Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Status: Incomplete
"You know, Hitomi, they say that tree is a jubokko."
She didn't turn around at the voice, instead watching the way the branches creaked and the old, worn face in the bark sighed at the interruption. She gave it a small bow, hair falling out of the bun her mother had tucked it in, before turning around.
"Hatsue-chan." She said, "What are you doing here?"
Her sister huffed, her hands settling on her hips. "Okaa-san sent me to find you. It's getting late, nee-chan. The stars are already coming out, you know."
She blinked. "Oh. I forgot to look."
She looked up, a smile filling her face as she saw the darkening horizon, the peek of the night filling the sky, bright, dancing stars coming out to play. The wind whispered around her, lifting her hair, and she hummed at the secrets it brought her.
"Do you think it will rain this year, imouto?" she murmured offhandedly, eyes riveted on the way the clouds traversed across the sky, a never ending journey.
Hatsue sighed, and then gave her a long-suffering look. She was sixteen now, and looking at her made Hitomi feel so old, like something jagged and wrong was stuck under her skin.
She'd only been a baby a minute ago, but now, now she looked a young woman with her long, curling hair, sharp chin, and wide, doe eyes.
Hitomi hadn't looked in a mirror for years, and she was half terrified about what she would face there. If she would look an image of this mother, this father, this sister, this brother, or if she'd find traces of the face she'd had, traces of smudged, blurry happiness. Of her mother's sharp nose, and high cheekbones, of her brother's dark, thundering brows, or her father's plump lips.
Or if the slate had been wiped clean of everything that had come before.
"Nee-chan…Chichi-ue and Haha-ue are worried about you." Her sister looked at her, dark brown eyes pleading. "You know, nee-chan, that the rumors from the border-towns aren't getting any better. And you can't keep wandering around, not if you're trying to avoid being killed."
She looked away from the sky, a hand coming to brush away the ebony locks that rested at her throat. "No one will find me here, not if I do not wish it."
The spirits were curious about her, even still. Even after those days at the river where she had told the kappa about her history, about those moments of death, and where it had not believed her, not even when she'd told him of the darkness she'd left behind.
And it had been so very, very dark.
She hadn't seen the kappa for a very long time, now. It had been years, but she remembered that little brook; the sound of the rushing water, the way the light reflected off the current, and how the very air seemed to still with energy, as if awaiting her arrival. For weeks, months, years, she went to the river and talked to the open air, as if the kappa could still hear her, and she told it all kinds of things.
She told it of the storm she knew was coming, the bloodthirsty war, the taste of wrath in the air. She told it of the way her heart leapt every time she thought she saw a flash in the woods, the trail of a ghostly spirit walking through the wood. She told it of the whispers she could hear on the wind, the dying sounds of secrets never to be spoken once more.
She could hear it all; their begging, the sorrows, their joy; she could hear every single prayer, every single plea.
The kappa was not the only spirit she'd ever seen.
Mere weeks after it had left her, spurred on by its scorn and distrust and quiet curiosity, she stood, barefoot in the fields, her eyes closed as she listened to the way the heat crackled in the air, and the humidity settled like a blanket over too-hot skin.
She was listening to the way the cicadas sang in the trees, listening to the way the barely weaved and bobbed in the latent breeze, listening to the soft humming of her mother's voice as she carefully shucked corn, under the high sun, the other women's voices joining her familiar songs.
"Kokiriko no take wa shichi-sun go-bu ja…."
She felt something scamper over her foot, and she paid no mind to until it spoke, "You are the one who is said to have seen the Shinigami's stomach."
A cat sat by her foot, but she was not fooled. The cats in the marketplace did not like look like this one; they did not possess that other-worldly quality of mirthful awareness she could see in its face. She saw its split tail and narrowed, glittering green eyes as it tilted its head to watch her in that particular feline way, and she knew.
It wasn't really a cat.
"Why do you think that?" She asked. The sounds of the earth had fallen away at her question, and she could not tear her eyes from the little spirit that sat in front of her.
It watched her for another moment, paws twitched, eyes locking with hers.
"The spirits talk, young one. They speak of many, many things…" it mused. "And yet…none quite so enthralling as you."
She nodded, half-lost in thought. She supposed that the kappa would be shocked and would tell all its beastie-friends of the human who spoke lies and could see the ones beyond the veil of death.
She wondered, for a brief, pressing moment, if that was why it had not returned yet; for it did not want to deal with a child as young as herself, a child so in need of direction.
"Do you know where it is?" Hitomi asked it, crouching down to her knees. "I was looking for it, but I don't know where it's gone."
The cat looked amused, "You question the kappa's departure? Such a strange little human child you are. Are you not afraid that he will steal your shirikodama—or, as you humans call it—chakra?"
She frowned. "I don't know of a chakra, and if I have it, I don't know about it. Does he desperately need it?"
The cat chuffed a laugh and it looked bizarrely appropriate on its feline face. "You are a curious one. And so very naïve."
It looked at her, contemplative, and yet a flicker of dangerous curiousity flashed in its ethereal eyes. It moved forward, twining itself around her legs, its two tails flicking into her face, slipping over her shoulders, and brushing up over her neck.
Its wet, pink nose bussed her cheek. Then it leaned back, eyes still boring into hers, not an inch away. "I wish to see you in time. With my scent, you will be protected, whether it is from myself, or from others."
"Protected from what?" Hitomi had asked, fingers twitching to pet the fussing kitty-ear. It looked so terribly soft, and it had been so long since she'd touched a pretty kitty like this one—
"Don't touch," it warned, padding backwards. "I hope your human family has taught you enough to know to never touch a yokai."
Hitomi shrugged. "They never quite believe me."
It watched her, eyes serious, and then it said, "I will find you again, when the time is right. Until then, you will be safe."
"Nee-chan?"
Hitomi blinked.
Hatsue was grabbing her by the shoulders, brown eyes wide in worry, mouth slack.
"Nee-chan—!" She started.
Hitomi smiled, "I'm fine, Hatsue-chan. I got lost a little, that's all."
Her sister watched her for a moment, catching the way Hitomi blinked rapidly, her arms coming around to clasp around her waist. She looked, in that instance, small; the moonlight making her frame more slender, her face more sunken, ghostly, in the light of the sick moon.
"Hitomi, you can't…you cannot do this any longer. The villagers are scared. They are scared of the war that comes, and with that fear comes malevolence." Hatsue told her, voice low and worried. She was so close, Hitomi could see the freckles that bridged over her nose and cheeks.
"I love you sister, I truly, truly, do but you must be more careful." Hatsue begged, drawing her forehead to her own. Hitomi closed her eyes, breathed in the smell of warm hay and sunshine-grass and honeyed bread of her sister's hair.
"They are scared of you, sister. They are scared of your mind, and where it goes, for no one can follow you when you leave your body behind. They are scared of the woods you traverse so freely, of the way you stop and weave flowers in your hair and hum your foreign songs. Of the way you speak, with a dip of unrecognizable accent—everything about you is unknown, sister. If there was only a way to…assuage them of their doubts then, maybe, they could see…you are nothing to fear."
Hitomi blinked, and then stumbled back. "Oh, I see. Mother has sent you here to convince me to marry Hiroyuki again."
There was a flash of guilt in Hatsue's eyes and then it was steeled away by determination. "You know he is a fine choice. The butcher's boy. He will have enough food to take care of you." Hatsue huffed a desperate chuckle, searching her sister's eyes. "He surely has enough brawn to fight away any who try to harm you."
Her sister's eyes softened, something like bitterness filling them. "But most of all…he holds a fondness for you, sister, especially after that day at the market, when you danced, and your eyes looked like starlight, and the sunflowers in your hair looked like the spirit's blessings."
Hitomi remembered little of that day. She remembered little apart from the yearning inside her stomach, the very fabric of her being, to dance. She remembered seeing the little deformed man slumped in the ditch, and his tight, white-knuckled grip on his little flute and she'd felt it burst free, and found herself approaching him before her mother could hold her back.
"Hello," she remembered saying, her yukata getting muddy as she knelt in the dirt. She remembered his eyes, sunken and red, and his mouth, bitter and wobbling. He smelt of vomit and dirt and sickness.
"What." He snarled at her.
She merely smiled, "I like your flute. Can you play?"
He watched her, black eyes flashing with something a little too close to quiet desperation.
"Yes," he grunted out.
"If I give you a coin," she asked, "will you give me a tune?"
And she remembered the way the music had pulled at her, and she had swayed to and fro and the melody had filled her parched soul like the first rain after a drought. She remembered the way the music had healed her, and the way her face felt wet and hot as the tears slid down her cheeks, and yet she still danced, even when she heard the whispers of the villagers on her ears and the tug of the wind on her skin.
She danced and danced and danced until her feet felt numb and her smile stretched her mouth and she felt whole once more, if only for a little.
And when she had done, when she had bowed to the little deformed man, who looked at her as if she were half-spirit herself, she found him looking at her—Hiroyuki.
"He wants to marry you," Hatsue was saying, but Hitomi only felt the tug of anxiety in her chest.
"I don't love him." She found herself looking into her little sister's eyes, and telling the truth for the first time in years. She found her mind clear and strong, and grounded right with her feet.
Hatsue shook her head. "You can grow to love him."
She shook her head no. "I won't love him. Hiroyuki-san only loves the idea of me; a wild girl with too much spirit, one he wants to tame and keep in his pocket."
"You know he cannot tame you, Hitomi." Hatsue whispered. "He cannot even begin to succeed."
"But he can try," she answered, "and I will always hate him for that."
Hatsue spoke no more, and they left the tree, not looking back.
Hitomi thought she'd seen a glimpse of amused, glittering green eyes out of the corner of her sight, but when she turned to look for them, they had vanished, and Hatsue would not wait for her to linger.
jubokko means a tree-spirit, and they usually grow where there's been bloodshed.
kappa means a spirit who inhabits a river or a stream
the song kokiriko no take wa shichi-sun go-bu ja is a song that's over 200 years old and it's sung on farm-fields by laborers during the day.
Please enjoy this update!