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There is a story that gets passed around the wilds of Hi no Kuni, though few in Konoha have ever heard it:
There are things that live in the water, in the torrent of the rivers and beneath the still mirrors of ponds and lakes on a windless day. These things, it does you no profit to find them. They are not man and they are not beast. They are not the intelligent creatures shinobi form contracts with, and neither are they the dumb monsters that wreak havoc if left uncontrolled for even a moment. They’re just the things that linger on the edge of day and night, the things that stare at you from the shadows with their shining eyes.
Rumor has it that if you go to the water at sunset on a day when the sky is red and free of clouds, you’ll see something. There’ll be something cold sitting on the bank, singing a song in a tongue you don’t recognize, but sounds familiar all the same. Its skin is white and bare but for the black hair that tumbles down like a cloak about its shoulders. You’ll stare at it, mesmerized, until it turns around and stares at you. Its eyes are as molten gold and when it looks at you, you are as still as a statue, your feet rooted to the ground.
Most men who find it, no one sees again. But every once in a while, the man brings something home with him instead, something that stares out from the shadows with shining eyes.
-0-0-0-
They still whisper sometimes about the day that man and woman approached the gates of Konohagakure. They bowed and introduced themselves, and the guards all stopped and stared. Not at the man, of course. The man was commonplace, non-descript; of him, what was there to say.? There was only that glassy gleam in his eyes when he looked at his wife, like a man half-asleep, but no one noticed. He was nothing. But the woman, look at the woman! The guards all held their breath as she passed. To them, with the heightened senses of the shinobi, it was as though something very powerful and very old had just passed them by. A giant, and you did not fight giants. You hid from them.
But man and woman both had come to offer their swords to the Hokage. They were accepted into the fold and fought for Konoha for many years, proving themselves shinobi of unimpeachable loyalty. What were odd looks and an unnerving aura to that? The woman, Kaida she was named, was appreciated from a distance. Even if she had proven herself no threat, it was still better not to get too close.
Eventually, these two died in the defense of their homeland, and were honored for it, as good shinobi were. However, it wasn’t as though they had left nothing behind.
-0-0-0-
Orochimaru had spent more time in his mother’s company than he had his father’s. It was inevitable, of course. This was Konoha, and in Konoha, a kunoichi with a child was expected to lay down her arms except in times of great need. Times were changing, but not fast enough to change that. When Orochimaru’s father was away, it was him and his mother. He would come home from the Academy to find her sitting at the edge of the shadows in their house, her eyes shining, and oh, the stories she told him.
“Do you know what lies beyond the eastern sea, my son? What lies beyond the edge of day, the birthplace of the sun? Do you know what lies beneath the waters, my son?”
“No, Mother,” Orochimaru responded, even if he did already know. There was a rhythm to her storytelling that did not bear breaking, and there was always some new facet even to the oldest of her stories.
“Why, there are great castles beneath the waters, my son. Kings hold court in wrecked ships, crowned with coral and pearls, sitting proudly in thrones of bone and kelp. They are attended by jellyfish, guarded by sharks, sung to by whales, their great throne rooms lit by the glowing lures of angler fish.” Her gold eyes gleamed like lanterns lit in the night. “I have seen them myself, though I was born in the sweet waters rather than the salt. I have traveled beyond the edge of the sea, to the birthplace of the sun. There the sea is warm and shallow, and sparkles like diamonds. There are islands decked with flowers of gold and fire, that shine in the black of night like great clusters of stars.
“And when you reach the edge of day, where light fades into darkness, the stars come down to greet you, and you are pierced with light as the arrow pierces flesh. I have taken many to see it, but they did never enjoy the sight as they ought; their bones make up the streets in that shallow sea.” She pressed a finger to her lips, pondering. “Or perhaps their eyes grew sightless before we reached the edge of the world, after all; they all grew markedly silent after a while.”
Orochimaru nodded. It seemed perfectly natural to him that they would; what man could keep his voice under the sea for so long? But there was something that engendered far more curiosity than the matter of men’s waterlogged lungs. “Mother?” he asked her, staring up into her white, pointed face. “Why did you leave the water?” With all its wonders, the waters and the edges of the world seemed a finer place to live than anywhere here.
At this, she smiled, her thin lips, so dark a red that they were almost black, drawing back to reveal her pointed incisors. “Simple curiosity, my son. We must always seek knowledge, lest we wish our minds to rot.” Her eyes gleamed with affection as she reached out to place her hand on her son’s head. “But I have never needed to tell you that, have I? One day, when I have learned all that I can, I shall return to the waters. Perhaps you shall come with me.”
He never forgot those words.