Antiquated Folly:
Prologue

Fate's Affair

.

.

For the moments that we'll come to remember with excruciating detail:
Flower petals floating in the chilling wind. Cloudless skies. Our tears and hopeful glances.
I will probably remember most that the three of us gathered here at the same time.

We chose to fight the fate the world had handed to us.

There were three young individuals—splashes of gold and onyx and roseate persisted—gathered collectively amidst a large group of other similarly-aged shinobi. They littered a long, familiar hallway, watching in wary awe as the double doors at its end groaned and croaked open. The two males of the trio wore nervous contemplation towards that entryway, for it was the last transition into a confined forest world, riddled with hidden dangers and unspoken trials. Every instinct would be challenged. Every alliance.

The two were suddenly pulled forward.

I used to think that friends stayed friends forever

"Naruto, Sasuke-kun, let's all pass together, ok?" The female in between them had grabbed a hand of theirs with each of their own. She was rallying back to them with a cheerful smile.

Hesitant stumbles turned into coinciding steps, and they took their first decisive strides past the threshold.

... ... ...

I thought… we could always look towards the same destination uninhibitedly

Three separate pairs of sandals hit tall lengths of grass in running bounds. Two boys and a girl were making their way towards a large hill in the distance. The males each thwarted the other's progress when they reached the base of the ascent— tripping and grabbing and incidentally rolling down that hill many times over. The girl with long locks of rosy hair finally reached the top, and she turned around to gauge their intermittent progress— laughing, waiting.

... ... ...

And that we could always smile, together

"Sakura, who did that to you?"

Her eyes widened as far as they could through the swelling and discoloration. She reached a hand to her busted and bleeding lip, too caught off guard to feel the rest of her battered face or the roughened ground beneath her scraped knees. Her focus was on the eerily calm gaze of his that stared down the enemies in front of them, and to the erect, pulsing waves of dark-colored chakra surrounding him. He was almost unrecognizable to the foreign odious markings that covered his person.

"Sakura, say it! Tell me who the hell hurt you."

... ... ...

Regardless of any pain or suffering, no matter how deep the scarring

"STOP!"

It was a desperate scream, longly drawn out and ascending to her daring leap towards him. Center focus was the view of his dark spiky mane of hair and the Uchiha clan emblem distorted amidst tattered clothing. These, along with the skin of his ears and backside neck left untarnished by curse seal markings, surmised the only image of him left recognizable to her. Reachable.

The past could still be mended. Weary hearts would heal

She grasped around his arms to lock her hands over his chest, completely stalling his forward progression. Her head burrowed between his shoulder blades as tears endlessly streamed.

"Please, "her whisper was a tremble, "stop."

... ... ...

Her head abruptly lifted. Her breath hitched. Leaves all around picked up in a sudden flurry. Then they fell to a subtle scutter. Moonlight watched as astray strands of shoulder-length roseate hair started to settle about her.
Her widened gaze remained fixated forward as he reappeared behind her—derisively close—just in the pinnacle of that dispersing gale, as if the very score of that cold disruption was solely caused by him. Time was stopped following the moments of his decisive lean forward, towards her.

I was a child, when I thought that

As they both stood, ear to ear, looking towards that same unnameable place in the distance, she was painfully aware of his wholesome warmth; like a blanket of fragmentary delusion it diffused along her chilled skin in constant cirruses while she deciphered the frigid truth so blatantly entreating. She would almost deny the disparaging thing she could so clearly see, set before them on a limerick so mercilessly absconded from the ballads of their past.
It was the diverging paths of their future. The promise never made.

"Sakura … thank you."

I was wrong

.

.

.

Two bodies forcefully crashed into the center depths of an immense waterfall. The velocity of their impact obliterated the mountain edge that was the waterfall's crest; resultant boulders fractured and catapulted, and heavy tons of pressurized water shrouded in every available direction. The currents thrust vertically eventually slowed as they reached peak altitude; a pause signaled what would be the onslaught of their massive downpour. The area all around seemed to darken with that volume of water: it cascaded in different shifts, as if the sky itself had opened to relinquish its own supply of precipitation in tandem; the enormity of what hammered down was endless.

Within the newly burrowed space of the mountain cliff's edge, those two met unstable ground. Corroded earthen walls impacted and shifted, and the rocky foundation soon collapsed to take them deeper beneath and behind what was left of the original cavern; boulders concaved further, and any previously visible sky completely obstructed.
Within seconds, the commotion of their new location started to settle. It was somewhat quieter in this plateauing palisade: the pounding of the rain and the hissing of the half-strength waterfall was a drowned hum against the arranged stone enclosure that trapped them; pebbles of rock broke free from larger craters to add their own intermittent ricochets; dripping water escaped numerous cracks and crevices; streams spurted strongly while others seeped. Scanty tendrils of light occasionally reached through shifting crevices, past the temporarily diminished water veil, to refract off any available watery substance and offer subtle introductions of dampened color.

Uchiha Sasuke was on his back, slightly raised against a fractured wall. His eyes were strained, tired—their natural obsidian color—as he looked up into Haruno Sakura's emerald stare. Her face was mere inches from his, and bore the same kinds of scrapes and smudges reminiscent of extended exposure to battle. She seemed to be positioned above him in some manner: What was viewable of her upper body in the near-darkness was hunched over towards him, and an arm of hers was braced against the stone wall above him. Heaps of overly-long roseate hair draped her shoulders to coil onto the denim-blue tunic at his chest; that abundance of saturated hair did well to successfully obstruct the majority of tears and blatant holes sullying the material of her own scarlet slipover.
Silence ensued for the enduring moments that they stared, analyzing one another. However physically close they were, and however more dangerous their surrounding enclosure inclined, neither seemed to care. There was lethargy there. An accusable morbidity. Focus was only on each other.

Sakura made the first movement. A weak push with the forearm of hers against that unstable wall allowed for her to leave just a hand there. The wall groaned and trembled as she pushed further, as if to fathom a phantom creation of distance between them.
She found herself mulling over an anomaly that only seemed to mature with the expanding duration of their locked attention; lamentable and unwanted, she tried to dissuade this lingering occurrence as an attribute of temporary delirium for the both of them, an anomaly in the face of escalating crisis. But what a tragically familiar, undeniable sentiment it was—this pitiful caricature from her past—rearing to the surface, having creeped from some unknown depths within herself to prickle at wounds hardly scarred over and silently existing till that point. Such a desperate thing it was, chaperoned by a decade-old memory.

-
"I love you so much that it hurts!"
-

She had said that, back then. When she was so much younger. So much more hopelessly desperate.
She would not say it again.

Her lips parted. A shaky breath released.

"Why?" she asked.
A question for everything. A plea for all that was unacceptable.

As if on queue, the already fragmented crater beneath Sakura and Sasuke impacted further. The plateau had failed: Surrounding boulders and rocks started to shift with greater energy, and subsequent effects of larger, croaking movement increasingly morphed their environment.

"Why did you come through this way?"

-
"Don't go! If you do, I'll scream."
-

"Why are we here … like this … again?"

Sakura referred to the trajectory that placed Sasuke in near-intersection to Konoha Village — their home. He hadn't intended a reunion. The reason he was back in the Land of Fire had nothing to do with reclamation of the once-coveted Team Seven from their childhood. No enduring change had taken place in either of them that he would intentionally renounce his aspirations or that she would blindly seek him out. She was of the select few that knew he no longer cooperated with Orochimaru, and that he had been—for the latter portion of the ten long years it had been since he abandoned their village—in intermittent skirmishes across every nation with members of Akatsuki, the most notoriously daunting and far-reaching criminal organization in the shinobi jurisdiction. It was unclear if the reason for these clashings had anything to do with the sporadic sightings of his older brother Uchiha Itachi; almost everything surrounding that pursuit remained a mystery.

The most pressing point to her, though, was that, in his long-standing hostility and renegade estrangement towards Konoha, Sasuke somehow failed to maintain his usual, careful bouts of extended evanescence. Where there were plenty of routes of seclusion through this land that would have accomplished similar expenditures of time towards his geographical objective, he didn't take them. And because of that very act of disregard, they all somehow managed to meet again—her, him, and Naruto. They were forced to be at odds, made to rehash futile truths and act on misunderstandings about the past, present, and future. Her and him specifically, in this moment, had to re-enact an encounter in terrible likeness to an unforgettable instance that existed between them:
One night, along a certain cobblestone walkway. One path he didn't have to take.

"Sakura"—his gaze slightly shifted to take in more of her face—"I don't need you to understand me." Even in monotone recital, his words held a softness almost non-attributable to his apparent exhaustion.

He didn't look away from her, even as diverted water started to spur and seep through the barricade above them with accelerating, riveting force.

Sakura dragged a slow intake of breath. Her exhale was soundless. And her hand on that unstable wall loosely clenched into an absentminded fist. "How I feel … knowing you've still gone through this world alone, without any semblance of happiness … that's what I'm trying to understand. Why … still, I'm unable to bear the thought."

Sasuke seemed to weigh her words carefully. When he replied, it was with a statement that would forever etch its mark in her memory:

"When ... did I ever mention … caring about happiness?"
Rhetorical in nature. It was an ode to an existence functional without emotional reprieve—damning, without a forlorn sense of longing or regret. What a vivid reminder they had to the anger and agony that coursed through his veins, never to be stripped or nulled; to the bearing of scars that were to be forever marred within his soul, so unrelenting and so maddening. Sakura had no way to fully understand the eternal retribution sought through a lifetime promise of vengeance: Uchiha Sasuke's Ninja Way.

The majority of the bouldered wall behind Sakura ripped away into a thundering chasm of charged water. Unfiltered light started to peek through in constant channels, and a widened beam corralled to provoke brighter shades of color.
A trickle of blood suddenly presented at the corner of Sakura's lips. It escaped quickly, rounding to her chin in an instant. And the red ichor's falling path was a slow one: its globby misshaping form as it fell led sight to the background setting in detail: to the outskirts of the puddled rocky floor the two injured shinobi rested upon; to their battered forms made more definite by tattered clothing and abraded skin; and to the slender female hand that the drop fell onto in a stain.
Another score of light swept through in a rekindled splash of full spectrum color. Sakura's hand, having just been marked with that splash of red, still weakly rested on the masculine hand underneath—already completely covered. Sasuke's. His was the hand that was a drenched anchor, clasped around the hilt of a familiar sword to steady a blade fully immobilized by its embedment into Sakura's torso. Viewable steel lengths spiraled with blood and coruscated with the water droplets adhering to it in swathes. It was the confounding factor to their encounter— that sword—having dictated their exact fallen positions—with Sakura on top of Sasuke in a near straddle—and having imposed the serious honesty of their words to one another. The brevity.

Sasuke continued to support that sword, and therefore Sakura's entire weight, quietly, with unwavering stability. "I've always considered it unattainable—yours and Naruto's world," he admitted. "That future you two would so fondly speak of … no place exists for me. "

"That place did exist!" A harsh whisper of a yell pervaded with a declaration of despair; it reverberated off the walls of their makeshift cavern before disappearing against rapid watery torrents.

Sasuke's eyes wavered. Only once.

Visible portions of the rocky platform underneath them started to break apart and crumble into cascading waters; and, as if a fuel source, the refurbished veil behind them started to roar terribly louder. Hissing and spurting sounded with each pressurized gain.

"It was right in front of you," Sakura continued. "You were in that world with us. It was ours."

They emerged from the dense forest—Naruto first, then Sakura and Sasuke—greeted by strong beams of sunlight on a widened dirt road. They had stopped to catch their breath. Hands on his knees, Naruto suddenly glanced at the other two, with a sort of mischevity. He said something indecipherable, while straightening to hook his arms atop their shoulders and pull them in. As he faced them all towards the road they would soon travel, his eyes closed, and his mouth opened with a wide smile.
 Sakura laughed as she brought up a hand to hang onto Naruto's arm.
She looked to Sasuke: he seemed disgruntled under Naruto's tight hold, but with a squinted eye he was also looking towards that same entreating sunlight, along the stretch of road that would invariably lead them back to Konoha.
Sasuke's transition to a prominent grin was unmistakable.

"But you talked yourself into believing you couldn't have it ...The solitude you mentioned, the very first time we talked … you held onto that instead."

Another resounding wail came from the wall behind Sasuke. The entryway to the waterfall behind Sakura now bellowed at peak capacity. Intermittent flares of spraying mist started to entirely douse them.

"I ...tried to experience the same feelings as you two in those moments," Sasuke finally said.
"I know," Sakura whispered. She didn't realize the way her body suddenly sunk in towards him, or the way her voice seemed to wane.
"I didn't intend to live this life chasing illusions or settling down in makeshift fallacies. It was never truly an option." There was almost a growing urgency to his tone.
"I know," Sakura restated, more clearly this time. She raised her head to give him a glance and a half-hearted smile. "I understand. It's okay." Her face was much paler. An accumulation of watery salt was still hanging in the corner of her eyes, and she quickly shifted her stare away in tired embarrassment.
"Sakura I—"
"—I think ... I was so focused on a childish dream, back then."She had intentionally interrupted. She didn't need for him to try and console her. Not like this. Not now. "It's my fault. For not seeing that shadow you've carried all these years... I just...I sometimes imagine what could have happened, if I were to have paid attention, like Naruto did.. Or if it was him who found you that night."
"It wouldn't have mattered, Sakura."

She re-met Sasuke's gaze. Her response stalled while she analyzed the ameliorative nature of his interjection. It was in a curt sincerity that he meant to dissuade her unnecessary reflections of regret and wondering. But she couldn't possibly draw reprieve from it, because it was undeniably steeped in a bitter truth that would condemn the very man in front of her—the boy she remembered so vividly—right from the start. No recourse would be left.
"Because you had already reached that point," she concluded. "I guess … I was really off the mark, neh?" Self-chastising and lighthearted, her rhetoric—coincided with the smile of the purest, most genuine regard: large, ear to ear and teeth-revealing.
When her eyes opened, they glimmered—vividly, to the fullest liberty. Her face held an understanding so somber and so fully reflective, it rendered in heartbreaking waves as tears finally took their audienced fall.

Something in Sasuke's eyes flickered, then. More than once.

A new instance mirrored the beginning of their time together in that makeshift cave. They wordlessly stared at each other again; twice over without discomfort nor relief, and with an uninhibited translation of transparency. As if they were re-accepting all the events of their lives. Acclimating to that predesigned 'point' of no return.

Sakura's smile soon faded. Her lips pursed before valiantly reassessing a small curvature, and then they parted again, suddenly, as if hesitation corrected over and over again the words she might have really wanted to say. "I don't see you, Sasuke… I... can't find that future in your eyes that I used to see so long ago." Her lower lip quivered, but her eyes still glimmered with humble sincerity. Regret. "I've lost sight of who you are."

For the first time, Sasuke's eyes fell downcast. They then slowly closed. He gave her a solemn return smile—a slight upcurve in the form of a smirk—to show her that he knew, and that he accepted it: the agony of hers that had so fully conceded to guilt and surrender. He understood and forgave it: that seething sentiment of futility and regret from her that he was already entirely familiar with. Because he was already in possession of a premeditated verdict. And he had left it ironclad. He would concede to the bleak reality of the shinobi world they lived in— to the absurdity bound by singularities of fear and recursive to the machinations of delusion that would make abundant eventualities of pain and violence, and that would color even the most sincerest of affections.
He would concede to fate's affair.

With the unconscious tightening of his jaw, Sasuke's smirk disappeared completely. It was audible as he re-secured his hand around the hilt of the sword within their grasp.

"You never knew me to begin with, Sakura." The sword started to move carefully, deliberately.

When the blade was fully pulled from Sakura, it traveled with Sasuke's hand as his arm fell to his side, outstretched, with a thud; puddles of water created a splashing patter, and the rest of the blood-burdened weapon clattered. It was noticeable, then, the harrowing state of damage to that hand and arm: there wasn't a single stitch of clothing intact like there was for his other; the nebulous blue material of his long-sleeved tunic was disintegrated to the shoulder and the skin underneath severely burned and contused—spotted with beads of sweat and blood.
He didn't wince as Sakura's head fell onto that shoulder. Both her hands were dropped to the uneven ground on either side of him, and they splayed out to force her arms into a dead-lock: her only recourse for stabilization.

They both stayed like that: spent—at the end of their whim and with all their chakra energy expended. For moments it didn't even seem as though they were breathing.

- (Song Play) [Melvin Tsui – Crossing the Return Threshold] -

Another major chunk of their foundation crumbled away. Sakura stirred, and Sasuke's eyes opened, slightly, unfocused under half-eyelids.

"Did any part of your heart … ever care?" Her voice was so soft and hopelessly curious it was barely audible against the resound currents now completely soaking them with stray wallows of water. "About Naruto and I?"

"What kind of question … is that?" The starting monotony of his return inquiry—low and tired—tapered into a whisper inflected with subtle scores of astonishment. He implied the elementary nature of his answer.

That answer seemed to reach Sakura. She released a breath in a scoff. Her face brushed against his, and her hands scraped along the pebbled ground as she lifted her upper body away. When she reached an upright position, her eyes closed with the full tilt of her head backwards. The rest of her started to sway in tandem.

Sasuke tiredly glanced to the reformed veil of the waterfall directly behind her; there was nothing left to separate a straight drop into raging waters. He looked back to her.
And as indecision waned, impulse persisted.
He moved, grasping her hand at the brink to let the weight of her descent pull him with her.

The sky outside was completely clear. The sun shined strongly. Surfaces still burgeoning with the saturation of prior rainfall glistened. The renewed waterfall cliff—before, escorted by a long, barren stretch of arid stone—took its renovated dive surrounded by lush varieties of unearthed vegetation. Deeply rooted trees adjusted to their shifted locations, draping either side of the waterfall's estuary in long green curtains.

Thundering currents continuously lapped at Sasuke, blinding and disorienting him. The ringing in his ears subdued the louder impressions of booming and splashing and hissing as he fought constant submersion with each tiered addition of the waterfall's scourge. Under the recourse of adrenaline, his senses finally started to excite. Sight. Energy. Focus. He tried to catch his bearings: the expanse of mountain cliff above him remained glaringly obstructed by the sun's blinding prisms while the view below obscured in dense swathes of cloudy mist; either side of the waterfall's immensely wide girth also proved guageless.
When he caught, only briefly, a diluted hue of roseate subsisting some distance beneath him, Sasuke moved with direction. He fully ceded to the surging momentum of raging waters in an effort towards that uncertain area—now just indiscernible aquarium colors of blue and threaded sieves of silvers. Frequent interruptions of debris and other funneled bursts of pressure accompanied his progress.

The vertigo that assailed him came suddenly. His peripheral vision darkened with the black fuzziness of syncope; sharp stabs of pain started to crawl with numbness and tingling. With resound rations of will, he forced himself to travel farther. For just one more moment, he pushed through the stifling contortions of doubt and oxygen deprivation in order to secure his intent.
And then he took his chance. A hand of his thrust forward, blindly, just as the last of his vision started to fade.
That lunging hand waded through endless emptiness under a merciless barrage of plummeting knives. Through a pressurized sea of splintering sinks constantly degrading velocity, it started to slow. It soon came to an unavailing halt.

Then it collided with something solid.

That contact jolted Sasuke back into focus, and he crawled his fingers to secure a vice grip on Sakura's wrist. He pulled her unconscious form into him by the time that another source of mountain rock barreled past.
Futilely, he grabbed at a tree growing on the cliff's vertical descent; hardened leaves and jagged twigs cut like blades as the last of the malleable branches slipped through his grasp.
Blindly, he pushed a foot against an eroded outcrop that manifested, but it immediately crumbled. That stumble caused Sasuke to lose his balance, and the two further tumbled out of control. They disappeared within the torrenting depths.

The piercing shrill of the Sharingan suddenly sounded.

It fulminated and echoed around the gargantuan funnel of water before a large burst of chakra energy erupted That chakra splintered and jarred heavy sheets of misty silver in one powerful undertaking; and through it, Sakura and Sasuke emerged; in between a sizeable gap of sterling curtains leading and swiftly following behind they continued their descent in a straight nosedive. The gap was already starting to close in as they plummeted into the bulk of steamy clouds entreating from the waterfall's base.

Spouts of hissing mist and thunderous whooshing deafened out all other noise. Any light that punctured through the haze of effervescent condensation was heavily diluted.

Sasuke's eyes—vivid with the blood-red Sharingan— looked upwards to view the destination below them: rapid, thrashing tides and jagged protrusions of high-reaching stones were the bedrock of the wallowing abyss that beckoned them. He was completely calm in the face of it.

"You lied, Sakura," he suddenly said.
The curse mark to the side of his neck—a blackened replica of the Sharingan's spinning wheels hemmed by calligraphic embers—pulsed, and a dark symphony of detailed markings fluttered across the expanse of his exposed skin. "You knew about this so-called shadow. You knew for a long time." He singly winced as his back rumbled and contorted with an underlying force.

When it seemed they would surely crash into that cacophonous chasm of cuspidating ores and whirling waves, their downward momentum abruptly stopped. An instant eruption of raven-colored wings sprouted through an entourage of feathers to completely shred what was left of Sasuke's upper tunic, and with a single powerful flap they were catapulted upwards. They moved forward, still stuck in the condensated shade of the mountain and too close to the jumping rhapsody of spurting waves to slow down. They sharply turned and rolled and narrowly dodged to traverse crying stone pires of basalt and shale, spouting fountains, and sudden boulders still plummeting from unseen locations.

"You were the one that knew when I got to that point," he said.

A full moon. Wistful gales and dancing leaves along a cobble-stoned pathway.
A young girl with rosy locks stood from a concrete bench.
A young boy of raven spikes stopped mid-step.

"You were the first to openly offer me a place to stay."

A child with pink bundles of hair secured upward by a red bow was facing towards him.
Some distance separated them.
She was leaning forward, with clasped hands behind her back and a closed-eye smile.
It was an invitation—behind her kids were playing.

Sunlight finally hit them. Scores of wind gently pervaded their travel above increasingly calmer waters. They lost altitude quickly, and they landed in a lushly vegetated area not far from the wayward forest.
As soon as Sasuke's feet touched the ground, the curse seal receded, taking his changed features along with it. He abruptly kneeled into tall grass—whether from fatigue or the immediate intention to set the unconscious kunoichi down, his composure did not reveal. He further supported Sakura's head as it lulled to the side. The anemic pallor of her skin and the languid blue tincture of lips were striking.

As he was about to pull away, a memory suddenly hit. A certain golden-haired shinobi's voice resounded.

-
"Jiraiya-sensei once told me … that a place where someone still thinks of you … that's a place you can call home."
-

"But it doesn't work like that," Sasuke countered to himself—against both Naruto's tenacious case and Sakura's venerable bane.

His other knee touched the ground.
A second hand went to plug Sakura's nose as the prior moved to tilt her chin.
His mouth closed over hers, and he forced a breath into her.

Sakura's chest rose and fell with each attempt thereafter—two breaths, three, and four.
When she finally started coughing up water, Sasuke immediately fell onto his posterior and pulled her backside up against him. He maneuvered expertly while in this position: as her lungs cleared to take a meaningful gap of air, he started removing the harness that held the sheath to his absent sword. As her head lulled backwards to rest against the top of his shoulder, he ripped a pant leg twice over before balling it in two separate articles; they were positioned against the entry and exit wounds of her abdomen and secured by that harness tightly around her. He held her until the major tremoring stopped.

A nearby tree stump, crowded with neonate stubs of flowering plant life, supported Sakura in a sitting position. Her hands were in her lap, and wet strands of hair cleared from her sleeping face to join the wrung-out piles positioned to one side.
The chorus of birds frequently passed by to accentuate the constant sounds of glistening substreams and the rustlings of nearby trees and blades of grass. It was a spirited ambience akin to endurance and renewal that vibrated all around.
From his crouched position Sasuke finally rose to stand—he almost staggered.
In subsequently bringing up a hand to face height, he took in view the leftover layer of crimson that dried and stained it.

A figure of a dot was seen in the distance, rapidly approaching their location. Increasingly recognizable features of gold and orange entreated.

"This curse is mine to carry," he said. "I accept the agony of solitude and betrayal. And whatever else may come." His gaze transitioned to some absent place as he let that hand lazily swing to his side. He didn't look towards Naruto's approaching form, nor to Sakura, as he addressed her one last time.

"If you survive …don't think of me anymore."

...

To the youthful dream of mine that persisted in despair. Now frozen in time.

My antiquated folly.

Oiiii! I'm back!

After yet another super long hiatus I've returned to the tale of Antiquated Folly and have revamped the fate of its characters twice over into a more condensed, meaningful storyline I can happily tread. With stockpiled chapters to prevent any future long waits—and without the terrible grammar, disruptive inserts, and non-proofread blasphemies of my adolescence —I present to youa story about the resurrectional tidings of love and friendship in the midst of an encompassing war. We discover a lethal curse and calamity of past origin, along with a great lost knowledge and an ancient machina that threatens the stability of the entire shinobi world.
In twists and turns and ethereal mysteries, we find hope along angst and despair.

By remembering dreams that I left to the wayward side of inattention, I found perseverance and versatility. I manufactured the strength to forfeit the past and all the work that I stubbornly held onto, in order to pave the way for new light - new creations. I hope that any returning readers forgive me, and, along with new readers, enjoy what this journey has become.

I give you my canvas.

Let's finish this, together.

Dumbtrickerita