CHAPTER EIGHT

A Spirit and a Human and Someone Other

It takes some time, but Sakura tries her best to explain things from her world, she's never had to do that before. The only beings she has contact with are like her and they do not need speech to communication, so it is a difficult task for her to verbally communicate in their tongue in a way that they might understand.

"Spirit dweller is another term for a being like me. I am this cherry blossom tree." She gestures to her tree form, "My kind is tied to a living thing in nature. As we grow, we become more self-aware and start to take on this form."

"Wow! So, you're like a tree and a human at the same time?! Do you haunt your tree? Are you a ghost?!" Obito is gushing and Sakura pats his head.

He is a good boy she thinks.

Minato thinks this is going to be a long day.

(/)

From then on Sakura spends every moment that Team 7 is in the forest with them; and they seem to train all the time in the clearing in her forest to be near her. She likes to sit on the side and grow flowers, she'll make flower crowns that Rin had shown her one day and give them to her humans. Kakashi never wore his but he always took it when she offered his silver and pink crown.

It makes her happy happy happy and bloom bright pink blossoms that flutter in her branches.

(/)

On a day that is slightly overcast, days that Sakura clenches close to her chest because it can mean rain and maybe that'll mean she'll get a storm to watch and think of Kakashi while Team 7 is in their village tucked away in little dead tree and stone dens (they might be houses she thinks, that's what Rin was telling her when Minato supervised Kakashi's and Obito's spar) Team 7 decides to sit under her branches where she can send an echo of warmth in the area around her trunk to chase away the chill. Sakura asks questions to her humans she's never been around humans this close to talk to let alone feel comfortable around.

(you live in what is called a village? what is a thing called a bed? you carve faces into rocks, why? do ghosts live under the things that you sleep on and chase away the things called bad dreams?)

"Did I say something wrong? Or do you not know?" Sakura questions.

They all laugh at her and she spends the rest of the day and night still not knowing the answer to her question.

(/)

Minato mentions having dinner with a woman named Kushina the night before and the name stirs something in the deep reaches of her root-based memories.

"Kushina Uzumaki", Rin tells her when she sees Sakura puzzle, "is Minato-sensei's crush." He turns bright red like sunsets in the summer seasons and he shakes his head in a negative gesture.

"What is a crush?" Sakura thinks that it cannot be humans crushing other humans, but one never knows with their kind so it's safer to just ask now instead of misunderstanding.

"It's umm someone who you like, uh people sometimes call it a crush." Rin's cheek turns a bit into her cherry blossom's color which Sakura has learned can sometimes mean different things like embarrassment (which took a long time for her humans to explain to her because it was something so completely foreign that she had absolutely no idea what it could be). So, she doesn't say anything about that.

"I like Rin does that mean I have a crush on you? And I like Obito and Kakashi and Minato." As she says this all her humans turn shades of reds and pinks; oh, she must have said something wrong again.

"Uh no umm a crush is like someone who you like like." Obito says then pulls a thinking face on with scrunched up eyebrows, "Its someone you love or could fall in love with. And not in a family way but as in I want to stay with this person forever and hold their hand and make them smile and listen to the things that upset them and and." Obito continues no longer red but trying to answer in a way that Sakura will understand.

"a crush is someone that you think about a lot when your alone and sometimes you can't stop thinking about them even if you wanted to."

Oh, oh she thinks as she watches him glance at Rin and then she just knows, knows in a way that is wholly unhuman, that Obito loves Rin in the way that Sakura loves Kakashi. In an all-consuming, overwhelming way that they would sacrifice their own life to safeguard a happy future for them, even if it meant seeing them with another.

My heart, she thinks, my heart hurts for him.

She steps up and gently pets Obito's curls smoothing away the ends that stick up. "You are a very kind human Obito, I thank you for explaining it to me I think I understand now." She smiles in a way that she hasn't before not all mimicked but in a reflection to her gratefulness.

"So, then this Kushina is someone that Minato cares for a great deal?" She asks the younger humans as Minato stutters.

"Yea he loves her, and she loves him but their too dumb to say anything about it." Kakashi rumbles evenly.

Minato again tries to protest but he's not really been in the conversation since the beginning anyway so they all go on ignoring him.

"I should like to meet her, she must be something if Minato has a crush on her. He's a very kind human and I would like it if she is too." Then she looks at the man in question, "can you bring her?"

He sighs deeply and mumbles out something along the lines of, 'doesn't seem like I have much of a choice so yea I guess."

(/)

Minato sends the other three off to go find Kushina, probably getting ramen he says shyly, then turns to Sakura who is sitting on a low branch on her tree body and swings her legs in a way she has seen Obito and Rin do on occasion.

"You humans terribly confuse me, you think one thing but say another does it not get unbearable to not connect?"

He looks at her for a long moment in silence, which Sakura will never mind she understands wrapping oneself in the roots of one's mind to think and wonder and pounder, to be able to grasp and understand, she does it often.

(Silence is not something she finds scary which seems to be the opposite for the humans she has encountered.)

"Yes," he says slowly "I think you're right Sakura, it does become unbearable yet somehow we still live like that."