Hello! This is the first in a series of oneshots I am writing about the Founders of Konoha, centering mainly on Hashirama, Madara, Mito, Izuna and Tobirama. There's a note on my profile page explaining more about this series; please go read it, if you intend on following these fics.
I own nothing.
A girl child was born to the Uzumaki in the two-thousandth, four hundred and seventeenth year after the time of upheaval known as the Great Burning. The Uzumaki are a clan renowned to live often more than two hundred years, with those of full blood spending thirty years in childhood (aging as one not of the blood would until about the age of five, then slowing down), sixty in early adulthood, seventy in midlife, and eighty in old age, numbers that vary depending on the person but have been slowly increasing over the centuries. However, as their life-spans increase, their birth rates have been going down, with parents often having no more than one or two children, and the birth of this child was deemed remarkable as all full-blooded Uzumaki births are.
Mito, she was called.
Five years on, one fine day in spring, Mito and her mother go down to the seaside on the border of their shining city.
"Don't wander too far out!" Nanami calls to her daughter from the shade of a gazebo. "And I'll be right here if you need anything."
Mito nods, but barely hears her as her small feet hit the water. The ocean water is shockingly cold, and Mito gasps, but at the same time, she walked across hot flagstones and sun-baked sand to get here, and after that, the frothy waves lapping at her bare shins feel so good. A bit of seaweed tangles around her ankle and Mito giggles.
Many parents and caretakers had the same idea as Uzumaki Nanami today, and the shallow waters just off the beach are all but clogged with beachgoers. The beach, in this way, is the great equalizer; whether they're from the Uzumaki, the ruling clan of this nation, whether they're rich or poor, whether they're shinobi or civilians, the beach and the ocean beyond is denied to no one. Here, there are children and adults from all walks of life.
Ever a solitary soul, Mito finds a place where there aren't that many other people, and wades out through the water. She's not allowed to swim by herself yet—Father says that her arms and legs are too small, and he doesn't know what he'd do if she swam out like a little red-and-white fish and never came back—so she doesn't; Mito would like to swim, but can't help but wonder what would happen if she disobeyed her parents. Would they ground her? Would they take her away from the ocean and never let her come back? Such a thing is too horrifying to contemplate.
She looks back at her shining city. It's still rather early in the morning, and Uzushiogakure hasn't fully woken up yet. Over the ubiquitous salt-smell, the aroma of brewing tea and baking bread wafts to Mito's nose on a gentle breeze. The smooth, gleaming white and gold buildings rise high out of sight. There is a faint haze over the buildings and the sky, over the sun, muddling the outlines of everything.
Father was still asleep when Mito and Nanami left, the former in her bathing suit and the latter without an ounce of makeup on her face. Nanami pressed a finger to her lips, gray eyes sparkling. Is he awake now? Has he found their note?
Oh well. Mito splashes her hands at the water and welcomes the rare freedom of being able to wear a bathing suit as opposed to a long kimono. She'll have to go home, shower all the sand off her skin and the salt out of her hair, and put on her white-and-gold kimono soon enough. But for now, her arms and legs are bared to the sun and the surf, and it's time to go exploring.
Little fish and crabs dart away from her feet as she wanders about the shallows. If she could, Mito would learn all their names—as it happens, she has picture books with the names of fish and crabs and other sea creatures, but doesn't recognize any of these, doesn't recognize the sleek silver fish or the small white crabs. Maybe she'll get her mother to—
Huh… What's this?
Mito's foot brushes against something sharp and hard, and she looks down, lips puckering in a frown. It doesn't feel like a rock; it's thin and smooth on one side, and jagged only on the edge. Is it a shell? She kneels down in the sand, the waves wetting her long, scarlet hair, and, with all of her strength (the thing she brushed up against is half-buried in the soft white sand), pulls it up out of the water.
The thing is thin, smooth, curved and a rich, dark brown. There are symbols done in gold ink on the convex side, and Mito realizes that she's holding a piece of broken pottery.
How'd this get here?
"What's that you have there, little one?"
Mito looks to her right, startled. A man is standing over her, smiling down at the child. He has sun-browned skin and the hair and eyes to match. He's obviously not a member of the Uzumaki clan (red hair is a trait that tends to breed true, and this man is not red-haired), and he might be a young man—the way Mito's full-blooded kinsmen age is different enough from those not of the blood that she has a hard time understanding what constitutes "young" and "old" among those not belonging to the Uzumaki clan.
She holds out the piece of pottery to the man, who takes it in his browned hands. "Where'd it come from?" Mito asks curiously.
The man looks it over, brow furrowed as he shakes his head slightly. "I'm not sure, to be honest. It's definitely a piece of a pot or a vase, but I couldn't tell you how it got here."
"And what are the symbols?"
"Now that I do know. These are symbols of the Uzumaki clan—drawn by kin of yours, I'd wager," the man remarks, nodding at the gold crest sewn on the front of Mito's bathing suit. He hands the piece of pottery back to her, and moves on.
Eyes shining with curiosity, Mito sloshes back towards the dry sand to take the sherd to her mother. Her tongue burns with questions.
-0-0-0-
Five years on from that, Mito no longer sloshes about in the ocean in a bathing suit. Though she is of the opinion that she doesn't look all that different at ten than she did at five, Uzu no Kuni considers it indecent for girls of ten years or older to go about showing so much skin, and it's also improper, society believes, for growing 'ladies' to go about in the ocean in their dresses or kimonos. Mito doesn't think much of this particular convention, but her mother and all the women of her clan tell her that it's just a part of growing up, and that she'll have other freedoms when she's older.
(Personally, Mito doesn't think that "other freedoms will be worth much without the freedom of being able to go diving in the brine water, but she supposes that she'll just have to wait and see.)
It's autumn, and there are red, gold and brown leaves on the flagstone streets and clogging in the gutters—Miki, one of the servants in Mito's house, complains about constantly having to sweep leaves out of the house after they sneak in beneath the front doors. Mito doesn't much care for autumn, to be honest—she's never really liked the cold and misses the flowers and the green leaves of summer. She spends much of autumn and winter inside, waiting for spring.
Today, Mito sits in a low chair at the glass table in her parents' sun room. Weak autumn sunlight pours in through the tall windows, and she wears a shawl threaded blue, white and silver to ward off the chill seeping in through the cracks between the panes and the sills. There is a book open at the left end of the glass table, and she pores over it, a brush soaked with sealing ink gripped in her right hand.
A three-pronged seal, originating in the early tenth century, is considered the proper seal for beginners in the Uzumaki seals to start with. Mito has been practicing with this seal for two weeks now, copying designs out of the book onto parchment and scroll paper, struggling to get the proportions right, struggling to get the designs right, and beyond that, of drawing just the right consistency of both of the layers of ink needed; the bottom-layer sealing ink and top-layer "sealant", meant to keep the ink from flaking and fading for as long as possible.
I'm almost done now. Just a few more marks surrounding the left-hand prong. And… And I'm done.
"Father?" Mito calls into the next room, her voice piping. "I'm done!"
Mito's father, Uzumaki Hideo, is a shinobi of Uzushiogakure, or rather, a retired shinobi of Uzushiogakure—he was dealt a leg injury some time before Mito was born that, even with the regenerative capacities of the Uzumaki, rendered him incapable of any longer serving his nation as a soldier. Now, Hideo serves his city as a historian, and has a fair amount of leisure time on his hands. Enough to teach his daughter seals.
From the next room over, Mito hears a groan and the rustle of a book being put down and linen trousers shifting as he stands and starts towards the sun room. The cadence of his uneven steps is punctuated by the dull thud of a cane against the cool tile floor. After a time, Hideo emerges through the threshold, and Mito tries not to wince or say anything at the sight of the sheen of sweat on his forehead—it would only wound his pride, or so Nanami says. But still, he's not an old man, only eighty, and he shouldn't have to walk like one.
With another groan, this one perhaps a bit theatrical, Hideo sits in the chair next to Mito, and picks up the paper with a flourish so he can examine it a bit more closely. Mito stares expectantly at her father's face as he squints, wondering what he will make of this.
Hideo has only disappointment to give his daughter, as it happens.
"No, Mito, I'm afraid this just won't do." There's a sympathetic smile on his face as he sets the paper back down on the table. "Try again with a fresh sheet of paper." He gathers up his cane, and makes the slow progress back to his chair in the next room over, where his book awaits.
Mito sighs, and starts over with a new sheet of paper. Let's start from scratch.
She's already devoted enough of her time to this seal. She has no intention of going so long without having anything to show for it.
-0-0-0-
"That was ridiculously smooth, Mito."
In the advice Uzumaki Mito's parents give to their daughter, there is a recurring theme: try not to grow too attached to those not of the blood, for you will watch them die long before you grow old yourself. In the years to come, Mito will finally know of the weight behind those words, but for now she is fifteen (looking more like nine or ten) and understands little of mortality and death. She readily makes friends outside of her own clan, and today, as the sun is sinking, red and vibrant over the waves, she walks home with two of them.
Mito turns her turquoise blue eyes to Chitose and Tokemi's warm brown ones. The former is smiling and the latter nods back to the place where they just came from. Mito blushes slightly—she can't help it—and runs her fingernail along the inside hemline of her sleeve, knowing better than to do something as unladylike as shrug. "It wasn't that difficult. It's really quite easy to make people see sense if they're allowed to lay out both sides of the story.
"Sure."
"Oh yes, certainly, Mito."
The incident in question was nothing major, and certainly not, to Mito's mind, anyways, anything worth praising her over. Two children, brother and sister, had gotten into a fight over whose turn it was to play with a prized toy. She'd simply assisted them to reach a compromise, nothing more, nothing less. And if Mito's not mistaken, she's pretty sure she heard them start to argue again as she and her friends walked off.
Mito casts a sideways glance at her friends and smiles, though that smile is also tinged with a bit of frustration. Chitose is thirteen, and Tokemi twelve. They're both younger than her, and yet somehow, they're both taller than her at the same time. This seems an incredible injustice somehow, but Mito's not entirely sure what the injustice is supposed to be. She just knows that she's supposed to be taller than girls who are younger than her.
"Hey, did you hear?"
Chitose's voice, driving bright and glittering, draws Mito away from her thoughts. She looks over to see the younger girl's eyes dancing with excitement. "Masayoshi-sensei agreed to train me to become a kunoichi! Can you believe that?"
Tokemi and Mito voice their congratulations, not without heart. There are quite a few masters in Uzushiogakure who will train young girls to become kunoichi, but Chitose had her heart set on learning from Masayoshi, who was notorious for his belief that women shouldn't fight. However, a year and a half of steady wheedling, nagging, and subjecting herself to outrageous tests of fortitude had convinced him to take a stab at training a kunoichi.
"And what about you, Mito?" Tokemi smiles gently at her. "Do you want to become a kunoichi as well?" Mito bites her lip, and looks away.
She knows why Chitose wants to become a kunoichi. Mito has more freedoms than either of these two girls, but that's only because she belongs to the very highest echelons of Uzu society—she might be young, but she'd have to be blind not to notice the differences between the way she and her friends are treated on a day-to-day basis. In becoming a kunoichi, Chitose can grasp some measure of freedom in her hands, or at least the respect given to a soldier, regardless of sex.
And Mito?
She's never really cared about genjutsu, or about ninjutsu, and certainly not taijutsu—she pulls muscles easily and doesn't deal well with pain. Mito's never really wanted to kill or go live in the forest for days at a time or go more than a whole day without baths.
Her eyes flick to the ocean.
"Hmm… I don't know about being a kunoichi." Mito's eyes narrow. "But I would like to see what's past that horizon. I think I'd like that very much."