Dreaming
"I think the air is finally safe to breath again, to breath again"
By the time I was fifteen months old, I was a fully functioning human being again. I had learned to talk, walk, even conquered the stairs. I finally felt like I was getting settled in here; although, I guess I still had a long way to go before this new life had any semblance of my old one. See, being able to walk and talk wasn't quite the same as being an adult. I was only barely over two feet tall- that was short even compared to the other one year olds. When standing next to Asuma, I looked less like a toddler and more like a strangely intelligent newborn baby. Naturally, I wasn't exactly commanding respect.
It bothered me more than it should have. I knew that one day I'd probably look back on my baby years and appreciate them a lot more, but still. I wanted it to happen faster. Even Asuma occasionally treated me like I was a helpless little waif just because I was so much smaller than him. I'd made it a full year, but I've got to say, the baby life just wasn't for me. I knew my restlessness, when people started to noticed how restless I had gotten.
"You know, eating all that daifuku isn't going to help you grow," Tsunade teased me during a trip to the park. I was having a rough day because one of the medics Tsunade worked with asked whose baby I was, and my coping mechanism was to drown all my sorrows in dessert. When Tsunade commented though, it struck such a sore nerve that I almost dropped my plate into the sidewalk. God forbid I do anything right now that made me grow slower than I already was.
Tsunade snorted. "Geez kid, I was joking."
"Sorry," I blushed, swinging my feet in my chair.
"Well Daifuku isn't going to stunt your growth, okay?" Tsunade raised an eyebrow. I think she was still making fun of me, but I appreciated that she was at least pretending to set me straight. "If you aren't growing fast enough, blame your mom."
"My mom? Like my real mom?" I blinked at her, momentarily distracted from my Daifuku.
"Yeah, I swear she was the smallest kunoichi in all of Konoha. You've got her frame," Tsunade poked my shoulder. "Otherwise though I guess you look a lot like your Dad. The hair, the eyes- that's all him."
I guess that made sense, since my father was the Senju in the family. My wild white hair must've come down from Tobirama through him. I was surprised though to hear that I shared my eyes with my father. They were a very familiar dark brown color. Interestingly enough, they happened to be the very same shade they had been in my past life. Personally, I liked them that way. They made me feel like I was still looking at me when I happened to cross a mirror. What's the saying? The eyes are the window to the soul? Whoever thought that up must've been right because my eyes were my only whisper of proof that the old me was still in there somewhere.
Also, apparently Tobirama's eyes had been red. It would've been pretty creepy to walk around with blood red eyes. I could deal with the weird white hair color because it seemed to be normal around here. Red eyes though. That would have taken some serious adjusting.
When I had conversations about my parents, I was always thankful that I still had my memories from my past life. Kojirama and Mura Senju sounded like they had been wonderful people. I could only imagine that a normal little girl would ache for the hole that their deaths had left in her life. I wasn't normal though. Talking about them was interesting to me, because it gave me clues as to where I had come from. Yet Kojirama and Mura didn't feel real to me. When I thought of my parents, I thought of the people I left behind from before. They were hopefully moving on with their lives now, finally recovering from the death of the daughter. I missed them sorely.
I'm getting distracted though. That's my bad. I was spending too much time thinking about the past these days, and I knew it wasn't healthy. Like I said, I was bored, and that left my mind wandering to bad places.
My days just had no point to them anymore. Before, games with Asuma had been a learning exercise for the language. Now they were literally just pointless games. Don't get me wrong, I liked kids well enough, but there's only so much toddler time most normal adults can take before they start to go crazy. I needed some kind of stimulation, some goal to be working towards. All of this down time was killing me.
So I decided to do something about it.
"Biwako-san," I walked over to her one afternoon, when playing with Asuma was really starting to drive me crazy.
"Mm?" she said, looking at me carefully.
"Will you teach me out to read?" I asked.
"Most children don't learn how to ready until they're older. Isamu started to learn when he was three," Biwako said. I rocked forward onto my toes. This was typical Biwako. It didn't matter that my request was pretty mature and educational. She just wanted me to work a little to get what I wanted- show her that I had some good logical thinking skills. This was why Asuma never got what he wanted without throwing two and a half tantrums. He wasn't very good at giving Biwako any sort of reasoning beyond "but I want it."
"Did Isamu ask to start learning earlier?" I countered smoothly. She looked at me with her piercing hawk eyes, scrutinizing my polite smile. She was going to give into me, I knew that already. In fact, I bet she was secretly pleased, although it was hard to tell. Biwako was very hard to read.
That didn't change the fact that my request was weird. I was coming off as too mature, talking like a twenty year old woman instead of a baby who'd just recently learned to a walk. Most of the time, I thought I did an okay job acting my age. I played with Asuma, loved junk food, and made sure to push the boundaries of the house once in a while just to keep Biwkao on her feet. There were some things, though, that I knew I'd never be able to do quite right. I didn't cry enough, I was too rational when I didn't get something I wanted, and I got caught paying attention to adult conversations with a little too much interest. Biwako and Hiruzen had to have noticed by now that there was something different about me. They were freaking ninja for pete's sake. I just had to hope they hadn't noticed too much.
"Okay," she nodded finally. "We will start tomorrow night, after Isamu get's back from school."
"Yes, thank you Biwako-san," I squealed, elated.
The next day, after Isamu returned, Biwako asked me to come sit at the dinner table with her. "Where ya going Nat?" Asuma asked when I got up to go join her.
"Biwako-san is going to teach me how to read," I told him.
"Oh," he blinked. "But we were going to play ninja today."
"We have been playing ninja," I said, suddenly feeling kind of guilty. I hadn't thought about how Asuma would feel about this. I had just assumed he'd be happy to just keep on playing by himself. Apparently that wasn't the case. "I want to be able to read stories all by myself. We can still play with each other all day. Just think about it like we're taking a little break for a while so I can learn. Anyways, Isamu just got back. You can make him play with you. "
Asuma didn't seem to be happy with that, but he accepted it all the same. I spent the rest of the evening in a somewhat grueling lesson with Biwako. Learning to speak might as well have been a cakewalk; reading was clearly something else entirely. Japanese kanji were nothing like the English alphabet. There were so many different characters to learn, and a lot of them had several different meanings to them. It was like trying to build a puzzle with pieces that kept changing shapes. My brain was swimming within minutes.
Thankfully, Biwako was more than patient with me. She had dug out some of Isamu's old books, and was sifting through each and every syllable with me. Then she'd go over the picture that went with the sentence and we'd connect every word to the image. Hiruzen was home by the time we had gotten through the book completely the first time, but we kept forging ahead .
"You have another book to start?" I asked. Biwako shook her head while she dug a pencil and some paper out from one of the drawers.
"I taught Isamu to write at the same time he learned to read. It helps you remember the characters, and is just as important," she explained. Then she had me copy the whole story down, reading it aloud a second time as I went. Writing was a lot easier than reading. Probably because I didn't actually have to learn anything new to do it. The only issue I had was that the pencil felt too big in my tiny hands, making my handwriting a bit sloppier than it used to be. Still, it came out looking almost reasonable.
"You're very good at that," Biwako said quietly. She was giving me that look again. The one that said 'this girl is too smart for her age'.
"Thanks," I muttered, feeling my cheeks turn red. It was too late to pretend to start acting like a normal baby, so I just took the compliment and continued.
After another hour of work, we were interrupted by the pitter patter of little feet entering the dining room.
"Mom?" Asuma came in, sounding sheepish. Biwako raised an eyebrow at him. "When's Nat going to be done?"
"At bed time. Natsuki asked to learn, and so she's got to be committed to her studies," Biwako said firmly.
"Oh, okay," Asuma said, before shirking back off into the hallway. Another pang of guilt went through me, but I swallowed it. This wasn't as big a deal. We weren't going to be playing ninja in the living room forever. Anyways, I could just make it up to him tomorrow before my lesson started; I'd let him have the Hokage role without any questions asked.
The rest of the week continued just like that day. In the morning I would hang out with Asuma- who was getting crankier by the minute. Then in the evening Biwako would steal me away to sit through three to four hours of reading lessons. Every now and then Biwako would take a break and have Isamu sit with me. I was always there for the full time though. No breaks and no complaints.
Saturday brought a break from the routine. Nakwaki came romping through the door around lunch time, apparently excited about something.
"Natsuki-chan!" he practically shouted when he saw me sitting on the carpet with Asuma.
"Hi" I blinked, mildly surprised to see him. Tsunade had said that she was going to be busy today, and Nawaki told me he wanted to take advantage of his sister's absence to practice throwing shuriken.
Asuma jumped to his feet at the sight of my cousin. "Nawaki-kun! Are you here to take us to the park?" he grinned. I guess not even Asuma could be mopey when there was a chance that the park might be on the agenda.
"Ah, sorry Asuma-kun. I've still got plans to meet up with my friends in an hour to train," Nawaki said. "I'm just swinging by for a minute. Natsuki, Tsunade told me that you were learning how to read?"
Asuma deflated like a balloon almost immediately, as his little baby cheeks turned into an aggressive pout. I was going to be doing damage control the minute Nawaki was gone. I swear, the reading thing was becoming a bigger sore spot by the minute.
"Yeah, I'm going to be able to read myself stories soon," I told Nawaki carefully. I was actually really excited about the little progress I was making, but Asuma was already pretty upset. I didn't want to make it too much worse by bragging.
"That's great! I brought you something that I thought you'd like," Nawaki bubbled, swinging a green backpack off his shoulders. He unzipped it and pulled out a thin raggedy leather-bound book, handing it to me. "This was my favorite when Tsuande taught me how to read. It's got my oji-san on the cover."
I looked at the book wide eyed. It was beautiful. On the cover was an intricate drawing of two formidable shinobi facing each other across a waterfall. Just like Nawaki had said, the first Hokage was the one with his back facing the reader. The black haired man across from him must have been Madara.
"What's the title?" I asked. My fingers traveled across the kanji written across the middle of the two men.
"Can't you read that yet?" Nawaki teased.
"It's The God of Shinobi and his Shadow," Asuma piped up, crossing his arms moodily. "Isamu's got that book on his shelf."
I looked up and frowned at him, feeling a small bubble of annoyance bloom in my stomach. What was with him this week?
Nawaki rolled his eyes. He didn't seem so surprised that Asuma was being pouty. I wondered if he'd spoken to Biwako recently about this. "I guess you don't want to know what I got for you, huh," Nawaki said.
Asuma paused, suddenly torn between whatever grudge he was holding and the bone Nawaki was throwing him. "You got me something too?" he sniffed finally.
Nawaki reached into his bag and pulled out a little wooden ninja figurine. Asuma reached out and took it, turning the toy over a few times in his hands, though I didn't miss the side glance he threw at my book. Nawaki seemed content with Asuma's reaction, and bounced back to his feet. "Well, that's all I've got. I've gotta go train now!"
"Nawaki wait!" I called out quickly before he got away.
"Hmm?"
I threw my little body at him and enveloped the kid into the biggest bear hug that I could manage. "Thank you, I love it," I told him quietly, so that Asuma wouldn't hear.
He grinned and ruffled my already wild hair. "No problem! This is what cousins are for."
Then he was gone, running out the door to go train with his friends. I watched out the window until he was out of sight. The book he'd given me was still in my hands, and the happy buzz hadn't quite dissipated quite yet. Nawaki really was good to me. I was so lucky to have him...
Suddenly I had a knot in my throat, but I swallowed it. He wasn't even a genin yet. There was still time to worry about all of the rest later.
That night, I insisted that we work with the book Nawaki had given me. It really was wonderful. Asuma was right when he'd told me that Isamu already owned this story. Biwako had even read it to me before I think, but the copy that Nawaki had given me seemed to be an original. The entire thing had been done completely by hand. The pictures were all painted in beautiful swirling colors, and the text written with a brush. Biwako said that you could always tell the quality of a document by the sort of writing utensil the author had used. Ninja used pencil for common paperwork, but fancier things like seals, clan historic documents, or even some books were all done with a brush.
The biggest event of the night wasn't sifting through my new present though. About an hour into my lesson, Asuma trotted into the room, looking equal parts angry and stubborn.
"I want to learn how to read!" he declared.
Biwako smirked at him, looking almost smug. "If you want to be a student, you're going to have to work very hard Asuma. You think you can show the dedication Natsuki is?" she asked.
Asuma crossed his arms. "If Natsuki can do it, I can do it," he declared fiercely.
From that night on, Asuma and I learned together.
Arc Title and Chapter Quote from Dreaming by Smallpools
A/N There you go. Sorry if the beginning here is a little bit slow, gotta establish Natsuki's place in the world before she can start getting into things. The next chapter will take us up to the start of the second ninja war.
Remember to review!
Until next time.
