Flock Together
- Chapter2: Kokoro -
Kokoro was the second daughter of the first crow demon. The world was new when she and her sister were born, and the First Betrayal had only just rocked the world.
They were each tasked with protecting and populating a Roost - a colony where crow demons would grow and live. The Northern roost sat in a small glen of woodland, just off the coast. The Southern roost laid in a marshy wetlands, among islands and rivers. They created more demons in their own image - with black wings and sharp red eyes.
They had been happy and prosperous, for a long while. Her father had stopped visiting after a time, paranoid the humans would try something again, but the task they were given was meant to last until the world ended and they let him be.
Years - decades - passed, and Kokoro and her sister gave up thinking he'd ever return from his wanderings. When they reached out to his shadows, he seemed... distracted.
News eventually came of one of the human villages, of their success in deciphering the demonic script that could seal a Tailed Demon. Frightened by the possibility of another Betrayal Event, Kokoro directed her Roost to work with the other demons nearby, to eliminate that knowledge.
Seals of power, written in the demon's own script, bent the 'Truth' of a demon, and forced them to obey. While the demons may be strong, those humans were cunning, and quick to steal power wherever they could. Overconfident with their abilities, or perhaps too prideful to call for more help, much of her own murder was quickly subdued by the developing seal-masters.
Shackled by seals, her own murder led the humans back to the Northern Roost. The one place she had been tasked to protect.
When she arrived, there was already nothing but shattered wood and battered reeds where thousands of nests once wove between branches. The bodies of her children perched blankly upon the trees, seals carved into their hearts until they could do nothing but obey.
Contracted.
In the broken pieces of her home, her heart shattered with it.
Ashamed and scared and trying not to fall apart at the seams, she directed the remaining unmarked members to join her sister's Southern Roost. Told them to be wary of humans, to hide their home.
In an act of vengeance, she whispered into the ears of other demons, who spread her words to the nearby nations.
"Uzushiogakure has demon-controlling seals " she spread, and watched as the sleeping beasts of Kiri and Kumo raised their heads, and readied their shinobi. "They have forced contracts with demons, and already made a strike against an opposing clan, in another nation's borders."
All of this was true, after all. The humans had such strict rules about territories. She knew they feared and hungered power, and suspected they would be motivated to act. Her Roost had lain within the borders of the Land of Hot Water, and her children had never agreed to the contract. There was easy proof, for anyone who cared to look. Her shattered roost was the workings of humans, and her truth was clear to any demon who listened.
And they listened.
Kiri and Kumo became hurried allies, and struck both suddenly, with devastating effect.
Within three days, the Land of the Whirlpools had been obliterated, their surviving humans scattered to the four winds. What few remained were hunted down, Kokoro's vengeful wings scouring the landscape for the last of the seal-masters. Her strength was for stealth, not strength, but being the daughter of a First Demon had its perks. Still, 'eye for an eye' hadn't restored her heartbreak, and she knew the secrets of their language were taken with the humans who escaped her eyes. The art of sealing still lingered in survivors.
Kokoro lived alone for many years, acting as a hunter and guardian, keeping the peace between other lesser demons as a messenger and neutral third party.
Those deaths - her mistakes weighed heavy in her heart.
Eventually, she got word that her sister had vanished as well.
One of her old subjects had hunted her down to inform her of the fact, and Kokoro felt ashamed that she hadn't even noticed the emptiness in her shadows. Grief kindled in her heart anew, and her strong wings faltered as guilt gave way to despair. Red eyes sealed closed, one pair after another, emotion finally overwhelming her self control. What use was she, if she couldn't even protect-
Refusing the invitation to leadership, Kokoro decided to have one last child, to carry on her legacy and take over the Southern Roost. A child in the direct line of the first crow demon, who she would gift with all of her memories and regrets and knowledge that humans were not to be trusted. Not just the basics of the world, but all of it.
She poured the shattered pieces of her broken heart into one last egg, in the hopes of a child who would not make the same prideful mistakes she had. Ready to let herself fall to pieces, she poured everything she could into it.
One last hope.
But the child was Kuroko.
And Kuroko did not inherit even a small measure of her mother's instincts, as a full-blooded demon should have done.
Kuroko did not mature to adulthood as soon as she hatched. She could not speak, could not move, could not shed her weak form to become one with the shadows to protect herself.
Even after the shadowjump forced her lifesoulself through the girl's body and Kuroko learned to speak, things… still weren't right.
She didn't instinctively know how to feel for her own self or the shadows, which were their birthright. She ate physical food when hungry, matured like a mortal bird, shed feathers like a mortal bird... She had to learn to fly, and train her muscles like they were actual tissues, and learned so slowly it was almost physically painful to watch.
She acted like a mortal bird, not like a demon who emulated a bird's form.
Compared to the countless young crow demons she had founded in the Northern Roost, she wondered if she should have given those other half-dead eggs a chance.
But…
Kuroko was so happy when she succeeded at the silliest things, and turned to look at her mother for approval. She did try her best, and purred with happiness whenever Kokoro gave her the slightest affection.
She was a wonderful daughter.
Kokoro loved her.
Her blood was pure, yet the girl's heart seemed more mortal than demon.
She could not lead the Roost.
She resented her daughter, for that.
And then hated herself for thinking it.
The self hatred manifested as an injury, as spiritual wounds did for her kind. Every time her daughter struggled with something she should have been born knowing, Kokoro felt a flicker of that resentment and then the corresponding blade of pain shooting across her foot when it inevitably morphed into self disgust.
If she let those emotions grow any bigger, it might spread. Her broken heart couldn't take much more of this, and the warmth that Kuroko created when being so innocent was nowhere near strong enough to heal her.
Steeling herself, Kokoro turned the Roost's occasional visits to help with border patrols into a steady return, easing back into the flock. It was... hard, pulling herself back together. It seemed like the slightest breeze would scatter her feathers into dust, and every new emotional twist dug deeper than it should have. Still, she had her resolve.
They seemed to accept her without a problem, but she knew trying to grab for power so suddenly after refusing for so long would not go over well. Her sister had only recently gone missing - barely a blink ago, to their ageless forms.
She left Kuroko to the wolves more often than not, telling her to practice this and that, trying to get her daughter's body strong enough to survive as a crow, if not a demon.
And then the Southern Roost seemed to be invaded in earnest, and she had to help them. Unsure if she'd even return, Kokoro quickly instructed Kuroko on Shadow Listening, trying to hide the deep relief she felt when the girl was able to grasp it.
The crow demons were mobilized, and she sent her daughter to the Foxes, in the hopes she would struggle through the journey and grow on her own.
She didn't have much hope.
By the time Kokoro got back to the Southern Roost, the human invaders had already been pushed back. Something niggled at her heart, that the worst was yet to come. Still, she organized patrols and ensured her crows would have their eyes throughout their land, whispers coordinated through the shadows.
They seemed receptive to her, and one of the older crows straight up asked if she would step up to lead the clan or not. Kokoro sidestepped the question, buying herself a little more time.
Her sister's Roost, and what was left of her old Roost - they needed her. They needed the guidance, and someone to keep them hopeful. It was the reason she had been created from her father's shadow. To protect.
But so too, did her daughter need her, and she knew the girl wouldn't survive a week under the criticizing gaze of a flock that expected any offspring of hers to be their next leader. If she showed weakness - WHEN she showed weakness, they'd revolt - both against her daughter, and against herself.
The gods wouldn't curse the child of a good leader, after all. It was already a risk, letting the wolves and foxes know about her.
With the potential of a full invasion on the horizon, she didn't have much of a choice.
She had step in to take her sister's place, and leave her daughter behind.
Her heart was still heavy when she slid through the shadows, to the tall pine tree that marked the fox's territory. Her daughter was unusually quiet, and seemed fine not talking.
That was good, she didn't want to do this in front of the foxes. They at least, still had faith in her, if not in her child. She did not miss the scornful looks they shot at Kuroko's back, when she had asked how the girl's training had gone.
Not well, they said. No progress.
Somehow, the news couldn't even make her feel worse than she already did.
She returned the two of them to the nest, a leaden ball pulling down her heart.
She had to make a choice.
Her daughter's happiness, or the Roost's safety.
Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a contest.