Part IV: Graves Hidden in Leaves

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The clop of teeming mourners' clogs—sounds of bad things on the horizon. They marched along, humming hymns and sighing sighs, black strokes against a brown street chocked with mud, sludge, leaves; rains had not been kind to this place, like they were to Carmilla.

When the Lord assigned you a calling, you took it; you did not refuse it; you embraced it; you cherished it for that was all you knew—that was what you were born to do.

She had to take it back whence it came, return his signs to his dwelling place. Her heart wept; eyes, silent, bespeaking a coldness that was best suited to loners without flesh and blood. And was it not so for her now, too? It was—truly was.

It was night when Hanabi had gone away to re-unite with her fragile medic; and Hinata, alone and desperate, went into the forest's bowels. Seduced by whispers of Naruto's voice, she stepped into the darks. Men screamed and ran after her into danger's mouth, with haunting barks.

And they saw Naruto's voice in the devious Reaper's mouth: what a riot of duality? Then, when her senses came to in a mind betrayed by body's grief, she darted towards the illuminated bounds of her dearest Leaf. Just a step too short; just a step too late—its beak ripped through her spinal cord whilst she fled for her life.

Blood gushed and rushed from her splintered spine: the Reaper's beak created a hole so big that her innards fell out the back; she could not scream, could not run, could not walk. Crumpled to the ground amidst the trembling black murder of Reapers, she lay prone; and they gripped her long hair and pecked into her flesh over and over again, drawing out the beaks and whatever came with them; and by the time the pursuing men alighted the area with Chakra-made fires to drive away the fear-apparelled monsters (with faces pretty) into the earth's deep, the seducer had consumed all of her limbs with his brethren in arms. The villagers only managed to save a face twisted in a telling terror of pain and a lump of misshapen and bloody breast, which they could not devour in hurry!

The Men returned with tears in their eyes and cries in their bosoms; they cleaned blood off her face and breast and closed her eyes. Hanabi interred her into this land's bosom. She did not want her to become ash and dust—sometimes, you needed more than memories to survive . . . (a gravestone was a place you could see and love, a mark of your kin's eternal dwelling.)

When Hanabi was little, she looked at the night through her fingers and was frightened of the tricks darkness played on her still-maturing mind: black-clothed crones jumping behind houses to catch children; smiling faces framed well between trees; ghosting children singing through wind, calling out to her . . .

How quickly people grew up, but most never left the fear behind—that uneasy sensation of a phantom hand on the shoulder in the night forest's wilderness; ghosts out for Men's souls; beasts who prowled and waited in burrows. Man was a creature of fear: it made his life, made him who he was; made a woman from girl and man from boy.

Hanabi's eyes could not drink sleep to satisfy their thirst. The men said it was good to catch winks with your friend and family; but she questioned the loyalty of former and sorely missed the latter. She stopped her tears when she lay her sister into the grave; now, standing upon the smooth earth broken by rain droplets, her mind was made anew: she would destroy him—even if it meant her own destruction!

The villagers could not stop the coming tides of Reapers from hurtling across Konoha. The monks left a curlicued symbol by carving it into the wooden gate that was the threshold of their peace! This place was tainted. Cursed. Lost. Soon, they would breach the walls, kill in their sleeping brother's name, maim all Men to their fill!

"I'm sorry," Sakura said, standing under the transformative gleam of this setting sun. Her lips, poor pink and chapped, told half-truths and new-lies. Hanabi did not know whom to believe, but Sakura was the last thread of her going sanity. If Hanabi did not trust her, who would? It was mercy Hanabi chose to give her. It was all right—she was forgiven.

"I—" Sakura stopped, and she stopped these days, often. Shielding her face with her hand, she blinked as rain fell softly and slowly through Autumn's thick and tedious air choked up with death. Her eyes changed shades, going from grassy green to liquid green in seconds. She was weeping.

Hanabi wore everyday clothes with a narrow obi. She bundled up her hair with only one hairpin. This was not the evening for formalities. He had rung the greatest clarion bell from Carmilla's beating breast, and its crashing toll dented the fear in her heart and left wrath as a lasting consequence.

"I'm going to Carmilla!" Hanabi said and rolled her tongue over her lips, robbed of their delicate nature in grief and toil.

"Now?" Sakura questioned, heart singing in her eyes. "Don't go so soon. They might come back!"

"So what—do you want to die here like a rat? We're good as dead here, anyway!" Hanabi said by looking at Sakura in the eyes; and she saw nothing but resignation there.

Sakura fell silent, looking down to sigh at the bumps by her feet, upon which flowers bobbed in glee: Hinata shared this earth with many that perished before her. Sasuke, her beloved, had not been kind to her brethren. She gave him children, his brother's imitations, yet he was not satisfied in dreams: he wanted them all to perish in return for the cruelty they showed to his darling brother and his long-dead kin. She would have to go there, talk to him, make him grant them all forgiveness . . .

With that strong thought, face brightening with a going yellow and coming smile, Sakura draped an arm around the shoulder of the shorter girl. She looked ahead at the mounds that rain struck with kindness; and they were stagnant like the dead ocean's waves, frozen in place to turn into a welcoming grave. Someday, she may end up deep in there, too . . .

"I'll go with you," Sakura whispered and wiped a hand across her wet face. "I don't get frightened by the sight of guts, torn skin, and broken bodies."

"This scroll is our last hope—" Hanabi stopped and looked up at her, "—we might not come back." And the glossy whiteness of her large eyes reflected the teeth of gravestones and shades of dusk's farewells—her face sober, hiding anguish which Sakura knew all too well; yet she only smiled, her heart made for good this time . . .

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