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Chapter Text

Their first child had been blonde.

Yasuo had taken after his mother and he sported a head full of silvery blonde locks that fell around his face in cherubic curls that had all of the village mothers squealing in delight. His father, Ensui, had laughed at that—a gift from his mother’s side of the family—and Chiharu had nodded, her lips quirking in a smile as she mocked, one of the last. Yasuo’s eyes were his father’s; dark brown and depthless; but he held his mother’s delicate features, and several grandmothers chortled when they thought of just what a pretty boy he would make.

Yasuo was a difficult child, for lack of a better way to put it. He screamed and cried, and, while he was still breastfeeding, he often bit Chiharu’s nipples when she wasn’t paying attention to him. He gurgled happily whenever he was the center of attention, and his face would grow thunderous in its anger when he wasn’t. A greedy little boy, one consumed by the need to be validated and acknowledged, the women of the village often reprimanded fondly.

Their third child had taken after Ensui; dark, olive skin, muddy brown hair and endless brown eyes, splotches of freckles sprinkling across the bridge of her nose and interconnecting over her shoulders. She was a placid, if serious child, and a sturdy little girl. She had a thick waist and solid, stern eyes that remained unwavering for the length of her life. She never complained too much, yet never too little either; Hatsue was a severe, curious little girl with a penchant for bossing people around a little too often, a fact, that brought a reminiscent smile to her father’s face and a long-suffering one from her mother.

It was their second child, the middle child that was…born different. Chiharu loved all of her children equally and without prejudice, as did Ensui but neither of them could deny the…bizarreness of their middle child.

She had been born on a thundering night, when the storm raged over their heads and blew the winds so fiercely that even the rooftops seemed to rattle, and she came into their world a little too small, her eyes shifting restlessly. She had not made a single sound when she came into the world, but her eyes were wide open and gaping, and Ensui would forever remain sure that his first daughter was sporting a look of complete and utter surprise. And then, when Chiharu had uttered her new name, Hitomi, before collapsing in an exhausted heap, the midwife wiping her brow, the newest addition to their family had erupted into screaming, sobbing cries that echoed in their little home.

Hitomi looked like Ensui in the way that her skin was tan; not as dark as Hatsue’s dark earthen brown, but still a dark, honey brown that complemented the dark hair her father had passed onto her as well. She looked like Chiharu in the way that she was delicate; her features were dainty, and made of glass, and she looked like she would break if anyone looked at her a little too long. Unlike Yasuo—who had retained their Haha-ue’s prettiness and stunning features—she wasn’t quite delicate enough to look pretty; her cheekbones were just the slightest bit too sharp, her mouth a little too striking, her eyes too hazy and clouded to look beautiful.

It was her eyes, however—her clouded, dreaming gaze—that she took from Ensui. They were almond in shape, and large, taking over most of her face. The color was her mother’s; dark as slate in the blackness of the night, as luminous as thunderstorms in the high sun—an opaque gray that shifted in the early morning light and turned tumultuous in the long nights.

While Hatsue was a sure-fasted, curious child with a stern personality and Yasuo was a superfluous, vain child…Hitomi was…different.

Their middle child never cried. She never made any sound or squeak, even when Chiharu accidentally dropped her one day, after her work in the fields. Her mouth worked silent syllables, and she mouthed strange words that seemed to be gibberish mumbling, just under her breath, unable to be heard. It was a surprise, when, one day Hitomi gave an enormous, gurgling laugh as Yasuo fell straight on his face, dead asleep after a long day of playing, straight into his rice bowl.

After that, things smoothened out—Chiharu was no longer rushing to the midwives and doctors for every little abnormality, and the stress that had accumulated on Ensui’s shoulders fell with a silent whoosh—but she still remained different; unique from every other experience they had with their other two children.

She learned to walk much quicker than their other children, toddling around at seven months, and learned to speak even sooner. Her words held a clip of unidentifiable accent, one that made the skin of Ensui’s brow crease, and Chiharu’s lips curve downwards, and no matter how much practice in enunciation, Hitomi forever held that little dip of strangeness when she spoke. There was a sense of quiet gentleness about her that Chiharu had only ever seen in elders; a sort of slow, lazy knowing gleam that made Ensui sit up and take note, his eyes glittering in that particular way.

There were things that Chiharu didn’t understand about her daughter. How she marveled over the use of chopsticks and cried over the crops, fat tears dripping down her cheeks when she saw a potato. How Hitomi always looked like she was half-lost in her head and never raised her voice above a well-mannered shout. How she sometimes mumbled to herself, dark eyebrows lurching together violently, in words Chiharu couldn’t even begin to discern. How she seemed to stumble over the syllables of Haha-ue and Chichi-ue, her mouth wobbling as she spoke.

Time passed, and yet Hitomi’s eccentricities didn’t go away. She would stop sometimes, in the middle of the day—the middle of the harvest, and fall asleep underneath the swaying trees, her hair caught around her shoulders, eternally tangled. She sang folk songs that were high and eerie, unlike the ones the rest of her siblings had learnt in the tiny village. Her clothes were always hiked up around her knees and shoulders, and Hitomi rarely cared that she tanned; her skin turning as brown as Hatsue’s, freckles dusting her arms, and kissing her shoulders. She tucked every kind of flower she could find behind her ears and weaved them into her hair so tightly they’d dry there and splinter until there wasn’t even a stem.

Chiharu drew the line when she began to let a bird nest their eggs in her hair.

She grew into a wild, untamed girl with a penchant for rambling and singing to the morning sun. Hitomi chirped hello to the birds and bowed to the trees, head low in respect. She hated shoes, and after years of her coming home barefoot and splattered in mud, Chiharu finally gave up her crusade for civility. She was clumsy, and shuffled and tripped as easily as she breathed, most often giving Ensui terrible frights as she walked around with her head half in the clouds, barely realizing she was in the way of a farmer’s cart.

And finally, there were things, Chiharu came to accept, that she would never understand about her daughter.

Chapter Text

“Are you going to tell the story?” Hatsue grinned brightly, her eyes shining with excitement. Her little sister was hanging onto her kimono, hands clenched in her obi, nearly vibrating with elation.

She’d begged for hours, voice nearly cracking with the effort, and her excitement was palpable: the gleaming eyes, although desperately concealed, and the smothered smiles and twitching fingers. But Hatsue was nothing if stoic, and so she tried, and eventually failed, to pretend like she wasn’t affected.

Hitomi let out a tinkling laugh and leaned forward to wrap her in a warm hug. Hatsue kept still for a couple of beats, before struggling in her grip, strained grumbling loosening her lips.

She looked the picture of disgruntlement.

“Hitomi-nee!” Hatsue whined, unable to keep the stoic visage, and tugged her kimono sleeves again, careful not to catch on the stitching. Her mother had had them embroidered by Hana, the village seamstress, on Hitomi’s tenth birthday and she adored the little flowers and birds that crept all over her clothes like little art galleries.

Maybe, Haha-ue had grumbled, if you like them enough, you’ll stop rolling your sleeves up like a gutter rat. Hitomi, of course, made no such promises and simply smiled back, eyes twinkling with gratitude. Her father, ever the picture of relaxation, guffawed, amused. Leave her be, Chiharu, he’d winked at her, she’s still a child.

“So impatient.” Hitomi hummed, blinking back fond memories. “Alright, I’ll tell the story. No need to get your koshimaki in a twist.”

Hatsue flushed red and glared at her, but Hitomi paid no mind.

She brushed the grain and dirt off her skirts, and straightened out the rug that sat near the open hearth. The sounds of the forest rose behind them; chattering cicadas, the call of a lonely toad, the final coos of the birds, replaced by the gentle wash of the wind.

Once she found herself comfortable, lying back against the dirt of the hut, her tired body resting, she opened her eyes to find Hatsue’s glittering smile mere inches from her face.

Hitomi smiled, and brushed back a loose curl from her forehead.

Her sister drew closer, brimming with anticipation.

“There was once a couple of tricksters that roamed the land,” Hitomi began, her eyes already glazed over in the darkening sky. Hatsue held her breath as she spoke, eyes huge in her face, mouth opening in awe. “The people of the land called them qamaque and kusilu—“

“—Just say fox and monkey, nee-chan!”

Hitomi sighed and looked over to her sister. In the darkness, her eyes had gone a slate gray, the silver tinge that brooked in the daylight long gone, and Hatsue immediately quieted down. Her sister rarely yelled or shouted, but her gaze held so much weight, it made her hold her tongue for fear of pressuring her.

Their father often called her Queen of The Clouds and he was right—Hitomi was more often than not, lost in her head. She looked at things that didn’t seem to be there. Her eyes wandered across plains and saw things unseen and unveiled, instead of the simple rice paddies and wheat fields that Hatsue did.

Hitomi rarely spoke, but when she did, there was always a lesson to it. Her voice was soft and wondering, like a newborn foal, and there was a certain hush to her tone; like she held the secrets of the universe in her palm.

When she spoke, none dared to interrupt.

“…Sorry.” Hatsue whispered, cheeks lighting up a luminous red. “Please go on?”

For a moment, the air stood still, and Hatsue thought she wouldn’t hear the rest of the saga, but Hitomi took a deep breath and began anew.

“The people of the land called them qamaque and kusilu after their spirit forms—the fox and the monkey. Qamaque formed as a fox; wily and aggressive, he was the one the people saw the most of. Kusilu formed as the monkey; slender and sly, he was the one the people feared, for he was the trickiest of them all.”

The night began to wrap itself around them, but Hatsue and Hitomi took no notice; the older girl stuck in a history long lost, long forgotten, and the youngest caught up in the spellbinding world her sister weaved with carefully placed words and ringing truths.

“Qamaque and Kusilu were thieves.”

Hatsue gasped, leaning closer, and Hitomi’s mouth quirked in a gentle smile.

“They stole village’s quinoa mush, and crops, and meat and took and took and took. They could not seem to stop themselves—thieving was so ingrained in their nature that the need—the urge—to take surpassed any other. One day, Qamaque and Kusilu decided that they would steal quinoa mush from a lord. He lived up and over the hill, far away from the Qamaque’s borrow or the Kusilu’s grove, and so they challenged themselves to steal from him.”

“So one night, they snuck off up and over the hill and into a servant’s quarter. They were quiet and stealthy, and made no sound—none more than they had to. The quinoa mush was piled into high, ceramic pots. The villagers had molded them with wet water and clay, and set them out to dry for days and days on end, until the surface was cracked and scorched. These pots, however, had been cleaned and painted over, and they were clearly quinoa mush pots. Kusilu, ever tricky, used his hands to take from the pot. Qamaque, however, put his whole head into the pot; he gorged himself on the mush for a while, but, when he made to leave, his head got stuck.”

“No,” breathed Hatsue, who stared at her sister has if she held all the answers. She had gone closer to Hitomi, whose voice was rasping and gentle, like the warmth of the embers in the hearth. “What happened then?”

Her sister didn’t spare a breath, and her eyes looked glassy as she continued.

“Panicking, he screeched, ‘Help, Kusilu! I’m stuck! Break this pot off me!’. Kusilu rushed to aid his trickster friend, and searched in the darkness for a rock to break the pot off Qamaque’s head. The night, however, was tricky in itself and fooled the trickster Kusilu’s eyes and made him find the servant’s head instead.

“Grasping the servant’s head, he shouted for Qamaque, ‘Here’s a round stone! Come smash the pot on this!’ Qamaque, trusting that his trickster friend was right, shouted ‘Good!’ and smashed his the pot on the servant’s head.

“The servant, having previously been deeply asleep, woke up enraged and grabbed Kusilu by the scruff of his neck. The wily, small Qamaque got away just in time, leaving behind his trickster friend.”

“…And then?” Hatsue whispered.

Riveted on her sister’s words, she didn’t notice the telltale clack of sandals against the hard earth. When Hitomi spoke, the whole world listened with baited breath and tense anticipation. Even the woods seemed to have quieted. When Hitomi spoke, the rest fell away, the only thing that remained was the hush of her voice, and the secrets blooming in the night air.

“The servant, angry and furious, put Kusilu in a cage and went back to sleep. The next day, seeing Kusilu in the cage, he rose to speak with the lord and tell him what happened. ‘What shall we do with this thieving monkey?’ the servant cried. The lord thought long and hard and his anger was only satisfied when he said, ‘Pour boiling water on him and skin him alive,’—“

“Telling stories again, are we?” a familiar voice sneered. “Don’t you ever get tired of the madness in your mind?”

Hatsue wrenched her gaze from Hitomi’s eyes and flushed a deep, flustered red at the sight of their elder brother. Yasuo had aged well Hitomi liked to say—his cherubic face had given away to sharp, cutting cheekbones and pretty lines—and there was, more often than not, a gaggle of village girls that followed him around, giggling behind raised hands.

“Yasuo,” Hitomi smiled, a little airily. She blinked at him slowly, taking in his ruffled hair and sweat-soaked hakama, stuck to his heaving chest. “Is there something wrong?”

Hatsue giggled at the glare their brother bestowed upon her elder sister. Yasuo never liked Hitomi—too bird-brained and flighty, he said—but it never failed to amuse Hatsue how Hitomi barely noticed out of the absolutely necessary; but then again, Hitomi barely ever noticed anything outside her own mind.

“Not that you’d care, but yes. There’s been a leak in the well. The water’s been poisoned.” Yasuo scowled furiously, his hands crossing over his large chest. “Not that you girls could do anything about it—no, this job needs a real man to finish it.”

“Oh,” Hitomi smiled at him and it was just as whimsical and brilliant as always. Her eyes gleamed in the low light, and there was a second where they flashed with something dangerous and lurking before it was gone—replaced by the good-natured creases at the edges of her almond-shaped orbs. “I see. Do carry on then, they might need you to go get them.”

Yasuo’s face darkened at the insult and he surged forward, grabbing at Hitomi’s brown tunic. Her sister dangled, feet off the ground, in the face of her brother’s ire. And yet, her face remained calm, undaunted. She drew no panicked breaths. Nor did she flail about in alarm.

Even in the face of anger, Hatsue thought offhandedly, Hitomi remained unflappable.

“You’re crazy, imouto.” Yasuo hissed, his voice like a viper, waiting to strike. “A lunatic. With your stories and your hair and your—your—silly, dirtied clothes. This is why I’m useful. This is why you’ll never be anything but father’s queen of the clouds. You’d better get used to cleaning the dirt off my shoes—“

“Yasuo!” Hatsue shouted with a furious glare. She scrambled up and off the ground, letting the calm that had washed over her fall away like lightning. “Don’t touch her! She’s our sister!”

Yasuo sneered at her before letting Hitomi go. She stumbled back for a moment, before catching herself, a hand around her waist. He wiped at his hands, making a show of getting of the dirt. When he was done, he gave them a last, dirty glance, he stormed past them, slamming his shoulder straight into Hitomi’s chest.

Hatsue, furious, was about to yell something that her mother would surely clean her mouth out for, but a slender hand on her head immediately halted her.

She looked back at her older sister, taking in her features in the low light; the curved, jutting cheekbones and plump, full lips; her too-sharp eyes, ever mercurial; and the fragility of her features only held up by the ferocity underneath her skin.

She looked, for once, as sharp as ever, her eyes deadly and focused.

Then Hitomi smiled, and Hatsue’s sister was back again—gentle and ethereal.

“Aren’t you going to stay for the end?” She said in that calm, gentle voice of hers; as if she drew the calm from her very soul.

Hatsue beamed and sat down next to her, and Hitomi began anew, her voice just as fluttering and fanciful as usual.

Chapter Text

She supposed she should remember how she died. It was a big thing—dying. Or at least it was, in her old life. Death was no friend to find comfort in, no wandering adventure that one could take solace in. Death, in her old life, was meant to be fought; to kick off the heavy layer of darkness and soothing warmth, and fight to reach that shining light. Perhaps her brain had blanked that part of her existence out, a survival mechanism—to keep her sane. Even she knew that remembering your own death, remembering those tantalizing last minutes could destroy even the strongest of minds.

The darkness remained, but she paid no mind to it.

Or at least, she deemed to try.

What she did remember was being born. She remembered the push and pull of the contractions, the heavy, wet walls that cradled her and then threw her out just as she was beginning to find comfort within them. She remembered the feeling of hands coming around her to snip the cord that led from her stomach to her mother, the sensation of being cleaned and cajoled into soft clothes and a warm embrace.

Those first few months were…terrifying. She could not remember how she came to be, other than that she had; and that she was here, surrounded by giants and strange, ringing words.

The first thing she remembered seeing were bright, brown eyes that held unreachable depths. Things blinked into existence slowly, color returning to her vision like an old, tired friend. She saw things anew—the rafting of her wooden home, the mud of the hut underneath her parent’s high sandals, the brown of the cotton wool that surrounded her.

This world had been a new one.

One that made her feel as awkward as a colt trying to fit into its legs for the first time; as if she’d put on the wrong skin. There were still times when she brushed away dark curls expecting them to be blonde so pale they were white. There were still times when she spoke and could not recognize the timber of her own voice; too melodious, too smooth to fit the piercing hoarseness she remembered. There were still times when she jolted at the sight of her siblings, because she remembered only having one, and yet, now there were two.

This world was one that she could not fit in, not like how these parents wanted her to. She still felt the urges of the sun; the culture ingrained in her demanded that at the high sun, she drifts away from the fields to take a nap, while others in her village worked tirelessly, long finished with trying to urge her to stay.

It made her laugh when her sister looked at her strangely the first time she’d walked without her shoes. She missed, desperately, the feeling of green, green grass under her toes. She missed the rush of the brook near her used-to-be mother’s home. The way the air smelled like fresh, fierce cold, the rush of winter coming to greet her on a September night. The mud between her toes, caking her soles made her feel grounded; she couldn’t keep her head quite right, but the way the nature made her stop and listen, and tilt her head to catch it, made her feel like she was doing something right.

The flowers in her hair were relics of a long-lived past; days of blurry mothers with clear, blue eyes and wide, gallivanting smiles pressing tulips and daffodils into dirt, and then daisies into blonde, curling hair. The stems caught on her neck, and sometimes, she felt the whirr of curious wings fly past, but she kept them there, stranded on her head, until the homage had passed.

There were days when the urges to leave were strong, far too strong to resist, but she stayed, because her mother looked happier when she smiled, and her father liked to see her waltz her way up the dirt path, his fingers tightening on the forge, as if reassured that she was once more there; as if they were all slightly afraid her mind would fly away with time.

Those were the days where she felt the urge to paint and to draw and to dance, and she missed the sound of music more than anything in her entire two lives. She missed the sway of the beat in the air, the way the rhythm would thread itself around her soul, and she could feel the very pulse of life within the words inching their way under her skin.

Her mother looked at her strange when she sang, as if she couldn’t quite understand the words that rumbled out from her chest, all too seductive. Her father liked to quiet his mind, and lean back against the floor of the hut, and find refuge within her song, as if his very soul could find peace when the melodies left her mind, tangled up in her lips.

The songs were bits of what she could remember. Low, eerie folk songs, eras of long past, when her mother would laugh and laugh and laugh, and teach her how to dance the Maypole in the wood at the break of dawn, for that was when Beltane came and the flowers in young lover’s locks were tender and flush.

The songs were bits of prayer and whispers of cherished gods, when her aunt would shudder and writhe at the feeling of the spirits in the air, as if she could feel them frothing in the very air; as if Anu, and Airmid would form to greet her if she wished it hard enough and paid them enough in worship and love.

The songs were from the radio, from hearing the same, rasping pop songs on repeat after a terrible day at school, and her mother would smile behind her hand as she belted them out, terrible lyric after terrible lyric.

Her songs were precious and cautiously tentative, but they were hers and she could not stop them from tumbling out of her, the need so fierce it overwhelmed her.

She missed many things. She missed art, she missed the galleries in her winding, secretive city, where in every nook and alley was something to look at, something to marvel over. She missed the sound of Signor Yazovitch’s piano—the polish carpenter who wanted to be a movie star—on bright, sunny mornings, his foghorn voice belting out love songs through the thin plaster of the apartment building walls. She missed the sound of Signora Raquel sobbing on the floor of her ostentatious living room, her makeup running down her face like a waterfall, after her daughter decided to run away with another uncouth man; this one, with long, flowing hair.

She missed, more than anything, the sight of Tia Conchita, with her long, shimmering, dark hair and calf-brown eyes, who lamented about the lack of love in her life—and how she would never be married, as she was far too beautiful to be held down by a single man.

She missed her mother, she missed her father. She missed her brother, Elan, who was an artist—as fastidious and pompous as the stereotypes, the only problem being that his art had the unfortunate circumstance of being atrocious to look at. She missed the way his brow would crease and fold like a thunderstorm, and his eyes would darken whenever she and mother tried to encourage him. She missed the way he shouted, arms crossed, with red cheeks, at the way he and Tia Consuela argued over art.

She missed that Tia Consuela, who had been shunned by a musician who painted the most stunning landscapes, was most cruel and brutally honest, her kindest piece of advice being, “those who cannot do, teach. Perhaps you will find wisdom in those words, Elan.”

She missed her mother’s lore, her father’s stories, she missed the world she’d been dragged from, kicking and screaming and sobbing.

She missed many a thing; many a thing that could not, would not, be explained. The histories of loving summers and cold, joyful winters were ones that would not pass her lips; for they would not understand, and no matter how much she adored this new family, even for all of its faults, they would be afraid, and they would not look at her fondly, as if she were an eccentric, wandering soul any longer; where there was love, there would be fear and suspicion within their once-welcoming eyes.

And so, she stayed quiet. She stayed quiet and hummed her songs, and her prayers, and thought to her many gods, and wondered if death was the reason why she could see the spirits moving so easily in the air or if her mother’s and father’s stories truly had been right.

She had been two when she’d seen the kappa in the water. Her new mother had set her down near the fields, but as she often did, she wandered, her head soaring far higher than her shoulders, and stumbled onto the quiet rush of a stream.

She hadn’t seen it at first of course, because she was watching the way the woods seemed to creak and groan with her presence and the wind wouldn’t push her out quite as hard when the melodies left her fumbling lips. She stumbled onto it suddenly; one minute, she was on-land and dry, but leaning over the stream as she tried to catch a drifting leaf, and then the next, she’d felt the slippery scales of the spirit underneath her, and the squeal of surprise that left its beak.

“Hello.” The word was warbling and high, and it made her think again, of times that were long past, times she wasn’t quite supposed to remember.

The beastie looked at her, its mouth open wide, and she took in the sight of his blue-green scales, wide, black, glimmering eyes, and his tufty crest upon his head.

“I’m sorry for falling on you.” She told him quietly, eyes riveted on the way his scales gleamed in the high-noon sun. “It was very rude of me.”

The beastie watched her still, the shock having not receded yet, at least, not until she posed her next question.

“May I touch your scales?” she asked, “they look quite pretty.”

“N-No!” It squawked, floundering in the bed of the stream, its claws making ripples in the water. “Why can you see me man-child?”

She tilted her head up, eyes catching on the pretty shape of a cloud. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a beastie like you before.” A smile filled her face, and she looked back upon the squirming creature. “You’re one of the prettier ones, I think.”

“Man-children, Man-women, Man-Men should not be able to see me!” It growled, and for a moment, it hesitated, eyes still shocked and confused, as it struggled to figure out what to do.

They stood, for a moment, spirit and child, entwined in a small eternity, each one locked within each other’s gaze, exploring this new discovery.

And then, suddenly, the sound of her mother’s voice pierce through the quiet, and the kappa jolted, slipping back into the water with a sharp twist of its shimmering body, and then it was rushing and rushing away, under the tide of the water.

She watched it leave and stayed at the bank until her mother found her again and began to scold her for leaving the tree by the fields.

“But I saw a pretty cloud, Mama.” She looked up at the fretting woman’s face, “And I thought I should follow it.”

Chapter Text

It was not the last time she met the stream-kappa, because she was curious, and when she was curious, she did not relent, no matter how much her mind wandered.

She knew it drove her mother mad, to find her wandering away from the fields in which she sowed the seeds and worked to the bone, only to enlist well-meaning villagers to find her toddler-daughter again, flushing in shame when she received another of her daughter’s airy explanations, about how the wind carried her away, and the birds told her to follow the path of the wood, and the woods that whispered for her to come in.

When they had gotten home, her mother had shouted herself hoarse, and Yasuo had laughed her a little too meanly to be sibling-rivalry, and her father had given her that look, the one that could quell her even now, the one that spelt quiet disappointment.

She had taken it all without a complaint, and when Yasuo had asked her why, in his mocking, jeering tone, she had given him the same answer she had her mother.

“There was a cloud,” she began, voice airy, “and it was really quite pretty, and I thought—”

“You’re stupid.” Yasuo interrupted, and she thought that he was quite ugly for one with such a pretty face.

She gave him a smile in return and he answered her with a scowl.

They made her clean the dishes that night, and she hummed to herself throughout, the words of Signor Yazovitch’s love songs thawed the gnawing worry in her mother’s heart, and the disappointment threading her father’s face, although not quite the bitter pettiness that lined her brother’s jaw.

“I’m sorry Hitomi,” her mother said, and she crouched down to face her. She was a pretty woman, she could tell, but the fields had taken their toll on her face, and the crowfeet at the edges of her eyes were beginning to groove, and the porcelain skin her father liked to trace was darkening to a leathery brown. Still, her hair was long when unbound, and a silvery blonde that made her stomach churn when she looked at it too long.

“Hitomi,” her mother chided, and she tried hard to focus on that name and remember it was hers, “It’s important that you listen to me, Hitomi.”

“Is she ever listening?” Yasuo sniped, looking up from the scroll father was trying to make him read.

“Yasuo,” her father’s baritone voice came. “Leave your sister alone.”

“She’s your younger sister, Yasuo-chan. Apologize.” Her mother sighed, pained.

Her brother looked ashamed, cheeks turning red in anger, and she saw the viciousness that flared to life in those slate eyes as he turned to look at her.

“Sorry.” He muttered, hands turning white, eyes full of vitriol.

It was then she realized he would not be quite like Elan; kind, but tempestuous Elan, who croaked about injustice and painted terrible landscapes, but made her tea when she was sad, and got up, his lips pursed like he’d chewed on a sour lemon, to dance whenever she declared they must have a party in honor of life, of happiness, of everything good in the world.

“See?” her brother voice ripped her from her thoughts, and her eyes fell upon a red-cheeked, murderous-looking brother who glared daggers at her. “She doesn’t even listen to my apology, Okaa-san! How can she listen to you if she’s so stupid she forgets to pay attention?”

Her mother threw her hands up in the air, long-suffering, and Hitomi let out a tinkling, giggling laugh, which only served to make her brother madder.

“Stop laughing, crazy!” He yelled, and in a moment of anger, he threw himself across the room and they rolled, she laughing good-naturedly, him grabbing clumps of hair in his fists, and trying to pull with all his might.

Father stepped in before her brother did too much damage and they spent the rest of the night apart, Yasuo murdering her with his eyes, and she, humming the last song she remembered hearing from Yazovitch’s piano.

Their parents sent them to bed, and Yasuo made sure to pinch the inside of her forearm hard enough to bruise.

In the morning, her mother made sure to pull her aside, “Hitomi, you cannot wander away anymore. There are…whisperings of a war coming soon. Whisperings that are not good; whisperings that warn of harmful things coming to pass. You cannot wander away, not when there are killers coming to our very doorstep.”

Her mother looked at her, eyes serious, lips pressed together. “Do you promise me, Hitomi?”

She tilted her head. “I will try, Mama.”

…

“Your name, little one, means spirit. So that you may be carried to the other worlds and beyond.” In another life, her father’s words rang true and fierce, and she’d smiled into her jacket the first time she’d heard them.

…

The second time she met the kappa-spirit, she’d wandered away from the market, enthralled with the way the birds danced in the sky, their joyous crows heady and inviting, and she crouched down at the edge of a small hill, a smile spreading across her lips as she heard the rush of clear water.

She made her way across the rocky, jagged plane slowly, pausing to wonder of the plants that seemed to grow with every beat of her steps, and the whispers she thought she heard on the edge of her hearing, just a little too far to be heard.

The stream was wider here, not yet a river, but the water rushed hard enough to feel the spray of the rapids when she got close enough. She came closer, watching and humming, carefully, carefully, until she was close enough to fall in.

She thought she saw a flash of light underneath the waves, but she did not want to risk being swept away by the current, and so she sat on the edge of the bank, letting her tiny legs swing, and the cool of the water let her think.

She closed her eyes, leaning back against the wet, moist earth, her clean hair loosening from its carefully-crafted bun, falling into straggly lines around her frail head. Mother, she knew, would be upset, but she so loved to feel the earth pressed against her skin, her soul, her mind that in that moment, she did not care for the scolding she knew she would receive.

She felt it rather than heard it, settle on the bank next to her, the smell of freshwater filling her nose, and the spray of water sprinkling over her brown yukata.

She opened her eyes to find it there once more, with its wide, curious eyes, something not quite innocent, yet not quite malignant to find threatening and it’s blue beak, with the green tuft of crest over its head.

“Hello.” She said.

It watched her.

Her gaze wandered back to the sky, and she watched the way the wind blew the clouds, peace settling in her bones.

“Why can a man-child like you, see me?” It’s voice was a raspy squeak, as if it was not quite meant to speak out of the water. “You are not dead.”

“Oh.” She looked back at it, catching the sight of its narrowing eyes. “I think I was. At least for a little while.”

It snorted in scorn. “Silly man-child. Humans like you cannot come back from the dead. They rest in the Shinigami’s stomach. Haven’t your human-parents told you this?”

“Yes,” she answered, because she remembered the way her father’s deep voice lulled Yasuo and her to sleep when they were young enough to get along, and the many stories he told of the creatures of the other world. “I didn’t know if it was true. Maybe, here it is?”

It scoffed, “It is the same everywhere, silly, stupid child. Surely, you must know at least that.”

She watched a fluffy cloud trace across the horizon. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe so. But who knows?”

“I do! We kappa know about death. We are spirit-beings, and all spirit-beings know where they must go, and how to watch for any way-ward man-children.” It squawked, scales glimmering in the heat of the sun. It turned accusing, black eyes towards her. “Like you.”

“Is that what you are?” She asked. “A kappa?”

It clicked its beak together, annoyance settling in his black eyes. “You can see, and yet, like many man-children, you remain blind.”

“I’ve never met a kappa before.” She told it. “How was I supposed to know?”

It hesitated, and then scowled at her, which looked rather funny with the enormity of his eyes. “How dare you question me! Insolent man-child! You know nothing about death, nor of spirits and yet you dare impede on my tribe’s territory!”

She opened her mouth to answer, but she heard the approaching shout of her brother’s jeering yell and instead smiled.

“Bye Kappa-san.” She bowed, hair plastered and wet against her cheeks. “Maybe, I will see you again too?”

When she rose, the kappa was gone, and all that remained was the glimmer of light underneath the river-stream.

Yasuo dragged her back all the way to the market where her mother had driven herself into a tizzy of fear, and her father, eyes creasing in amused worry, went to laugh at the sight of his daughter, covered in mud with wet, dripping hair and dirty feet.

Mother made her do the dishes again, but she didn’t mind; she rather quite liked it.

Chapter Text

“You know, Hitomi, they say that tree is a jubokko.”

She didn’t turn around at the voice, instead watching the way the branches creaked and the old, worn face in the bark sighed at the interruption. She gave it a small bow, hair falling out of the bun her mother had tucked it in, before turning around.

“Hatsue-chan.” She said, “What are you doing here?”

Her sister huffed, her hands settling on her hips. “Okaa-san sent me to find you. It’s getting late, nee-chan. The stars are already coming out, you know.”

She blinked. “Oh. I forgot to look.”

She looked up, a smile filling her face as she saw the darkening horizon, the peek of the night filling the sky, bright, dancing stars coming out to play. The wind whispered around her, lifting her hair, and she hummed at the secrets it brought her.

“Do you think it will rain this year, imouto?” she murmured offhandedly, eyes riveted on the way the clouds traversed across the sky, a never ending journey.

Hatsue sighed, and then gave her a long-suffering look. She was sixteen now, and looking at her made Hitomi feel so old, like something jagged and wrong was stuck under her skin.

She’d only been a baby a minute ago, but now, now she looked a young woman with her long, curling hair, sharp chin, and wide, doe eyes.

Hitomi hadn’t looked in a mirror for years, and she was half terrified about what she would face there. If she would look an image of this mother, this father, this sister, this brother, or if she’d find traces of the face she’d had, traces of smudged, blurry happiness. Of her mother’s sharp nose, and high cheekbones, of her brother’s dark, thundering brows, or her father’s plump lips.

Or if the slate had been wiped clean of everything that had come before.

“Nee-chan…Chichi-ue and Haha-ue are worried about you.” Her sister looked at her, dark brown eyes pleading. “You know, nee-chan, that the rumors from the border-towns aren’t getting any better. And you can’t keep wandering around, not if you’re trying to avoid being killed.”

She looked away from the sky, a hand coming to brush away the ebony locks that rested at her throat. “No one will find me here, not if I do not wish it.”

The spirits were curious about her, even still. Even after those days at the river where she had told the kappa about her history, about those moments of death, and where it had not believed her, not even when she’d told him of the darkness she’d left behind.

And it had been so very, very dark.

She hadn’t seen the kappa for a very long time, now. It had been years, but she remembered that little brook; the sound of the rushing water, the way the light reflected off the current, and how the very air seemed to still with energy, as if awaiting her arrival. For weeks, months, years, she went to the river and talked to the open air, as if the kappa could still hear her, and she told it all kinds of things.

She told it of the storm she knew was coming, the bloodthirsty war, the taste of wrath in the air. She told it of the way her heart leapt every time she thought she saw a flash in the woods, the trail of a ghostly spirit walking through the wood. She told it of the whispers she could hear on the wind, the dying sounds of secrets never to be spoken once more.

She could hear it all; their begging, the sorrows, their joy; she could hear every single prayer, every single plea.

The kappa was not the only spirit she’d ever seen.

Mere weeks after it had left her, spurred on by its scorn and distrust and quiet curiosity, she stood, barefoot in the fields, her eyes closed as she listened to the way the heat crackled in the air, and the humidity settled like a blanket over too-hot skin.

She was listening to the way the cicadas sang in the trees, listening to the way the barely weaved and bobbed in the latent breeze, listening to the soft humming of her mother’s voice as she carefully shucked corn, under the high sun, the other women’s voices joining her familiar songs.

“Kokiriko no take wa shichi-sun go-bu ja….”

She felt something scamper over her foot, and she paid no mind to until it spoke, “You are the one who is said to have seen the Shinigami’s stomach.”

A cat sat by her foot, but she was not fooled. The cats in the marketplace did not like look like this one; they did not possess that other-worldly quality of mirthful awareness she could see in its face. She saw its split tail and narrowed, glittering green eyes as it tilted its head to watch her in that particular feline way, and she knew.

It wasn’t really a cat.

“Why do you think that?” She asked. The sounds of the earth had fallen away at her question, and she could not tear her eyes from the little spirit that sat in front of her.

It watched her for another moment, paws twitched, eyes locking with hers.

“The spirits talk, young one. They speak of many, many things…” it mused. “And yet…none quite so enthralling as you.”

She nodded, half-lost in thought. She supposed that the kappa would be shocked and would tell all its beastie-friends of the human who spoke lies and could see the ones beyond the veil of death.

She wondered, for a brief, pressing moment, if that was why it had not returned yet; for it did not want to deal with a child as young as herself, a child so in need of direction.

“Do you know where it is?” Hitomi asked it, crouching down to her knees. “I was looking for it, but I don’t know where it’s gone.”

The cat looked amused, “You question the kappa’s departure? Such a strange little human child you are. Are you not afraid that he will steal your shirikodama—or, as you humans call it—chakra?”

She frowned. “I don’t know of a chakra, and if I have it, I don’t know about it. Does he desperately need it?”

The cat chuffed a laugh and it looked bizarrely appropriate on its feline face. “You are a curious one. And so very naïve.”

It looked at her, contemplative, and yet a flicker of dangerous curiousity flashed in its ethereal eyes. It moved forward, twining itself around her legs, its two tails flicking into her face, slipping over her shoulders, and brushing up over her neck.

Its wet, pink nose bussed her cheek. Then it leaned back, eyes still boring into hers, not an inch away. “I wish to see you in time. With my scent, you will be protected, whether it is from myself, or from others.”

“Protected from what?” Hitomi had asked, fingers twitching to pet the fussing kitty-ear. It looked so terribly soft, and it had been so long since she’d touched a pretty kitty like this one—

“Don’t touch,” it warned, padding backwards. “I hope your human family has taught you enough to know to never touch a yokai.”

Hitomi shrugged. “They never quite believe me.”

It watched her, eyes serious, and then it said, “I will find you again, when the time is right. Until then, you will be safe.”

“Nee-chan?”

Hitomi blinked.

Hatsue was grabbing her by the shoulders, brown eyes wide in worry, mouth slack.

“Nee-chan—!” She started.

Hitomi smiled, “I’m fine, Hatsue-chan. I got lost a little, that’s all.”

Her sister watched her for a moment, catching the way Hitomi blinked rapidly, her arms coming around to clasp around her waist. She looked, in that instance, small; the moonlight making her frame more slender, her face more sunken, ghostly, in the light of the sick moon.

“Hitomi, you can’t…you cannot do this any longer. The villagers are scared. They are scared of the war that comes, and with that fear comes malevolence.” Hatsue told her, voice low and worried. She was so close, Hitomi could see the freckles that bridged over her nose and cheeks.

“I love you sister, I truly, truly, do but you must be more careful.” Hatsue begged, drawing her forehead to her own. Hitomi closed her eyes, breathed in the smell of warm hay and sunshine-grass and honeyed bread of her sister’s hair.

“They are scared of you, sister. They are scared of your mind, and where it goes, for no one can follow you when you leave your body behind. They are scared of the woods you traverse so freely, of the way you stop and weave flowers in your hair and hum your foreign songs. Of the way you speak, with a dip of unrecognizable accent—everything about you is unknown, sister. If there was only a way to…assuage them of their doubts then, maybe, they could see…you are nothing to fear.”

Hitomi blinked, and then stumbled back. “Oh, I see. Mother has sent you here to convince me to marry Hiroyuki again.”

There was a flash of guilt in Hatsue’s eyes and then it was steeled away by determination. “You know he is a fine choice. The butcher’s boy. He will have enough food to take care of you.” Hatsue huffed a desperate chuckle, searching her sister’s eyes. “He surely has enough brawn to fight away any who try to harm you.”

Her sister’s eyes softened, something like bitterness filling them. “But most of all…he holds a fondness for you, sister, especially after that day at the market, when you danced, and your eyes looked like starlight, and the sunflowers in your hair looked like the spirit’s blessings.”

Hitomi remembered little of that day. She remembered little apart from the yearning inside her stomach, the very fabric of her being, to dance. She remembered seeing the little deformed man slumped in the ditch, and his tight, white-knuckled grip on his little flute and she’d felt it burst free, and found herself approaching him before her mother could hold her back.

“Hello,” she remembered saying, her yukata getting muddy as she knelt in the dirt. She remembered his eyes, sunken and red, and his mouth, bitter and wobbling. He smelt of vomit and dirt and sickness.

“What.” He snarled at her.

She merely smiled, “I like your flute. Can you play?”

He watched her, black eyes flashing with something a little too close to quiet desperation.

“Yes,” he grunted out.

“If I give you a coin,” she asked, “will you give me a tune?”

And she remembered the way the music had pulled at her, and she had swayed to and fro and the melody had filled her parched soul like the first rain after a drought. She remembered the way the music had healed her, and the way her face felt wet and hot as the tears slid down her cheeks, and yet she still danced, even when she heard the whispers of the villagers on her ears and the tug of the wind on her skin.

She danced and danced and danced until her feet felt numb and her smile stretched her mouth and she felt whole once more, if only for a little.

And when she had done, when she had bowed to the little deformed man, who looked at her as if she were half-spirit herself, she found him looking at her—Hiroyuki.

“He wants to marry you,” Hatsue was saying, but Hitomi only felt the tug of anxiety in her chest.

“I don’t love him.” She found herself looking into her little sister’s eyes, and telling the truth for the first time in years. She found her mind clear and strong, and grounded right with her feet.

Hatsue shook her head. “You can grow to love him.”

She shook her head no. “I won’t love him. Hiroyuki-san only loves the idea of me; a wild girl with too much spirit, one he wants to tame and keep in his pocket.”

“You know he cannot tame you, Hitomi.” Hatsue whispered. “He cannot even begin to succeed.”

“But he can try,” she answered, “and I will always hate him for that.”

Hatsue spoke no more, and they left the tree, not looking back.

Hitomi thought she’d seen a glimpse of amused, glittering green eyes out of the corner of her sight, but when she turned to look for them, they had vanished, and Hatsue would not wait for her to linger.

Chapter Text

She woke in the middle of the night when the world was silent and all she could hear was the rush of the wind outside and her sister’s soft snores. She blinked in the darkness, for a moment feeling the haziness of the moment before the clarity of a clear mind. The hay was scratchy under the thin sheets of her futon, and she was warm under the downy blanket, and for a moment, all she wanted to do was close her eyes and snuggle back into the itchy bed and blankets and forget why she had jolted out of her bittersweet dreams.

Then, Hitomi blinked, and opened her mouth to greet it.

“Hello.”

Green eyes creased in amusement. “You are bigger than I remembered. How curious, how you humans age.”

She said nothing, riveted on the way the moon shone down on its sleek black pelt, its two-tails twitching back and forth, feline smile trapping her in her very skin.

It sat on the windowsill, a present from their neighbors for her parents’ twentieth marriage-year, it’s paws neatly tucked underneath its breast.

They watched each other, spirit and girl, and the world heightened; Hitomi could feel the way the wind battered the house. How it howled and whined for something unknown, how it begged for something to talk to. Child, come here, it seemed to tell her, and Hitomi wanted to move, but she was trapped. The spirit watched her, and she could not move.

For the first time, she felt a frisson of fear.

The echo of something deep ricocheted within her and sweat as icy and cold as the night trickled down her spine.

Finally, she spoke. “Do you need something I can offer you?”

The spirit smiled. “No. What would I need from a human such as yourself?”

Hitomi shrugged. “Shelter, perhaps? The night is cold, and young, and the frost covers the ground well enough to freeze through your toes.”

It gave her a look, as if to say I am a spirit, and spirits do not feel the cold, not like humans do.

“You are still naïve.” It told her. Its shifted on its paws, tails flicking back and forth, black silk fur glittering in the shuttered moonlight. Behind it, a tree groaned. “Strange for a human supposed to be as old as you.”

She blinked, mouth pursing. “I am only eighteen.”

It smiled at her, quiet and eerie. “In this life, yes.”

Hitomi froze. She felt the way her breath caught in her throat. The way her hands clenched, and the knuckles whitened on her blanket. Her hair shifted, falling into her view as she looked at it from underneath her eyelashes. “So, you believe me.”

The hope felt scarce, a terribly young, beating thing in her hands; as if any false movement could break it with the wrong twist of words.

“I have spent years looking for your truth. The kappa crowed to the councils about you; a silly, foolish human who harbored delusions about death.” It told her, hopping down from its perch on the windowsill.

It slinked into the house, drawing itself up into a regal squat. Up close, she suddenly realized just how big it was; its head came to her chin, and its eyes were narrowed and green, and so very glittering. Its paws were the size of her fists, its tails the length of her arms.

“But,” it mused, its voice so low and rumbling Hitomi could feel it thrumming inside her chest. “You have not been the only one. And the old ones remember well.”

She sucked in a breath.

Her voice was shaky, naked desperation evident as she spoke. “There are others…like me?”

The spirit smiled; it wasn’t quite as comforting as she hoped. “Of a sort. Some do not know of where they are like you do. They do not quite dare to believe. Others, once realizing where they have landed, take their own lives. They cannot deal with the knowledge looming over them. And some, like you, live on, dangerously all-knowing.”

“Can I…Can I meet them?” She whispered, low and hopeful.

“No.” It shook its head, and her chest cracked in two, face falling, crushed. “They have lived long before you have, and long after. There are none like you now.”

“How long after?” She asked, hands digging into the blanket. Her voice was hoarse, desperate, and for a moment, she sounded exactly like she had before. “Will I meet them?”

The spirit flicked its tail. “We spirits know the paths of fate, but we know not the intricacies. You may, or you may not. That is for you to discover. For you to stumble upon in all your human clumsiness.”

She was quiet for a long, eternal moment. Her eyes were glassy, mouth open, and she seemed to hardly breathe. Outside, the wind howled, and the spirit continued to watch, tails flicking back and forth, and back and forth, before it interrupted the silence.

“You must follow. I have come to collect the debt owed.”

“Debt owed?” Hitomi echoed, and she the frailty she had donned, shed like water in the summer sun.

It smiled, nasty and mean. “All these years of protection do not come free, child.”

“But I did not ask for it.” She told it, eyebrows furrowing.

The spirit shook its head, “It matters not. What’s done is done. If you do not follow the laws, I will feast on others tonight.”

Its eyes flickered over to the sleeping form of her sister, sprawled out across the futon like a starfish, and Hitomi’s eyes hardened.

“I do not take well with threats, spirit.” She answered, voice low and hard. “I will follow you, like you have demanded, although not of my own will.”

“Will has nothing to do with it.” The spirit snorted in scorn. Then it looked at her, head tilted, eyes narrowed. “I will wait for you, at the edge of the barley fields. There, you will find the onibi and you shall find me.”

In a flash of thunder and howling wind, it disappeared, the feeling of its tails brushing against her cheek, echoing against her skin.

Hitomi rose and followed, not looking backwards.

…

The night was cold, the rain even colder.

She heard the squelch of the mud underneath her toes, and she shivered against the rising gale. Overhead, the winds howled their secrets, thunderous in their anger. Something bad had happened tonight. Something evil and destructive, as dangerous and wrathful as the hounds of Culann when spurred. The world of spirits raged, furious and bitter and her ears rang with their cries, tears spilling down her face.

They have done enough, the wind raged, and Hitomi bowed her head to shelter herself from the rage. The balance has been disrupted for too long.

Her overcoat was soaked, and she was frozen to the bone when she arrived at the field. Her teeth chattered, face bone-white, as she looked, eyes squinting in the early morning dusk. The sun had begun to peak over the horizon, but the clouds were bruised and black, the thunder not letting up.

“Where are you?” she dared to speak. Her voice was weak in the gale. “Where are you, spirit?”

Her eyes travelled the rice paddies, and barely fields, searching as far as she could. She thought, vaguely, as she stood chilled to the bone, that the spirit would laugh at her for her eyesight so weak, so very human.

And then, just as the storm heightened, and the sky flashed with lightning, she saw it in the far distance. The flickering of blue-green fire on the field, an eerie glow spreading around it. Next to it, she saw the flicker of two split tails.

She tugged the frozen, soaked overcoat closer to her frame, and walked forward. Her feet trudged through mud and saplings, muttering prayers for the sprigs she trampled, and promised that she would fix them when she could. Her head was bowed low, and the wind picked at her form as she tried to urge herself forward.

Hitomi stopped at the foot of the fire, blinking when the spirit twined itself around her legs.

She felt, for a moment, bitter jealousy that it looked as dry as it had before.

“Come.” The spirit commanded, and Hitomi nodded.

They walked for what seemed like hours; through rain and hail and thundering worlds. The wind screamed its rage, and the earth groaned, its anger deep and vicious, cracked deep into its very soul. She felt so very, very small against this anger, this brutality, and more than once, she stumbled, her feet slipping in the hay and mud and underbrush, her coat feeling colder and colder to the bone, until it slid off her shoulders and she did not bother to pick it up again.

The spirit led her through the pathways in the wood, climbing over felled trees, travelling over rushing streams, waiting for her to follow the light of its onibi, its tails flicking impatiently, eyes glittering in frustration whenever she stumbled a little too long.

It urged her to walk faster and faster as the brush of dawn threatened to burst through the clouds.

And then, finally, it stopped in a clearing.

She shivered, teething clacking together so hard, she started to shake. Her dark locks were plastered to her face, face so pale, even her tan could not take away from her sunken cheeks.

“We are here.” It spoke, breaking the spell of silence that had followed their journey.

The onibi winked out like a light, and darkness fell around them like a blanket.

“What do you want?” She chattered, and as it turned to look at her, she suddenly felt fear.

Its face was different in the darkness, and unfamiliarity of the forest; wilder, fiercer, more savage. It looked at her, and she felt its anger, deep and furious, like the breaking of a dam.

It pointed towards a tree with its tails, one that she had not seen before. It towered over the clearing, its branches spreading out like those of a messiah. It covered the rest of the trees, choking out their sunlight, and she shivered, afraid when she saw it. Its trunk was gnarled and broken, and dark sap trickled down it, and in the flashing of the storming, raging night, it looked eerily like light.

“This is a jubokko.” The spirit spoke, and Hitomi began to tremble.

The tree groaned and creaked, and malevolence filled the air, choking her.

“W-What d-do you n-need me to d-do?” She managed to push out, even as she cursed herself for getting into these situations.

The spirit kept its eyes on the trunk, tails twitching. “There is a child, inside. It is dying, cold and alone.”

It turned towards her. “You must save this child.”

Hitomi faltered. “I-I wasn’t a doctor—I don’t know how.”

“That is not one of my concerns.” It shrugged, utterly unconcerned. It looked at her, intensely, eyes narrowed. “But know, if you do not, I shall feast on the girl you call sister, and call her forth to the Shinigami’s stomach, where only the walls will know her screams.”

Bitter, hot tears stung her nose. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how!”

It flicked its tail.

“Then learn.” It hissed, and at the rush of wind, it flickered away.

Hitomi sobbed, and she felt the fear claw at her heart.

Then, she took a step towards the tree.

Her mind had never felt clearer.

Chapter Text

“Give thou thine heart to the wild magic,” she murmured, face wet, as she pushed back the branches of the tree, her hands coming away sticky with sap. “To the lord and the Lady of Nature, beyond any consideration of this world.”

The air was charged with electricity, and the sky rumbled, even as the sun inched across the horizon, breaking the restrictive hold of the nebulous clouds. Her hair whipped back and forth over her shoulders, soaked and icy against her frozen skin. Her lips felt numb, her fingers even number. Her lips were blue in her face, and her teeth chattered so much she could barely force out the comforting words.

“Do not covet, large or small, do not despise, weakling or poor, semblance of evil, allow not near thee,” she whispered the rites of old, the ones her mother taught her when she was small and made her not to say them in church. “Never give nor earn thou shame.”

She prayed, desperately, to her old gods; the ones with the creaking temples and whispered rites, whose people barely dared to raise their voices and yet, were heard all the same. She prayed to her mother, her father, her brother as she brushed the tree branches aside, and searched the bark for the entrance to the child.

The night roared its fury, the spirits reeling with wrath, and her face was wet, and she tried, desperately, her words gaining panic and frustration, as she threw herself against the bark, over and over, her voice climbing to a shaky screech.

“Blessed Mother come to me and cast your lovely golden light! Give light to earth so that I may see your glory, shining ever bright!” She cried, wet, cold and terrified. Her tears dribbled down her face, and she was afraid, so very, very afraid.

Afraid that her gods would not come to aid her. Afraid that the spirit would do good on its promise to swallow her sister’s soul and ravage the family she’d come to accept as her own. Afraid that the child would die in the arms of a blood-tree, when then world outside it raged and burned for flesh she did not know. Afraid that she would forever be cursed to stand outside this very tree, her fingers clawing the trunk, bloody and frenzied, and no one would ever find her here.

She leaned her forehead against the bark. The sap felt slick, and sticky, and it oozed over her skin, tangling in her hair, as she cried, sobbed, even screamed.

“Please.” She begged the tree. It groaned beneath her touch, and she could feel its energy preparing to strike, the fury and malevolence gaining an anger so fierce, it would strike down any who dared to come across its path.

“Please,” she begged again, and her bitterness was hot and fierce in her chest. “The child will die. The child—it is innocent. His life…h-his life s-should not b-be claimed, not now—I—please.”

The tree stilled, and the storm seemed to hush for a moment, and the tears trickled down her cheeks and mingled with the sap and dirt and sweat.

“Please.” She whispered.

The tree shuddered, once, twice, and then the sound of creaking wood echoed in the clearing and she closed her eyes as she felt it close around her.

Thank you.

…

Yasuo knew his sister was strange.

He knew there was something wrong about her; something so fundamentally different it itched at him, made him sweat whenever she looked at him a little too long. He thought it was her eyes, the ones that were so similar to their Okaa-san’s; dark, thunderous slate in the night, and pale, shining pearl-gray in the high sun, ever-shifting. There was something wrong about her gaze, as if she could look right through you with a single glance and know everything she wanted to.

His sister was wrong. There was an itch about her, a persistent, digging niggling suspicion that ran deep within him. It started, he thought, when he heard her talking at the creek. She was still little then, but her head had forever been in the clouds, and he’d followed her because he was bored, and she always had a funny look on her face when he pinched her too hard; as if she was pursing her lips from scolding him, and it made him feeling a little powerful—as if, maybe, he could control that little zing of a thrill, and twist it and cajole it into something more.

As if he could control her—Hitomi.

He didn’t know why he wanted her to adore him, he just wished it intensely; more than anything else in the entire world. He wanted her to look at him and smile like she did at the plants, and leaves, and fields, and creeks, and stray cats. He wanted her to look at him like he was someone, something, important, like he mattered.

He wanted Hitomi to look at him like he was her brother—older, all-knowing, all-powerful.

Hatsue was different of course, but then Hitomi always made everyone else look normal. His youngest sister was stubborn, and hard-headed, and a little too narrow-minded to be fun but she still looked at him like he wanted Hitomi to—like he was the oldest, better one. Like he was the one that everyone looked to for guidance, for advice—after their parents of course.

And so, he watched her, out of the corner of his eye, and saw her grow. She barely noticed the years passing so far gone in her mind, but she grew all the same, her childish, sharp face smoothing out, into darker skin, wider eyes, and longer lashes, and even sharper angles.

His sisters weren’t the pretty ones out of them all, he had always been, and that was something he lorded over them like a well-earned achievement. Hatsue always flushed in anger when he talked about her heavy-set shoulders and thick soles, but Hitomi only looked at him, with her too-sharp face, and bony cheekbones, and smiled, that soft, airy smile, even though her eyes were far away.

Yasuo wanted her to look at him.

He wasn’t the only one, no, of course not. There were many that wanted Hitomi to glance upon them. She was a lonesome child, and apart from Hatsue, she didn’t interact with the villager children, but Yasuo did.

He noticed when she turned into a young woman and the rest of the boys that played with him sat up and took notice of the way her curves filled the embroidered yukata she wore, how her face had lost its child-like look, and her lips were fuller, how her hair was longer, glossier, even though she stuck flowers and plants and sticks in them like a crazy person and he knew she didn’t brush it a hundred times every night like Hatsue and Okaa-san did.

When they were little, it was easier—they didn’t take notice of her, not when she walked barefoot, or hummed her silly songs, or bowed to the trees and talked to thin air, or smiled airily, absent-mindedly, as if she heard someone’s rather funny reply.

But Hitomi didn’t grow out of these ticks, they only solidified and with that eerie, enticing foreign strangeness came want and need and greed. Hitomi was different and they wanted her for the same things Yasuo did—attention.

She was the only one of the village girls that didn’t notice when the boys grew muscles and worked the fields bare-chested, sweat slick on their skin; the only one who didn’t look over and flush or giggle.

She wasn’t a serious girl, not like Hatsue, who many boys tried to woo, and turned away scorned when she leveled them with an unamused, blank stare. She just didn’t care—or at least, that’s what Yasuo thought in the beginning.

Hitomi didn’t seem like she cared about people, because she wasn’t ever looking, talking, walking with them. Hitomi didn’t seem like she cared because her head was in the clouds and her eyes were far away, untouchable, unreachable, and no one, not even Hatsue could drag her down when she wished to go.

But then he watched, and he saw—she sang her songs when father was tired and the gray at his temples had begun to thread through his dark hair, and when mother’s shoulders sagged at the end of a hard day. Hitomi didn’t complain when they cooked meager meals, only smiled and took what was left, pretending she wasn’t hungry when he knew he would hear her stomach growl later. She didn’t make a fuss when her yukata was too short, and her sandals were too shabby, ripping at the twine, she only hummed a nonplussed answer and began to go barefoot.

Hitomi was different, but she was, ultimately kind.

Yasuo wasn’t.

He wasn’t kind, not like Hitomi—not even like Hatsue. He was selfish and vain and cruel, and he laughed when Yuki fell into a muddy ditch and scratched her perfect face, and the lord that had called for her hand removed his suit the next day. He liked when the village girls would flush under his attention, and move into his touch, even though they knew they shouldn’t. He liked when the grandmothers shook their heads and muttered bitter things about their crying granddaughters’ and broken hearts.

Yasuo liked being powerful, liked being selfish and vain, and he didn’t want to change it.

He wasn’t like Hatsue who labored for everything she wanted, and spent weeks and months working up the money to pay for a new cut of cloth from the tailor to fashion herself a new yukata. He merely smiled and swaggered up to the old woman, and trailed his finger down her arm, and watched her flush and squirm, because she was lonely, and lonely women liked to be noticed by young, pretty men; and he’d come home with mussed hair, and red lips and a brand-new silk cloth.

He wasn’t like Hitomi, who was a new stratum of strange unto herself. Hitomi who hummed and danced and skipped and folded flowers into her wild hair, but she made sure to pick fallen children off the ground, and stayed with them to tell wild, winding stories, even though she sat in the mud. Hitomi stayed when people needed her small, strange kindnesses, unlike him. He would merely scowl, and shove the children out of the way, although not as roughly as he would an adult, and continue to skulk down the road.

…

It was a maze of wood and limbs and bones. Red, old blood spattered the walls. Inside, everything was muted. The screaming, horrifying noise of the storm sounded far away within the tree, and Hitomi found herself wiping away her tears as she tried to look around.

Pitch, black darkness greeted her instead. The tree groaned and creaked around her, and she tried to blink, to catch some semblance of light, but caught none save the crackles of lightning that traveled through the walls of this wooden cage.

She sucked in a breath.

…

It was Hitomi’s kindness that drew Hiroyuki to their doorstep.

She might not remember it, in the airy skull of hers, but he did. The butcher’s boy was a hulking beast of a man, with straining muscles, and an ugly, brutish face, all mashed together like someone had forgot to knock it all into place. He was quiet, and steady, and no one bothered him, no one truly dared.

Hitomi rarely noticed when her siblings trailed after her due to her mother’s request, but Hatsue was working in the fields and she had begged him, promising him a new pair of sandals, so he could follow her this time, so that their sister wouldn’t end up killed, and lying dead in a ditch somewhere, the cries of the Senju and Uchiha trailing in the air.

He followed her that day, to a glen in the meadows, glad that she hadn’t traversed the forest that day; the one that felt like your very soul left its body when you dared to step in its midst. The glen was narrow, and the flowers that stretched across its plains were lush and rich and he settled back in the grass to listen to her humming; her foreign songs wild and free on the breeze.

She spent the day there, and she made crowns of daffodils and daises and rich, bursting blooms that made her smile, softly, kindly, in that way that made him think of lost things. Her arms were full of thyme, pockets bursting with sage and mint when she rose, the sun yellow like a yolk in the orange sky and made her way back to their home.

It was that day that he noticed that she never did return without something. It was also the day that he noticed she was kind, and that no one really quite knew what to do when she was.

(She was supposed to be feared after all—a witch in girl’s clothing.)

He wasn’t careful when he followed her, for she didn’t notice, hadn’t ever noticed, but that day she stopped in the woods, when she heard a grunt of anger and rage, and the crack of wood on flesh and bone.

She tilted her head, eyes shining in the sun like glinting opals, and she settled the herbs down on the ground, and stepped inside.

He balked, at first, superstition clogging his throat, and stringent fear making him stutter in his steps, but he thought of his beloved Okaa-san’s face, shining with loss and grief as he brought his sister’s spirit-less body, and swallowed it down to follow her.

…

Morrigan, my lady of darkness and war, I petition you—answer my call.

It had been years, decades, centuries since she’d prayed for them, the ones she wasn’t to speak about, so not to scare the others around her, but now, in the darkness of the night, and brimming morning, she bowed her head in the blood-tree and prayed.

Tunupa, father of my blood, creator of my world, I beseech you—answer my prayers.

…

“You shouldn’t go punching trees, you know.”

Yasuo stopped dead in his tracks, fear striking him still.

There was a rustle, and a shocked silence and then she spoke again.

“You’re bleeding. Are you sure you’re alright? Hands are very hard to heal if they break the right way.”

…

She stayed still, hardly dared to breathe, and listened to the groan of the tree around her. She could feel the slick blood on the walls, and the way the tree breathed, closing around her, tighter and tighter, until her cheeks were wet with blood, and her throat felt the bones jutting from the walls, razor sharp.

Still, she stayed, and her lips murmured prayers, her mind already half-gone with fear, as she trembled, yearning, yearning, yearning.

Please, let me find him, please, please, please.

…

Yasuo hid behind a tree, and watched his sister as she smiled, airily, at the boy with the hulking frame and hard, broken eyes. She approached him, and it was almost comical how different they looked then—him the looming, enormous giant, with tree trunks for arms, and she the slender little bird, with breakable skin.

“Look,” she said, and she pulled his bloodied knuckles to her. His hands spanned the entirety of her waist. She unfurled his hand slowly, taking care not to rip broken skin. Her dainty fingers traced the bruises, and she clucked her tongue, just their Okaa-san did. “Oh lord in heaven, you’ve nearly ruined them.”

And as she looked up into the butcher boy’s eyes, with her strange kindness and hazy clarity, he saw it—the exact moment when she hooked him.

Hiroyuki looked at his sister, the strange, bizarre one with too much wild, and he saw something that told him he was worth more than his father’s fists and drunken yells, and the burning intensity in his eye, softened if only just.

“You’ve got to clean them now,” Hitomi told him, looking up underneath her lashes. “So, they don’t get swollen, infected—so they don’t hurt too much when they heal.”

Yasuo watched, and he saw how she weaved calm around her, and settled the boy’s shoulders and drew him out of the scarred, twisted shell.

Yasuo watched as Hiroyuki slowly, carefully, allowed himself to lower his walls as she spoke, his hands in her lap, as she tore away a strip of cloth, and mopped his bloodied knuckles.

Yasuo watched as he blinked, slowly, eyes soft, and Hitomi spoke of wondrous things—castles in the sky, and spirits who were kind, and glittering, pleasant cities that shone like gold and held the secrets of the world in their palm, who loved its children, and held them close to its bosom.

He watched as his sister stood, and bowed, wearing her absent smile, and left the boy there, his heart racing in his chest, hands bandaged and clean.

…

She gasped when she heard the wet, rasping whine. Her eyes fluttered open, and she felt the tree loosen around her shoulders, letting her through. She stumbled, skin tearing under the sharp bones and slick with sap and blood, hands brushing the walls, tentative hope fluttering in her chest.

Hitomi sobbed in relief when she found him—the child.

…

Yasuo knew his sister was strange, and that is why he heard when she put on her overcoat, quietly, and tucked her hair underneath the collar, and unlatched the door. He watched, eyes barely open, as she gave them one last glancing look, and slipped out the door, closing it shut.

And he knew his sister was strange, but he thought of his mother’s face when she heard Hitomi’s songs, and the way she smiled, at peace when his sister sang, and so he rose, and tiptoed out the door to follow her into the night.

…

“Hush, little one,” her voice stuttered on her grief. “I’m here, I’m here, don’t you worry now, don’t you worry.”

He was a mess of blood and guts and entrails, and her stomach was open. His face was pale, sweating. He didn’t even move as she rushed to him, hands lifting his face. He was going to die if she didn’t do something. He was going to die in the cold, away from his family, inside a blood-tree, a strange girl hovering over him.

Her tears slipped down her face, and her chest heaved as her hands fluttered over his open chest. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t heal the boy, not like this—not with her hands and hope alone. She wasn’t a doctor, and even if she was, she couldn’t sew him up and hope for the best. She had nothing but dirt and prayers, and for once, she truly felt helpless.

“What can I do?” she blubbered, breathing hitching. “Oh, my gods, oh Morrigan, Tunupa, Saint Mary, Joseph and Lord Jesus Christ almighty, what do I do?”

…

He lost her several times, but his heart stopped dead in his chest as the forest loomed over him, a heaving, roaring graveyard of swaying trees and furious spirits. He saw her enter, determined, as if she was following something only she could see.

The winds battered against him, and he nearly lost his footing as he trudged forward, through the fear and pain and desperation, his will and determination alone holding his legs up.

He followed her, because he knew he couldn’t back now, and because he was afraid—because Hitomi was his sister, even for all her strangeness, and he couldn’t bear to watch her lolling, life-less eyes and leave silent eternities behind.

…

Her hands trembled, and her mind was panicked.

“I don’t know what to do!” she shouted, hoping something, someone would hear her. “What do I do, oh god, oh god.”

She didn’t want the child to die. Not only because her sister would, but because he was a baby. She could see his round, childish face. She saw his pudgy fingers and short legs, and she wanted to scream and sob, and now, looking upon the bloodied, dying child, she understood the earth’s anger, deep and furious, grieving and dangerous.

She understood, and so she begged.

And then, something sparked within her, and it was such a silly little miracle one she barely remembered she could do; that she nearly laughed, but she couldn’t with the lump pressing against her throat, and raised her glowing, blue hands to torn flesh instead.

Please, please, please. She begged, and she prayed that she’d be heard.

…

It was morning when he found her.

The roaring storm had receded, and the world was soft. Larks flew, hesitantly, into the morning sky, the sun rising with a pink glow, and the dewdrops on the trees were glistening, a picture of calm.

He stumbled, dead tired, blonde hair stuck to his face, and eyes bleary.

Yasuo didn’t know it was her she appeared on the field; she was crying, sobbing, and he couldn’t remember a time that she’d done that, even as a child; as she came closer, he saw her familiar bony face, high cheekbones, and silvery eyes, and his heart stopped in his chest.

He stood frozen and watched.

Yasuo watched her, with her slack mouth, eyes wide and afraid as she struggled to him, her dark, wet hair plastered to her pale face, and the front of her yukata was thin, and stuck to her skin, and she looked so small and slender then, like the ebbing night could swallow her whole.

The child sat, swaddled in her arms, bleeding, and gasping, his hands clutched around her neck, and it was that that shocked him to the very bone—her desperate face, and wobbling mouth, and for the first time, he realized that his sister, the one that didn’t pay attention, not like she should, was afraid.

So very, desperately afraid.

“Help me.”

Chapter Text

“You found him?” Their father asked her, eyes serious.

She stared at nothing, her hands shaking, her face as white as bone. Her hair was around her in inky black trails, stuck to her skin, sap and sweat and rain matting the thick locks. Her lips were blue in her face, and her eyes were wide, dark as slate, the whites showing.

Yasuo had brought her to their hut, had sat her down onto a seat, and run back into the village for the old healer by the creek. By the time he had come back, the healer-woman and her son in tow, Hitomi had not moved from her perch, eyes riveted on the rising and falling chest of the boy.

“Hitomi.” Their father asked again, reaching out to catch her chin. “Hitomi this is important, this time, you have to listen to me.”

His sister looked at their father, mouth opening in a speechless gape. There was something horrifyingly wrong with the way her face screwed up, her mouth pursing into a sob, and her eyes welled with tears. She didn’t make a sound as she bowed her head into her hands, fingernails digging into her scalp, as she rocked herself back and forth.

She looked broken there, holding onto her head, her shoulders shaking with her sobs.

Their father had gone white in the face, and he made a little sound in the back of his throat—something caught between a sob and a grunt—before bending down to clutch at his daughter.

“Hito-chan, my little queen…” he enveloped her in his enormous arms, and pulled her close, tucking her head under his chin, his eyes closed in a grimace. “Did they do something to you? Did they…did they…touch you?”

Yasuo felt dawning horror grip his stomach, and he thought he stumbled back. He thought about how he found her, eyes wild, mouth open, blood around her fingernails—her hair a mess. How she was crying, and stumbling, and falling as she ran, and she could barely reign in her hysteria.

For a half, breaking second, he thought…

“N-No!” Hitomi sobbed out, and this time, she let out an accompanying grief-stricken whine. She clutched at their father, hands digging into the fabric of his yukata. “No…I there wasn’t anyone but the child…he was alone Papa…he was dying, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”

Their father gasped in relief and brought her closer. “Shhh…hush, musume.”

Yasuo watched, chest rising in relief, in awe of the way their father clenched his eyes, and pursed his mouth in silent worry. How he trembled and shook in terrible easement, and clutched at his daughter tighter, until Yasuo was sure that Hitomi couldn’t quite breathe without a twinge in her lungs.

Ensui was not a sentimental man. He was quiet, and never quite voicing his thoughts. He was like Yasuo in the way he watched instead of speaking, and only raised attention when he interrupted, untroubled, when he didn’t quite agree.

To see him, his father, a man of soft pride and importance, break at the sobs of his daughter was almost surreal.

“Will you tell me where you found him, Hitomi?” Their father asked, voice low. Hitomi cried harder into his chest, “It’s important, my sweetling. Will you tell me?”

“Why?” She rasped, breaking away from their father’s hold. Her eyes were wet, red, and her mouth trembled. She looked a mess of tears and snot and grief. Her hands still shook. “Papa…you’re not going to hurt him…are you?”

“His people may come looking, Hitomi.” Their father said evenly. “We cannot afford to lose more to the Clan Wars. Our crops are thin, our cattle are starving—we have no land to make fields from, no more rice paddies…we cannot bestow the child with our protection, not when we have so much to lose.”

Yasuo, trying to lighten the blow, pitched in. “We do not even know if he is a clan-child, Otou-sama. We may be worrying for nothing.”

His father’s eyes were dark and strong. “He bears the Uchiwa emblem on his back—the blood thirstiest of them all. We cannot let them know we housed one of their own. Where the Uchiha roam, the Senju follow.”

Yasuo winced at the stony look their father graced his sister with as she let out a stifled noise, looking away. He didn’t think he could bear to see the betrayal flash in her eyes; the clearest and most pained they’d ever been.

“But Papa—you can’t—Papa—” Hitomi’s eyes went wild, panicked, and her throat worked as she grasped at her father’s sleeves. “We need to protect him. We need to.”

Their father’s eyes were hard as he stepped back, even as his mouth creased in worry, arms crossed over his chest. “Hitomi I have allowed you to do as you please for all these years. We have had no troubles, inklings or stirrings of war…but now our village is suffering. The Clan Wars are closer than ever—the men in our village cannot protect us if they come here. We will be ravaged by war and bloodlust and their foolish squabbling.”

Hitomi shook her head. “The earth is angry Papa, the winds roar for their grief—we cannot leave the boy; he is important. I beg you Papa, we must keep him safe.”

“Hitomi!” Their father shouted, mouth severe. He looked, in that instant, paralyzed with fear and grief and rage. “I have had enough of your mind wandering. The earth cannot be angry, for it is a thing. The winds cannot roar, because they are not capable of emotion! You must be grounded in these times of fear, Hitomi—you cannot allow yourself to wander within the strange, eclectic whirring of your soul.”

Their father looked her, shoulder stooping. He looked defeated, head down, eyes heavy. “It is better to let them believe he has died, to have them find him there in the forest, and think it was another Clan.”

His sister stood, eyes unusually clear, her hands clenched at her sides. She was still wet, dripping. Her face was pale, her eyes red, and her mouth trembled.

“I will not let you.” She whispered, and Yasuo gaped in shock at the blatant way she defied her father. “I will not let you harm him Papa, even if I have to stand in front of the blade myself.”

…

Chiharu had not heard her daughter leave the house, but she had heard her husband rise from their futon, and pretended she was asleep. She breathed evenly when he dropped a kiss on her brow, and didn’t murmur anything back when he whispered that he loved her.

She stayed quiet, and listened to the way his feet thumped on the ground as he made his way towards the thatched living room; listened to the way her daughter breathed loudly and panicking; listened to the way the old healer woman and her son made their way to the free bedroom, a gift from the butcher’s family when young Hiroyuki landed his eye on her daughter, to check on the boy Hitomi and her son had dragged home.

Chiharu pretended she didn’t listen to her daughter’s distraught sobbing, even though her heart clenched, and her throat tightened, aching to run to her side.

If they had taken her virtue and stripped her of dignity, Chiharu did not think she could bring herself to shame her daughter for the vulnerability. Ensui…Ensui would take up his daisho and wakizashi once more and hunt them down to the ends of Amaterasu’s green earth. She knew he would spend years hunting them, decades; that he would even let them take the last breaths from his lungs if he could strike them true.

Her husband was strong, and fierce, but while Yasuo and Hatsue were his children beloved, Hitomi was truly his heart. He adored her with a ferocity she knew would consume him if she were truly gone. Hitomi was the jewel of her father’s eye—and while he was fair, and true and good to their other two, she knew that if Hitomi perished, Ensui would change; he would darken and obsess, and the light that came into his eyes when she stumbled on up the dirt path, flowers in her hair, songs in the wind, would wither and die.

And then she heard her daughter’s words, strong and fierce, like her father, ever determined.

“I will not let you,” Hitomi swore, and it was true and strong. Chiharu’s heart beat too fast in her throat. “I will not let you harm him Papa, even if I have to stand in front of the blade myself.”

And Chiharu, terrified of a life without her daughter’s songs and quiet, ever-lasting adoration, rose up, and ran to the door and tore it open, and in her nightgown, with her silver hair unbound against her back, she rushed to her husband’s side.

…

She startled so badly at the sight of her mother, hair unraveled and face squinty with sleep, that she nearly fell over. Only Yasuo’s hands kept her knees from buckling beneath her.

“Chiharu—what are you doing—” her father stuttered in open shock, dark eyes wide. “I thought you were sleeping.”

Her mother didn’t stop to turn over his words, merely fell to her knees, forehead pressed against the dirt, hair fluttering around her.

“Ensui-sama.” Chiharu said, and Hitomi’s heart leapt in her throat.

Yasuo’s grip tightened on her, and she thought she felt faint as she watched her father’s looming figure, eyes awash with wary anger, look down upon her mother’s. Hitomi knew her father was no cruel man—he treated his wife fairly, kindly, a great difference to some that resided in the village.

But with her mother prostrated on the ground in front of him, she could not help but wonder if he would degrade her like this, just because he could.

“Ensui-sama.” Her mother spoke again, and her words did not waver, nor did her gaze look up from the dirt floor. “I ask that you grant her request.”

Her father’s eyes darkened, mouth working in anger, and for a searing, terrible moment, Hitomi thought he would strike out in anger.

“And why,” her father bit out. “Should I do this?”

Her mother did not move from her bow, her feet did not waver, her arms did not tremble, and she bowed her head in the dirt. “Because,” she began, and her words were strong and fierce, all the love of a lioness within them, “she has never asked for anything.”

Her father’s mouth tightened so much his lips went white in his face. The tendons in his neck strained, “Chiharu this is madness. You cannot ask me this.”

“Shujin-sama. I beg this of you.” Her mother did not rise. A lock of silver hair fell around her. “Hitomi-chan has never begged for anything. She has not asked or cried or sobbed for greed. She has been a good, kind child. She has not made herself a nuisance, has not even begged for food.”

At this, her mother looked up at her father, gray eyes pleading in the flickering light of dawn. “This is the only thing she asks, Shujin-sama. I pray that you let her have it.”

Her father said nothing for a small eternity. He merely looked, eyes dark and serious, on the sight of his wife, lying before him in the dirt, her nightgown wet and muddy, her skin pale, hair around in a pile.

There was a moment, a single, fleeting moment, when his eyes softened, just a hint.

Then he turned, hands tucked at his sides, and looked to the door.

Hitomi held her breath.

“If they come,” he told her. “You will take responsibility.”

And she thought of the cat’s green eyes, and the way the earth had screamed its fury, and breathed a sigh of sobbing relief.

His footsteps were last thing she heard as the sun rose behind the clouds, shining down on the little village.

Chapter Text

He awoke to the sound of a voice.

“’S moch an duigh a rinn mi eireigh, Hoireann o hi ri u ho,”

A voice so beautiful he thought he dreamed it all along.

“Hu o ai hi o ho eile, Hoireann o hi ri u ho,”

What he remembered was the feeling of his skin ripping, tearing, breaking beneath the swords, and the vicious, furious gaze of the Senju, bearing down on him like dogs, and the thought that at least his brothers were safe, even if he had to die under the sword of murderers.

“Ghabh mi mach ri gleann na geigeadh,”

He remembered how he dragged himself to the tree, a last mercy to himself, and he swore he felt it creak and rise around him, like a small babe in a mother’s embrace. He felt the earth roaring around him, the static of rage filling the air as the blood leaked from his wounds, oozing from his veins.

“Thainin mi steach gleann na spreidheadh,”

His head hurt, and he felt frail, papery, as if someone had drawn the life from his bones, swirling it in their hands, before rushing it back into him, blooming it quietly in his cold body. He groaned when he tried to sit, and his limbs trembled with the effort.

“Fhuair mi gruagrach dhonn gun eireigh,”

His eyes barely opened, shut tight together, the crisp at the seams crackling so painfully he hissed. His throat was dry, cracked, and his mouth bled as he tried to ask for water.

“Ach.” A low, gravelly voice sounded. “I nearly didn’t hear you wake over the girl. She’s been singing all day—her witching spells.”

He startled badly, jolting so much he nearly toppled over.

“She begged for you, you know.” The voice spoke, and it remained as brusque and unconcerned as ever. “She has not spoken, truly, deeply spoken, for years…and yet she begged for you—and outsider. A clan child.”

He felt something push against his cracking lips.

“Drink.”

He swallowed, and nearly sobbed at the cool water that filled his mouth and smoothed his ravaged throat. Hot tears trickled down his face, and he sniffled, whimpering, and he vaguely realized just how scared he had been—that they would kill him.

It was with this realization that he let himself settle back into the futon, his body trembling, mind spent, and listen to the echoes of the strange, haltingly eerie voice.

“’S tusa ghaoil a gheibh am preusant.”

…

She sat outside the healer’s home, eyes riveted on the horizon. Her throat was hoarse from the songs that had passed her lips in worry. She did not know what to do, and so she sang—because she was scared—but also, because her mother’s native tongue comforted her, so much so that she thought she felt the brush of a kiss on her brow.

It had been days. The novelty of the child—a clan child—had not worn off for the villagers. Some looked at her now, and Hitomi actually saw them as individuals and not the blurs she was used to.

They were small, squat, brown people, and she realized that it was herself—and her family—that were the outsiders. Her mother was different to them; though her skin had browned and leathered with the skin, it was not the same caramel-brown-black that theirs’ was; her movements were too graceful, her words too stilted and archaic to sound like the lower class.

She wondered, vaguely, if they saw her that way—a product of squandered nobility, too impossibly difficult to figure out.

They saw that she’d awoken, of a sort, her mind as clear as the water that rushed through the creeks and were even warier to approach her. They had been all along, but before, she had blurred, hazy memories of children allowing her to pick them up and brush their knees of dirt and blood, before her stories whirled in their curious, open minds.

Now, not even the children she vaguely remembered behind the smokescreen of the haze dared to come near. She sat vigil, unmoving, and she did not pretend to flinch when they tried to spit harsh words at her.

Hitomi knew they were scared of the child that lay on the bed of hay, covered in canvas, his mind long gone from his head. They were scared of what he could, would bring. Of what she, in all her supposed naivety, had brought to this little village.

So she tolerated their hatred. Their vicious lies and self-fulfilling prophecies. She didn’t let them tear her down, nor did she allow their cruel words, gestures and insinuations to bow her head and make her cower in fear.

No, she sat tall and firm, and her eyes did not move from the horizon, not even when her brother tried to rouse her interest.

Her sister had yet to wake.

She pretended to be surprised at that—as if the guilt wasn’t swallowing her whole, churning inside her stomach and roaring in her head like a muddied landslide, ready to envelop her. Her Mother was restless, and the healer-woman’s son overworked.

He walked to and fro, from his mother’s cottage to help her tend to the young boy, and then back to her own, to fix his hand on her sister’s brow and check if the fever had let up. Each time, the result was the same—when the boy grew in strength, and his breathing evened, her sister would begin to stir, her brows creasing, and then when the boy left, Hatsue recoiled back into the darkness, where Hitomi was sure the cat gripped her in its sharp talons, eyes glittering so very green.

She did not know to trap a soul, but she was sure that the creature-spirit did, and she was superstitious enough to know that if they wanted to, the spirits could swallow you whole.

So, she sat, and waited for her sister to rouse, the boy to stir from his fever-sleep, and sang until her lips felt numb and her words rasped in her throat.

No one quite said anything when her words stumbled, and her eyes gleamed wet.

…

The early morning sun felt warm on his face, like the caress of a butterfly resting on his cheek. He blinked slowly, a phantom pain travelling up his stomach, and his gaze rested on a low ceiling. The rafters were low, and heavy, and cracks shone through the roof. He thought, for a moment, of the old blacksmith’s words brittle words, besmirching the idea of low-quality lumber.

A low hum stirred him from his musings and his heart leapt in his throat.

“I see,” a voice came and his eyes snapped up. “You are awake.”

He looked, and for a moment, he gaped.

He didn’t think he’d ever seen a girl as strange as she. Her eyes were hard and yet, soft; gray so bleak they were slate, and yet so poignant, they shone like glittering river-stones on sunny days. Her mouth was round and red, unsmiling. Her hair was wild around her shoulders, tangled in fat, blooming flowers of all kinds; sakura petals threaded near her shoulders, sunflowers sat, content, near her ears, and daises nestled in deep next to them.

But it was her voice that made him stop.

That eerie, gentle voice, that made him think of high, soaring clouds clipped by the wind.

She sat on a low stool, the leg wobbling when she leaned forward. Her skin was dark, freckles spattering over the bridge of her nose. Her mouth didn’t melt into inviting civility, nor did she try to smile for a child.

He thought it strange that she merely watched him, dark and serious, her hands clutched in her lap.

Her eyes flashed, dark and stormy, and he thought he saw a hint of the devil there.

“Do you have a name, Clan-child?”

He swallowed. “Yuji. Uchiha Yuji.”

Chapter Text

Hatsue dreamed of glass cages.

She was still, lying on her back, staring up, and the glinted in the darkness, an elegance close to the silver and diamonds her mother would whisper to her about at in the night. Her breath was caught in her chest, and her breast would not rise, her mouth not opening to draw air. She was still; unnaturally, deathly still. She could not even feel the lump of her heartbeat beating away in her throat.

She watched the glass, as it twirled and glinted, glimmering with some unreachable light. Darkness licked the side of it; shadows as thick as syrup curled their arms around it; the blackness trying to swallow it whole.

She tried to turn her head, tried to blink, open her mouth, but she was paralyzed.

Hatsue thought she stared at the cage forever. Her eyes, unblinking, staring, glazed and open, took in every inch of the bars; the glint of the light, the twinkling whoosh of against air, how they twirled, back and forth, even though nothing spun them.

Echoes and whispers dragged across her skin. Something like wind, but far heavier, brushed over her, and she tried not to shudder.

It edged itself over her, lying directly over her chest. She felt it press down, down, down over her heart, and then, carefully, cautiously, dip into her chest. She tried to gasp, to move, to shove it off, but she stayed fastened, unable to move, unable to blink, to scream.

She felt it going deeper and deeper until it grasped something deep inside of her. A sob built in her chest. Pain ricocheted across her body, clamping her throat tight. Her vision was blurry, and she wanted to scream.

Carefully, it drew it out of her.

She tried, desperately, to close her wet eyes.

It flickered, a dull, shining blue, and for a second, she thought she saw a glimmer of green.

Hatsue dreamed of shimmering glass cages, and then nothing at all.

~.~

The girl was staring at him again, eyes searching his face, as if she was looking for something only she could find.

Yuji bowed his head, looking away from those eerie eyes.

It had been a week since that time he’d woken up and found her there, her hair a mess of flowers, her voice an airy whisper, and her eyes still searching. She did not speak again, not after she’d asked his name, and only the healer-woman and her son spoke to him now, terse and strictly.

After she’d caught his name, she disappeared just as quickly as she’d come, only returning days later, her eyes suspiciously blank and wet, her mouth a hard, thin line. Her skin, not as dark as he’d first thought it, was sunken and pale when she watched him and sometimes, he swore he saw something glitter and glimmer behind them; a dragon turning in its cave.

He hated looking at her. He hated her looking at him. She was too watchful, too quiet, and she made no sound when she sat still, her breathing not even stirring the room’s air. He thought she looked like marble rock then, with her dark eyes and dark hair and darker skin, not inching from her spot for hours.

She disappeared during the nights, and he knew this because when he woke, in the fits of thrashes and screams from the nightmares of the Senju dogs, she wasn’t on that wobbly stool; ageless, ancient eyes tracking him no more.

Sometimes, he was relieved when he found her there, watching. Other times, he loathed it with every single fiber of his being.

She had a way of being uniquely…present. Like not even the woods and the creek and the spirits could ignore that waver less stare. Like, if she willed it, she could sit there, still, silent, immortal, for an eternity and a half.

The medicine woman, he knew, was nervous around her. Her son, even more so. When she left their home, they hummed and bickered and scoffed at each other. They laughed freely, with abandon, eyes glistening with warmth. When she did arrive, they closed themselves off, eyes shuttering, mouths pursing, heads turning away, except to bark out answers to her far and few questions.

They watched her through suspicious eyes and tense faces; through the veil of distaste, sick fascination crawling between the cracks.

Today was a day that he hated her.

It was hot. The kind of hot that made him want to strip off the bandages wrapped around his skinny chest, and bathe in a stream to strip him of the smell of sweat and sickness.

It was hot, and so he hated her, because she did not seem bothered. It was as if she didn’t feel the prick of sweat on her forehead, nor the buzzing of flies, or the high, scorching sun boring down on her unprotected skin.

They sat outside, as they often did when she came to see him—the medicine healer woman did not want her inside for too long—and again, they sat in utterly still silence.

Yuji had always hated the silence of the sick. It was as if their very souls would still in their chests if they disappeared too quickly within their mind, not quite able to come back out. He hated the infirmary at the Uchiha camp. He hated the way his brother sighed, and his black eyes would crease, unfocused and blurred, on the horizon when he had to go back. He hated how he’d lost his two sisters and three brothers to the stillness of the soul, how they’d gone pale first, and then quiet, and then nothing at all.

So, he hated her. He hated her for her quiet, for her stillness, for her staring, watching, haunting eyes, and unmoving mouth. He hated her for the flowers in her hair, and the sheen of sweat on her skin that didn’t bother her. He hated her for her sharp mouth and jutting cheekbones—too sharp to be pretty.

“What’s your name?” He asked, a little louder than he should have, because he didn’t think he could quite hate her like he should—would—if he didn’t know her name.

He couldn’t grab onto her, make her real and true if he didn’t know her name. Couldn’t make her solid. She kept looking at him, but it was as if her eyes had gone back into focus, as if she’d been very far away when she stared.

Something like a smile curled those red lips; inviting, languid, so very tempting, and he felt, for a moment, the twitch of his own, until he scowled at her, eyes hating.

“Why do you want to know?” She asked, and he nearly shouted at the childish tone that escaped those lips.

He hated her for that too.

Yuji glowered, “You know mine. It’s only fair.”

Amusement trickled in those stone eyes and he thought they looked liquid gray then—mercurial. She leaned back, arching into the clutch of the sun. Her throat worked, and he glared at the skin of her neck.

“A rose by any other name would be just as sweet.” She seemed to laugh, and her hair hung around her shoulders, the flowers winking at him.

He gnashed his teeth, and this moment, he truly wished her dead.

“You are not a rose.” He hissed, cheeks heating in anger. His hands clutched at the mat underneath him. His hair, long and unbound, tickling his neck. “You are far from something as sweet.”

She faced him again, tilting her head just so. He wanted to snap her neck. She looked awfully fragile there. Her eyes looked dark then, deep and serious, just like they had when he first saw her in the half-light, face full of shadowed secrets.

“Why does it matter?” She asked him, and Yuji boiled.

“It’s your name!” he snarled. “It is how people know and come to understand you.”

She smiled at him, “I knew you as the boy who bleed out on the forest floor before I knew your name. I understood you as the boy with the pale skin and dark hair and eyes before I knew your name. I learned you as the child who lay in the arms of a jubokko before you told me you even had a name.” Her eyes were dark in her face. “A name defines, and yet not. What you know me as doesn’t need a name.”

“I know you as the annoying chit who won’t stop visiting me.” Yuji growled, then flushed in shame when he realized he lost his temper.

He expected her to recoil in shock, or burst into tears, and for a moment, her eyes flashed with something that seemed like frustration. Years later he would laugh at the absurdity of that thought, for he knew then what he did not know now; that she did not cry or react at cruel words or actions, even the most horrifying of them all.

She merely stared back quietly.

Yuji flushed a little, in shame when she spoke, “Are you so angry that you cannot even be polite?”

He hated her then, so much he nearly threw himself at her, just to tear the skin from the damned smile, that airy voice and too-sharp chin.

Yuji, hot, annoyed, frustrated, told her to shut up.

“Very well, Yuji-san.” She said.

Then she rose, and he felt a lump fill his throat where rage had previously resided.

He watched her, brown skirts, embroidered sleeves, flowers in her hair, swish down the dirt pathway until she left his sight.

He pretended like he hadn’t been yearning for her to look back.

Chapter Text

She awoke now, in the dead of night, sweat slicking up her spine, her mouth open in a scream. Her heart thundered in her chest, and she felt the dizzy, spiraling panic fill her chest up until she could scarcely breathe.

Her face was wet with tears, her eyes stinging.

Something had changed in the forest. Something had slotted back to where it shouldn’t be, and now she felt it; the agonizing, desperate, clutching, clawing emptiness that filled her to the very brim. She could feel the chill of death coating her lips. How she stared and stared and stared, unblinking at the people in front of her, and yet came to life at the sight of the spirits.

She hung, unbalanced, between two worlds—betwixt, between.

Something had gone terribly wrong when she’d saved that boy—Uchiha Yuji. She didn’t know how she’d stopped his body from dying, didn’t know how she’d grasped his spirit with her very hands, but she’d felt it.

She remembered it like a fever-dream. Blue-green. Warm. Fluttering, like the little bird she’d found when she’d been little and kept it close to her breast as she brought it to her mother to fix it’s wing.

She didn’t remember if the bird had been in this lifetime or the last.

Unhinged, the villagers whispered when they thought she wasn’t listening, and she thought they weren’t very far off.

There were days when she thought her fingers turned too fair, too pale, and she could see the dirt path through them, and the beat in her throat lessened until she thought she couldn’t feel the rush of her blood very much at all.

There were days now, where she was too cold, too still, and she sat underneath the sun, desperate to feel a flicker of warmth. Days where she thought the voices of the past hissed and curled in her head, and she wanted to scream aloud; days where she thought she would go insane, crazy, off-with-your-head-girl if she looked at the distorted image in watery puddles.

She’d finally looked at herself in the days after Yuji. Finally, she’d tilted her head and stared down into the puddles, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl-before.

She didn’t look like she should, and yet she was exactly as she should be.

Betwixt, between, falling through the cracks.

Pale skin had fallen away to a deep, reddish-brown tan. Clear blue eyes were now gray, dark, light, in between. Her hair was dark as night, so deep a black it turned blue, and as straight as sticks, but all she could recall was the white-blonde locks falling past her shoulders in corkscrew curls.

Her hands weren’t as slender as they should’ve been. Compact, hard, untrained. She missed the keys of her instrument then, the low, alluring hum of the piano as she pressed her ear to it, to better hear the tune. She missed the sound of music flowing from her lips, her fingertips, her heart, her soul.

It made her sick to her stomach, nauseous, dizzy and trembling when she yearned for the shake of the boy’s soul in her hands. The fluttering, warm pulse that beat desperately in her palms. The sickening thought of if she clutched it just a little too hard, it’d shatter into a million pieces.

Hitomi shut her eyes. Her chest was still rising, her heartbeat still throbbing. Her back was slick with sweat. Her knees trembled underneath the nightgown.

She lay there for an eternity, the ghost of heat in her hands, and she hoped she’d never truly wake again.

…

Outside, the swish of cat’s tail could be heard, but the girl didn’t listen.

…

She walked the streets, her arms by her sides, her eyes blank.

She felt dizzy, unbalanced. There was something worse about today. Maybe, she thought vacantly, it was the heat. She nearly laughed then, loud and clear and true—like she used to, for she hadn’t felt anything since the yokai-cat had swallowed Hatsue’s soul and Uchiha Yuji broke from his fevered sleep.

Her thoughts, usually so far away, so unreachable, whirled inside her mind, ripping through skyscrapers and carefully drawn-up imaginations, whispering, hissing, vengeful. She shook her head, muttering a nothing under her breath, and continued walking.

The sun was already high up in the sky, and there were no clouds for miles to see. It was the day of the market, and normally, her mother sent Hatsue to fetch the bread for the week, and the full-grain flour, and stacks of fish, but she had sent Hitomi instead.

Her mother fretted over her younger sister, barely looking up to give Hitomi the money before clicking her tongue once more and pressing a damp cloth to Hatsue’s fevered brow. If Hitomi was her father’s favored daughter, then Hatsue was her mother’s.

Her father hadn’t spoken to her for the entire week.

Something tugged and lurched in her chest at the thought. Unbidden, a face flitted before her, eyes dark and serious as night. Lips in a straight line. A chiseled jaw-line. Long hair tied back in a low ponytail.

Dad.

She stumbled over nothing. The breath felt like it had been kicked out of her chest. She shook, eyes open and wide, burning. Wet, hot tears ran down her cheeks.

Dad.

The face left as quickly as it came, and she reached her hands out, as if to catch it, but it slipped through her fingers, and only she remained; hands tilted up to the sky, eyes wet, a sob ripping through her lips.

She felt the cry build in her chest, locking in her throat until her neck strained from keeping it in, and her face screwed up tightly.

For the space between one heartbeat and the next, she thought she would scream. That she’d cry and pound the earth and bellow out her rage and loss and grief. That she’d finally feel it—the omnipresent shadow of terrifying fear racing up her spine.

Instead, she let out a single, whining croak and lowered her hands. She wiped her tears away with trembling hands. She slowly straightened, spine clicking into place.

Then she continued walking down the dirt road, eyes glazed over, mind a roar of wind.

…

It watched her, tilting its head, eyes glittering at the sight of her tears.

She’ll come, the council had promised, eyes deep and sad and full of grief, she will come to you.

…

The boy was asking her name again.

His eyes glittered impatiently, a deep black that bordered on obsidian and she thought of the ones that had flitted before her. Her hands clenched in her lap. She watched him, eyes roving over his face—thin, but still carrying the weight of baby-fat, large, full-lashed eyes, a pretty unsmiling mouth.

He’d grow to be as pretty and fine-boned as Yasuo, she suspected.

His skin was pale, although tinted red because of the heat, and for once, she was infinitely glad she’d been born to carry the weight of the sun on her back, reddish-brown skin not as susceptible to burning.

“Don’t you ever speak?” he snapped, frustrated. He scowled at her, and she couldn’t help but remember others with the same furrow between their brow, the same glaring, clouding eyes—angry, scared.

An image of another boy—darker than this one, with shorter hair and narrower eyes—filled her mind and she thought she sucked in a breath. Her nails dug into her palms.

Elan, Elan, Elan, Elan—

She heard the angry snort of the boy before her, and she refocused, catching the last vestiges of worry in those tempestuous black eyes.

She watched him for another while. “No.”

A flicker of what seemed like a smile tugged at those lips.

Then the boy glowered even harder, “Why won’t you tell me your name?”

She tore her eyes away from his face, gaze going far. She looked at the sky, and felt the light breeze settling over her face. She watched the larks flying, heard the buzzing of the cicadas, smelt the wet, damp of rains to come.

Then she stood, bid him a farewell, and left the way she’d come.

In truth, she didn’t know which one to give him.

…

She dreamed of it.

The rich, golden fields beckoning her. The barley and wheat weaved and bobbed in the wind as she stood before them. Her skin was pale again, hair trickling down her back in blonde curls. She wore a yukata. Her shoes were still sandals. Her hands were coarse, nails short and ragged from work.

Something swished at her legs and she looked down to find the cat staring up at her, chesire smile in place.

“You’ll never be one or the other.” It rumbled, and she felt the vibrations in her soul. “You can only ever be both—or none at all.”

Its eyes glinted, mouth full of knives. “Your choice.”

…

She woke much like the last time.

Sweating, eyes blurry with tears, chest heaving.

But this time, she rose and with shaking, trembling hands, she pushed on her sandals, her new overcoat, and walked out the door, to the bumpy dirt path.

She didn’t look back.

Chapter Text

The world was awash in gold. The sun sparkled, glittering like a yellow-flecked streak in the blue, blue sky. The stream gurgled, gilded light reflecting off the winding current. The grass swallowed the movements of the wind, rising and falling with the tide of its call. The sun shone, and the world was awash in gold, and they sat there, waiting, breath caught in straining lungs.

She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, waiting. For what, she didn’t know. Her hair was loose around her, streaming over her bare shoulders. Her clothes were gone, but she didn’t seem to mind as much as she knew she should’ve.

The sun shone, the creek gurgled, and the wind lifted her thoughts, until they swirled and swirled so far away she couldn’t catch them anymore.

She felt ageless in the meadow. The flowers around her sang and sighed, twisting themselves around each other, reaching out to brush against her, like a curious, fluttering bird, before whirling away, off to play with the breeze again. Her skin did not burn under the heavy sun. Her eyes no longer squinted. She drew no panting breath, nor did she wipe away the slick of her sweat from her brow.

They sat, gazing into each other’s eyes, and she wondered why she was here, before the wind whistled again and all was clear.

The child in front of her was pale. She hadn’t seen anyone that pale in her entire life—not even the light-skinned mercenaries that traded goods in their little village had skin so translucent as the elfin creature that sat before her. Her eyes were blue so clear it seemed like the sky over a barley field; wide, curious, ancient. Her hair was a whitening gold, licking the sides of her slender face with riotous curls.

“What brings you here, sister?”

Her voice was hoarse, a low-pitched gravelly tone that made her think of rushing rocks, turning, turning, turning at the center of the earth. The child’s eyes were old then, watching, ever-watching.

A flicker of nostalgia ricocheted through her, and she thought of another pair of eyes, just as old, just as ageless, staring until the secrets she carried were no more.

The child laughed prettily, dimples creasing her youthful face. “You remember her then, sister. That is good. That is very good. It’ll be easier for you to go back.”

“Go back?” She said, and her voice was suddenly loud in the meadow. The sun stood still in the blue sky. The tall grass no longer hummed to the tune of the playful wind. The flowers went rigid, no longer creeping closer and closer.

The child watched her, “Yes. Isn’t that what you want?”

Go back.

She hadn’t thought of it like that. The meadow was pretty, far too pretty, and she didn’t quite want to leave it—not like…not like—she didn’t know, she was…

“You do know you can, can’t you?” The child looked at her through her lashes, rosebud mouth pursed thin. “Nothing keeps you here like your own mind. The spirits cannot stop you from walking to the sun, nor can they stop you from walking back to the near shore.”

Something bubbled in her, something that felt a little like hope, a little like fear, and she suddenly looked.

They were sitting in the meadow. The sun rose in the sky, and shone down gentle golden rays, soaking the earth in sunshine and warmth. The wind played with the grass and tickled the flowers.

Next to them, sat the gurgling creek.

The trees on the bank were swaying, humming, a tune so soft she could barely hear, floated by her and she felt warm.

She focused again, and her mouth went dry, hands shaking.

There lay a road past the stream. A single, winding, rocky road with interspersed grass and twigs, and then nothing. A black so deep, writhing in shadows and darkness swept around it, curling over it, licking up the path before flinching backwards, hissing as if burned.

The child smiled at her, ageless, ancient, waiting.

She felt, all of a sudden, so very, very afraid.

“They cannot stop you from leaving,” the child told her kindly, watching her with those familiar eyes. “For you are not here because you are meant to be. They stole you from your home and took you away before your family could struggle to keep you.”

She tried to speak, but she didn’t think she could say what she thought quite clearly enough. Instead, she tugged her hair, and reached her arms around her waist to try and hide her naked skin.

She felt so very small now, so very afraid that she thought she could not move.

Who had taken her? Who had stolen her from her home?

Was it the trickster gods, the ones that a haunting voice had whispered about to her in her youth—the voice she couldn’t quite remember now.

“No,” the child interrupted, her eyes were sad then. “Those gods do not dwell here. They await elsewhere.”

She swallowed, and her fear felt like acid as it slid down her throat. “Who took me?”

The child looked at her a long while. Her hair blew in the wind, the curls twirling around her like wind-chimes. She was a handsome girl, with a slim jaw, a high forehead, and a sloping nose. Her mouth was soft, pink, full.

Something made her think that if she’d seen the child on the road, she wouldn’t think twice before offering help.

But it was the child’s eyes, those blue, blue eyes, that made her sit still in fear, that made her heart stutter in quiet terror.

There was something so very…ageless about those eyes. Something that made her want to recoil at the sight, no matter how kind they appeared to be. For ageless eyes could be cruel, and she didn’t want to know when their sweet warmth would expire.

“Spirits are very often…mirthful in their tricks.” She began, and her voice was an old humming melody, one that brought fleeting memories to her mind. “They wanted another, and instead, took you, for the other one cannot be kept, cannot be held—one cannot keep smoke in their hands for very long.”

She did not speak for a very long time. She sat still, and felt the breeze settle over her. She listened to the flowers humming. She watched the blue sky and tried to keep from thinking too hard.

Then, when she was ready, she spoke.

“What are you here for?” She asked, voice a whisper.

The child shrugged her slender shoulders, and her pale skin glinted in the pretty sun. Her veins traveled under her skin, blue, streamlined, stretching under her flesh like a map of gold. She was a child of warmth, and sun, and gilded yellow, so very different from what she knew.

“I wait. I sit. I listen. I am here because I must be and because I want to.” The child smiled suddenly, “I am here because I gave someone something special. Something very, very precious. And I wait, and wait, until it is returned.”

“Will they ever give it back?” She breathed, and worry ran through her until she felt sick to her stomach. The child had been kind, had been forthcoming, and the nostalgia ran so deep she thought she could feel it bubble up in her mouth until it tasted like fond memories.

The child looked to the sky, and her eyes slowly changed, the blue slipping away to reveal a slate gray. Her hair straightened, darkening, a black so dark it shimmered blue. Her skin turned darker, the veins hiding away under russet skin.

When she looked to her again, she thought her very heart had stopped in her chest.

“Hatsue,” her sister spoke, and her eyes were so very welcoming, so very warm, that tears dripped down her cheeks. “You must leave now. They wait for you.”

…

Hatsue woke with a gasping scream, and before she heard the thundering footsteps, her heart raced through her chest as the memory seared itself into her mind—the sight of the golden-haired child with her sister’s face.

When her mother reached her, she merely uttered one thing.

“Where is Hitomi?”

Chapter Text

The night was a time of men.

This had been drilled into her like the stomping of grapes to make a fine, deliciously, bitter wine. The time of night was for men, of men, only men. But still, Hitomi walked. She marched and strode and swung her hips to and fro, her mouth resolute, her eyes burning, the fire in her breast spurring her forward.

(She could not be afraid. Not now - not when Hatsue hung there, in the silent gold heaven that smelled of sulfur, sickly-sweet rot and trickery - no…not now…and…perhaps maybe ever. )

She did not, could not, look at the village-men that graced her lithe form with their peering, curious eyes. She did not look, for she knew if she did, she might crumble, stumbling like a frail little fearful thing that could not be trusted to hold up its own legs. The tail of the cat still itched on her cheek, its foul breath still alight in the air, her dreams hauntingly present. Her feet ached, having lost the sandals she'd slipped on, and for once, she was wholly aware that she was bare-footed, with frozen toes, and bleeding heels. Rocks edged themselves into her skin, skittering cuts and bruises into her pace, and an out pour of whimpers and grunts from her lips. Her fingernails dug deep half-crescent moons into her palms, and the slick sweat under her arms made her heart beat only faster.

The night was vivid - and not hers. Vivid, terrible, and reminding her that she was not to be there; apart, separate, kept away, like a shameful existence to be admired in the sobering light of day, or to be ripped to pieces in the shadows of the moon. Her every breath, her every step, the very stirrings of her heart were there, brilliantly, clearly, there. And for a moment, she was fearful. Vividly fearful…for she had never been so aware of herself in this life than in this very moment; her inconspicuous machinations…the rolling mass of tangled hair, a fluttering wave of flowering chaos, the golden-brown of her skin, warmed from the sun, now catching a deadly chill; as she walked down the main road… they watched her. The villagers hooked their eyes deep into her, pinning her with curiously loathing gazes, and mouths that twitched down into furious scowls, with yellowing teeth bared into mockeries of the lions and tigers she'd seen Before, and arms bulging into violent actions of rage, veins stiffly rising to match their vitriol.

The dreams, the slow panic that had edged its way under her skin like an oozing poison, they'd dragged her attentions from the boy, her father, her mother and siblings, and lured her to this very moment, to these very actions.

It was like a trance within herself that she moved - utterly aware of every single second she sliced through the tension of those terrifying, male gazes - and yet, unable to discern to where she walked, or what she was looking for.

Come, the earth urged, come sang the gurgling creek, come chirped the crickets sitting in the high trees, away from the brightness of the high-noon sun, and basking in the shade of all the earth's dark, looming creatures.

And so, Hitomi walked, and she came, with fear and desperation clouding every footstep she made. Her fingers twitched and trembled by her sides as she heard the male jeers, and just as she was to slip out into the fields, and make her way to the forests, she jolted still, unmoving, at the sight of the familiar burning fire hovering over the barley.

Come.

Come to us, now.

As she made to take a step forward, she stumbled. A thick, sharp pain ricocheted through her head, and a wince came to fill her face. A clump of flowers fell from her tangles, a caricature of what they'd once been, and she pulled away her searching fingers to find the dull gleaming of her red blood.

A shocked kind of silence rose around her, gripping her shoulders and slipping into the cracks of those unaware.

"A rock," she mumbled to herself. Her words broke the silence like a bucket of cold water on an early morning. The offender sat in the palm of her hand, weighty and cold and all-too simple looking, like the dread that flooded her stomach now. She fumbled with it, turning it, and it stained her skin bloody, a blatant mockery of the pain she now felt thrumming thinly under the film of her skin.

And then -

"Don't bring anyone back, witch." A rough, terrible voice filled the ominous raging silence. It angled itself deep into her sides, her heart, her soul. She was no witch. No terror. "Or you'll be bringing our deaths with you."

And yours, was what he didn't say.

She stood for a moment longer, the rock tucked tightly between her fingers, memories of shame and terror and fear robbing her blind of the bravery she'd garnered herself with in leaving the house.

As she blinked, tilting her head back to watch the cloudy sky, the light of the moon flickering over her like a tender caress, she spotted the blazing light once more, hovering, buzzing.

come to us, the fields, the animals, the ground and sky crooned.

The whole world shook for her…the universe filled her very soul to the brim with the urge to move.

And Hitomi walked.

(I cannot go home…the thought sat within her chest, encased in a couch of denial and fear and loss…I cannot come back…

And yet… the earth hungered, and raged, and…and she could not let that be…)

She did not look back for their bellows of rage, or wails of betrayal.

(She couldn't)

It took her a moment to realise she was in the forest. The fields of barley, stalks illuminated in the flickering light of the onibi, ran past her. Time fled from her steps, and her eyes could only swallow the billowing fires of blue-green light - curling, smoking hovering things, hungering and slaughtering the closeness of the shadows.

The forest was deathly still. For a moment, she could not move. Her legs trembled, knees weak. The onibi hovered, thrumming and buzzing at her stillness. Her hands shook. Her nightgown had slipped from her shoulder and even the darkness of her skin looked pale in the moonlight.

She exhaled. The leaves barely moved around her, the branches of their stretching trees still reaching towards her. Her hair hung around her, but her head was sticky and sore, and her vision thumped. Thick warmth trickled down her neck. A flower fell to the forest floor, landing with a quiet noise.

She had gone out Before at night…but it wasn't like this, it wasn't anything like this. Her moving city, her winding cobblestone roads, and laughing pubs and restaurants and bars and malls had warmth. Her city, her home, breathed of life and a terribly intimate closeness. Her night was familiar, like a lover's laugh around the corner - thrilling, and all too terrifying. You knew what you'd find - only not in the place you thought.

But this night, this world, was cold now. The earth cooled beneath her feet, her skin becoming pimpled to the touch. There was only the sound of her heart, her breath, the faint, dainty light of the moon-mother, and the moving light of the onibi. The shadows bobbed and weaved around that flickering blue fire, soundlessly stretching around her, a dance of frivolous obscurity, ever-changing.

And then, when her vision blurred further, and her heart grew louder, knees ever-weaker, the sound of the wind wound itself around the trees, lifting their branches off the ground, away from her, moaning and groaning, wrapping around her body, enveloping her, until all she could feel, all she could focus on, were its whispers dancing across her skin.

Child, it crooned prettily, and if she thought hard enough she could imagine a set of sharp teeth in a stranger's mouth, glinting sharply. You must hurry. We wait. We wait.

Hitomi shuddered. Blinked, slowly. A noiseless protest threatened to slip from her mouth, but she froze -

She could hear them, chattering, not long off.

She didn't know how she hadn't heard them before. The sound of her blood had covered it, but now, standing in the stillness of the night, with the wind picking, all she could hear was them.

The ghosts, the spirits. She thought all of a sudden, a dawning kind of realization washing her with fear. I can hear them. I can hear them all.

The thing inside of her - that warm, fluttering thing she'd tried to iron from her mind - gave a dangerous flip.

Whispering, buzzing, tinny voices, at the edge of her hearing. The onibi's flashing fires, and childish giggling and scampering delight. The sound of hushed, terrorizing delight, growing ever nearer.

For a single, half-moment, she thought of the sound of her brother's laughter, however scarce, and how his eyes would crease, and his white-blonde hair would shine in the sun, mouth curling into a beautiful picture. It almost sounded like Yasuo, except this laughter…

This laughter -

This laughter was cruel; this mocking, taunting, carnivorousness laughter; the kind that made you question whether they were laughing among themselves, or if it was directed at you.

She could feel it, that laughter, trickling underneath her skin like a poison, building inside her like a dam, creaking in her bones, until she could no longer breathe with the shame, the embarrassment, the fear.

And she took a single step -

The onibi winked out all at once.

They were upon her.

Chapter Text

Just before she died, Hatsue asked again.

This was a question which had warmed their home, set it ablaze even, kindling from the time she'd awoken.

It was a question that remained unanswered.

"Hitomi," Hatsue began, her sister's pearlescent gaze catching her own. "What happened in the forest?"

Hitomi stared. Her face did not scare Hatsue like it did others. This was her sister, they'd been girls together, and to buckle against it would mean acting as strangers.

She met Hitomi's silence with thrumming frustration.

Their mother would have called it stubbornness if she were here with them.

Hatsue didn't know how she came to be known as the stubborn one when Hitomi became silent in this way. A tide breaking rock over time; a patience expecting the other's death.

"We are old now," Hatsue tried new words, fumbling through her husband's suggestions in gleaning the knowledge she been seeking her entire life. "Yasuo is far away. We are the only ones to care for our parents graves. You held my hands as I gave birth."

Her sister's mouth wobbled.

Hatsue nearly gaped.

(A suddenly irrelevant and horribly inappropriate thought flooded her mind—that perhaps she should listen to her husband a little more often; no wonder he got better deals at the market with his penchant for diplomacy.)

Still, Hitomi said nothing.

"I…remember the golden child."

Hatsue had never confessed it aloud, not once in all her sixty-five years, "Her eyes were yours."

When she finally spoke, Hitomi looked at the hearth. The flames licked the slate-gray of her eyes, haunting her wizened face.

"I was told I needed to give something back."

And Hatsue, the one who had found Hitomi bloodied and empty-eyed that day, suddenly understood.

The sound of their tears did not break the dark, calm night.

Hatsue awoke the next morning at the terrible cold in Hitomi's fingers. As her cries brought the Uchiha's children, she wondered if Hitomi's answer had been the final price.

"You will not speak as we approach," The Uchiha boy repeated himself. "My clan is not kind to strangers."

His eyes, dark and warm, seemed familiar to her. Hitomi couldn't remember his name. Perhaps it was just Uchiha as the girl who carried her even now tended to snarl.

She began to snarl again now, dark brown eyes deadened in fury, "You've said—"

"Hatsue," the older man's voice came. Hitomi liked his voice. It was strong. "Uchiha-san has brought us to his Clan for refuge. We will not squander such a rare kindness."

And sometimes, this voice turned bitter.

Hitomi liked it much less when it became like this.

"Otou-sama," Hatsue said, fingers digging into Hitomi's ribs like knives. She sounded like someone when she spoke like this. Hitomi didn't know who. "I will not shame you."

She blinked when white-silver-blonde appeared suddenly before her. This boy's mouth was flat. Full lips smoothed into a thin, bitter slash.

"Imouto's awake again."

Hitomi wanted to frown but she felt frozen. She had a feeling this was not what the boy usually called her.

The brown-eyed snarling girl (Hatsue?) turned meek as a mouse.

"Hitomi-nee, are you—"

Her words were swallowed by the Uchiha boy's hissing.

"I'll need to knock her out again," The boy's eyes flickered red and suddenly, Hitomi could hear them again, "We can't risk her doing—"

In a corner of sky, twin tails swished.

Remember your promise, little one.

The kappa's scaly skin reflected off the old man's dark eyes.

The man-child owes a debt.

Lightning sparked in the blonde boy's hair.

The trees need blood.

Hitomi opened her mouth to scream.

"—that."

She wondered why the snarling girl's cries joined her own as the world slid into blood red.

When Hitomi awoke, her cheek hurt.

There was someone pressed against her; warm and breathing steadily.

Asleep.

She watched the ceiling for a while before she realized it was not the familiar wood of her home's roof. It moved against the wind, soft tapping alerting her to the soft rain that cooled the earth around them.

They were in a tent.

Hitomi didn't know why. She had a feeling there were a lot of things she didn't know just right now. Like the name of the girl huddled into her side, even though her dark brown hair reminded her of…of….

"Hitomi."

The old man was very quiet when he spoke.

"You're awake again."

The word finally seemed to linger in the air.

He watched her, something agonizing tearing the familiarity of his gaze. Hitomi watched him too. This man was someone to her. He was a person, her person.

But which?

His hair, long, dark and half-pinned in a simple style, looked like her own. When he opened his mouth to speak again, she wondered if he would curse her. He looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he asked, "Are you…hungry?"

She blinked.

It seemed stilted. He was asking her something. She didn't know what.

"I…" Her voice was very weak. The man's face softened. It must have been a long time since she'd spoken. That or…the screaming. "I don't know."

His eyes grew pained.

"Hitomi you must…" He exhaled, collecting his frustration. "I do not…understand you when you speak that…language."

Her brow crinkled, "What do you—"

A murmur sounded next to her.

"H'tomi you' awake…"

The girl's arms tightened around her before releasing. Then, she catapulted into consciousness.

"You're awake!"

"Hatsue," the old man warned. "She—"

Blurry with sleep, the girl's eyes could only stretch into a puffy squint. Her brown curls were riotous around her head. She was very young, Hitomi suddenly realized. She couldn't be more than sixteen.

She was staring at her.

Hitomi shifted, "Yes?"

Hitomi startled when she leapt into her arms, sobbing.

The old man looked at her strangely, "You're speaking normally again."

"I told you," The girl cried, words muffled against Hitomi's chest. "I told you she would."

She wondered why the girl was so sad for her. Wondered why she was insistent something wasn't wrong with her even as the old man stared at her uneasily.

Something like a voice buzzed near her ear and she jerked hard. The girl and the old man exchanged a look. 

Her eyes felt hot, "Hungry. I—I'm hungry."

Feed, it crooned, feed me.

This had the girl stilling, peeling herself away from Hitomi's embrace. This time, her eyes were not snarling or sad. Only stubborn.

"You," she started, hands forming fists. "You promised to leave her alone."

The old man seemed unable to breathe, "Hatsue, it is dangerous—"

Hitomi's lips moved on their own, "Feed. Me."

The girl, this Hatsue, glared. "Bring my sister back."

"I hunger," the thing said. Hitomi's voice was ugly. Thick. It was not her own. "I want to eat."

"Give me Hitomi first."

"Hatsue, no." The old man snarled, and something burned in her mind.

The screaming began to make sense again. The screaming sounded nice. It sounded like freedom.

Because someone had to hear her over the crea—

Hatsue's hand slapped over her mouth, "You can't scream Hitomi. You can't, you can't, you can't. They'll hear."

This girl was a sister, her sister, she'd loved her, hadn't she?

She'd entered the forest; she'd given the blood.

"Hatsue," its voice said. Then her own, garbling against flesh, "Sister."

Hatsue's mouth trembled. This was the sister she'd given oaths for.

The old man—this was her father, her father Ensui—gasped, "Hitomi, sweetling, you must fight it…you must."

Feed, the thing crooned.

Wait, Hitomi said, wait.

"You woke—"

"Up," The Uchiha boy finished. Against the soft light of the dawn, he looked taller than Hitomi remembered. She didn't know when he had slipped inside the tent. 

"You're not screaming."

The red-eye, the thing screeched, killer of trees, scorcher of land.

Behind him, there was the murmuring of feet and metal. They were in an encampment. The fans embroidered on the walls seemed suddenly much more relevant.

"Uchiha," Hatsue, her sister, snarled again. "Leave."

"They want to speak to her," he said, unbothered with Hatsue (her sister) and her loathing. "They want to understand how she did it."

"You, you—you told them!" Again, this sister of hers drew herself up for a fight, "She didn't do anything. You were there you saw everything."

He hesitated, this Uchiha boy, this boy who meant nothing to her and everything to it.

Feed me, it crooned, plying and sweetly rotting, I will teach you to handle the red-eye.

"You know it wasn't her—"

The Uchiha boy finally broke, "She healed me. With chakra. No one knows how to do that."

Something was hammering at the edges of her mind. Something big and dark and ugly.

Hatsue shook her head viciously, "She doesn't know how to do that."

"She does," He insisted. His eyes looked…fervent. Greedy, the thing raged, all so greedygreedygreedy.

"I felt it," The Uchiha boy repeated. "She's…I don't know what she is but—she is not—normal."

"There is nothing," Hatsue said, nails digging into Hitomi's cheek, "wrong with my sister."

Nothing wrong, the thing told her, almost soothing. Nothing wrong with my human.

The motion had Hitomi's cheek smarting. Tears brimmed when she finally remembered why. She moved without thought, ripping Hatsue's hand from her face.

Turning to the Uchiha boy, Hitomi let them fall.

He looked jittery at the sight, on edge.

Yuji, she thought, he said his name is Yuji. It healed him and he—

"You burned me," she croaked.

The boy, Yuji, looked to the ground, "I didn't mean to…I thought you were going to—"

And suddenly Yasuo was opening the tent flaps, face ashen, lips bloodless. His presence slices through the snarling and the stillness. It only adds to the heaviness that is already suffocating.

For a moment, he does not speak.

"Uchiha-sama wishes to speak with Hitomi, Otou-sama."

Hitomi closes her eyes.