Chapter Forty-Nine: The Devil's Moth
AN: Temizuya is a Shinto water ablution pavilion and Komainu are lion-like pairs of guardian statues that guard the shrine; Izumi is a traditional crib for a child and Torii are gates found at the Shinto shrines.
Yes, I'm also aware that these Devil's Moths exist, and they don't share the colours of the 'fictional' autumn moths; furthermore, the 'devil' is more of a thematic title rather than a theological reference. Keep that in mind.
This chapter is dedicated to my good friend "Chie."
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It was a windy night. Few birds were flying over a big watermill that slowly creaked, unable to move completely. Birds would swoop down, bounce, and glide into the air currents and then land back again on the flume. He could only see a thin trickle come down from its mouth. The water had probably gone dry up in the stream. If it rained again, the mill would move tonight.
The birds, with snowy plumage, flew up to start the game again, trilling and chirping nosily now. These were the grey night-birds. It had been a while since he saw one. He had not been in this part of the Land of Rivers in so long. It was a small village that served as a resting place for travelers—the only one he could find close to the caves in the mountains near the Hidden Valleys' Village.
Wind chimes knocked together noisily at the door of a small shop. So many people were out on the rough streets today: it was a local religious festival. Countless lanterns, big and round, hung from the ropes stretched from one roof to another. They bobbed in the wind. One fell down and nearly landed on a passerby's head. He yelled at the shop owner who quickly muttered an apology, grabbed the lantern, and disappeared into the shop.
Women and children wore colourful kimonos. It was such a chaos of bright lights and colours; they broke the night's deep shadows that just hovered over the whole festival. He breathed in a soft breath and got a whiff of something familiar, and those cold, hesitant lips seemed so nearly to smile outright. Dangos!
Fresh, round, and colourful dangos; and a vendor was selling them just a couple of feet away from the restaurant. Sweets. He had always been fond of them. If it was between something spicy and his favourite sweet, he chose the latter. He did not know why, but the taste of sugar on his tongue made him happy. It was light; it lifted his spirits, and it was just something from his childhood that he still clung to—fleeting pleasures of innocence, possibly the only one he had managed to save over the years as a Shinobi.
He looked at the vendor again, indecisive. His fingers and legs slightly twitched as though he wanted to move forward, a smile threatening his lips; but he stifled it. Serizawa and Karin appeared from behind the large sacred-stone. He looked a little whimsical and out of it. There was a scroll in his left hand. Karin was a little chirpy. The festival and colours excited her. She spun around once and then twice to look everywhere, nearly bumping into a few people. There was a wide smile on her pink-ish face.
Serizawa stopped by the small guardian deity statue, which stood amid shivering shrubs, and held out the scroll. "Itachi-Sama, it's from the Hokage," he said and watched Itachi as he took it from his hand and read the message. A deep breath escaped Itachi's lips, but he said nothing. He burnt the scroll with a small Katon Jutsu and looked back at him.
"Take Karin and survey the area up in the mountains and meet me at the temple on the hill in half an hour," he said, directing his gaze to her face now. A small frown was beginning to form on her features: she opened and closed her mouth several times as if she wanted to protest, but in the end, she chose silence and strode off with Serizawa towards the gates on the east-side.
The dull sound of a bell came throbbing through the trees down the hill. He gazed up, and at that moment, a streak of red flew across his vision, and his hand shot out to grab it out of the air. It was a pinwheel—its straw was slightly crooked. The wheel still spun to the left in the wind. He raised his eyes and gazed upon a wee girl, no older than five, who buried her face into the material of her mother's kimono.
She sat down and urged her to go forward with a little encouraging pat on the back. The small girl's cheeks were red, and her big round eyes filled with tears. She approached him with small fearful steps till she was standing close to him. Her head tipped back to look up at his face—her small, wavy hair left in a wild disarray. Two tiny combs threatened to fall out of her hair.
Her pink mouth trembled, round cheeks turned deep red, and she raised both her hands in the air with such an innocent challenge in her eyes: it was her pinwheel, and she wanted it back! The little one amused him. He turned it one last time between his fingers and lowered his hand. She took it from him with a big and beautiful smile spreading across her face and ran off to her mother. The woman hugged her close and smiled at him, before she took her daughter's hand in hers and walked off to a small shrine on the left.
It was like something suddenly flashed right before his eyes. In that moment, all scents of sweets and noises in the air were forgotten. There was nothing but stillness for him now. The languid sounds of voices and the sluggish movement of the watermill . . . everything vanished in the sharp sounds of wind, shattered like glass—so many pieces that he could not collect them all (even his Sharingan-eye failed him).
The smile was gone, and his eyes stared at the woman and the girl as though he knew them from another life, another time. It just seemed so familiar, so soft and real. She still held the straw in her tiny hand, and the paper windmill spun and spun in the wind, making his thoughts whirl with it. His mouth got so dry, and his tongue was thick and pulpy—a thirsty traveler who had not tasted a drop of water for days. He did not know when he moved towards the stone stairs, and the rain came pouring down after a rumbling call from the sky.
Itachi heard the soft cry of the little girl behind him, but it was forgotten in the midst of his memories' storm. He climbed the stairs with firm steps. They never faltered. He had never known them to falter ever since he left the grasp of childhood behind. He was as sure of foot as the devout monks who had climbed these stairs a thousand times. Few gusts of wind hit him and sent shivers down his spine, but his thoughts were too strong for such distractions.
He passed through the torii that had borne the lashes of Time and Nature and came across a dilapidated temple. The stay that supported the heavy bell had rotted away and fallen down into what were the final remnants of the sanctuary: it was nothing more than a heap of rubble and stones. The bell lay on its side by a small set of stairs. When the wind rushed at it, its clapper collided against the inside to produce faint sounds. They would never be able to repair it.
Itachi looked through the light drizzle and mist at the temizuya. Its roof was still intact—everything below it was broken. His steps were slow, deliberate, almost cautious; and his ears were filled with such soft and pretty sounds from her lips.
"Itachi, you can offer something at the small shrine. It will bring you luck," she said and looked at him, staring into the very depths of his eyes as he looked up to gaze upon her white face, sun shining behind her . . . that he stopped at the small shrine. It was broken. He thoughtlessly reached into his pocket and took out a coin.
The head of the deity had fallen off, its smile broken and crooked. He could not even tell if it really was a child or not. He sat down on one knee and put the coin before it into the small stone basin, his fingers touching the rough and wet stone there.
He could hear her whisper to him in soft, loving tones: "you're a good boy, Itachi—you're such a good boy." Her fingers swept the curve of his cheek. She bent down, and then her delicate red lips were on his right cheek and then the left; and he could feel them leave a soft, pleasurable tingle upon his skin and could smell the fleeting scent of fresh sandalwood in her hair that he blinked once and closed his eyes and gave a slight jerk of his head.
"Okā-San . . . " he whispered, bent his head down, looked at the water pour out of the basin.
Itachi had not thought of her in so long. He had left her behind the heavy veils of distance and Time. When the massacre happened, and her lips were moistened with a bit of water, he did not know what he felt then. Anger, sadness . . . loneliness? Sasuke was too young, only six, and he was but a boy himself: the burden was too great for a child's heart to bear. She was gone just like that, and he did not know what to do, did not know how to comfort a child.
Slowly, he raised himself up to his feet, and his senses focused on that single woman in his scattered memories. The rain was louder up here, pattering on the bell and what was left of the roof. Thunder would shriek and rumble right after a few flashes of lightning. His skin was cold and so was his heart; even after so many years, he was still distant and aloof to her death.
She was young when she died—only thirty-five—but he could remember her so clearly: her heaving breast as she laughed; her vibrating, long, and beautiful white throat; the twinkle in her deep black eyes. She used to press her fingers delicately to her bosom and tip her head back to let out a trill of musical laughter. Then she would press her hand over her mouth to suppress it. It was a habit. He had noted over the years that her lips would turn so red and her cheeks so pink when she got happy, which gave a rosy hue to her skin.
The rain slowed to a light drizzle and moonlight tore through the last flimsy sheet of clouds. Shadows climbed over the naked rocks and the cracked and destroyed komainu; their jaws were missing and one of them had no arm. He could not tell which one was supposed to have its mouth open. Itachi turned his head away and took a few steps to stand under temizuya's roof. His mind was still lost. Why, after all this time, was he remembering her now?
The oldest vivid memory he had of her was when she was carrying Sasuke in her belly. It was only slightly round, and when he asked her that when he could have his little brother, she told him that he would come when summer would be at an end. She roamed around in the garden, picking up a few dry leaves from the ground. The sun was in her hair, and she turned around and smiled at him. It was still spring and flowers bloomed fresh everywhere.
He leant back against the wooden pillar and peered at the apertures in the wall of the shrine. He tried to distract himself, but the smell of her was still in his nose. Fresh. Beautiful. Soft. After all these years, he was forced to ask himself: what did he really feel about her? He still did not know. Underneath the darkness upon his mind, there on the delicate gossamer cobwebs, were but a few recollections he could feel something about—feel something fleeting and sweet move his heart just a bit.
Mikoto was a lovely one. When she had Sasuke, he noticed that her breasts grew rounder, larger. She used to open a few buttons and slip her hand beneath the collar there that it would slip off her shoulder to reveal her breast. Then she would direct Sasuke's eager mouth to her soft, brownish nipple with a warm blush. She was happy that she had had another son. He was happy, too—perhaps even happier than she.
Did he . . . love her? Itachi breathed in a soft hiss of breath. Cool droplets of water glided a path down his neck, and his shirt's collar fluttered. Small disturbances. Tonight, the memory of her was too strong, palpable. It was as though he could sense the tips of her fingers upon his cheek and forehead leave new sensations and feelings for him to mull over. Innocent touches, lovely touches, they were so full of love and warmth.
"I love you, Itachi," she whispered in his ear and kissed that cold cheek with a hungry fondness. "Don't you ever forget it. You're my lovely boy—my precious boy. Kami gifted you to me, and I'll always be grateful." Then she walked off into the garden and stood under the light drizzle. The lovely sounds from her lips, still hanging there from a single web in his memories, trembled and moved like insects that had no escape: the web was their eternal grave. He thought it strange how her voice, and the sweet scent of her, struck his senses simultaneously that he could actually see the memory: he was there, and she was standing in the light of the moon, wet and laughing like a wee girl.
The long skirt she wore stuck to her skin, and her nipples peaked in the cold—the material dark, interspersed with such beautiful edges of gloomy, greyish light; his eyes followed their ghostly shimmer, and he could see her, all of her: the gleam of her young white flesh, and the soft roundness of her breasts and buttocks; and she laughed and laughed with her head tipped back, moving her hands over her bosom and face in futile attempts to rid herself of the raindrops beaded on the rich fringe of her lashes, her white face, and that supple bosom.
She looked over to him, and he could only stare at the light shining in her eyes, and then the veins in her neck and face pumped a pink hue to her skin, and she was blushing again—so girlish and so young. Her wet black hair whipped across her white face, few clung to her ruddy cheeks; she put her hands over her mouth, and the laughter shook that delicate, soft body.
Her hands reached out to him, and her voice echoed like the whispers of the dead around him: "come to me, Itachi. Don't you want to play in the rain? It's the first rain of autumn. It's so lovely. Come—come!" She gestured to him again with the flick of her hand.
Itachi did not move, but he saw a specter, a little boy, move to her in his place. She took his hand in hers and sat down and drew him into her lap; and she pressed the boy's head against her breast and smoothed his hair. The loud thumps of her warm heart resounded in his ears as she wrapped her arms around him to pull him close. The soft side of her red mouth trembled with a smile, and she bent her head down to kiss him on the wet forehead and blushing cheeks. She raised her startled face to Sasuke's cries from a small izumi put under the roof where she could see him. He was crying with hunger . . .
There was a slow expansion of his lungs and a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly exhaled, and he leant his head back against the pillar, thinking: what did he feel about her? And still he had no answer. He had forgotten her and her memories. It was not anything deliberate. He thought it was for the best. Slowly, very slowly, she faded from his memories and was pushed back under the pile of so many. She was just a haze in others . . . a shadow that talked and walked across his memories.
When he looked back now, after experiencing the first ooze from his ripe genitals that told him he had turned into a man, he would say that she was . . . beautiful. She had such delicate, lovely curves and perfect white skin that must have been the envy of many women. Her features were set in a soft, lovely mould. She always looked innocent to him—young, pure, and naïve.
There really was not much to think about her. She was his mother and they called her Mikoto and she was so lovely. She loved him, and she blushed and laughed in the first rain of autumn. There really was not anything else about her that would startle him, make him think of her twice. If it was not for the scent, he would not have remembered her at all.
Itachi looked up and saw an autumn mouth crawling on the cracked wood, fluttering its wings above his head. He raised his hand, and it climbed onto his finger. They called it the devil's moth, too: it poisoned its mate and was attracted to strong chakra. Perhaps it had followed him here from the festival. He did not know. It so loved the purple lilies.
And then his mind went elsewhere. Did he ever love anyone? Mikoto loved him so much, and he did not think he ever felt the same way—ever returned her love. Perhaps he appreciated her love, her kindness. As a child, she would dote on him, stroke his hair, and read him folktales of the Uchiha clan from a distant past. It always used to pique his curiosity, and he would ask that was it possible to make Sharingan Genjutsus more powerful to fell the enemies?
Her eyes would see him with an unspeaking wariness as if she was seeing him for the first time, and the silence between them would hang like a discarded little thing. All she could manage then was a shy little smile and a few words that he was too young and innocent to talk of battlefields and war. He felt that Mikoto always treated him like a silly child that was so fragile that he needed her to protect him. It always used to draw that small ire and indifference from him, but he ignored it for she was his mother, and she loved him; it's natural for mothers to be foolish, he had reasoned then.
Love probably made fools out of people. His heart suddenly trembled at the thought, and a shiver ran through his body. Even the moth felt it, and it began fluttering with a kind of uneasiness. It did not want to go out into the rain. Wind would rip apart its fragile wings and rain would ruin them. It wanted to stay on his hand and feed upon a little of his chakra. How foolish was he?
Her softening lips came to Itachi's mind, and he saw her tempting ghost again in the vast web of his memories, kissing little Sasuke in her arms. The child used to look at him and let out a startled little laugh as though something about him made his little heart so happy. His plump cheeks would grow so red and warm. Then Itachi would move his finger playfully above his face, and he would reach out eagerly to grab it and emit a lovely, innocent laugh as though he had conquered something so big.
He never had had any urge to pick up children, but he found himself drawing Sasuke to himself and steadying him in his arms to look back at the eyes that had seen nothing but a few rooms, streets, and faces. They were pure and innocent. There was a new life in that small body and the smell of it was so like his own!
Sasuke was a little part, a small piece of himself and his heart. He did not know why he thought that way as a child, but he did. He used to rock him to sleep in the garden and sit among the lilies. The sun was a little warm in the first weeks of autumn and Sasuke liked it. He always drifted to sleep in his small arms; and when he would slide his eyes down the clean—and such soft—lines of his round cheeks, he would see nothing but pure innocence, love, wonder there.
It had struck his heart then, the slow fluttering of the babe's lashes and the growing smile upon the softest pink mouth he had ever seen, as Sasuke would look upon him . . . and all was forgotten. Everything was wondrous and pure and love. Itachi had asked himself many times over the years: why did he love him so much? And just like his mind failed him to weave a reason for her, he had none for him, too. He just did. It was easy. It was simple.
Somewhere in the past, when he was but a boy and he had seen Mikoto's belly grow with Sasuke, he had felt something inside his heart: a raw anticipation, thrill, love. Sometimes, he used to sit beside her and stare at her growing belly, and she would touch it tenderly and tell him that he would be his brother and that he would have to protect him. That Sasuke was a part of him the way he was of her, and that they were brothers, and they would always find strength and love in this eternal bond of flesh and blood.
Itachi had believed her then. He still did—he always did. For all her girlish charms and naivety, her words were true. He grew to love the small and pure child over the years. Little by little, as he inevitably lost his own innocence before the vulgarities of life, Sasuke became his innocence. He was that pure, ethereal part of himself that he so cherished. Sasuke's smile so lightened his burdens when hers never did. And he . . . just did not understand. Sasuke was to him, what he was to Mikoto: something pure and innocent that needed to be loved from the deepest depths of their human hearts; the hearts that were affected by human faults, errors, and lusts.
And oh, she had loved him the way he had always loved Sasuke. Itachi could still remember her bloody hands trembling upon his cheeks, her eyes filling with such pain. Those pretty lips smeared with so much blood as she reached up to plant a kiss on the side of his mouth. She could not do it. Death had her fragile body in its grasp. It was dragging that struggling spirit out of her skin, and her very bones shook with the paroxysm of the final bits and pieces of life that pitifully struggled to hold on—to tell him that she loved him with all her heart. That he was her precious boy. And she fell back lifelessly into his arms, her eyes staring into his as though they were a blank-canvas that needed the colour of life to fill their depths.
Mikoto was dead. His mother was gone, and he felt warm tears trace the soft lines of his expressionless face. He had set her down gently and sat there, smoothing her hair and wiping away the blood from her face as if it marred her innocence. When the first rain of autumn fell down, he looked down at her again to see that she was just staring up, and he felt that she was about to smile, laugh a little for the rain made her happy. It made her blush; but that skin was growing white, and she began to look more and more like a still, lifeless wooden-doll, and he just wanted to look away.
Someone threw a white cloth over her body, and instantly, red soaked through, making it appear spotty and unclean. He did not lift it then, and he did not raise it at the funeral. He wanted to remember her with the tremble of a soft smile on her beautiful face, and the tinkle of her laugh, ringing like the soft sounds of the chimes at the door in the garden. That was how he chose to remember her and her loveliness and her soft naivety; so when she was buried, he forgot it all, too—forgot the red, that haunting and ugly stillness in her face, and the hardening body in the rain.
Itachi turned his head to the sounds of steps, and the moth flew away from the tip of his fingers. The wind was soft and the rain had stopped. His mind was whole again. Serizawa appeared with Karin in his wake. Itachi walked to the edge of the cliff and peered down over the edge at the darkness below. He peered for a long time, looking at the valley below that was so full of shadows.
His mind was cleared of all confusion, and he was cold again. Then he jumped down into the dark, and she was left behind amongst the broken stones of the shrine like a forgotten memory—never to be remembered so fondly again . . .
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