
When winter arrived with the passing years, the female spirit would leave, having no real need to stay for the cold months as their guardian did, and the village guardian would grow sullen in those cold snowy months.
Her absence saddened their guardian greatly; he would vanish from their lives for days on end, and would remain so until the shrine, which he had continued to lay flowers on unseen sustaining their life with magic, would clear.
It was after one of these winters that the villagers noticed that the harsh winters made it hard for their crops to regrow, or would be longer than usual if she did not reappear on time with the first grass roots of spring.
They realised that the female spirit their beloved guardian held in his heart had a direct effect on their village at times, and began to grow concerned. They suspected her private game of rejection to be a Nogitsune's spell, designed to distract their guardian so she could let a true disaster befall them unnoticed at a later date.
In timing with this new suspicion, she returned to the village, and a few weeks later one of the villagers watched her secretly as she picked a single benibara from her shrine. The villager was Elder Namikaze, and he noted that blatant admission of love brought her a good deal of joy.
Later that same evening, one of the shrine attendants watched with worry as their guardian picked up not a tulip, but a keshiki, it's golden colour reflecting in the spirits dark eyes as as he realised it's meaning.
A wedding was announced for the pair, to be held at the end of the harvest season in late autumn. Unfortunately, while the villagers had forgiven the fox spirit for her previous pranks - for they had been rightly deserved on reflection - they were not much fond with the notion of their beloved guardian taking such a lower spirit to wife.
They much believed that, with trickery magic known only to the fox spirits, she had bewitched him, seeking to keep their kind guardian for herself; they secretly thought her a true Nogitsune than the simple fun loving spirit she was, and drastic action was taken in secret amidst the wedding preparations.
A messenger was sent to a village to the north, which had been known to suffer attacks from a malevolent fox spirit some years previously. The priest in the village spoke of a special jewel-like ball, known as a hoshi-no-tama, held by all Kitsune spirits; if separated from this small ball of light, the spirit would surely die, and spoke of sacred spells that would destroy such gems.
Only one man, the ancient man named Jiraiya who travelled through the village often, selling his highly praised sacks of rice, protested the idea, begging them to reconsider before their actions proved to have unwanted consequences, but it was to no avail.
The night before the wedding was due to take place, in the dead dark, they headed into the forest. With their information in hand, the villagers waited by the forest Hokura for the young fox spirit to approach it (so to collect the morsels of food that had been placed on it as an offering).
Soon she arrived, taking the abura-age pieces with a happy grin. As soon as she was distracted, they set upon her, stealing the ball from her and quickly smashing it; it was said that the cry of anguish she let out in her last breaths haunted the villagers for years to come.
Her scream alerted the guardian spirit to the plans of his villagers, but by the time he had materialised at the scene, it was too late; the jewel that held her soul was smashed into a thousand pieces, her human body cold and reverted to one of nine sleek tails, and golden fur that had lost its shine.
Desperately, he scraped the prices back together, piecing them back into place only to find the last, thousandth piece gone. His hopes of piecing it back together and reviving her gone with it, in his anger, he turned on the now fearful villagers.
"You fools! You know not what you have done! What do you accomplish with this betrayal?" he snarled, his mouth snarling to reveal hidden canine teeth at the villagers.
"Great Spirit, we beg of your understanding; this fox spirit has bewitched you. We sought only to free you from her curse!" Elder Hyūga explained, eager to sooth the confusion he thought in the spirit's eyes.
"You think me bewitched, but you have bewitched yourselves! You would care more so for your rice fields than a servant of Inari-sama? Naruto long watched over your harvest, helped better it's growth every spring more than I ever could, and she had no need of such responsibility!" he roared at them, shocking several of the gathered elders.
They believed the success of their crops after the hard winters was the protective blessing from their guardian, but he said it was the fox girl he held so dear, the fox now dead at their feet.
The villagers begged forgiveness, but the spirit could do nothing but rage such was his grief. Picking up the small vulpine body, he turned to the villagers in anger and spoke their grievances after they pleaded their feeble excuses.
"Great Spirit, we did not... We thought... If we had known-"
"Ignorance is no excuse for your actions, and for them you and your descendants are cursed from this day!" he roared, interrupting Elder Hyūga, his fury and loss unmistakeable.
There was a terrified, anguished, stunned silence through the dark, grim glade as the spirit's words echoed through it, surrounding the villagers and latching onto them.
"...Neither you nor your descendants will ever leave this valley, and none shall enter! You will only grow what would have you survive. Where are the leaders of this village? Bring them forward! There will be one more price paid for this treachery."
The elders of the village - the so-called wise ones who had suggested the plot at first thought - stepped forward, fearful of the angered spirit.
"Yamanaka, Haruno, Aburame, Namikaze, Hyūga, Sarutobi, Akimichi, Nara... You are the leaders of this village, the conspirators of this foul crime, and the condition for the removal of this curse rests on your heads!" they were told in fierce, furious tones.
"What is this condition? We would gladly pay it to make amends for our fault!" Elder Namikaze asked pleadingly; though he and his clan had at first objected to the crime they had committed, they had also still participated, and knew whatever price demanded of them would be equal to their dishonour.
"One piece of this hoshi-no-tama is lost, but Naruto is not yet fully gone. She can be reborn if the last piece of the hoshi-no-tama is found, along with a body that matches her previous one. Once so, her spirit will be reborn, revealing itself on the sixteenth birthday of one of your daughters..." the spirit told in a vice retaining personal hope, one so small and strong that it grieved the villagers more for their terrible mistake.
"...On such days, it will rain from cloudless skies, as is the tradition of Kitsune weddings, and she will walk with her family to the entrance of shrine that I dwell in, and stay there for seven days and nights. If on the last night she does not return... Then the curse will have been lifted, if not, she will be the price for your failures! Blood for blood! That is the condition for which to remove this curse!" the spirit snarled, bearing his canine shaped-teeth as tears flowed in unyielding lines over his cheeks.
The villagers could not speak as he sank to the ground, sobs of grief wreaking havoc through his body in shudders as he held the small vixen body close and grieved for her. Elder Haruno was the first to notice that his cries were not dissimilar to the call of the Fox spirit they had so cruelly murdered, the first to connect many tiny clues together in her mind.
As he mourned, an old man with long grey hair in a ponytail and travellers clothes approached, leaning heavily on his long knobbly cane (taller than himself by several measures) to compensate for the heavy packages of rice he carried on his back.
It was Jiraiya the Rice Seller. Pushing through the crowd, he approached the grieving spirit, crouched beside him, and gently, soothingly, threaded his gnarled, kindly fingers through the spirit's dark hair with a tremor in his hand, and a tear steaming down one of his grizzled cheeks.
The spirit clutched at the man's trousers, his choked sobs only slightly muffled, seeming to flow with less restraint with the comforting gesture from the old man. Slowly, so slowly that it took the villagers some time to notice the occurrence, the spirit left his human appearance behind, taking one that matched the girl so recently lost.
The ice white fox nuzzled and whined sadly at the golden furred vixen, laying his head over her neck, staying there and curling his three tails around her, as if to warm her back to life, or not to move and depart the world with her. The old man ran his fingers softly, sadly, in a reminiscent affectionate gesture behind the vixen's ears, his voice sad and quiet as he addressed the villagers without a glance.
"Kitsune spirits are such picky creatures when they choose a partner, Sasuke especially so. He was stubborn since he was but a cub. However, once they choose another, there is no changing. I often thought he would never choose but I was mistaken. I should have realised he chose her long ago..."
The old man stroked the white fox as it nudged and licked the face of the dead gold nine-tailed Kitsune, refusing to leave her side despite the old man's silent encouragement to do so.
"...The hoshi-no-tama is not simply a portion of their power, it is their soul. When two Kitsune exchange those balls of light during sun showers, it not simply choosing a partner as you humans would..." he explained to them.
Elder Yamanaka was the first to realise the extent of grief just what their crime had afflicted the white Kitsune spirit, and almost cried herself. Quietly, she explained to the other elders that the two spirits cared so much that they would have trusted the care of their soul to the other on the wedding which would have taken place the next day.
The realisation came with paling faces to the village leaders.
"...If you understand the severity of what pain you have caused my son, then you will understand why I choose not to revoke the curse he has placed on you" the old man finished, his tone unyielding.
Slowly he, stroked the grieving white fox on the head.
"Come along Sasuke; this is not the place for her, or your grief. Your brothers and sisters will wish to see her put to rest too..." he murmured to the animal.
The whine returned, a sad mournful tone of acceptance, and the spirit moved aside for his master to pick up the still form of the golden vixen. The body was small when cradled in the old man's arms, the nine lifeless tails draping over the arm that carried her.
Sasuke - as the villagers now knew their guardian spirit to be named - sat on his haunches, staring at her mournfully, before darting through the trees to the shrine; his silvery white fur glinted as he took a piece of abura-age from the altar.
As he darted back beneath the trees, a foul, hateful glare to the villagers as he passed them (threatening even with his muzzle filled with the abura-age offering), his white fur was stained black as he entered the shadowed wood.
Slowly, he padded on light paws to his master's side, his own hoshi-no-tama glowing faintly in one curl of his three tails, and soared up through the still night air towards the unmoving female, and placed the small snack near her muzzle, before floating up onto the old man's opposite shoulder, and curling upon it with a small whine.
It was with heavy hearts that the villagers watched the old man, and the heartbroken fox spirit disappear with the carcass of their crime out of the forest and into the paddy fields.
As if to emphasise their folly, the villagers of Konohagakure were surrounded by the low, mournful barks and yelps of every fox in their valley.
This was what had cursed Konohagakure for a thousand years. Though the names of the spirits were long forgotten, the villagers had not forgotten what they had committed upon the spirits that had so well protected them.
As promised, the newly black furred fox spirit wove illusions around the village, trapping every villager in their valley, and all of their ancestors as the years passed. Time passed over the village, and Konohagakure disappeared from maps as travellers passed it by.
They followed the requirements of the curse to the letter, the main families sending their daughters for seven days and nights to the old temple on their sixteenth birthday even as they strove to find the missing piece of hoshi-no-tama.
But they could not find it, and so the girls never returned home alive, nor the curse ever lifted. The village searched and searched, yet more girls died, and the village continued to fade farther into oblivion with every passing year.
Without fail, each year's passage was marked by the mournful cries of the fox spirits in remembrance of their dead sister, and support of their grieving brother.
Sixteen years before the thousandth year of the curse, came the birth of a second baby girl in the Namikaze Family. The relief at her birth, as female children were regarded as highly as males now, was marred.
To the dismay of her parents, she was cursed; upon each of her cheeks were three, pale, thin lines that the kamunushi declared the mark of a fox's curse. For fear of what such knowledge might cause the village, the kamunushi had her parents hide her marks.
Unbeknownst to the villagers, the fox spirit who had cursed them watched over the miyamairi ceremonies of all the girls born in the village, for he knew that the chosen child would have a mark upon her, so that he may know that a suitable body for her soul had been found.
But her parents feared the sign they had been given, and so he did not see the whisker marks on the cheeks of Namikaze Naruko.
Yes, another new story. An Angsty Story. A very very much Angsty story. There will be very much angst in this story. Just making sure that's clear. There will also be character deaths. Not out of character hate though! Even the ones I don't like aren't hate-filled deaths. That's not my writing style.
But yeah, major number character deaths – I mean, Naruko got killed off straight away. Everyone else is completely free game now. Even Sasuke. So yeah, be warned.
Abura-age is deep fried tofu, which Kitsune spirits are supposedly very fond of. Put it on udon, and you get Kitsune Udon! Miyamairi is the Japanese equivalent of a christening ceremony.
There were several words I could have picked for 'Priest' but 'Kamunushi' seemed the best. An yes, I know that in today's Japanese it's spelled wrong, but this isn't a modern setting. That said, if anyone knows one more appropriate, feel free to chime in :)
To be clear, the flower thing was Sasuke flirting with Naruto through Hanakotoba. And Naruto was rejecting him, but not really rejecting him.
The meanings are as follows;
Lavender - faithful (didn't translate this since it's pretty much the same as in English).
Tulip - One-sided love (same as Lavender for translation).
Kuchinashi (Gardenia) - secret love.
Tsubaki (Camellia) - in love (red), longing (yellow), waiting (white).
Wasurenagusa (forget-me-not) - true love.
Benibara (red rose) - love/in love.
Keshiki (yellow poppy) - success.
A full list can be found on Wikipedia - just type Hanakotoba. As always, don't take my word for the meanings. If anyone can correct me, I welcome it. That said, there are a few types of flower language, so if you do want to, be sure it's the Japanese one.
Kind of important since it will run through the story, but I'll translate them as I go. I do recommend going to the Wikipedia article though. And if anyone has a longer list I'll be glad for a link or something :)
As usual, there will be no update schedule other than what the muses give me XD My main focus is on stupid Sensei and Blurred sound, so unless I feel inspired it won't be updated quick. I was in a good mood after meeting The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh yesterday though (not joking – I really did. The duke spoke to me too!), and good moods make me post things. I had this handy lol.
Hope you guys liked the prologue. I'm trying to use more of them in my attempt to master the elusive oneshot. This was supposed to be a oneshot... I have five chapters written already...
Hope you guys liked the chapter :)
Chapter Title; 'Sayuri' is an orange lily, meaning 'Hatred/Revenge'.
Song Quote; 'Keep Your Heart Broken' by The Rasmus.