"Your skin looks pretty, though," whispers Tsunade with her hands on his cheeks. Her nose scrunches with a cat-ish grin. "Kinda jealous."
Orochimaru gapes and gasps, tears spilling down his face, unable to stop shaking. The snakes are crawling all over him.
Up his sides.
Down his arms.
All over Tsunade.
.
The snakes talk to him.
They listen to every word he says.
Like magnets, their eyes; always focused on his.
What does bread taste like?
Why do you hesitate to strike?
Where are your others?
Orochimaru swallows. "I think you are my family," he explains.
The snakes gape their mouths and hiss.
That is funny, snow child. You are too tall.
.
Hiruzen-sensei says that animals are like people; though they can't easily speak, they feel as humans do. Their silence only heightens their awareness. They speak with their eyes.
Orochimaru discovers this himself when he's running barefoot through the woods one night beside Tsunade, jumping off tree limbs and sending leaves tumbling down to the grass floor. She looks prettier than him with her hair blown back.
When his feet finally meet dirt, there's a rubber hose beneath one arch. The sound of air hissing from a nozzle causes him to lift it back up.
A snake writhes into a spiral the moment his foot leaves, striking out for his heel, two fangs hooking right beneath his skin, right close enough the tips pop back out. There's a shimmering spray of poison.
"Orochimaru!" Tsunade cries. "Don't touch that!"
"Poison must enter the bloodstream to work," Orochimaru calmly explains. The pain isn't as respectable as her. The snake writhes beneath him all the while. It can't seem to free itself and he makes no move to help.
It has black eyes.
Black eyes so black there is nothing but pupil.
Black eyes so black they don't have anything inside them.
He doesn't save it. Won't even dream about it later. He ends its life with a stomp.
Its eyes have nothing inside them when it dies.
Sensei is a liar yet again. Tsunade runs away just like him.