"Mother! Mother!" Mei's call had me looking up from the seedling resting in my hands. Its leaves fluttered in the light breeze and its roots wound down between my dirt-dusted fingers. A line of other, freshly-planted seedlings stretched out to the left of where I knelt in the tilled dirt, and others waiting to have their roots planted in the soil sat to my right. Brown had worked its way into the knees of my white, medical-nin attire and smudged my face, but I didn't mind that. I had long learned to work the ground and tease life and crops from it as well as nurse waning flickers of life back into flame in humans.
"What is it, Mei?" I asked, when the little one stopped her headlong rush outside the perimeter of my garden. Unless they were helping plant my children did not disturb the sacred place I went to to find peace.
"There are people coming, mother!"
"Oh? Then we should go to greet them." I said the last standing and dusting off my hands. Defying my efforts the dirt stubbornly clung along the ridge of the old scar in my right palm. Ignoring it, I held the hand out to one of the youngest of my current daughters. "Come on, Mei."
In reality I'd known for some time we would be having guests. They hadn't bothered to hide their chakra and I had sensed them for almost twenty minutes. But even if I hadn't recognized all three of the life energies coming toward my home, I wouldn't have been concerned. No one bothered the strange medical-nin or the group of orphans that were the white clad one's children. Those in the nearest villages had even begun to come to me for assistance when they were threatened by bandits or rogue nin. It was no secret along this stretch of borderland where the Rain, the Grass, and the Land of Fire came together that the medic with the no-color hair and odd eyes, which seemed to look through a person as much as at them, was formidable and forbidding. People were uncomfortable with me, but the bandits stayed away and the villagers came to me for healing.
And if there was a child without a family, with no one to care for them, they found their way to me and I taught them how to defend themselves. From the Land of Waterfalls, from the Land of Earth, from the Land of Wind, from the Land of Rivers, from the Land Water, and the Land of Lightening… Those and more. Fire, Grass, and Rain also gathered under my roof. Most notably Rain. Representatives of all the ninja world made up my band, but of the twenty-three I currently called my own half were of the Rain.
I did not question it; not how they came to me. Out of nowhere my little ones would appear on my porch, some escorted by adults, most alone, apart from a bird of prey perched on their thin shoulders. Sometimes the bird would have a scroll tied to its leg, most times it would not. I did not question this, either. It had been four years since I'd left Konoha and built the orphanage I'd once told my caretaker I would have if I could do anything with my life. In those years children had come; some had grown and gone. The day-to-day reality of it was enough.
And sometimes I had visitors.
It was a short walk from my garden to the path leading away from the long, low structure of my house. Coming out of the trees toward it were three well-known figures. A large, scarred man in a long, dark coat, a tall woman dressed in a white uniform mirroring mine, and a lithe girl dressed in ANBU armor.
"They're shinobi, mother," Mei said, griping my hand with both of hers.
"Yes, they are. Shinobi of the Leaf." I smiled down at my child, then turned my gaze back on those approaching. The medical-nin was waving and calling, "Ko! Hey, Ko!"
I waved back and soon the five of us came together. The lithe one in ANBU attire said, "Mother," and wrapped me in an embrace. If my eldest had still been shorter than me she would have tucked herself against my side, under my arm, but Haru had grown while I had stayed the same, and now I found I had to look up at her.
Mei griped my hand harder and looked up at my other child with nervousness. "Mother?" she queried.
"Yes, Mei," I returned, turning another small smile on my little one. "Haru is your sister. And Rai." I twirled the girl slow on her feet with the hand she clung to so she faced my fellow medical-nin. "Is your aunt."
"Hello, Mei," Rai said the words with a slightly uncomfortable look on her face, but Mei never noticed.
She frowned at my once-caretaker for a moment, then turned her appraising eyes on Ibiki, the famed torturer of Konoha. "Are you my uncle?"
The scarred man's dark eyes took in the little girl with quiet interest. "Uncle?"
The repetition of the word broke my control. Unable to stop myself I burst into high peals of laughter. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said after a moment, calming myself. "I couldn't help it, Morino-san." And really I couldn't, but I still needed to correct my daughter. "Ibiki isn't your uncle, Mei. He's…" I paused, wavering over the next word I wanted to speak. "He's a friend." And that had become true somehow over the passing years. He'd done his duty to Konoha where I was concerned, then done what he could to help me. Even when I had made it hard.
"Look, mother!" Mei let out, forgetting herself and pulling me from my remembrances. "Aida is here!"
The clear cutting call of a raptor on the air confirmed this, drawing my attention up for a moment. "Yes, he is. Why don't you take our visitors to the house, Mei? I'll be right behind you."
Rai gave me a quizzical look, but Ibiki didn't react at all, and Haru seemed to know I wanted privacy. She held out a hand to Mei and said, "Will you show me what mother built?" Mei took the proffered hand and soon I was alone.
I raised an arm and Aida came down in a graceful whirl of feathers and claws. So tender the grip of those claws on my arm, just as the snap of its rending beak on my fingers. Ryo's summon knew me well and was always gentle with me. I stroked its chest, then reached to loosen the scroll on its leg. When I had it in my hand Aida sprang off my arm with a screech. I watched him go, then unrolled the scroll. My brother's familiar handwriting danced across the paper in thin, pristine characters. His messages were rare and his words few, but they were enough. We would never see each other again, but somewhere, wandering all the world, my brother was free.
And I had visitors. Tucking the small scroll away, I raised my head to the sun and started down the path to my home where my children's voices were soaring in greeting. Haru would doubtless be buried in young, squirming bodies, Rai would be flustered and flushed, and Ibiki… It would be interesting to see Ibiki among children.
The thought was the best of it.