DFS Chapter 21
The tea in Tsuru's hands is hot and sweet, but it it is not enough to distract her. She watches her companions eyes keep flickering to the long haired woman, with pupiless eyes.
"She's the one from the cypher division, right? Tsuru whispers. "You should ask her to join us, Kisame-san."
The man stiffens. His cheeks lightly dusted with purple. "I... Uh, no."
"Would you rather I do it? Because I will."
0o0o0
Tsuru watches Isano from the doorway, torn between entering and being bombarded with requests for the poetry she has memorized from his sisters companions, or leaving, and losing the chance to pester Sachihiro for some of his old notebooks.
After a few more seconds, she enters the room.
Sharp brown eye's regard her. "You've decided to finally join us then?"
"I didn't want to interrupt your conversation," Tsuru lies, picking up a piece of scrap fabric from the pile nearby. The silk soft, and cool against her skin. "Is Sachihiro-nii awake yet?
"You missed him, another urgent mission came up."
Tsuru sighs, and drops the cloth. "Then I will leave you be."
"You needn't study so much, Tsuru-chan." Oniyuzu Mirai chides, stopping mid stitch. "Come join us."
"You already have enough hands making toys," Tsuru remarks, examining the growing pile of handmade playthings. One of her elder siblings brilliants plans to influence future generations in their villages favor.
Tsuru admits she would love to see some of the crankier, hardened ninja handing them out, as her brothers did when they traveled.
"I should make a batch of hard candy to go with them," she murmurs, looking towards the kitchen. It would certainly give her an excuse to leave.
"Such an industrious child," Yuki Hideyo praises. "Those are what you call those sugar candies you make?'
Or perhaps not. Tsuru focuses on the elegant looking man, his perfect posture.
"Yes," she admits, trying not to shift under the man's gaze. "They last the longest."
"Those are also the layered ones you call jaw breakers?" he probes.
Tsuru's eyes fall to her sister, who seems amused. "No, those are harder to make. The sugar candies are the ones I our into the molds father bought."
"Would you mind us watching? I would like to see the process."
Decades ago, Tsuru had felt the same way. Leaning over the counter, as her mother tried to perfect another recipe from work with simpler equipment. It is difficult to say no.
"It will be to crowded for all of us in the kitchen," Isano reveals, saving Tsuru from answering. "But I doubt my sister would mind some company Hideyo-kun. Our siblings often help her."
"You mean, they eat more candy than they wrap," she mutters, knowing they will laugh. "And call it a compliment."
0o0o0
Tsuru's form grows heavier in his arms with each passing year. He brushes a stray hair back, as he carries to her bedroom.
Stops to wash her face, with a cloth he runs under the bathroom's faucet.
She fusses, and murmurs, but does not put up any real effort as he moves onto her hands. Far to used to the treatment.
Taiga knows his daughter is more intelligent then she pretends. Her honey-hued eyes a shade too calculating. Her responses a little too slow. His brother had been like that too, in his youth.
He cannot say he doesn't appreciate her attempting to be normal though, to give him another child to dote on.
He worries though.
It's hard not to with a child like that.
0o0o0
Tsuru's walking down the street when street when she first notices it, the dim, black mist forming above the village's inhabitants.
And at first she dismisses it as a figment of her imagination, but that soon changes.
A part of Tsuru wonders if one of the older children have cast a genjutsu on her as some kind of sick joke. She wouldn't put it above them to target her. A few of the them still held grudges that have bleed to their younger siblings.
Her fingers quickly form the hand seals necessary to dispell the illusion as she reaches the edge of the training ground. Kisame, and Mangetsu throwing themselves at each other a few feet away. Swords clashing, before they push off and the dance begins again.
Days pass, and it does not dissipate no matter how many times she attempts those seals.
People's injuries have also begun to stain the dark figures red, and she tries not to stare. She does.
Her family aren't the first to notice, but they do comment and one morning Eito plops a box shaped hat onto her head. Three white balls dangling from the headgear, and bouncing off of her torso. Tsuru knows he expects her to laugh but she can't, only force a weak smile.
They grow quiet.
Watchful.
A few hours later Tsuru finds herself digging through one of the chests, locked away in one of the storage buildings off the main house. Seeking the festival masks her siblings have collected over the years, thins her father couldn't bear to part with. The growing bags under her eyes, fueling that need.
The academy teachers tell Tsuru she is doing the seals correctly, and the unsettled feeling in her stomach grows.
Yuichi isn't due home for another week, and Tsuru is supposed to be angry with Yagura for teasing her about her new acessories, so she cannot be caught asking him.
Instead she finds herself hesitating outside her nephews nursery.
Isano peers out at her. "Did you need something Tsuru-chan?"
Nails dig into her palms.
"No," she lies, looking down.
"Are you sure?"
Tsuru knods, and forces herself to move, to ignore the now solid figures above her sister's head. The wavering gray over Satoru's.
She heads towards her bedroom and it's attached bathroom. Her hand trembling as the door opens.
Tsuru's gaze falls to the square mirror, hanging above the counter. Solid, and sure.
Two names float over her head, like errant clouds of matter. One a ghostly faded red,crossed out and half stitched into the other.
She stares at them with dawning realisation.
Her eyes following the hanging string, that disappears suddenly.
0o0o0
The head priest watches her with a calmness Tsuru cannot return.
The rhythmic chanting behind them sends cool fingers racing down her skin, already burning from the cold, harsh air of the snow covered mountain peaks.
Tsuru knows the sound, recognizes the notes but she cannot place it anymore than she can her grandfathers voice. Her grandmothers. She resists the urge to cry out, scream at the dead to shut up. The noise growing in volume the longer Tsuru remains. Even the cones of her eyes seem to vibrate as the drums join in, beating frantically.
Her fingers knot in the dark fabric of her jacket. "I cannot stay."
The man simply smiles at her, even as strange ribbons twist about him and then slide towards her. Ethereal, and pale with fish like heads, and rippling fins. Beady, hungry eyes. "I know child. Death calls you, as surely as the cold wind calls the leaves from the trees. Even now you can hear them, can't you?"
"Yes."
Tsuru thinks I can't see the shades anymore, but leaves those words unvoiced. It is more than enough to see the fragmented names, written above invisible heads. These odd creatures.
The man nods to himself. "I am going to die today then, probably within hours."
"Yes," Tsuru admits, focusing on the characters above his head. Stained so red, they practically drip.
Meat she remembers. That's all their bodies were.
The other priest kneeling beside her, the man's student flinches as if hearing her thoughts. Face fallen slack in the wavering light, as wind slips in through the window cracks and kisses the candle's flames.
"You should try daughter of rivers, and sails. To remain, I mean. Death has called you here for a reason."
"She's the lady that leads me to the life I dream of. She's the mistress that keeps me from the ones that I love," utters a man Tsuru had once loved, cutting through the incessant noise. His voice of no comfort today.
And it is only in her mind, but still she shivers. Wraps her arms tighter round herself. It is worse than the feel of the eel like creatures brushing against her, like overly affectionate cats. Tsuru hopes they will not follow her.
"It is better that I leave. I only seem to distract them from their purpose."
"Them?"
"The shinigami."
"Ah," he says. His smile finally straining. "Not our kami, or any of the rulers of any of hell?"
The rulers of hell? Tsuru had only ever thought there was one.
"No, not yet," she admits, checking the room to be sure. There had been something to quick, to catch a true glimpse of earlier as they entered the temple grounds and looked upon the frozen waterfall but that was it.
"Do not look so worried child," the man chuckles, then falls into another coughing fit. Saicho lifting his teacher up, as she hurriedly pours a glass of strong, medicinal smelling tea that makes her nose twitch.
Blood spatters against the man's hand. Slips between his fingers.
"I doubt they mean you ill." the man finishes after awhile. His eyes watering.
His blood coated teeth flash. "And we both know how this goes. This is nothing, but a passing thought."