Discalimer: I am unfortunately in possesion of no small area of Naruto or any of the characters

Warnings: None!

Akasuna no Sasori / Aburame Shino – January 23rd

Human lives pass like grains of sand through an hourglass, measured by the turning of the years which begin and end with just one day we think to be individual to each of us. But how many others are there that share this most special of days?

Like the bugs that inhabit my body and feed off my chakra, so we humans inhabit the world and devour its energy. Living and dying in a continuous circle, we measure our lives on our own individual scales, each person aging on their respective ways.

To be alive is to suffer from the pain inflicted upon us by the world in which we live. Physical or emotional trauma is soon enough entered into our lives and so we use this one day a year to help us count down the moments until we can escape into death; our final release which renders us no more.

To celebrate each day is to show how much longer you have lived than the rest, but sooner or later – when you live too much longer than everyone having clung onto life by whatever means necessary – you begin to dream of the days when the rest of the world was a part of you, when you shared with it the joys and pains of a young life filled with new experiences.

Being made of wood and paint and metal joints, I am no longer human. I no longer count down the days to a death which I know will never come. I am immortal and I do not feel the pain of others, I do not allow myself to be involved in their fleeting existences. I am the personification of art. I will last forever, and those who come after me will see only raw, everlasting beauty before they breathe their last breath.

Those individual days which are never truly individual shine so brightly in the minds of others and in our own memories that the next one is something to look forward too. Another excuse to look back at the past, to measure how far you've come, to gather together your precious people and enjoy them as though it were your last day alive – because in this life you don't know it won't be.

And with this knowledge of my own self-made immortality comes the undying certainty that nothing can hurt me. Beneath these two wooden shells there is but the tiniest semblance of mortality, too small to be touched and unable to be reached by a single soul – because no man has the power to tear away what I have created and what I have kept hold of for so many worthless mortal turnings of this year-long hourglass. It is mine and I count the years, not to my never-closer demise, but since the day I became a true, living work of art.

Each movement within me, each new life being born into my body ensures that my end is further and further away. The power that is created and placed inside me had its own limit, one that will not be reached until I have found my own. With each new celebration individual only to me, I should be coming closer and closer to my end, but instead that end moves further and further away.

My immortality is irremovable, incapable of being destroyed.

My immortality rests solely on how I protect it. I can protect myself from man-made threats, but eventually nature will re-claim my power.

So I wonder how many others share my
Individual day? How many of them . . .

Increase their power to retain immortality?

Count down the days
to their death?

How many others are thinking what
I'm thinking right now? How many others . . ?

Owari!

Thanks for reading! :3