Chapter One

Hiroko was no stranger to loneliness, it had been an old friend ever since she had turned seven. As tender an age as it had been, Hiroko had never had difficulty in identifying loneliness as something other than being alone. Hiroko was not alone, not truly, but she had always been lonely, at least as far as she could remember. Of course her memories from before Fire Country were long gone, carried by the wind that blew incessantly during those first years of her life in the country where trees grew faster than children and life was said to be plentiful.

She could no longer recall the faces of her parents, neither could she remember her real surname. There was no family, no parents, no friends. There was only Suzu Hiroko, the brown girl that snuck in from Water Country, whose parents had been caught by border patrol and kicked out never to see their child again. Years later, Hiroko guessed her parents would have wanted her to move on like she had done. With the civil war raging in her home country, the hunger, the violence, she could understand the risk they had taken; even if she would die wondering why Fire Country would not give them asylum like it had given her.

She had been lucky, she figured. She had studied hard at school, got herself an apprenticeship with an apothecary in town and was on her merry way to making a name for herself as a healer and a poisons mistress. She had a steady income, a home of her own and a good relationship with her regulars -she had stopped listening to the whispers of older women on the street when she walked by. Hiroko had made one close acquaintance in her time there, and the kunoichi didn't even pass through town that often, but they kept in touch. Hiroko had met Akane when the kunoichi had come to town on her way to Grass, her teammate had confused White Snakeroot with Lettuce and had got himself poisoned. The heightened immune system developed by shinobi had saved him from what could have been certain death, but thankfully, he had only given himself high fever and twelve hours of intermittent vomiting. Hiroko had been the nearest healer and the only person experienced enough in treating poisons within a hundred miles; she had saved Doyun and had got on with Akane enough to become regular penpals.

Still, Hiroko was quickly reaching the end of her apprenticeship and had long ago finished reading and taking notes of every scroll on poisons outside the shinobi archive, she needed to decide on her next move. She was eighteen and she would be damned if she didn't travel around a little before settling down for good. Akane had offered her to pull some strings in Konoha and maybe get her a place in the poisons department in the hospital, but Hiroko had thanked her for her consideration and turned her down. She would be getting her next job on her own, and she did.

There had been no one in Fire Country who would have wanted to hire someone from The Bloody Mist to work as their poisons expert of all things, but that did not discourage her because her past had never stopped her from achieving her goals before then and it would not start doing so now. It took some time -over a year of negative answers and unanswered letters- but she finally landed an opportunity so big, she could not have landed it had it been up to somebody else.

Hiroko had been accepted as junior healer that would be accompanying a guarded caravan across Wind Country.

Now to some it might have not seemed like much of a deal, what good could come from travelling the desert day and night, with not only shortage of food and water in an unrelenting environment, but also surrounded by the most dangerous animals and insects in the continent? Well reader, you forget the profession of our dear Hiroko. To a poisons master and a healer, studying and learning in a desert with such a diverse fauna as was the one in Wind Country, was a unique opportunity. Even more so since Hiroko was a citizen of Fire Country and would be able to provide her shinobi with invaluable intelligence. Not that she had to, but the thrill of having access to information no Fire Country poisons expert before her had was exhilarating to Hiroko.

She set to work right away when she received the scroll. She would be damned if she arrived at the desert without an ounce of knowledge on some of its most common poisonous inhabitants. Had she been on her own in her efforts, she might have never got the information she needed, shinobi rank restrictions and whatnot, but be it chance or destiny, Hiroko had met one of Konohagakure's most efficient infiltration teams. Getting her hands on a handful of imported books would not present an issue.

She also needed someone to take care of her greenhouse while she was away. There was no way her poor plant babies would survive six months without her, and neither would her house -drying herbs could accumulate a lot of dirt if left unchecked. Then there were the stray cats that were not stray anymore and basically lived all over her back yard. Her garden would have to go unplaned for at least a season and a half, but whoever stayed to care for the house could use that stretch of land to plant anything if they wished to. The new tenant would either have the time of their lives or a lot of work in their hands. Luckily for Hiroko, her friend Akane had a solution to that. A friend of the Uchiha's needed a place to lay low for some time while they received medical treatment and a nice little cottage like Hiroko's would be the perfect place for them to have some much needed rest.

The month leading to her departure date had Hiroko running around like a very stressed chicken trying to get everything ready for her trip as well as preparing the house for the new tenant. She made her bags first, small, easy to carry and packed with only the essential things she would be needing on her trip. She had prepared a second bag with all of her healing and poison supplies so that everything she needed would be at hand in case of an emergency. Her own personal bag was quite weightless as it only had toiletries, two extra changes of clothes and underwear.

The house, on the other hand, was quite more difficult to get ready. Her new tenant would be on strict orders not to move around too much, so everything would have to be easy to access and in the right place. Hiroko excelled at many things, but she prided herself in being queen of checklists; she had a separate one for each room in the house, as well as the greenhouse supplies and what she had labeled "the cats' list". It took her an entire week, but all six -bathroom, bedroom, livingroom, kitchen, greenhouse, cats- checklists had every single item crossed out and in its designated place, ready to receive their new tenant.

The day of departure arrived, and just as the sun was peeking over the horizon, three people appeared on Hiroko's doorstep. Akane stood in all her glory, eyes scarlet as they had always been and with a smile on her face that was just a little brighter that it would have been any other day. Beside her, stood two men, one of them looked like he had swallowed the sun on a dare and now shone in his smile; the other -underneath his cloak and straw hat- looked eerily similar to Akane herself, only that his eyes were black.

Hiroko gave them a little tour of the house, pointed out where everything was, and even gave them the name of a trustworthy errand boy that knew how to keep his mouth shut should the new tenant need anything he couldn't find inside the house already. She had made a watering schedule for every plant in the greenhouse and told her new tenant to only feed the cats once a day because they were all greedy and would fight for seconds otherwise. She gave him one of her gardening calendars and showed him where she stored seeds in case he wanted to start growing his own food like she had been. The cottage did not have much space for guests, she told them, but the sofa was comfortable enough if someone needed to stay the night for any reason.

Akane insisted on the fact that no one could know the tenant would be staying there, that she hoped whoever would be escorting her to Wind would not be coming to the house. Thankfully, Hiroko had thought of that as well, and told her that the shinobi escorting her would be waiting at the inn in the next town at midday, and there was nothing for them to worry about. So with everything else sorted, she gave each of them a key and said her goodbyes, she would see them in six months -she wished them good luck.

All three shinobi watched her figure disappear from sight when she rounded the corner on her way to what would be her first big adventure.

Hi everyone! I got some inspo for this little story within the SFTH universe, it will probablu be rather short (shorter that TWYG at least) and for the time being I'll be focusing on this one until I get some inspiration to rewrite everything I lost for Easier. I hope you like it as much as I am enjoying writing it. Be safe and have a nice week!

PIAB