On her first night alone with Okojo, Sakura had not known so much fear since her earliest weeks in the forest.

She was plagued hour after hour with all manner of insidious ideas of all the ways he could be hurt, the uselessness of the protective charms and prayer beads on her door weighing down upon her. Not once had she seen any predators, not any that would pose any real threat to them, anyway. The boy was small, but he could fight off owls and eagles without much trouble. There were no tigers or mountain lions that she knew of, and though she'd heard an occasional wolf howl, they kept well outside her circle of allowance. Snakes and poisonous toads, both easily able to sneak without making a sound, were by far what frightened her the most, aside from humans.

And though not one of the sick, injured, or wandering people she'd met had tried to harm her, that had to be an enormous stroke of luck. When she had only herself to look out for, well, it wasn't that she didn't care if she lived or died; she was convinced she could heal through any wound, except maybe a mighty enough blow to the head or heart—and even then, she would need to be exhausted of all chakra to not have a protective barrier to absorb the shocks.

Now, though, she found herself wide-eyed and clutching at her blanket as she fretted over everything. What if she weren't quick enough to dash to the rescue, should someone go for Okojo instead of her? Of course now that she knew she was lacking in speed, it was something she could both compensate for and work on.

It was with thoughts of a mother bear standing on her hind legs, making herself as big as she could, the mighty roar that erupted from her throat sending poachers fleeing in all directions, that she found sleep.

The next few days carried on in much the same way, long and punctuated, her routine interrupted by her extended guest as they navigated this new life together. She had the vague inclination that much of her past had been spent on her toes, her schedule never quite having the breathing room to fully adjust before some whirlwind adventure spun her along elsewhere. It came naturally to her, the structuring of order from a bit of chaos. And though she was still without her memories, what Madara said during their spar had been right—she'd definitely trained with a master.

Maybe two.

Lesson after lesson poured through her and out from her tongue. She'd known exactly where to start with someone who knew little more than how to climb a tree using only their feet. She knew how to explain the nuances of chakra control in terms he would understand, helped him visualize the push and pull of it, the river of it running through him.

Combat training came each morning only after ample time for stretches and breathing exercises. He did not like those, but he was a fine student who managed—mostly—not to pout for too long before they got to what he dubbed the good stuff. At that age he was all budding energy, his mind eager, she knew, and she used that to goad him into attacking her in the hopes of improving his form. It helped, of course, that it was already in the process of becoming refined thanks to his clan's efforts, though he was all offense and very little defense. It lit her on fire from the inside out; raising a child as little more than a front-line soldier...!

She taught him how to speed up his flow on command, how to gather it at crucial spots to absorb the force of a punch or a kick. He was fast—a family trait, she knew somehow from her forgotten memories—and her evasion improved in turn. She recalled her mentor, the one who'd been in charge of the bulk of her progress, had tried to encourage speed and saw value in ducking and dodging, but Sakura had always found that rather uninteresting. She'd been far prouder of the damage she could both deal and withstand through means of chakra control only—and, of course, prouder still of healing.

It was difficult to practice with no steady source of injuries. Okojo was firmly against bringing animals any intentional harm (and she was, truthfully, beginning to tire of the fact that mushrooms had become such a staple in her diet of late, feeling rather less hungry with each passing day), and without much control of her radiating healing aura—something she wasn't even sure, at this point, was even chakra at all—it left them with few options between the injured soldiers that wandered into the woods. And with no predators in these wilds, their chances of stumbling upon a maimed deer or otherwise were slim, as well.

The most important thing, to her, was to ensure that he understood one ultimate truth: that there would be bruise and blood and bone, none of it in any small measure. He would need to make peace with having his hands in places they otherwise shouldn't be, and, of course, that sometimes he would fail. It stung her heart when he'd nodded seriously and signed with resolve, I know.

It was no light thing, to have the death of another on one's conscience—and he'd seen his fair share of it in the ongoing war.

The boy was a fine teacher, too, and patient. At first he communicated solely through writing, showing her the corresponding hand signs and having her repeat them back to him ad nauseam until they were perfected. It resulted, in those early days, with the two of them conversing very little; mostly just her doling out instruction or quickly barking an order to use less chakra (control was all about using less to accomplish more, after all), which he diligently tried to follow and correct. It was the least she could do to offer him the same in return as he showed her the basics of his language, writing their meanings in careful strokes on any surface they could find. Most of her paper, which wasn't much to begin with, was used within the very first month. As a result, the outside of the wooden planks that made up her home slowly became covered with his neat and even brush stokes.

Once each week they would set out together to gather herbs and wild plants. Okojo, still young enough to be all curiosity without much of the caution, soon realized how they would never fan too far from home, and he asked after it on the third week. She'd paused momentarily, then sunk to her haunches to hack away at a dirt-covered root.

"If you go too far," she explained, "then I can't follow you, and that means I can't protect you."

When she stood to toss the freed root into the woven basket strapped to his back, he asked,

Why?

She furrowed her brows, his childish pursuit of knowledge dredging up a feeling of discomfort inside her that she couldn't name. "I don't...really know. There's a certain line I can't cross that can't be seen. Only felt. It gets bigger very slowly, but I don't know when it might stop."

What happens if you cross it?

"I don't know that, either."

He looked around, almost like he were hoping to find the boundary she spoke of and smash it himself. So you never tried?

She couldn't help a small smile at that, her pessimism no match for a child's inquisitiveness. She gave her answer in silent hand movements. I haven't tried, no. Do you think I should?

There was a brief pause as he thought over this question with sincerity. She'd sank back down on her haunches before him, her arms crossed over knees when he replied, Maybe not. Is it scary?

The word itself stirred that nearly-forgotten dread in her, from that first time she'd toed the invisible line that marked her outer limits. It had been so small then, though it felt like she'd walked for hours to get there at the time. Her creeping freedom equal parts welcome and deeply troubling, for exactly whom was the one responsible for it in the first place?

She suppressed the oncoming shiver and answered, It is.

His face was so serious to be so young. When nii-san comes back, he'll go with you. Quickly he added, With us.

She smiled at him. Okay. Sounds good to me.

It was midday when a flurry of activity sounded in the brush—heavier now than it had been even a few weeks ago—made the two of them turn their heads, halting their spar. The voices were laced with anxious energy, but Sakura recognized them as her samurai. She brightened for only a moment before logic took hold: people only ever came to her hut for one thing anymore, and sure enough, the second they burst through the trees and the low leaves, she knew immediately that one of them was very near death.

He was held suspended between his two brothers-in-arms, his feet dragging on the ground behind them. It seemed likely, from the way they were limping right alongside him, that they'd come here in quite the rush, exacerbating each of their conditions. Nevertheless she ran to them, thrusting out her arms to take hold of him as she shouted the names of specific herbs and reagents for Okojo to gather, as quickly as he could.

She carried the man inside, scurrying through the main room to lay him on her own cot, letting her healing aura seep into him all the while. The two other men had followed as quickly as they could, but one of them winced in pain and fell to the floor of the main room, bracing on one knee with his hand against the wall. She hurried to her feet, eager to ensure the boy could handle himself when she returned to the more gravely-wounded man.

"Lay down," she commanded, pointing harshly to the futon in the corner. While she spoke, she guided the samurai in the most stable condition down onto the floor. "Okojo—just as we practiced on the last one." Except the stakes now were far higher than the pleasure woman who'd arrived with an uneven burn down her leg; her sister had been in hysterics over it. "Healing flow to ensure he's stable enough for a deeper assessment. Begin. Anything you can't handle, tell me right away." For him, that meant smacking the wall as hard as he could to get her attention.

She couldn't be sure how long exactly it'd taken for her to arrive at her level of skill. Three years? Five? As she called out steady, confident direction to Okojo from the next room over, she performed all of the same motions, though her assessments and healing could exist in harmony, synchronized. In time, she hoped, he would develop the same expertise.

All the while, the men tried to put on brave masks through their anguish. As Okojo healed his patient enough for the man to regain coherency and sit up, the former hurried to the wash basin to soak a rag and thrust it into his hands with a wet slap before hurrying to the other charge.

Sakura, though, was struggling to comprehend the scope of this man's wounds. His nose was badly broken, blood streaming out and into his mouth—much of it he'd swallowed down, doing nothing to help his collapsing lung and some crushing damage to his throat. Worse, the entire right side of his body seemed to have been impacted by the same blunt force trauma, not concentrated in any one spot in particular but spread evenly. She suspected he'd been slammed by an earth-style jutsu, and it was as she was mulling over the possibility of amputating his arm at the shoulder that she felt his heart give an exaggerated beat.

Her eyes widened, sweat beading at her temples. She sent more chakra from her palms and into his chest, speaking reassurances down to him in quiet, gentle tones that she hoped betrayed none of her mounting panic. The extent of the damage was brutal, and she winced when he spat up a deep red blood. She heaved him to the side to minimize his risk of choking, her breath catching to realize how much he'd been sweating, his clothes and her futon soaked.

She couldn't let him die, not when she was here and capable and he couldn't be more than twenty years old. Trying her best to steady her hands, she released her yin seal, only a fraction of it, the first time she'd needed to since she arrived here. Already she could feel the boost to her stamina and her power, so much so that she drew her lips into a thin line as she deepened her concentration—if she flooded his system too carelessly, she risked shocking the system and losing him regardless.

But something curious happened then as she sent her healing flow through him: the pathways of his nervous system and his chakra pathways appeared in her mind's eye, his organs and bones and muscles visible to her in perfect clarity. She swallowed, overwhelmed and fascinated by it in the same breath. It was then that she realized that, in her preoccupations with his chest and throat, she'd missed that some of the bone from his broken nose had pierced just a fraction into his brain. She sucked in a sharp breath, her heart nearly shattering for him, and then she saw something stir.

Just off-center from his chest sat the seat of his soul, a flame tiny and flickering as a candle burnt down too far.

Her breath hitched, her mind struggling to accept what it was she saw while realizing with exponential anxiety that, despite her efforts, she was losing him indeed. He'd been so close to the brink of death when they'd arrived, but if she just pushed a bit harder, just reached in a bit deeper to take hold of that flame and breathe her life into it, wouldn't that be enough? The essence of him was visible to her, nestled there where his heart was struggling to pump his blood, so she had to—

A gurgling in his throat froze her thoughts. That deep red life of him was spilling out of his mouth now, his glassy eyes hazing over in a way that she knew meant the end. Glowing, sparkling bits of her chakra mingled with his blood, not enough to poison him at all but clearly not enough to save him. But it should have been, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek in sheer frustration and determination, so deeply that she drew her own blood.

She sent another flooding wave of herself into him, feeling and seeing as his body tried to accept its mending power—and subsequently failed. His breaths, long and slow yet shallow for his injuries, were the only comfort she had left: despite everything, he at least would not pass in excruciating pain. But—but...! Even as he went limp in her arms she fought it, couldn't accept it, wouldn't accept it. In her mind's eye she could see the light of him snuff out, and there was the racing memory that flew through her of her best friend's heart in her fist, keeping him alive in the most primitive way imaginable.

She could have tried it. She almost did, but he was already dead there in her arms.

She wanted to wail, fought against it with everything she had. The knot in her throat ached and her heart sank, her stomach a pit of churning grief. With her yin seal still activated she refused to accept reality for another few moments, trying to force her chakra into his lifeless form. She could still see the complex composition of his body, his chakra settling save for where hers pushed it along fruitlessly. There was a hollow space where his flame had just been struggling to stay alive.

She wasn't sure when she'd started crying, but tears were dotting her knuckles and the backs of her hands. They were still aglow with the shine of her chakra, green and sparkling, too pretty a sight for such a gruesome and empty moment. She drew back the power from her yin seal, closing it off and cutting the standard flow to her arms, letting her head drop and her hair, reaching just past her shoulders today, spill over her face. Her hands slid from his sunken chest, the aching lethargy of her failure beginning to seep down through her limbs. Unable to stop herself now, she cried fully, tears streaming down her face and dripping from the tip of her nose and her chin.

Small hands gripped her shoulders, shaking her gently. One of them appeared in her line of sight, holding a wet cloth to her in offering. She sat back, adding shame to her grief for Okojo to see her weakness, for if she was not strong enough for the both of them, how could this ever work? She took the cloth from him and brought it to her face, letting the warmth and the water soothe her—but that was when she heard a strange sizzling.

The boy gave a small sound of surprise. She glanced up, pulling the cloth from her face to find the stains of her tears outlined in that gentle glow, spreading—and eating away at the fabric all the while. Confused (and perhaps more than a bit frightened), she drew it close to her eyes to examine it, ignoring the way the acrid scent of the burning fibers stung within her nostrils. When she looked to Okojo, though, he was staring down at the dead man with wide eyes.

At every place her tears had fallen, they ate through his torn and bloodied clothes. They were eroding away his flesh, cauterizing as they went, exposing his sinew and other unseemly things in small, hollow holes, not much bigger than pinpoints.

The two of them watched in a sort of mesmerized horror, until finally the acidic trail stopped at the bone. She was unsure how much more strangeness her mind and body could weather.

The samurai hadn't expected their comrade to pull through, but it hadn't made any difference. Their pained sobs tore Sakura apart, although those sounds paled in comparison to how their gratitude pierced her. She did not deserve it, not after having failed. Not after having desecrated his body with her own, but she hadn't the courage to tell them of that part exactly. His body had been carefully wrapped to conceal the small holes before she broke the news.

His family had been torn apart by the war, the others said when she asked after their plans for their departed companion. They hadn't the faintest idea where any of them had been buried—of if they'd been buried at all, let alone given proper funerary rites—and so it was with their heads bowed low despite their bandaged wounds and sore joints that they requested he be laid to rest in her woods.

It was a quick ordeal, all things considered. She and Okojo had dug up the earth not far from her hut's tiny clearing while the soldiers rested. They each helped the other men down and out to the site, and then Sakura took it upon herself to bring the body. The soldiers said kind things about him, and refused any help in lowering his body into the grave; filling it back in with dirt, though, was a group effort. Then the four of them clapped their hands in ritual, the deed being done.

Though the samurai stayed the night to rest, they were gone before dawn of the next morning. Okojo was at first distraught, but then something had caught his attention.

Your seal, he signed, and then flicked his eyes upward, a habit he'd taken on when he was thinking hard on something. But then he simply held up his hand with his thumb pressed against his palm, his forefinger curled down over it.

"Two seals?" she guessed, her voice raw from both its disuse and her still-fresh grief from the day before.

He shook his head, then held out his hand to draw invisible brush strokes along her forearm—he only did this when he was too excited or otherwise occupied to grind ink for a more formal lesson. Steadily and in big enough strokes for her to follow clearly, he wrote the character for Water, near her elbow, and then down her arm all the way to her wrist were the characters for Ripples.

Then he pulled away and showed her how to sign the word.

Nii-san taught me to throw stones on water, he went on simply, smiling expectantly. It looks like that.

Well, the strangeness of the last day had certainly worn her down. She declared that they would take the day to refill the basin, full currently of dirtied and bloodied water, tear out the soiled grasses and hair from the cots to wash the fabric, and sew clean pieces back in. There at the river she peered down and into her own reflection, and sure enough her diamond yin seal was bordered now by a larger one, nearly cutting down across the thick ends of her eyebrows, rippling outward like a skipping along the water's surface, just as Okojo said.

What else could she do but go on?

It was little more than a week since the samurai had died on her futon. She and the boy were lounging on the porch, grinding down some herbs and storing the others whole in jars. The sun was setting and their clearing was shrouded in a deep orange twilight when the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

She got to her feet slowly, hoping not to startle her assistant. Heavy footsteps thumped loudly in her ears, every inch of her skin tightening as if she were the very grass being trampled underfoot. Just the same as when Madara had left she could feel the swaying branches as men—five or six of them—dashed through the hydrangeas and smothered the patches of clover and dandelion. Through the trees she swore she could see them, glinting knives and shortswords and armor fastened around their robes. Their anger was palpable, a marked amount of adrenaline laced through it that carried them along.

They were looking for a fight.

"Get inside," she said to Okojo. He looked up at her and stood slowly, but did not otherwise move. She glanced at him from over her shoulder.

Is something wrong?

"I think so. Feels...like trouble's coming—so please go in. Don't come back out until you hear me say it's safe."

He wanted to stay, to fight. It was plain on his face, but he swallowed down the pride of it and collected their projects from the little porch, then scurried in. Sakura, meanwhile, collected herself; she sent chakra through her limbs, spreading it equally with an additional concentration in her knuckles. The tree trunks seemed to bristle and sigh with each of her steady breaths, the leaves falling eerily quiet as if even the wind was in tune with her.

Part of her wanted to sprint, to cut them off before they had a chance to get to the hut. They might not even know where to find it, but no one so far had ever reported getting lost on their way here. And she couldn't risk being so far from home to face them, should one of them branch off and harm Okojo.

They were nearly upon her now. She swallowed, hoping that whoever they were, they'd be willing to talk.

The first thing she noticed when they broke out into the clearing—not all of them, for she could feel that one was hidden in the trees overhead—was that nearly all of their heads were covered in hair black as ink, wildly thick and unkempt from their sprint here. Their eyes, though varied, were dark like stones, some grey and others closer to void. Uchiha, unmistakably, and though they were indeed talking, it was not in the hopes of negotiation or reconciliation.

Witch, came their hisses.

Look at her face, came more, their tired eyes filled with anger and bracing as they glanced up to her expanding yin seal.

One of them, their leader, perhaps, barked at the others to stay focused. She stole away the main family's youngest, he had said with a sneer. Even Madara could not stop her.

There was a strange rage bubbling inside of her, her eyes narrowing and her chakra readying and her heart racing. Something within her echoed like a warning, Do not look them in the eye.

With her eyes cast downward to their chins, she wouldn't bother telling them there was some grave misunderstanding; and even if she wanted to, their assault had already begun: a kunai was speeding towards her.

Her body moved without conscious thought. Years of grueling training returned to her in a moment, her instincts alive far more than any mere spar could trigger—she ducked to the left, her right hand flying up lightning-quick to grab the throwing knife with her bare palm. In the same instant she twirled it and sent it flying back at its original caster, another knife and three shuriken were careening towards her.

She ducked low to the ground, hearing and feeling as the weapons whirred overhead. The kunai hit the outside of the hut, and she swore a low growl sounded from somewhere deep within her. The moss was gripped so tightly between her fingers that she could feel the fibers breaking apart and staining her skin, and she sucked in a breath to find her center once more. She had no offensive jutsu at her disposal, none that she could remember, anyway, and glanced up to eye their formation. They were closing in, already giving her the advantage, and she spied a weak point at their right flank.

She hurried to her feet, letting them close in on her. With a narrow spin, the ends of her peasant's kimono fanning out around her, she channeled her chakra down through her thigh, let it pass through the knot of her knee, and flow down through her slender calf and brace itself around the ball of her foot. In the next second one of the men was flying back, slammed in the stomach by the force of her kick, crashing into one of the wide-trunked trees with a terrible cough tearing from his lungs.

The others leapt back in an instant, one rushing to his comrade's side. Another began weaving signs—ox, tiger, horse, and that was all she needed to make the assumption that a fireball was soon going to come her way. She dashed to the side to keep any flames from making a trajectory to the hut, feeling the speed and the heat of the jutsu singe at her hair and her robe. Ducked low to the ground again she glanced up, her anger at their audacity rising like bile in her throat.

The grass was warm against her palms, and as she stared down their leader she could feel the way her breaths synchronized with the forest. Maybe it was the years of hard work and diligence flooding her in instinct like a mammal thrown to water for the first time, or maybe it was their audacity to approach and attack her without a second thought, but she hated this man who stood there before her, and that was when something curious happened.

From the ground beneath his feet, the roots of a strong tree nearby burst clean through the crust and dirt and grass, so fast she could barely register what was happening. They wrapped around his ankles in an instant, snaking up his legs and squeezing him in a way that looked awfully uncomfortable. She sucked in a sharp breath, startled, feeling the familiarity of her chakra signature coursing through the wood as she once again got to her feet, aware now that the two others were weaving hand signs and risking a tag-team approach to her now that their captain was incapacitated.

It was no matter. She pushed up from the ground with a graceful flip and slipped past the sharp edge of a sword with ease, slamming her fist into the toned side of one man. Her empathy pulsing once through her fury when he let out a pained gasp and doubled over. The second man dodged her kick with an impressive backflip, but the moment he landed she tapped into that mysterious power and ensnared him, rooting him to the ground and rendering him useless.

The longer they stayed trapped, the more powerful she felt. The man who'd ran to tend to his partner had bolted at her with a shockingly loud battle cry and even more shocking speed, brandishing a shortsword that crackled with lightning. When he swung it at her, she held up her hands and caught the bladed edge between her palms—blood began to drip down her wrists and arms, the wound sizzling audibly from her hyper healing and the force he'd put behind it, re-opening the slice with each push.

The electricity, however, was harder to manage. She could feel it rattling through her body, and though her biology did not struggle to heal any internal damage it caused, the strange sensations and the disturbing popping sounds had distracted her. It was as she struggled to swallow, planning to simply give a harsh shove of her chakra to shake off her attacker, that the man who'd been lurking in the trees dropped to the ground behind her and gave a powerful kick to her upper back.

The air left her lungs, the pain hitting her in waves for how quickly she healed through it. She fell forward, her hand and fingers slipping on the blade that should've sliced them to ribbons. She pivoted—though it was closer to a stumble—to land on her back, though that proved to be the worse of her choices, for now she was staring up into glowing red eyes, a black pinwheel spinning and capturing her in genjutsu.

Panic shot through her, just a fraction of it but enough to rack her. Her arms and legs felt uselessly attached to her body, whatever this man's Sharingan ability was rendering her nearly invalid. It was still difficult to swallow, her throat thick and feeling more like it was closing up inside of her. Trapped in an illusion, her healing aura was useless against the pain that he wanted her to feel, her head pounding in stress-induced migraine and her uterus giving a few painful pulses that indicated the impending birth—due in just one day, and the man used this knowledge, fished-up from her own psyche in a sickening display of torture, to conjure the image of him kicking her once in the stomach, hard.

The rage that shot through her was indescribable.

It was felt so deeply that it must have been some sort of catalyst. She realized then that, though it hadn't been a focal point of the studies she could no longer remember, she was quite skilled in genjutsu. Her hands were still not responding as they should be, but that was no concern. She steadied her breaths and found her center, sending forth a burst of her chakra as she shouted her command for the illusion to break apart and dispel.

The moment control returned to her body, she splayed her hands on the forest floor and pushed the entirety of her weight up off it, throwing out her leg. When her foot collided with the man's chin, the sound of his head dislodging from his neck and shoulders should have made her wince. The dull thunk, the rip and the tear of it, the spilling blood and the spray of it smattering across her peasant's kimono. Later, she would retrieve his skull and bury it cradled in his own hands.

The man whose ankles only had been trapped by her roots had managed to break free of them, and though he tried to run from her, it was too late. Inside of her something was rising up and through her throat, a feeling she scarcely recognized but one that somehow also seemed like second nature. Staring at the back of the retreating man's mane of hair she heaved in a great breath, and then out from her esophagus she spat a thick liquid, shooting forth like their kunai and skuriken had only moments ago. It was so highly condensed that it pierced clean through his abdomen, seeming to stick to him and dissolve his clothes and his skin and his muscle and that thick, black hair.

He had screamed all the while, until he couldn't any longer. Only once there was silence and his skeleton piled on the ground did she realize that, at some point, her roots had squeezed that first man, the leader, so tightly that he'd been crushed. The wood surrounding him had begun to dissolve him into a viscous gunk, the terrible smell not lingering for long for how quickly it burnt him. Soon, his bones fell one by one to the ground below.

The one she'd punched near the kidneys had stayed on the mossy floor, backing up from her as she surveyed the extent of her damage from where she stood. Not that she could be certain, but there was a revelation budding inside of her that told her she was not typically capable of this amount of power, nor was she typically so violent. In her spar with Madara, she'd gone exclusively for ways to incapacitate—and, she noted with interest, she had began that way in this battle, too.

Something, though, had taken hold of her, some deep-rooted sense in her that she had to protect herself, and protect the forest, and protect Okojo. She wasn't sure, though, that she wanted to do any of those with so much spilled blood. She shook, a familiar shiver of grief racking her, and looked down at her hands. A thick stripe of the same blue color as her yin seal was streaked across her right palm, trailing a line atop the veins of her wrist and disappearing up under her sleeve. On her left, the stripe was instead on the back of the hand, rising along the hard side of her wrist and climbing along her forearm until the burnt fabric covered it.

Frustrated with her ever-changing body, she shot the man a look that froze him in place. "Take your comrade and leave. Do not come back."

He nodded dumbly, holding his side where she'd hit him as he got to his feet. The first man she'd kicked was still slumped over against the treetrunk, moaning and hissing in pain as his partner hoisted him up and looped his arm over his shoulder. Trembling, they looked at the bodies of the others that she'd killed.

"Tell whoever it was who sent you," she bit out, unable to look them in the face for her shame, "that any who trespass in these woods will meet their deaths."

Another hasty nod, and when he asked in a hoarse, terrified voice, What is it you call this place?, she stilled.

It hadn't occurred to her that she'd been inhabiting a forest without a name. All manner of people who needed her in some way or another—including these men—had always found their way here, though none seemed to be able to tell her where it was they were except for a broad, vague, Fire Country.

She thought of her samurai, how her tears had become like acid and burnt through him in little dots, almost pattern-like. There were two skeletons around her already, the third man—decapitated, in her ruthlessness—already being eaten up by the grass as if it was an animal feeding from him. Soon there would be nothing left of him but his bones, too, and she could not stop the horrible wave of empathy that crashed over her then.

"Shikkotsu." And she wept.