7
Birds take flight from trees
Like thoughts of children asking, "Please…!"
Snatched into the breeze
The next day, Inazuma had a friend over to play.
"Ina! Guess what? My mommy said that she would get me a ninja hawk next week for when I start academy! It's going to be a little chick and I'm going to raise it and everything!"
"Really?" In her excitement, Inazuma forgot to hold onto a wooden block, and it clattered to the floor, bringing a carefully constructed tower down with it. She blinked at her friend, Kamomi, who was about the same age as her and who came from one of the smaller clans of the Village Hidden in the Clouds, the Torikawa clan.
The Torikawa were known for being bird-handlers and having orange hair. They could make a mental connection with their birds, which gave them a huge advantage in a fight, for they could survey their enemy's movements from high above the battlefield. These abilities meant that they were usually chosen for recon and spying, rather than front-line attack, but having a predatory bird watching your back was always useful in a fight, too.
"I wish I could have a bird too… I bet it would be fun to have a friend with you wherever you go," Inazuma pouted, jealous of her friend's luck. Her own family did have a few specific jutsu unique to it (family heirlooms is a way of looking at them), but it could hardly be called a clan.
"Don't worry, Ina, you can help me take care of it. And maybe we'll even be on the same genin team one day!"
"Most of the teams I've seen have two boys and one girl," Inazuma sulked, "I bet the last time we'll see each other is on graduation."
"Aw, don't be so sad, Ina. It'll all work out, you'll see," Kamomi waved her hands in the air for emphasis.
Inazuma leaned forward on her hands as she began stacking the blocks back up into recognizable shapes. After a few failed attempts that brought carefully structured piles falling to the floor, the blocks soon assembled into the shape of a person.
"Kamomi? Do you have a square red block anywhere?"
"Here."
Inazuma took it and set the block on the top of the humanoid structure, completing the head. She kneeled back to admire her work.
"Kamomi, have you ever met anyone from another ninja village?"
"No. I've never even been very far outside this village."
"Do you think they would be very different from us? What if they looked really different, or acted really differently, and lived really differently from us?"
"I never thought about that. What do you mean…"
"Snack time, you two!" Inazuma's mother called from the next room.
The two girls scrambled to their feet and made a beeline for the kitchen.
The wooden block man with the red-painted head stood silently on the floor.