Note: I'm using the Wilhelm/Baynes annotated translation of the I Ching for the names of the trigrams and hexagrams (which is not really the best version, but it is the one I own, which does much to recommend it), and will be going in order.
Prompt: Sixty-four drabbles on the Hyuga clan, one for each of the sixty-four trigrams in Taoist divination.
Yin and yang in threes make eight trigrams:
Heaven, earth, fire, water, thunder, mountain, lake, and wind.
Eight trigrams in twos make sixty-four hexagrams.
The first hexagram: heaven over heaven, the Creative.
A child is born into a ruined city.
Her name is Hinata, for the sunflower. Her father did not approve of the name: though it is traditional, he feels it is too weak, too flimsy a name for his eldest child and heir. Her mother insisted, uncharacteristically, but did not explain why.
Three months before, a fox with nine tails had appeared in Konoha. It had the force to cause tsunamis and level mountains, but it crushed no mountains and brewed no waves. Instead, it destroyed a village and killed some hundreds of shinobi, devastating the forces of a land only recently at peace.
Yellow flowers are laid on the graves of the dead.
Yellow, like the hair of a young man laid to rest in a tomb. He died protecting a newborn son, and many tears were shed at his burial.
His son is three months old now.
Who will cry for him?
Hinata cries inconsolably from the moment she is born.
There is no apparent reason for it and no reliable way of stopping it. The doctor explains she has colic and shrugs in a way that says, 'It's out of my hands'. Her cries are mercifully quiet, but persistent. After hearing her wail for hours on end, the noise begins to grate on the nerves of everyone in the compound.
Hiashi is displeased, but says nothing: it is not the Hyuga way.
After the birth, the Lady Hyuga falls ill. Not dangerously so, but enough that she is weak and fevered and constantly exhausted, white eyes rimmed in red.
On the doctor's advice, her newborn daughter is taken from her. It's the best decision, he says firmly. Hinata is young and her immune system is weak. The Lady Hyuga needs rest, and should not be woken by her daughter's wails.
The baby girl is moved to a remote corner of the Hyuga clan compound.
There is no one to hear her incessant cries save her attendant.
Her attendant's name is Ko. He is a member of the branch family, a man of twenty who served for eight years as a chunin of some skill. Just a few weeks prior he was being considered for promotion to jounin on recommendation from his team captain. He would have been the first member of his genin team to make jounin.
But Ko is a loyal Hyuga.
He obeys.
Instead of accepting the promotion, he turned in his headband. He may rejoin the force in later years, he thinks, but his duty is to the clan now. His teammates were surprised and dismayed- they didn't understand why he should sacrifice his chance at success to stand by the bedside of a days-old child.
He shrugged off their objections- they weren't of the clan. They couldn't understand.
He tends Hinata with devotion. He knows well how to look after infants- three younger siblings and a father disabled in the war left him with plenty of experience. It's an honor to protect and provide for the future clan head. Lady Hinata is their hope for a better, stronger clan.
She will create their future.