Author's notes: Bonus mythology!
So, legends and myths are like a game of telephone, before the telephone is even invented. A story gets told here; it gets tweaked a generation later; someone decided to translate a word differently; languages evolve; and before you know it, dragons in western mythology is destructive hoarders of precious goods and collectors of virgins, and dragons in eastern mythology are blessed messengers from the gods.
And that is how we have the Legend of the First Mother. While the other clans - largely paternal - focus on the Sage of Six Paths and his sons, the maternal clan of the Inuzuka are going to focus on the person who brought the Sage's two sons into the world. Because someone had to sleep with Otsutsuki Hagoromo, since I doubt the man pulled a Zeus and had his sons leap out of his thigh fully formed.
Tale of the First Mother was briefly mentioned in the last chapter, in which Tsume is delighted to have her very own Juubi, just like her ancestor. (Can you imagine Jiraiya trying to write lurid fanfiction on the Sage of Six Paths meeting the future mother of his children? I can, and I am immensely amused. Let's all just pretend that this is what sets him on the path to writing Ichi Ichi in the Misfits 'verse...)
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We know her; we speak of her. She is wild as the thunder and bright as lightning in the dark sky.
We know her; we speak of her. She dances with the wind and runs with the waves.
When the Juubi, his ten tails a'swinging, sweeps the country and sunders life, she flies in his wake with laughter in the air. Ten tails a'swinging cannot kill her.
The Sage is bright like sunshine. She withers in light. The Sage dispels darkness. She thrives in shadows.
Come to me, says the Sage, golden as the dawn, golden as the sunset, and be one with me.
Not I, not I, she laughs. She is a firefly amidst the shadows, and she chases the darkness of the Ten Tails.
In me shall you stay and together we shall be one, says the Sage. And he traps the Juubi within his breast, and within the moon.
She cries, for there is no more darkness, no more shadow. Her spark is gone, and she howls her sorrow to the moon.
We know her; we speak of her.
Says the sage, I am the sun, but the greatest light casts the greatest shadow. Fly to me, Zuka Hotaru, and I shall set you aglow even in the greatest light.
So she comes to the Sage, comes to the Juubi, and they embrace together, three as one, in a field of clover. They glimmer and glow like a firefly. The day embraces night, and together they become twilight.
The Sage gives her seed; she begets him shadow and heart. The Sage gives her seed; she begets him light and love. One for each – each as his own. The Sage gives her seed; she begets him spark – spark for the heart, spark for the moonlight. One as her own, a spark that glows.
We know her; we speak of her.
From the two came three. One for dark, one for light, one for spark, and they scatter. Then the Sage sunders into six, and the ten into nine, and she dances once more with the wind and the waves.
We know her; we speak of her.
She flies across the prairies; she flickers through the forests; she soars in the shadows. 'Twixt her sons is enmity and nine beasts begotten from the tenth wander the earth with their tails a'swinging, but her daughter is the spark.
We know her; we speak of her.
She roams the earth for the Juubi. Inu Zuka. The Six Paths lead back to the Mother.
Inu Zuka.
We know her; we speak of her. We her daughter, we the spark, remember the First Mother.