Ashen

by Tavina

"Of all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been." In which we take a look at the world through the eyes of everyone except Hana. The Bloodless Side Stories.

15. Bride of the Wolf God: Rising

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Word of warning, this is a backstory. Kiba makes an appearance in one scene. There are no other recognizable characters from Bloodless who make an appearance here. This backstory is not essential to understanding the rest of Bloodless, though it might clear up some questions about Okami. If that does not sound like your cup of tea, this is your warning to turn back. If that does in fact, sound like your cup of tea, on with the story!

---

My heart is so full of you, I can hardly call it my own.

— Liana Radulescu

---

He watches as Inuzuka Kiba looks about his shrine with confusion after he winks out of view.

"Just 'cause you can disappear quick doesn't mean you're older'n stars Jiji." The wolf boy mutters. "Just means you know cool ninja tricks."

His partner whines and snuggles close to the boy's neck. "Strange, Kiba. 'S strange."

"Whaddya mean strange?'" Kiba pulls his puppy out of his collar and raises him so that they are eye to eye.

"Kiba..."

Okami chuckles. The puppy won't be able to explain what he felt to the boy. It takes a little more like age to understand the presence of a god. The boy himself probably felt a difference, but it's unlikely that he'd be able to explain it to someone else either. The presence of benevolent gods generally has that effect on people. He knows more by experience than anything else.

His grandson — it is easier to call the boy that instead of sifting through the branches of his daughter's family tree to discover exactly how precisely they are related — is one of the bravest souls he's encountered despite the boy's relatively young age.

Who else sits down with a deity and calls them Jiji without barely a second thought?

Down below, the wolf boy puts his partner back on his head, and they set about playing a game of marbles in the dusty stone path beyond the shrine steps. "He coulda at least said goodbye." Kiba mutters.

Yes, indeed.

Amusing.

Inuzuka Kiba had to have known that the being he called Jiji is a little more than human. Yet, he didn't treat that being any differently than a normal old man.

It has been a long time, even by his standards, since he's checked on his daughter's descendants. It has been long...and the dull ache of loss in his chest throbs still.

Inuzuka Kiba reminds him of Chikasa, of her fiery temper, her smiles, and wicked humor.

Chikasa is close to his heart still.

Nagatori Chikasa.

The centuries turn. Time passes. Mountains have crumbled into the sea. The world has forgotten her name, but Nagatori Chikasa still weighs on his heart. Bride of the Wolf God.

That is all she is now.

It's a disservice to her brilliance that her connection to him is all that they remember. She'd been so much more, like a comet in the night sky, but there is no person living who remembers her. Her name has been lost to the ages, and she is only Bride of the Wolf God now.

Something about that tastes bitter. Her name is Nagatori Chikasa, and for her I would have chased and caught the moon.

He steps into the shrine.

There is the statue made to his image and then Yasuka and Yama beneath it. He has buried them both, but that is the way of things. God-born they might have been, but not immortal. Touched by his power, but without his longevity. That's the way of mortals: they do not endure.

All of his family has been so. He has not thought to love again. Losing everything once is painful enough. He doesn't want to live through it all another time.

Though, in some small way, he already does. His children's children, their children, so on down the line, a millennium of loss has worn thin his heart.

There is a stick of unlit incense before his statue. The likeness retains his features, his golden eyes and white hair, his crooked, twice broken nose, the red fangs, and his tendency to wear white, the ruff of fur he kept about his neck centuries ago, and the sword by his side. He wagers that the artist would have included the scar on his left flank too if they'd known of it. It really is a remarkable likeness for someone who had only Yasuka's stories to base it off of.

It seems that she'd remember him all too well, just without his most fatal flaw. What foolish pride I had back then.

The sun slides down the side of the statue as he stands there, thinking. What foolish pride I have now, to do what I've been planning all these years.

He can afford to be patient now. He has all the time in the world. He just needs to find the right moment to move.

But the painted wood doesn't hold his sorrow or his slowly simmering rage. He had been tricked and betrayed. He will have the blood that is due to him. The pieces are almost all in place. He need only wait. His painted face holds only benevolence, as it should for his children's children.

He moves forward slowly, glancing about at the well kept building. His daughter's children are faithful still, with her wild temper and brash ways. Perhaps it is Yasuka that Inuzuka Kiba reminds him of, and by extension, his own youth, of that time when everything was cast in shades of gold, and he'd run wild in the mountains.

He is no longer a young god despite looking ageless.

He is no longer so pleasantly free with his affections as he had been before he knew what it meant to lose and what it meant to grieve. When he'd been young, Amaterasu had told him that gods do not have mortal companions because all who do come to grief.

He'd fallen in love with a mortal woman anyway.

What is ten years to a god?

For this one, everything. A life condensed to ten years.

All the centuries of the sun cannot hope to match you, my darling. Your brilliance was everything to me.

He lights the incense before his likeness and vanishes with the sun into the smoke.

---

He'd been born from a thought, a plea for something more, gathered in the darkness, in the space before the stars were lit and the world was made and time's pearls strung together on Amaterasu's necklace. No relation to the creation of the greater gods and goddess, he had been born in the fabric of darkness to find a home in a wish: to be wild, to be free, to run and jump and sing. Perhaps that made him older than they, though less powerful than they, for he is no relation to Izanagi.

He does not know. He'd only been there in the space of a moment when before there'd been nothing.

He had no form then, only being, a mind perhaps, but a mind without a body, until he had been found as the other Kami sought to define the space they'd come to being in.

It was Tsukuyomi who had reached out to him first. "Who do we have here?"

He'd formed a hand — "Nameless and motherless." — and been pulled into the light of Amaterasu. Only then did he have a form. The mirror that Tsukuyomi held up showed him long white hair and a pale face marked by two red fangs.

"No longer nameless and no longer alone." Amaterasu had decided without a moment's consideration. She had a face that burned, searing to the eye, though he supposes, now on looking back, that she was beautiful. At that moment, he had no comparison to judge her by. "You are Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko."

And so he came to have a name and form though his place in the pantheon of gods came later.

Tsukuyomi took Amaterasu's hand, for those were the days when they were still of one mind and very much in love, and they departed towards the heavens. Reluctantly, he had followed. Where else was he to go, now that the darkness could hold him no longer?

Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko. He turns the thought over in his mind. Okami. My name is Okami.

I am Okami.

The years would pass, and his name would shorten and he would come to live on the peak of Mount Hoyoken in what would later be Fire Country. He would gather his pack and live among them, calling at the moon.

At Tsukuyomi, shunned by his sister for his role in Uke Mochi's murder. He'd been touched by the moon first when the gods had come to find him among their number, and he always felt a special kinship to Tsukuyomi. Yet he could not take Tsukuyomi's side either, for it was Amaterasu who had named him, given him form and feature from the darkness by her light.

So he had stopped visiting the heavens and chose to live in the mortal realm among his pack. When he ran with the wolves, he became a wolf himself. He was the hunter on the hillside and a man in the streets.

The mortal men and women below built him a temple at the foot of Mount Hoyoken and offered up their lambs to his image in return for the promise that the pack will not ravage their herds, for promises of good hunting and peaceful days without war. And so he came to have a purpose, Okami-sama, god of the hunt and the hillsides, nurtured by the strength with which the people beneath Mount Hoyoken believed in him.

In those days, he rarely paid attention to the men and women at the foot of his mountain. He was their god, but there was the division between siblings for him to concern himself with. It took up all of his time, and the mortals didn't need him anyway. They would live just as well without his attention.

Amaterasu and Susanoo bickered over the smallest things without Tsukuyomi there to mediate between them. Yet, Amaterasu was too prideful to allow herself to ask for her brother-husband back, and no god was willing to risk her wrath by suggesting Tsukuyomi's return, so there was strife in the realm of the gods as Amaterasu took one lover, then another, fought with Susanoo over the smallest decisions, meddled with the lives of mortals, and refused to think about how she had banished Tsukuyomi into the nighttime sky.

He wanted to suggest it, but it was unlikely to do any good. Amaterasu would make up her own mind when she could no longer bear the pain of separation, and not a moment before.

---

He has traveled beyond the foot of the mountain before, but this is the first time he has done so for perhaps two hundred years or so. This time he leaves, because he has a sudden craving for human brewed tea.

There is an earthiness to mortal tea that he cannot find when he raids Inari's pantry. Not to mention, whenever he raids Inari's pantry she is inordinately displeased and will not welcome him back for at least a century, or two if he had taken some tea more precious than the other ones. And since only humans can brew mortal tea, he will have to find a teahouse.

As he recalls, there is a teahouse on the second street on his right in the small village he'll first meet when he steps foot off of the south side of the mountain. The village is so small he can't possibly miss it. He sets his course in that direction, because this ought to be a short trip, perhaps a month or two, and if he can find the human sweets Goya loves so much, his lieutenant will be less upset at his sudden leave-taking if only because his whims are incredibly sudden. He only started craving human brewed tea three days ago and now he's up and left the mountain.

It suits his lieutenant to remind him that other gods do not have such...sudden urges, are not given to his brand of impulsive decision making and thus their lives are much more structured.

The words have always slid off of his skin, looping in one ear and out the other. What does he care for a well structured life when he has everything that he needs and wants whenever he cares to look for it?

As it is, he has taken care to disguise himself. His mortal body doesn't have fangs, or golden eyes, or the ruff of fur he wears when he is lounging about in his mountain villa. He's even given himself dark hair so that he can blend in with the surrounding mortals.

They must have sesames. He reminds himself. Goya loves sesames.

Ah, well. It is to be a short trip, and eventually Goya will forgive him as she always does.

It is a beautiful day in late summer with a soft breeze and a clear sky, so he takes the footpath down the mountain. It had rained the night before, and now the air is clear and fresh.

And it is there at the foot of Mount Hoyoken that he begins to run into trouble.

For one, the small village that he last remembered is now...no longer quite so small. For another, the cacophony of sounds and scents and sights is enough to render him quite lost as soon as he makes his way through the first few streets.

For once in his life, he can't use his nose or his ears to orient himself, only his eyes. He's not used to remembering his way by sight alone. Most times, he remembers now things smell more than he does the colors and the shapes of it. It makes for a bad combination now, where everything is far more confusing than he remembers it.

That, and he has found neither sweets nor tea.

Or well, he could simply summon a cloud and float away, but he's learned over the years that most mortals don't take kindly to such practices — their little hearts give out on them far too easily when in the presence of a god — and it is not as if this place is bad, so he refrains. He doesn't want to kill any mortals. Sometimes they are quite interesting, like right now in fact.

The dinky little village at the foot of his mountain has become something of a small city in the span of only two hundred years and that is quite alarming. What have these mortals been up to? Why have they moved so quickly?

Perhaps he ought to have visited his temple first and spoken with one of the priests or priestesses in charge? He does remember their names — Chiyu, Miku, Haru — yes, it had taken him a while, but eventually he had learned their names. He is — as he finds with slight chagrin — a rather scatterbrained example of a god. Other gods happened to have longer attention spans and better ability to recall requests and faces and names, and as such, their realms are well ordered.

Still, he doesn't think that any of them have to contend with the veritable howl of empty thought in the back of their minds, so he likes to think that he does better than most.

Yes. He decides. Next time I visit, even after a short time, I will call upon the temple first so I will not be so lost.

As it is though, he is quite lost. He wanders through the spice market, a hand on his sword hilt and lets the bustling noise wash over him.

They speak differently now too, with new and unfamiliar words. He imagines that if he opens his mouth to speak to anyone he'd sound outlandish and strange. There are different wares and new spices that he has not yet seen before. Perhaps sometime he will have to come back and try them, despite how much they have confused his nose for the day. He will have to spend a span of two years trying to learn their names and their smells and their colors and feels too. Perhaps his trip to the world at the foot of his mountain will have to be lengthened. He doubts Goya will truly mind.

He still sees no place that he recognizes, so he continues on, down one street and then another at his fancy, still searching for the elusive teahouse that he knows is somewhere around the corner, one of these corners anyway, until the sun slides down the sky to hover uncertainly above the horizon.

By now, he is a little bit away from the houses, walking along the banks of the Nakano. Perhaps I should find someplace to rest now.

He is not paying attention, and compared to Tsukuyomi, he's always been rather clumsy, so it is truly no surprise when his foot slips on a patch of mud, and he crashes straight into the cool waters of the river.

It is even less surprising that with his luck today the first thing he hits is a rock and not one of the banks. He sputters when he comes back to the surface, shaking the water away from his face and ears. His chest aches when he musters up the willpower to crawl to the other bank and flop over there on his back, coughing up water and blood as his ribs heal and pop back into place.

Just because he is a god, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It hurts quite a bit in fact.

He is displeased with this.

It figures that a day beginning with getting lost not even a casual day's walk away from his mountain would end with falling into a river and having his chest cavity crushed by a rock. I should have just taken Goya's advice. He coughs the water out of his lungs.

A physical body comes with many ills, even if such things will not kill him. It is one of the unfortunate facts of living in the mortal realm to avoid Amaterasu's rages — all kami must take a mortal form when they walk in the mortal realm.

On his mountain, he can get away with modifying his physicality a bit, but now that he's at the foot of Mount Hoyoken, he has to at least be injured like a man, if not die like one because of a crushed chest. Sometimes, he wonders if it was a blessing or a curse that Amaterasu gave him a physical form from the darkness. He is so clumsy some days, and stubbing his toe on the tea table has always been a painful experience that he could have avoided by staying a formless patch of darkness before the light of the sun and moon.

He's about to call this trip a bad job all around and just go home, when he's interrupted.

"Excuse me, sir." He looks up into the face of a young woman dressed in the red and white of a priestess's garb. "Are you alright?" She speaks like he remembers mortals speaking, not just the garble of new words that he's been hearing all day.

He doesn't bother pushing himself up. Regrowing his ribs is quite an exhausting process and has left him rather winded. "I've just had the most awful day."

"Mmmhmm." She offers him a hand up. "You're remarkably well recovered for someone who has nearly drowned in the Nakano River."

He takes her hand. "It wasn't as bad as it looked. I wasn't under long." Mortals are after all, the only reason he doesn't roam the streets as a large white wolf. Apparently, wolves are not found in the polite societies of man. He is considerate enough, most of the time. Considerate enough to not bleed all over her as well, since his chest wound is healed.

At that moment, he feels a rib realign itself with a slight shudder. Make that mostly healed.

"You don't speak like you're from Kakunodate." She says as they continue to walk along the river bank. "Have you travelled far?" She looks up at him with earth brown eyes. She smells like incense and candle wax, both so very normal for a priestess's life that he thinks nothing of it.

He considers the distance from the top of the mountain to the edge of the Nakano River from as close as he can get to a mortal perspective. "I don't know." It had only been a half a day's walk for him after all, surely a week or two can't be that long of a trip to take, but who is he to know the minds of mortals? They are all impatient, even more than him. "You're a miko?" He asks instead.

What temple do you belong to? Which one of my comrades do your folk worship now, in my domain no less?

Not that he would mind if his mortals also worshiped another god, unless it is Susanoo. He and Susanoo do not get along, so it would be best if there are no Susanoo worshippers beneath his mountain.

She shrugs. "In a manner of speaking. I am the only one there, and it is not particularly close to the capital, but you can find lodging for the night for free there where you would have to pay for a room at an inn."

He had been looking for a place to rest. "That sounds very pleasant, thank you…"

"Chikasa." She fills the space of his silence with a name. "Nagatori Chikasa." Chikasa. Calm Bloom or Peaceful Aid. It's a pretty name. Maybe he'll actually remember it.

---

As it turns out, the temple grounds are not very large, but in good repair. However, he can't feel the presence of a single god. He had tried while Nagatori-san offered him dry clothing to change out of his damp ones and a meal for the night that he really doesn't need to eat.

He didn't need it, but it was a welcome addition to the day anyway. Kindness is a blessing on days good and bad. Perhaps he needs to offer some sort of kindness in return to Nagatori-san. If she has such an absent god that he can't even feel their presence, maybe he needs to pay them a visit. It is far too unfortunate that such a nice young woman is so alone in the world.

She must be lonely for there are no people here, that much he can ascertain with absolute certainty. He well remembers what it is like to be lonely, to be formless and shapeless, lost without purpose or companions though it's been a long time since it has been so for him. For her to invite a stranger into her home so easily, she must have been lonely.

And lonely is a terrible thing to be.

He continued testing for the presence of someone, anyone, that he would know discretely as she left and then returned with a tea set.

He sits with an arm around his right knee, leg drawn up towards his chest as she pours tea. "Who is the god of this temple, Nagatori-san? I'd like to pay my respects."

She turns to him with something like resignation. "There's no reason to pray to him, sir. He will not answer." She sets the teacup by his right hand and rises gracefully from her seiza to leave. "But thank you for asking."

Well, he considers it as he swirls the excellent green tea around in his cup. That is quite troublesome. I must discern who this absent, indifferent god is if it causes my benefactor for the night such grief.

She doesn't know that she's satisfied his craving for mortal tea. She deserves a boon, and if her god causes her such worry then he will hunt until he finds them.

That night he passes her kneeling in front of a shrine, a shred of smoke from the incense stick before her rising up into the air as she taps the wooden fish, a tap per heartbeat in perfect rhythm. She does not lose her place as he stands there listening.

Dutiful girl. He muses. What self-respecting god would ignore you like this?

---

The next morning finds him splitting wood with an axe in the front yard. "Good morning, Nagatori-san." He nods in her direction, careful not to lose his focus and drive the axe into some unfortunate part of his body. Goya does always shake her head over his clumsiness.

Of course, he wouldn't die of it, probably can't die of anything except the sword forged from one of his own fangs in the hands of a god, but it would be terribly rude to bleed all over the courtyard and cause her to worry overmuch.

See? He can pretend to be a man when he wants to be.

She makes her way across the courtyard to him. "Do you have far to go to return home, sir?" She asks as she dabs his forehead with a handkerchief. "If you do, it will be best to leave early to make the most of the light."

But he still hasn't weaseled the name of her absent god out of her yet. He can't possibly go hunting without a face or even a name.

He blinks. "I — I am unaware of exactly where my home is." This is not exactly a lie. He has called the Mountain home for thousands of years now, but when pressed, it's hard to say exactly where his home is. Where exactly did he come to be?

He certainly isn't aware, and he doubts Amaterasu remembers. The place of his birth is hardly an important piece of information for the Sun Goddess.

She frowns, concern wafting towards him in her scent. "Where are you from then, Traveler-san?"

"I don't know that I can tell you." Where exactly was his patch of space? It was in the fabric between the mortal realm and the realm of the gods, that he's certain, but there are a hundred thousand little hiding holes and pockets of space, and the various travelings between the two realms have only increased that number. How exactly is he to tell which one belongs to him? How he could possibly explain where he came from to this little mortal? From what he is aware, their brains are not made to contemplate the vast complexities of space.

"Then, do you remember your name?"

Oh heavens, she sounds so concerned. "O—" At the last moment, he remembers that she is in fact, not a god, and therefore would not appreciate learning that Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko is standing in her courtyard chopping wood. "—ryoshi."

Okami is the name of his that mortals recognize, so… Well, he supposes he is Ryoshi now, for however long he stays.

It shouldn't take long. Mortals are very easily trusting.

"O-ryoshi-san." She repeats as if tasting the word, as if words are things that one can taste. What a strange young woman. "You don't remember anything else?"

He blinks. He hasn't met her before yesterday, which is an undoubtedly short acquaintance. "What else am I supposed to remember?" She hasn't told me something I was supposed to remember until today, has she?

He sincerely hopes not, because if she has, she will be disappointed to learn that he's forgotten it. If he stays here for any length of time, she'll have to come to terms with that.

"The river must have damaged you more than I thought." She mutters to herself. He would not have heard it had he been a normal man, but alas, he's not a normal man and had to hear about how he is damaged of all things.

It's easy to be frustrated with her, but she has been kind to him, and her god has been unkind to her, and he has made a decision to go hunting, so he still needs a name. He will stay until he gets one. Goya has always lamented that his moods pass like the wind. Anger, sorrow, mirth, and amusement ruffle over his surface without disturbing his heart.

He is well aware that among his fellows, they whisper that he is a heartless god, well meaning, and hardly cruel, but heartless all the same. There is nothing that he feels deeply, and no one he needs in his life besides his pack.

"Why am I damaged?" He asks.

Ah, now she's embarrassed that he's heard her statement earlier. He tastes the change in the air. Her embarrassment shifts to determination a moment later though.

"You don't know where you're from or where you're going. You sound like you came out of the last century, and while your clothing isn't cheap, your sword is even more expensive." She lifts her chin at him. "Yet you can't be a rich nobleman pretending to be a normal man because they don't have manners like you do and wouldn't bother chopping firewood." She narrows her eyes at him. "Are you a rounin who's been banished by your former master? Or are you a samurai who hit his head in the river and can't remember where he was supposed to be going?"

He blinks at her. "I do not recall ever being a samurai or a nobleman." No, he's never been any of those, he's certain, perhaps because he is the local god of Mount Hoyoken, but this is his mortal body, and well, he thinks she would be very disinclined to believe him if he said he was a god.

Especially since she met him because he nearly drown himself in a river.

Mortals have such a foolish understanding of how gods are supposed to behave, as if they could not be injured, could not have faults and foibles and hurt each other and themselves just like mortals do. For all his life, he's seen others do foolish things. Foolishness is something that gods and mortals share.

She pats him lightly on the cheek as if that will knock loose something inside his head. "You really don't remember a thing about your occupation? That sword isn't cheap." Of course it isn't, it is the only one that he's forged in all the realms. His sword can kill a god and deserves recognition for how dangerous it is.

It isn't as though she knows about that though, so he forgives her for merely calling his sword expensive.

He shakes his head. "No. Not in the slightest." It's only a little white lie. It will mean nothing to her in the long run. He will be here for however long it takes for her to divulge the name of her absent god, and then he will go hunting.

She will hardly miss the strange man she found by the riverbank or care that he'd told a small lie.

"Well then, O-ryoshi-san." She says with a slight nod to herself. "You will have to stay here until you remember where you were going." She sighs, worry evident in the downturn of her lips. "It is, after all, no good to travel if you do not know where you are going."

She is kinder than he thought. How many of his fellow gods would behave with such courtesy to a stranger?

"I will impose then, Nagatori-san." Perhaps if there is another god here, the god of this temple might be inclined to sit up and take notice. Perhaps then he'd be able to get his hunt in. Gods are generally territorial, at least, towards their temples.

"Chikasa." She says. "After all, you have no last name to offer me. It would hardly be fair."

He nods. It is true that he hasn't a last name the same way that mortals do. He hasn't a family to his name either beyond his pack. "Chikasa-san then."

She smiles at him. It lights up her eyes and he can only stand there helplessly for a moment both infinitely short and infinitely long all at once.

His heart clenches in his chest. What it means, he cannot ascertain.

---

They settle into a routine of sorts, as she spends her days tending to the shrine, and he does his best to assist in ways that are less conspicuous. He is well aware that mortal men cannot continue chopping wood for eight hours without stopping, or lifting full trees with his bare hands, which are distinctly things that his altered mortal body is capable of.

He is careful not to though, if only because he does not wish to frighten her. Mortals are frail beings.

So he takes breaks, wipes the sweat from his brow, and eats a normal, mortal amount of food, as he imagines it. Sometimes he wishes he'd just told her that he happened to be a god in a mortal form. It would make hiding his feats a moot point, but it is a little late now, and she never would have believed him anyway.

He has never worried over things that cannot be helped really, so he doesn't know why he is starting now.

After dinner every night, she pours tea for him, and then retires to the main room of the shrine to pray.

Tonight, he sits on the wooden walkway outside the shrine. It would be the work of a moment to intrude when she looks away, to trespass and learn the name of her absent god, but something stops him. She has not seen fit to tell him, and he respects her enough not to pry.

"You aren't asleep yet, O-ryoshi-san?"

He had heard her rise and walk toward him, but he pretends to be surprised. A man would not have noticed her soft tread upon the wood. "The moon is full tonight." He says by way of explanation.

There are some things that not even a god can do, though mortals believe that gods can do everything. He is never more aware of his own limitations than when he looks up at the round autumn moon. The brother I abandoned is alone.

"You'll be able to find your way home." She's also looking up at the moon, but she does not see what he sees. For her, the moon is just the moon, something untouchable and distant, is all. For him, the moon is his brother, and his brother is alone. "I know you will."

Somehow, this young mortal woman cuts to his heart without even really knowing anything about him at all. She knows him as O-ryoshi, a mortal man who has lost his memories dependant on her kindness and searching for what he's lost, but how could she know that he, Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko, has always wanted Tsukuyomi to return to the morning sky and for the brother of his heart to reunite with his love?

Why is it that she can make his normally jovial mood pensive?

"How old are you, Chikasa-san?" What invisible hand had given her wisdom beyond her years?

"I am nineteen this year, O-ryoshi-san." She turns to him with an impish smile. "And you? You cannot be more than twenty-seven from the way you look."

More like twenty-seven centuries give or take. She is only nineteen. Her entire life has been nothing more than a passing thought. She had not even been born the last time he set foot off his mountain.

He'd always known that mortals led short lives, but never to this extent. At this rate, his short trip might indeed span her entire life. "As you guessed." He says, "I am twenty-seven." Centuries. I am Okami, and that means I was given form twenty-seven centuries ago.

"Really?" She giggles to herself, her head propped up on her hands. "I didn't expect to be so right!" It's such a little thing, yet it delights her, so he doesn't mention anything about it. And if it's built on a deception, well, he tries not to let it trouble him overmuch.

He is normally so unfailingly honest, but with her he had begun with a miscommunication that has now spiraled into lies.

If any god could see him now, they would not let him forget it, as long as he lived.

They sit in silence for a comfortable moment before he tries to fish more information out of her. "How did you come to this temple?"

In a moment, her mood goes from delighted to melancholic. "My uncle sold me to the temple after my parents died because he needed the money to send my cousin to school." She shrugs. "That is life, I suppose."

"You were sold?" How can a person be bought or sold? There is no god that would dare to presume that they owned another's being, so how would mortals delude themselves as to think that they would be able to own another's being and then barter that for things like money and food? How could anyone even put a price on a soul?

It simply isn't done.

She smiles sadly and turns away. "I was another mouth to feed, and the head priestess of this temple needed a successor." Her lashes are heavy with tears that will not fall. "Kaede-san died waiting for our god to speak to her two years ago."

"You've been alone." He reaches out to her, and she sets her head on his thigh. He smooths a hand through her hair. "You will not be alone again." Again, he curses her absent god, for what sort of god neglects — he has to admit, he's not much better than the god of this temple.

He surely must have worshippers, but he rarely bothers with the mortal lives beneath his mountain. They do not need him to care to flourish perfectly well, and he would much rather rest than work. He imagines that they are well though.

They do not need him, not truly. Not as Chikasa does. They have each other. Chikasa has no one.

"I'm sorry." She sniffles, the scent of salt wafting into the air. "I didn't mean to cry, O-ryoshi-san. I do not cry normally."

"There's no guilt in being sad." Her quiet sadness makes him ache in ways that melodrama cannot. There is such strength to her, for how else has she survived? "Do not think you cannot cry in front me."

A watery laugh, and she sighs. "You must have been a samurai, O-ryoshi-san. You wouldn't speak so prettily if you weren't."

It's beneath his station to pretend to be a samurai, but she is no longer miserable. It is, perhaps, enough. "If I was or if I wasn't, I do not remember enough to know." Another lie. I am Okami, but you do not know that.

They sit like so for a long time, his hand in her hair as he stares up at the full moon, her head in his lap as she falls asleep.

When the stick of incense behind them burns out, he picks her up and goes back in.

---

"Chikasa-san! Chikasa-san!"

He'd been fixing the edge of the roof of the shrine when a small girl races into the dusty courtyard. He can smell the faint scent of blood on her, even from high above. What cause does a little girl have to do with blood?

"Haruko-chan?" Chikasa emerges from the inside of the building, wiping the water from her hands with a small square of cloth. "What's the matter?"

"It's Yamato-san!" The little girl huffs and puffs with her hands on her knees. "He was sawing wood for a new table and now he's injured, you've got to come quick!"

So that is what it is.

Someone has injured himself. But why are they here to see Chikasa?

"I'll be right over." She glances up in his direction. "O-ryoshi-san? I'll be going into Kakunodate for the day, will you watch over the shrine for me?"

Haruko-chan glances up at him curiously, but as of yet does not say anything. She looks like she's bursting with questions to ask about the stranger on the roof.

"I will." He nods to her and turns back to the roof tiles.

"Chikasa-san?" Chikasa and the little girl walk hand in hand out of the shrine grounds. "Who was that on the roof?"

"That was…"

He hides a smile behind his hand. The things he overhears when mortals think they are out of earshot are amusing. So often they try to hide their curiosity, disapproval, or admiration, and yet still can't manage it successfully.

In the room directly below him is the central shrine of Chikasa's absent god. She is away now.

It would be easy for him to slip down and take a look.

It would be easy.

My uncle sold me to the temple after my parents died.

A betrayal of trust. She has already suffered plenty without him adding to the mix.

What would she think, coming back to the temple with the doors of the shrine open, and him gone without a trace? Should he go down to look at it now, the urge to go tear out the throat of the one who had harmed her so would be too great for his conscience to hold him back.

No.

He cannot go down to look.

If he should know that name, it will be because he has earned the right to know it.

---

"O-ryoshi-san!" She sounds entirely too amused by his plight. "You look silly."

Ah, well.

He supposes that if Tsukuyomi ever saw him like this, he'd laugh as well. My foolish little brother. He would say, a fond light in his eyes as he attempts to brush the soap bubbles away. Do you know that you have a long standing grudge with water?

As it is, it is Chikasa's hands that attempt to rub the soap away from his hair. "How did you get soap in your hair?"

"Perhaps I scrubbed too intensely." He hasn't the faintest clue honestly and wouldn't be able to explain even if he knew. "The soap bubbles are quite light."

It was most likely because he'd stopped paying attention once more.

He'd been thinking of where he might find sesame candies for Goya, if he should at least attempt to return for a brief visit to the villa, no more than the space of one stick of incense to explain that it is likely he will not be back for at least a few centuries.

And somehow his hand slipped, and he is as he is now, dripping wet with soap suds in his hair.

She giggles as she towels his hair. "Well, at least we know now that someone else had to do your laundry."

Or no one ever did his laundry because his white robe is impervious to dust and grime, and he would only have to travel back to Amaterasu's realm to get it replaced if he stained it with blood.

Still, he wears mortal clothing now, so it certainly needs washing at regular intervals, or he wouldn't be able to stand the scent of himself.

"Why do you think that?" He mutters, half to himself and half to her.

Goya would laugh her head off if she saw him like this, and so would the rest of his pack.

None of his pack are particularly shy, and his first lieutenant is the worst of the lot. His pack sister has never been afraid to mock his slip ups, and he honestly prefers it that way.

There is no leadership through fear after all.

It is better to be loved than to be feared.

"You would have learned different by now." She finishes toweling off his hair, and they stand there for a moment, soft and unbroken. "Perhaps you were a nobleman after all." She smiles. "If that is the case, I am sure they will send someone to search for you."

A nobleman.

He considers it. Amaterasu is the ruler of all gods, and she calls him little brother.

Perhaps that gives him a different sort of status, but the realm of gods follows different rules than that of mortals.

He is no nobleman there, merely Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko.

"Perhaps." He murmurs. He has no idea if Goya has even noticed that he has left the mountain yet.

Tonight then. He will return to Mount Hoyoken for a brief visit when Chikasa sleeps.

---

He steps past the door of the courtyard that night when the crescent moon is high in the sky. He concentrates, and a brief pause later, leaves the mortal body he'd wrapped about him behind as an empty husk.

Turning, he catches the suddenly slack flesh and marvels at the slight differences. It is still his face, but without the red fangs.

It is still the same length of hair, but without the white silver color.

The wide eyes are brown, not gold.

After living for a few months in this form, he'd forgotten that he does not look as he normally does. How strange. He thinks. I feel some attachment to this form that I've built as a disguise.

As it is, he stashes his mortal body in a bush just outside the courtyard door, careful to hide it from prying eyes — no need for Chikasa or a well meaning passerby to see it before the sun rose — and vanishes with the breeze.

His right foot hits the smooth polished stone on the walkway outside followed quickly by his left. He is out of practice after pretending to be mortal for so long and would have tipped forward, but his hand flashes out, and catches the low hanging branch of a small tree.

He is saved a tumble into the dirt by virtue of fast reflexes.

What a lovely thing it is to have his own body back again. His mortal body would never have been able to stand it.

"Goya?" He asks.

It is deep night now, and it may be a night when the bored pack decides to go off for a hunt.

He strides off towards the main building, passing the rice paddies and herd pastures, the long long rows of neatly tended crops and the natural spring of water that now formed a magnificent pool with a little bubbling stream.

At the doorway he pauses to look back at the darkened landscape. It is good to be home, even if it is only for a few brief hours.

There are his bamboo glades, most beloved by Amaterasu as a source of woven baskets. There are his gardens, formed lovingly of stone and water.

There are his crops, tended by himself and by his pack.

Only the other members of his life are missing.

"Okami-nii?" Goya stands there in the dark, a summer yukata wrapped loosely about her shoulders. "Where have you been? We searched for you during our last hunt."

In the pale moonlight, her shoulders and neck gleam a pale bronze. Her hair is left free without even a band to tie it with, and it flows about her face soft and black like strokes from a painter's brush.

Worry. She hadn't even bothered to look presentable.

He has worried her, but he has little time to explain.

Chikasa rises with the sun. He has to return and pretend at sleep before that. "I am taking a trip." He says unhurried.

There are still a few hours before the sun. "Two centuries, likely no more."

Ah, but two centuries are so short. So, so short.

She is only nineteen though, young even as a mortal woman.

He should not feel sorrow.

Short lives are the dominion of mortals. It is both their fate and their blessing. They do not have to reckon with the merciless turn of years.

There need be no sadness over it, but he feels it all the same.

"Two centuries?" Goya rolls the words over her tongue. "Well, do not be gone for too long." And in the pallor of the moonlight, he sees her smile, a flash of white teeth. "After all, we can't be left without a leader for long, Niisan." She teases the word between her fangs as she turns to go. "Else I may usurp you and become the Wolf God of Mount Hoyoken."

"It is only a short trip." He tells the space she's left behind. "I assure you, Imouto, I will bring you back more than enough sesame candies to make it worth it."

From around the corner, he hears her quiet chuckles.

Outside, the sky is greying.

He turns on his heel and returns to his mortal form.

And if he is grimy and cold with leaves in his hair when he stumbles inside for breakfast, still unused to the renewed limitations on his limbs after mere hours of freedom, Chikasa merely raises one eyebrow at his disheveled state.

"I went outside last night and fell asleep in a bush." He tells her. "It was not a good decision."

He has turned himself into a liar as surely as if he wove and tied the rope for his own hanging. He is only lucky that she will never know.

All she does is shake her head and laugh. "How unlike you, O-ryoshi-san." She says with a hint of mischief in her eyes. "You do seem so to have a habit of causing yourself trouble."

He has never understood Tsukuyomi's dreamy descriptions in getting lost in someone else's eyes, but at the moment, he might be closer to knowing.

---

He goes back to the market inside Kakunodate — this city's name is Kakunodate. She'd said so at one point or another — with Chikasa. She is looking through vegetables, comparing two completely identical heads of cabbage, and he's never been interested in vegetables.

He wanders off.

There is still much to learn to about the realm of mortals.

He had promised himself that he would learn about these spices the next time he came to the market. It's easy to start now.

Chikasa does not seem to be making a decision about those cabbages anyway.

"And what does this one do?" He picks a small amount of red powder.

"That's chili powder." The shopkeeper smiles at him. "Have you come in from the countryside?"

He blinks. "I have never seen this before."

He has come from the countryside. He lives in a villa on a mountain. He attempts to smell the red powder politely, but he gets too close and ends up coughing, tears in his eyes. I should not have done that.

"A country bumpkin." A young man sneers from the other side of the street.

"And who might you be?" Okami smiles. Mortals are so amusing sometime.

So what if he comes from a mountain villa? He has still seen far more than them.

"Takahashi Nobu." The young man lifts his head a little. "Who're you here with, country cousin?"

The two men on either side of him snigger into their hands.

He's going to forget this young man by the time he leaves the marketplace. He knows it.

He smiles. "Chikasa-san." She is still across the way. She's made a selection over the cabbage and has now moved onto haggling over rice.

"Oh." The young man nods understandingly. There's an edge to it though, because it seems oily, off somehow.

"Don't mind them young man." The spice seller tries to get his attention back. "They've always been the local ne'er-do-wells."

" — That's the priestess who isn't really a priestess because there aren't any gods in this world, isn't it?" Nobu looks like he's said something insanely clever.

He blinks. "I beg your pardon?"

You are speaking to a god. One of the older gods, in fact.

"Oh don't tell me you're one of those fools who believe in gods, country cousin." The man to the right of Nobu laughs. "Not that like that poor fool. All she does is pray all day. A really pity too, she's got such a pretty face, but a right prudish—"

He sees red.

"I suggest you change your tone." He whispers. "Or else I'll be forced to be impolite."

"And what're you gonna do about—"

He might have gotten a little bit overboard.

He does not need a sword to threaten anyone, but it is in his hand and against the poor fool's neck between this breath and the next. "I suggest you change your tone." He murmurs, a slight amount of killing intent in his voice. "Or I really will be forced to be impolite."

"A-a mo-monster." The two other men turn on their heels and run off into the crowd. "A monster!"

It is only Nobu now, caught between the blade of his sword and the wall.

"O-ryoshi-san?" Chikasa has returned. "What's going on?"

There's a gathering crowd now, and the whispers are overlapping, making them hard to listen to.

The only clear sound he can hear is her voice. "We were merely having a civil disagreement." He tilts his sword edge up slightly, forcing Nobu to raise his chin. No, he doesn't think he'll be forgetting this face and name any time soon. Takahashi Nobu.

"Call off your new guard dog, priestess." Nobu hisses, with the little remaining breath he has.

"You're not being very smart right now, Takahashi-san." Chikasa sets a hand on his arm. "Please let him go, O-ryoshi-san. He doesn't mean half of what he says."

"He called you stupid for believing in gods."

Something like pain makes its way across her face. "Perhaps I am foolish."

His sword drops.

His chest aches, but nothing inside him is broken. It just hurts, is all.

It just hurts.

"Do not say that." He says finally, when they are on their way home.

"Hmmm?" She looks up at him. Clearly she's already forgotten what he means.

"Don't call yourself foolish." Ah, how to tell her? She is walking with a god. "You are not foolish for believing in gods."

"Ah." She sighs and looks away, a half smile on her face. "You are attempting to humor me, O-ryoshi-san. Everyone knows that gods exist." She turns her face up to the sky. "But they do not believe that mine cares for me, else he would be more present."

The ache in his chest gets worse. He doesn't know why.

They do not speak more on this matter.

---

"O-ryoshi-san?" He turns to find her standing in the entryway of the courtyard, two red apples in her hands, a smile on her face. "A break would not be amiss."

This morning had found him weeding the small herb garden she kept in a corner of the courtyard. "You went out again?" His hands are still caked with mud, so he rinses them off in the wooden bucket in the corner before he takes the proffered fruit.

"I did."

On her other wrist as he takes the fruit, he spies a hint of darkness. A bruise. He thinks suddenly. A bruise the shape of someone's finger.

He draws her hand up. "What happened in Kakunodate today?" As he does so, her wide sleeve falls back to reveal more bruises on the inside of her wrist.

Three more dark shapes that match someone's fingers.

She pulls her hand away. "It was nothing."

Still, the scent of it lingers. He knows very well who has hurt her.

And the empty howling in his mind deepens. "It was the one I threatened, wasn't it?"

Takahashi Nobu. He will not soon forget that name.

"You frightened him." She says without much fanfare. "He told me you were dangerous, and that I ought to turn you out. He also said that he saw your eyes flash gold."

Well, that's unexpected.

Takahashi Nobu did not seem to have much fondness for Chikasa when he'd picked a fight in the marketplace a few days back. Yet, it seems that the young man has seen a little more of his aura that he's done his level best to suppress.

"And will you ask me to go?" He has not yet learned the name of her absent god.

They do not speak of it, if only because she does not want to, and he hasn't the heart to force the moment to an eventual crisis.

Still, if he has caused trouble for her, if she wants him to go, he will cut his trip short and return to his villa.

But he does not want to do that. He would much prefer to stay.

She stands there, looking up at him for a long moment, their clasped hands around the apple between them. "No." She says at last. "I will not ask you to go."

And so he does not go.

---

Before he pauses to consider it, the autumn leaves slip away, and the world beneath the mountain is blanketed by winter snow.

Chikasa sews him a new set of robes, thicker and heavier than the ones he owns. He doesn't need it, but he also can't grow fur when she's around, so he accepts her kindness and vows to treat her more kindly.

And rather quickly, in the space of a few months, he finds that he cares dearly for her happiness.

Still, she does not spend her days in silence or sadness anymore, and every night she sits with him in the tea room for longer and spends less time closeted in the shrine. Perhaps this is all he is meant to do.

She only needs a friend to chase away her loneliness. She doesn't need someone to hunt down her absent god.

It wouldn't hurt if he spent the rest of her life here in this temple. After all, he has no pressing affairs. Above all else, he is a leisurely god of whim. It is not as if he has responsibilities that cannot wait.

He has long secluded himself on Mount Hoyoken. A mortal lifetime spent off of his mountain would barely register to anyone except perhaps Goya and the pack, who know that he does not prefer to travel far from home.

Somehow, the thought of how short a time he will stay here hurts him a little more than it ought.

Why does it hurt to know that a mortal life is short by comparison? He has always known that to be true, but it's never hurt him before.

"O-ryoshi-san?" He hears the patter of her feet on the wooden floorboards far earlier than she decides to make herself known.

These days her scent is a mix of tea leaves and woodsmoke. She no longer smells so heavily of incense.

He has been perusing the small collection of books inside the shrine, at least those for medicine and leisure reading. At the moment, a book of history is open on his lap.

History for her, merely recent life for him. He has heard description of this war, but there had been affairs to tend to in the realm of the Kami, and he had returned to Amaterasu's side for a time.

She'd been looking into the eternal flame when she called him to her side. Little Brother, she'd said. Do you know why the kami do not associate with mortals beyond recognition of their worship?

He hadn't had the slightest clue. She had merely sighed and smiled at him. You will learn, Little Brother. Oh, but I think you will wish that you didn't.

Chikasa keeps all of the religious texts in the main shrine, and he has never step foot there.

"Yes?"

"Aren't you cold out here?"

He'd been sitting out on the walkway watching the snowfall.

His mountain villa is the home of a god, and no snow ever falls there no matter what season it is. The dwelling of Okami is one of an endless fertile summer, if only because he wishes it so.

"Not particularly." There is a cold but endlessly pretty call to the white flakes that makes him want to run and jump about, though he keeps himself stationary for the most part. It has been long since he's seen snow.

Not since his last trip off the mountain, when he'd granted the prayer of the bleeding masses.

Mortals are always fighting their wars.

But here, in this temple, it is as peaceful as it is to live in the villa.

"Please come back in." She holds the door open for him, his cloak in her hands. "It's so very cold outside, and you aren't even wearing a cloak."

Ah. This must be another thing that mortals do when it snows, go inside and hide by the fire.

He had just made it to the door when a woman bundled in what looks like at least three layers of clothing hurries into the courtyard. "Chikasa-san! Chikasa-san please come quickly! It's Hotaru. He's fallen ill."

Chikasa glances at the white flurries outside and squares her shoulders. "Come in Shimeji-san. I will need a moment to get ready." With that, she starts to gather her basket. "O-ryoshi-san, have you seen my cloak?"

It is still hanging by the main fire. She had gone to market yesterday afternoon. It had frozen and then thawed, and even now the heavy woolen fabric is damp and unfit for wear.

"You can't wear this and go out."

She continues arranging dried herbs in her box. "I'll have to. There's a young man dying of illness out there." The people in town come to her to ask for healing, as she's a priestess, but they do not ask her to join them, as she's a priestess.

She has always stood on the outside of every gathering.

He can't but help find that this hurts him. For someone so brilliant and kind to stand alone...in some ways, Chikasa reminds him of the brother he could not help.

They are both quick to offer kindness to those they do not know.

He could not help Tsukuyomi, but he can be friend to Chikasa.

"You'll die of illness if you go out there with this." He gives the offending garment a shake. Water droplets spray across the floor. "Take mine."

He wraps her up in his cloak and ties the front about her neck without her able to get a word in edgewise. "I don't want you to get sick."

She is dwarfed by the heavy fabric, looking up at him through that thick, heavy fringe of fur. He knows that she is strong, but she is still mortal, and he worries.

Chikasa is kind above all else. She deserves a long and happy life.

"But you will also need a cloak." She murmurs fretfully. "You'll have to go out to fetch more wood before I can get back."

But he will not fall ill if he is chilled.

He does not have the power to bring back the dead, so he worries for her when she seems to care for everyone a little more than she cares for herself. "Then I will go with you."

He swings the cloak over his shoulders and wraps an arm around her. It is large enough to cover them both, and he is nearly always warmer than her anyway. She cannot worry about him if they share.

The woman standing off to the side glances between them, absolute bafflement in her eyes. He can't be bothered to think of what might be the matter with her.

Other mortals might pass in and out of Chikasa's life, and by extension his own, but he feels little more than amusement and irritation with most of them.

Perhaps that makes him an uncaring god, but he only stays here because he knows that Chikasa would be sad if he left.

Chikasa is dear to him, but he knows little of the others who dwell under his mountain. He is content with that. He is not by nature, a meddler in other people's affairs. He always left that to Tsukuyomi to deal with.

His own affairs are enough to occupy his mind.

"Then thank you, O-ryoshi-san." She turns to the other woman. "I'm ready to go now, Shimeji-san."

---

They make their way through the snowy streets together, Chikasa holding her basket, and he holding the umbrella to keep the snow from their heads.

"How long have you been staying at the temple, O-ryoshi-san?" The older woman asks.

"Not long." He has only been at this little temple at the foot of Mount Hoyoken since the beginning of summer. "Why do you ask?" He doesn't think he's particularly interesting. At least, he has not made himself so, at any rate.

"You seemed very close to Chikasa-san." Perhaps his question wasn't proper. He detects a slight hint of embarrassment in the response.

He doesn't press it further. It neither amuses, nor interests him to begin with, so there is no need to think further on the matter.

The scent of decay and death that hits his nose when they enter the house almost makes him want to turn around and go back out the door.

At least, the snow smelt clean.

But he doesn't, because Chikasa's raced forward, hurriedly asking for clean boiled water and a light source. "Why didn't you call me before?"

The gathered townsfolk hem and haw, but cannot give her a specific reply for why they had not summoned her for the young man currently dying in bed.

There's something like judgement that he smells, a judgement that veers towards anger and guilt. This is no clean place to stay.

As she works, he is drawn aside by the same woman who had come to the temple to bring them here. "O-ryoshi-san." She begins "What intentions do you have towards Chikasa-san?"

He blinks. "Intentions?"

"You are a young man living with an unmarried young woman." The woman says, her chin raised. "It will become the talk of Kakunodate if you are not careful."

"Chikasa is kind enough to let me stay." He replies, his eyes straying to where he knows she is. "I fail to see how this is the talk of others."

"It is improper." Ah. He's made someone angry, though he hardly knows why. "Here in these parts." The woman adds when he looks back at her. "Who knows what absurd rules they have where you come from." He ought not to have heard that, and he ought not be angry.

Gods and mortals do have different rules.

He wasn't aware that living with Chikasa in the temple was in any way wrong.

Mortals have such strange rules.

Why does it bother them so much that a friend lives with a friend? What business is it of theirs?

He ought not be angry — this woman is no more than a mortal, and when had the opinions of mortals bothered him? — but he is angry.

And this is a mood that does not pass so easily as his other ones. He is at a loss as to why.

"How is it improper?" Mortals and their notions of rules. He has never understood them and likely never will.

"Chikasa-san is a priestess and can love no mortal man for all her days. Do not tempt her to stray."

"What a miserable form of existence." He mutters. It is not as if Chikasa chose to become a priestess. Her uncle had apparently sold her and doomed her to be a solitary young woman with an absent god. What an absolute injustice. All deserve to be loved somehow.

Not to mention, he's hardly a mortal man, and whoever and whatever she loves is her own choice, not to be dictated by anyone else.

Something sounds like a sob in the next room. The scent of tears...Chikasa.

He exits the conversation with the older woman without pausing to be polite or to care.

He pauses in the doorway.

The dying man has become a corpse. Chikasa sobs brokenly by the deathbed.

He hesitates, suddenly stricken by a terrible sense of space and distance. There is no welcome for him here.

Death is something that mortals feel more sharply than he does. What does he know of death? What does he care for a mortal's passing?

It does not touch him.

Death cannot touch him, unless he wishes to die.

He has never considered the concept before.

By normal means, he cannot die, and like most gods, he has little sympathy for a mortal's passing.

What does it matter when they share different lives?

He stands there with his hand on the doorframe for a long, long moment before he steps forward into the room. "Chikasa?" He asks, a hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"I couldn't save him." She sounds so heartbroken when she turns to look up at him. "I don't know why they didn't call me beforehand. I don't know—"

He brushes a few of her tears away with his thumb. "Sleep." He says, a touch of power heavy in his voice. "It will heal." He doesn't know why she would cry so miserably for the young man now dead if it was not her fault she could not save him, but it matters little to him.

She is hurt, but she is alive. So she should rest, and they can go back to the shrine so she can heal.

She slumps against his shoulder, her breathing deep and even. Her face is pale from the strain still, misery cloaked around her in ways that his power cannot disperse.

He acknowledges yet one more thing that he cannot erase and picks her up gently.

What good is power if it cannot keep her from harm? He does not know.

There are weeping women in the front room when he passes through, and men with hard eyes, and anger in their scents. "I don't know why you called an tainted priestess, Shimeji. You should have known that she'd be no use."

He would not have paused, had it not been for how they spoke of Chikasa. He does not care for the death in the other room like she does. There is no pain in his heart because of it.

He is, after all, a heartless god. Even among gods, the whispers claim it so.

He is a god who has never loved, not like other gods. Their liaisons with each other do not interest him.

Amaterasu calls him little brother with a fond smile, as does Tsukuyomi, though Susanoo has never looked at him with anything but distaste.

He is a heartless god.

But they had spoken ill of Chikasa.

So he pauses.

"Tainted?" He asks. How could you call her tainted with that dirty mouth of yours?

"Not as if you wouldn't know." One of the men blusters. "The way you hold her is evidence enough of how far she's strayed."

In the back of the room, he notes a face he has not seen since that day at the market. Takahashi Nobu.

The way I hold her. He considers it. What's wrong with the way I hold her?

He holds her with a touch more care than he would hold another person, but he is not aware that there is something wrong with care.

"Chikasa is tired." He says. "I was not aware that I was supposed to leave her here in your care and return to the temple by myself." He is slow to anger, slow to speak.

He is not and has never been someone easily provoked to rage, and yet now he toes the line. How strange it is that he toes the line.

What has angered him is no small thing. Yet at the same time, he is well aware that others would find it little.

A mortal girl. He almost hears Susanoo scoff. All the goddesses in the realm lining up for a moment of your attention, and you choose a mortal girl to be angry over.

What a dumbass.

It is only that he does not think the same.

He snaps his fingers at the umbrella still propped against the doorway, pulling it to him with a small bit of power. He summons his cloak in the same way, though he wraps only Chikasa in it this time.

He has never needed a cloak except to keep her happy, and he doesn't want her to catch a chill.

When he turns back to look at them, they do not say anything more.

There is only an uneasy silence under his gaze.

He leaves, though he is still uneasy. What did I do wrong? Why is there now tension between Chikasa and the people she lives next to?

The umbrella bobs above his head with no hand to hold it.

---

She wakes later that evening, still coughing and pale. He snaps his fingers to summon a cup of tea. "You've caught a chill." He says absently as he helps her up. "It's best that you rest for now."

She tenses in a way that she has never done with him before, staring dumbly at the teacup in his hands.

He considers it.

It is only a cup of tea in a teacup, the same as any other cup in the world. The fact that he has summoned it does not make it any less a cup of tea.

"Is there something wrong?" He asks.

She breathes out, her head resting against his shoulder. "O-ryoshi-san." She begins. "Are you an oni?"

He almost laughs, and his efforts are not enough to prevent an amused huff from leaving his lips. "No, Chikasa. I am not an oni."

What a funny thought. An oni? How have I suddenly become an evil spirit? He passes her the teacup. "Drink your tea, Chikasa."

She takes a sip of the tea, cold sweat beading at her temples. "True." She whispers. "You cannot be an oni, because an oni wouldn't be powerful enough to live on the temple grounds."

Onis are weak evil spirits for the most part. They wouldn't be able to live in a temple for as long as he has lingered here, even if the god of this temple pays little attention to it.

Evil spirits do not dwell where there is the presence of a god.

He is certainly more powerful than an oni can ever hope to be.

She is cold, so he pulls the blanket over her more securely. "Why did you think I was an oni?" He asks her.

She coughs, shoulders shaking so badly that she has to set the teacup aside. "Because you are not a man." She says when her coughing fit subsides.

"In this world," he muses. "Are the only options a mortal man or an oni?"

What a sad dichotomy that must be.

If one is not mortal, one has to be an evil spirit.

"You won't deny that you aren't a man?"

He considers it, considers her. "You are not afraid of me." There is no trace of fear to her. She is cold, perhaps. She is sad, perhaps.

But she is not afraid.

He had feared her fear, but it seems that she does not fear.

"You didn't answer my question." Her eyes demand the truth from him.

He smiles. "No, Chikasa. I am not a man."

She sighs, though she does not move away. "Then are you a bakemono?"

A shapeshifter.

Well, he supposes that such a thing is true. This is after all, his mortal form that he is sitting here with her with, and his wolf form can be as small as one of his foot soldiers or as large as a house. But it is not what she means. He is no bakemono youkai.

And that is what she had asked about.

"In a manner of speaking." He sighs. "Is it important to you?"

His lies are back to haunt him, because it is important to her, despite the short time he's known her. She wouldn't care to ask if it wasn't.

"You were never a samurai or a rounin or a lost nobleman then." She frowns, teeth worrying over her lower lip. Still, she has not pulled away, so perhaps it is not an irreparable rift between them.

"I never did say I was." He reminds her of this gently. "I try not to lie to the people I meet." But he has lied all the same. I didn't expect to be so right! It had been such a little thing, that brilliant smile, such a little thing.

He is twenty seven centuries old give or take. It is hardly the same as twenty-seven years.

"But you let me assume." There is hurt in her eyes. "So you didn't tell me the truth either. O-ryoshi-san, is that your name?"

Ah. He is caught then. He has no more ground to give up. "It is not my full name, no. My full name is O—"

She lays a finger over his lips. "If you tell me, do you have to leave?"

He breathes out. "You might not want me to stay." He is after all, not her god.

And from his limited experience, the realization that one's house guest is a god is generally not a welcome thing.

Or, at least, it is not an expected thing.

"Then I don't want to know your name." She pulls the blanket tighter around her. "I'd much rather you stay."

She must have been so lonely in this place where she is set apart, not invited, but forced to be present.

So lonely, if she doesn't even want to know his name anymore if that means that he will not stay.

"Are you angry with me?" He has lied, and he is not used to being a liar.

Not used to it at all.

Something about the shame of it hurts even these immortal bones.

"Why did you let me assume?" Her eyes fall closed.

"You assumed before I could introduce myself." It had been so sudden. "And in the realm of mortal men…" He sighs.

"Will you tell me a story, O-ryoshi-san?" She asks. "What is your life like when you don't live here?"

"I live in a villa." He says. "On a mountain where it is always a golden summer." He smooths down her hair with a hand. Sleep has tangled it in the back, and it sticks out in all sorts of weird angles that he cannot really help. "I have a brother," banished for a crime that was not so heinous as the punishment. And I have no way to help him.

"A brother?" She murmurs. "A mother and a father as well then?"

"No." He watches the smoke rise from the candle wick as it goes out. There's a draft from someplace he hasn't found yet, and it's blown the candle out. "A brother and a sister." And a pack. His mind adds. A pack and a little pack sister waiting for my return.

"They have died then?" She asks, small and sad. "You're like me."

Unspoken goes that she is more alone than he has been for a long time.

"No," he says once more. "I never had parents, so I have never felt a loss or a lack."

"Even if you've never had them—"

He does not learn what she was going to say, if only because she falls asleep in the middle of her sentence, her breath even and deep.

He sighs slightly and tucks her back into bed.

And sits there on a chair in the gathering dark, eyes tracing the patterns of the wood on the opposite wall.

---

There is fire light gathering outside.

And the sound of drunken voices gets louder, closer than they ought.

This temple is secluded from the city and by all rights, should not be disturbed by the growing voices.

He rises from the chair, joints stiff, and heads to the front door of the temple to meet them.

They carry torches in their hands, led by Takahashi Nobu. Torches and pitchforks, as if that could harm him.

"Youkai." The young man spits at him. "Stop spreading your poison. We don't want your kind here."

"I am not a youkai." He stands there in the doorway, a hand on his sword, and waits. It will not be long before this gathered anger in the air breaks like a storm. And then, what then, he knows not. "And I believe I live here by Chikasa's grace."

This is a temple.

There is no space for death here in this place of worship.

"A tainted priestess." One hard-eyed man spits on the stones. "We don't want her kind here either, led astray by the evil in the world."

"We don't want a priestess who would lie with a demon."

"I am no youkai." He says again, suddenly angry. Chikasa is a priestess, that is true. But what does it matter if she is chaste or no?

It is not as if every god demands that their followers give up their entire lives to worship and service.

He himself has certainly never asked for such a thing from what priests and priestesses who have called on his aid once upon a time. All deserve to love and be loved.

Chikasa is no different.

And so what if she lay with me or no? What happens behind another's doors is not your concern.

And so what if I love her or no? My heart is not any of your business.

"Liar." Nobu says, though he looks pale. "We all saw your magic. You're no man."

"Of course." He smiles, no longer bothering to hide his fangs. "I never claimed to be a man."

He is slow to anger, but he toes the line.

How closely he toes the line now.

The uneasy whispering grows louder.

Takahashi Nobu charges forward, a pitchfork in trembling hands. "Begone, Youkai!" He screams the words, face twisted.

But it is a drunk mixture of hatred and fear.

He is nothing more than a little boy playing at a hero.

Okami parries his wild swing almost lazily. This mortal form will not survive the fight well. Not with all these torches, these wildly spinning lights, and weapons coming at him from all directions.

"Stop!" Chikasa cries, clinging to the doorway in a vain attempt to keep upright. Her cheeks are fever-flushed.

Dying. His mind whispers to him as he freezes to stare at her. She is dying. If I do not prevent it, she will slip from this world forever.

Between the sky and this earth, there will no longer be anyone called Nagatori Chikasa.

And in his moment of inattention, the five prongs of the pitchfork bury themselves deep in his chest.

"No!" The scream is endless. It echoes in his ears and between slower beats of his heart even long after it has faded from the air.

It sounds like despair.

How easy it would be to tell her that he will not die of this. His vision blurs.

But he will not die of this.

It is a puny wound compared to the one in his heart.

"You dare desecrate a space set holy?" Chikasa's footsteps sound behind him. He cannot see her face, would not be able to see it even if she was in front of him, this mortal form will not live for much longer, but he imagines she is angry. "Do you know whose temple you stand in?"

The silence is deep. "You would dare to kill in Okami's temple?" She asks. There is fluid in her lungs, weakness in her breath. She is dying.

He sheds his mortal form between this breath and the next. My temple?

His temple.

He is the absent god who had caused her so much grief.

What arrogant folly he had to not understand why the fates had brought him here.

The mob flinches back from him. "I wasn't aware." He says, as he raises golden eyes to the wide brown ones of Takahashi Nobu. "That a mortal was arrogant enough to try to kill a god."

White light.

In this night, he is brighter than the absent moon.

"I am Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko." He roars. "Leave my temple."

Faced with his true form, the mortals scatter like autumn leaves.

Behind him, Chikasa's legs give out on her.

He catches her before she hits the ground, and they are gone from this place with his next step.

---

"Okami-nii?" Goya lays a hand on his shoulder. "You have been watching her for such a while now. Don't you need a rest?"

It has been two days and two nights.

He wordlessly shakes his head.

Chikasa still has not awakened.

Perhaps he had been too late in taking her here. She has overexerted.

Perhaps she will never awaken.

He doesn't know what he would do if she does not, and he doesn't know what he would do if she does. He has committed a grave sin by leaving her lonely.

Her predecessor had died without him ever meeting them.

A mortal lifespan is shorter than he thought.

"Okami-nii." Goya sighs, her head on his shoulder. "The others will worry about you, and you will not make her wake any faster with your staring."

"I have made a mistake." He says at last. It is not only one mistake. "Goya, how does one make amends?"

In his trip off the mountain, and truly it was a short trip, no more than seven months, he has become a liar and broken so many things.

"You start by saying sorry." She hums softly to herself. "And you continue by righting your wrongs."

She has not asked who Chikasa is.

No one has.

He had returned to the mountain in bloodstained dark clothing, a sick mortal woman clutched in his arms, and a towering unspent rage, and no one had asked any questions that were unnecessary.

"I don't know if this is a wrong that can be righted."

She can no longer return to the temple, to the one place in all these realms she could call home.

She has no reason to like him. He is, after all, the god who has left her lonely and the man who has lied to her.

She has no reason to like Okami, and less reason to like O-ryoshi.

"Perhaps." Goya says at last, as she sinks to a seat on the ground beside his feet, her head laid gently in his lap. "You ought to tell me all about it."

"You pry, she-wolf." He rumbles. "And prying is the dominion of vixens."

Goya bares her fangs at him. "A pack-mate can't ask out of concern anymore? Some god you are."

And that is true.

So carefully he tells her beginning with his whim to search for mortal tea and ending with the reason for his fury.

He is angry with the mob for forcing his hand, but he is more angry with himself for not telling the truth.

Goya sighs when he is finished. "You will have to present her with many tokens of affection to win her back, Okami-nii." The she-wolf rises, a wide grinning smile on her face. "But you'll be able to win her back, silly foolish Niisan. She likes you."

He hasn't the faintest idea how she discerned such news, but he hasn't the time to ask her, for she skips out the door. "I'm going to wrestle with Harunosuke now. Have fun, Okami-nii!"

And he is left alone again.

"You really are Okami-sama?"

Chikasa's awake, her eyes sweeping over his form, taking in the differences.

His hair is white. His eyes are gold. There are two red fangs gracing his cheeks. He wears white, a ruff of fur over his shoulders.

"Okami no Ryoshi no Otoko." He murmurs. "You didn't want me to tell you."

A weak excuse at best.

She turns away from him. "I don't want to talk about it."

There is salt in the air.

"Why are you crying?" He sits on the edge of her — his, it used to be his — bed, his hands clasped uselessly in his lap. "And more importantly, what must I do to make you laugh again?"

"How can you be Okami-sama?" She asks him. "You nearly drown yourself in the Nakano River."

"My foot slipped." He says. "I assure you it was not intentional."

She turns back around, tears forgotten for the moment as she smiles through them. "Even gods have such moments?"

"Especially this god." He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "I have always been clumsy, Tsukuyomi often said so."

She laughs, watery and indistinct. "I guess this means that I just didn't have eyes to see." She smiles, a little bitter around the edges. "I tried to talk to you for so long every night, but you were sitting just outside the door."

"I am sorry." He says and finds that it is true. "Will you be able to forgive me?"

If he had known, oh but what does it matter if he had known?

He had always been called a heartless god. Even Goya remarked upon it once or twice. You have a heart with a wall of ice, Okami-nii.

Yet still, he wants her forgiveness very much, and more than forgiveness, he wants her love. He wants to be the reason for her happiness, wants to stay by her side.

Chikasa sighs, the sound a soft thing. "Perhaps later, Okami-sama. I would have to forgive myself first."

He doesn't want to be Okami-sama. "O-ryoshi. It is still my name." He says when she raises eyes to look at him. "And I would like if you could call me so."

She smiles, the first genuine smile he's seen since she woke up again. "O-ryoshi then." She agrees, a faint amusement in her scent. "You look like you need to rest."

He shakes his head. "No."

His hand finds hers. "Will you tell me about yourself, Chikasa?"

"It is not so interesting." She begins. "I was born Nagatori Chikasa, to Nagatori Saekon and Nagatori Mei. My mother died of illness when I was small, and my father of an accident in the rice paddies. My uncle gave me to the care of Kaede-san of your temple in exchange for money…"

His eyes fall closed.

---

I was born Nagatori Chikasa. She'd said to him so many years ago. Nagatori Chikasa.

It is a name he has not forgotten.

What is ten years to a god?

---

"It is a fearful thing to love

what death can touch.

For

your life has lived in me,

your laugh once lifted me,

your word was a gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

'Tis a human thing, love,

a holy thing,

to love

what death has touched."

— Chaim Stern, It is a Fearful Thing to Love What Death can Touch

---

A.N. So I've been working on this in bits and pieces for at least a good six months, and this monster is still unfinished. So this is part one of Okami's story. I have part two planned, but as of yet, unwritten.

This chapter really doesn't have a lot of the characters we're familiar with in Bloodless, or even Naruto really. A lot of this just builds the backstory of how the Inuzuka Clan came to be, and what sort of character Okami happens to be, so if you've stuck with me this far, I'm really thankful.

And heads up, I'm working on the next chapter of Bloodless. It is half done, and if all goes well, we should be returning to Hana's world by next Friday 12/14/18. I also hope to get several other chapters of my ongoing fics out by Christmas for those of you who celebrate the holiday. If there's a next chapter that you'd really want to see, feel free to send me a PM and I'll see what I can do.

And always, always, I am grateful to the people who support me through this massive adventure. All of your theories and speculations and thoughts about Danzo in the last chapter really cheered me up a lot these past months. Thank you so much you guys.

~Tavina