[Graded]Forging bonds

[Suzuri]

Tock, hsssht, tcha. The knife slid along the wood fiber, sending paper-thin splinters rolling into the sand. Later, she would pick some for her firebox. Her movements flowed; occasionally, the girl’s eyes would rise to encompass the sand and the sea and the sky burning blue, without the knife’s woodpecker voice stopping. Her right eye had then the vivid color of pine bark, while her left one burned with wisps of flame from the fire on her side. Occasionally, she would go and look at the boy sleeping on the other side of the fire, and touch his forehead with the back of her hand.

He looked younger than her, around that early teen age when a year is an eternity. Yet he had been carrying on him what Suzuri considered an arsenal, before she had gently relieved him of its majority. Enough sharp objects to make a shark blush…The girl frowned, and her knife stuttered nearly enough to slice through her nail. A ninja. The ninja were people of a different world, isolated in their secret villages even from those that they were supposed to protect. She looked thoughtful as she hollowed out the piece of wood. Some said that a society should not be judged outside the norms of their culture; she had walked in places where wearing leather boots was a sin. But it made the girl uneasy to conceive a world in which, rumor had it, children half her age were taught how to kill.

“Pour, cupbearer, to the Warden of Time,
So he shall forget the time left to us.” She sang in a whisper.

She sat on the sand, relaxed, but with one foot always on the ground, ready to leap at the smallest warning. Their back was assured by a pale, practically knife-cut cliff, and the fire should keep away all but the most desperate of animals. Nevertheless, Suzuri did not like to leave the unconscious boy for more than the minimum necessary to set traps and forage. She stood up and arranged her umbrella to better shield him from the sun.

Close by, he still smelled like a pine forest. The turpentine and resin shard in her painting kit were the first antiseptics that had come to Suzuri’s mind when bandaging wounds. She’d traded a few stings on her wrist for a honeycomb with a nest of wild bees, and dripped it on cobwebs to cover the more superficial scratches. She’d sewed shut others. There was no other medic around, and Suzuri could only hope that her clumsy skills would not be enough to kill him.

Every now and then, the girl turned her attention to the muddy concoction boiling in patched clay pot hung above the fire by a clay-covered wire, and finger-tasted it. She gnawed on her fingertip. She was worried. Even though his body had fought away the fever, the boy would inevitably perish if she couldn't make him eat. And all she could do was to wait. Her knife hit the carving in her hands as if she hoped to wake him up by her resolve alone. Hsssh, tcha. You could tell that he was normally an urban dweller by the contents of his pockets. A true hunter didn’t need so many knives; on the other hand, the boy lacked an essential utensil of any long-term explorer, which is what Suzuri was crafting right now. She wouldn’t share hers if she could help it.

A spoon, that is.

Without expecting a response, without even gracing him with a look, almost without being aware, Suzuri asked:

“Hey, are you awake?”

[Valkier]

Fear prevailed in the darkness, rising like a lump at the back of his throat within the restless dreams that had taken him. At the edge of his vision every tree-shadow twisted and writhed into the shape of an enemy, and their knives fell from the sky like rain that bit deeply into his skin. The lucid moments were few, each filled with a feeling of dread and a heaviness to his body, as if he were struggling uphill with a burden about his shoulders. The steady roar of water rapids never seemed to relent, instead growing louder, louder, louder.


He opened his eyes. The return of consciousness was slow, at first, and for a moment his mind lounged in the pleasant confusion of waking. Already the memory of the fever-dreams began to fade, and in their place he found focus in the soft words of a song sung somewhere near at hand. What is that? Its tone was hushed, but the gentle words reminded him somehow of the sound of a trickling stream in some far away, peaceful place. In his half-consciousness they seemed to blend together with the faint, rhythmic sound of a knife against wood. Their music was a subtle thing, but very... real. Gradually, his mind cleared, and with it faded all pleasantry.

The first sensation was that of solid earth beneath him, offset slightly by something softer. Grass, perhaps? Or a bed of leaves? An umbrella seemed to be angled over him, blocking but silhouetted against a sunlit sky. A gentle but chill breeze brushed across him, and awakened him to a dull ache in his torso. It throbbed, and he risked moving his head to look down. His shirt and vest had vanished and in their place stretched a series of wounds; glancing cuts covered his chest and sides between at least two larger injuries. One, a deep stab-wound a little above his waist, announced itself with a startling surge of pain as he moved. He lifted his left arm to inspect it, only to see that it too was covered in defensive cuts, sticky with some sort of resin.

He quickly became alert, spurred on in equal parts by the growing pain and the natural caution of a trained shinobi. He glanced around, and through the crackling flames of a firepit immediately to his left spotted a figure, apparently focusing on something in their hands. Immediately he dropped his head back and closed his eyes, feigning sleep. He subtly increased the pressure of his right leg against the ground and noted the missing feeling of metal. His kunai pouch was empty. His forehead creased for a moment as he fought despair; he was wounded, unarmed and at the mercy of whoever had brought him here. Wherever here was.


For all his pretending to rest, he jumped as the figure beyond the fire spoke. He opened his eyes again and shifted his head in search of the speaker, hoping to get a clearer look, but found that the dancing flames of the firepit obscured the details he sought. Instead he considered the voice. It struck him as being... Odd, somehow. The intonation and tone of the words rang differently to the voices of people he knew.

Eventually, after a stretching pause, he answered.

"Whe--" He coughed, words catching in a dry throat. He brought a hand to his mouth, and a shiver ran through him. "Who are you?" he managed at last in a hushed rasp.

[Suzuri]

Through the howl of a blizzard, a good hunter would catch the faint screech of a leopard’s padded paws five meters away. A hunter always noticed the small sounds. However, as she wasn’t interested in people, Suzuri instinctively brushed over her rescuee’s first whisper.

Five seconds later, she suddenly jerked up.

“I’m Suzuri. Inkstone, if you prefer.” She hurried towards him with long steps and fluttering sleeves, her makeshift sculpting kit stabbing itself in the sand, and she fell to her knees. “Travelling painter.” A thin arm sneaked under the boy’s shoulder-blades, trying to help him up into a sitting position. With her heel, she dragged towards her a small waterskin, unscrewed the lid with help from her teeth, spit it out, and then put the container to his lips. “Drink.” Suzuri said. The lukewarm tea had the mildly bitter taste of honey spread on a bark sandwich. “Drink.” She’d been more than lucky to find the-tree-that-weeps. The girl would encourage him to take at least a few gulps. Even more than hunger, dehydration could weaken, kill.

Her gaze moved over his body, looking for signs of inflammation. He was a survivor. There were men that, when outnumbered, would stop defending, would make mistakes, and be defeated by their own minds as if they couldn’t stand letting others do it. But he had done well. A branch cracked in the fire, and suddenly Suzuri was transported back in that forest, breathlessly tracing the sounds of metal hitting metal, the outline of voices. The color of steps in the soft ground. The shape of blood. She could read those red threads and splatters, saw where people stumbled, read the environment in the mathematical manner of a criminal investigator. Usually she was the life-taker, but she had never hunted people.

Unlike a criminal investigator, Suzuri had had the chance to stop the crime before it happened.

She’d had to knot the strings of her bolas, to make her weapon smaller, in order to be able to swing it through the trees. Like the lasso, it was a tool for open space; a hunting tool, Suzuri saw it, rather than a weapon. Nevertheless, it swung with enough force to push the first man off the branch he was standing on, with his legs tied together by the bolas chords. A fall from that height might mean nothing or death. Suzuri didn’t know what happened to him.

Her second throw missed. The lasso, rather than wrapping around the man at the edge of the clearing, the one aiming a kunai for the boy’s torso, only caught his off-hand. Still, by a pure stroke of luck, the girl managed to dodge the various sharp objects headed her way in just the right direction for the lasso to dislocate something. A faint pop, a howl, far-away voices, and then it all became a haze of running and hiding. Mostly hiding. There are very clear limits of how far you can run while dragging a kid seemingly made of rocks. Her shoulders were still sore.

Hiding is the mirror-art to tracking. A great escape artist is not the Invisible Man as much as a velvet-cape magician. You make people see what they want to see; do not erase all clues, but twist them in order to misdirect their attention. Give them a swinging bridge far above a white-water river, and they will race past without a thought. The smart ones would look up in the trees, and sideways on the precipice edge, feeling clever, because air and stone keep no footprints.

Very few people would look right underneath.

“What is your name? Do you remember what happened? How are you feeling?” Suzuri asked, back in the world with sunlight and sky. Her glassy eyes sought his.

During the time it took for him to wake up, the girl had had a worm in her chest. Had she done the right thing? Had she misread the signs? He was a ninja. For all she knew, he could have used the water-container she’d found on his person to poison an entire village, for a smaller or larger guilt. Maybe…Those men might have been entirely justified in hunting him.

But a life is too heavy a thing to waste on a ‘maybe’.

[Valkier]

Watchfulness followed wakefulness in short order, and in the moments after speaking to the figure-through-the-flames, Naohiro was already doing his best to learn his surroundings and situation. His first discovery was that what he'd initially taken to be solid ground beneath him was in fact only sand, fine in appearance but compacted under the weight of his own body. It seemed to him that he must have been lying there for some time. A sharp cliff face encircled their camp on one side, and even his trained eyes could see few points of purchase along its breadth. It struck him as the sort of cliff that he would have strugged to scale even were he in good shape - and impossible to conquer as he was now. For a moment he thought he could hear a faint, far-off call of birdsong on the air, but his investigation was interrupted by an answer.

""Suzuri..." He repeated the name slowly, listening to and trying to place the voice. Again the accent of the speaker stood out a little; though their tongue was the same, his ears could detect a subtle difference to the words, as if they'd grown up in cultures worlds apart. In better circumstances he would have wondered at length about that, and asked many a question, but as it was he kept his silence and watched as she rose - for in doing so he could finally see that this new acquaintance was indeed a young woman.

She began to approach and for a fleeting moment a wave of panic washed over him. He could hear in his head the small inner-voice that was conditioned into every ninja through years of hard training, the seed of mistrust and caution that was meant to keep a soldier alert, rational and alive, during difficult times - and this was certainly such a time. He almost moved to pull away as she took to her knees at his side, until the logic of his situation kicked in; if she was an enemy, you wouldn't have woken up. And in any case, you're in no condition to get away. How many metres could you crawl before she walked over and tied you up - or worse?
Swallowing his caution, he instead lay quietly and allowed her to sweep an arm beneath his shoulders and lift him to a sitting position. Allowed was, perhaps, the wrong word, for though her touch was gentle it was firm enough to steady him when dizzyness reared its head and set his mind swimming, and tense or not he felt so very vulnerable and weak cradled in her arm.

It was a very new feeling to the young boy, and not one that he was keen to familiarise himself with. He could not help but feel like a cornered cat, intent only on finding somewhere safe, quiet and alone, to lick his wounds and recover what strength he could. Those wounds caught his attention again for a moment, as through the lurking pains and aches he felt a stiffness when Suzuri helped shift his weight. He realised with surprise that many of his injuries had been treated. Beyond those he'd seen sealed beneath a sticky glaze, some appeared to have been rubbed with something that left the skin tingling, numb, and others still had seen the kiss of a needle and thread.

Perhaps she's really trying to help? It shouldn't have sounded like such an unreasonable scenario, and yet... It was a simple outcome that his entire childhood education had taught him not to expect. He was still skeptical when his eyes fell on the waterskin that she was pushing towards him, and a moment of hesitation clouded his mind as instinct threatened to return before the skin touched his parched lips. A crushing thirst quickly made him heedless, and all his concerns and caution were washed away with a swift swallow.

He choked and coughed on the first swig, struggling with a throat so dry that it refused to cooperate. He'd expected fresh, cool water, and instead recieved a sharp and bitter concoction of warm tea. Thankfully, beneath the tartness it was a stirring and rejuvenating drink that immediately put a little strength back in to him. The second swallow went down easier, the third with pleasure, and on. Once the tea was on his tongue it was impossible to refuse, and he drank deeply.


Finally he pushed the waterskin away and looked at the girl, as if reading her face would help him determine some sort of motive for her assistance. She seemed slim, perhaps a little gangly, with deep brown eyes and black hair not too dissimmilar from his own; although while hers appeared well-kept, his was still untied and splayed across the ground beneath him in a mess that would've earnt him a great deal of trouble if his parents were here to see it. That wouldn't do at all - and with a faint feeling of embarrassment about its state, he made a mental note to sort it out just as soon as he was able. No mere fleshwound could come between an Aisu and his hair.
But his watching of Suzuri didn't seem like a wasted moment. In her face he thought he could read genuine trouble - was it worry? For his life, because he had woken up, something else? In that light he he decided that she was indeed his saviour, less captor.

"Thank-you," he managed, and attempted a wary smile. Did you save me? Why? Where are we? How long was I out? A barrage of questions were begging to be asked but instead he just found himself repeating, "thank-you." Eventually he remembered his manners, and continued, "I am Ai-... Naohiro." a moment of hesitation broke his introduction. Aisu was a very well known name associated with the clan of Kirigakure. Would she recognise it? There were many stories about civilians who hated ninja, and having convinced himself that the girl was not a threat, he didn't want that to suddenly change.

Instead, he turned his focus inwards and tried to recall whatever it was that had brought him here. Something nagged at him, a sense of forgotten urgency or alarm.
I was running. Trying to escape. But from what? From whom?. He could remember trees. A heavy, thick canopy that in places sagged almost to a forest floor, and in others soared up dozens of metres. An image stuck in his head of those exposed boughs suddenly crawling with the figures of men-- and then nothing.

"Can... Can you tell me what happened?"

[Suzuri]

“In the shade of the canopy, three people fought.” Suzuri twirled one of her beaded braids around her finger, as her mind sneaked back through the trees like ink brushstrokes. “There might have been more at some time, but the attackers trusted the remaining two to finish the task. At least one of them was an artist of ranged weapons, to the point that his projectiles seemed to curve through the air. Possibly far-sighted. The lonely defender was pressured. Ninja or samurai, I thought at first. He was losing blood. He was skilled, despite his age, but lacked the speed to get away.”

Broken branches. A painfully small footprint. Beads of blood hanging by the finger-long thorns of a bastard-acacia sapling. A detective would only have to piece all the clues together. Suzuri fidgeted with the beads in her hair, separating them in groups of twos and these.

“I can’t guarantee all that I just said. But this is what I read in the tracks, in the sounds. The tracks sometimes jumped to the canopy, and I couldn’t follow, but eventually I reached you. And then…I lucked out.” A grin spread on the girl’s face.

“Faced with an easy prey, they’d let their guard down. And it might’ve helped that my means of attacking are something that people don’t usually train against, because only an idiot would use them as weapons.” Half a self-derisive chuckle escaped her nostrils. She touched the lasso wrapped around her waist. “With the two temporarily disabled and other coming closer, I made a run for it.”

She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, more careful.

“How are your ankles and knees feeling? I’m afraid I couldn’t be very gentle when dragging you.”

“Anyway. After that, we hid. Hanging by a rope, under the lip of a precipice, fifty meters above a very fast river. It calmed down about half a mile away.” Only a shudder in Suzuri’s tone betrayed the fact that dragging somebody along the high stone walls for half a mile, constantly expecting a kunai in the nape of the neck, was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. If she closed her eyes, she could smell the riverside vegetation. Red spider lilies spotted the grass. Some said they were a bad omen.

“I built a raft out of reeds, and sailed for the village downstream. But the doctor was just outside it, so I thought I shouldn’t stop.” Her fingers clenched against a cold, purple stone bead. “I mean, his head was. On a pole.” Her sorrowful tone curled up on itself. She’d heard of rumors whole villages being taken over by bandits, but never before had she encountered anything close to it.

“So…I set sail for the sea. This is the smallest island in the Sisters’ Bracelet, the group of islands in which the one we left is the largest. It’s quite a quaint place.” Slowly, the fidgeting resumed.

“That was…two days ago.” She looked towards the boy, and gestured with a tilt of the head. “Think you could manage a bit of stew?”

[Valkier]

With Suzuri's words as his guide Naohiro reeled, transported back in time to the vision of the forest that she described. Here and there his own memory augmented her telling, adding a recollection of fear and a prevailing animosity to the scene that saturated the air and reached through to the present. It had not been a friendly fight, for certain. It had been brutal, and fast. The emotions stirred more memory, fragments falling back into place until eventually he found in them an understanding. He sat quietly as she talked, nodding along where her words filled blanks or confirmed his own thoughts.

But she hadn't caught every detail.
"I wasn't alone." He realised with a start. As a mere Genin he wasn't cleared for missions beyond the borders of Kirigakure, and in this case he'd been travelling with an older man, a Chuunin called... called... he rubbed his throbbing forehead gently, trying to soothe his raging mind and coax forth the name.

Ōkura! It came back to him in a flash. A tall, swift-footed man in his early twenties, always dressing in black and wearing his dark hair short. Quiet, but experienced. They'd been strangers at first, and he remembered the man being rather put out with having to guide a young Genin, but they'd bonded well during their mission together. They'd set themselves a steady pace, but the day had been at an end and they were past tired - then the ambush had caught them suddenly, a closing net of hostiles that didn't waste time licking their lips before falling in on their unsuspecting targets.

He closed his eyes and swallowed, recalling the scenes of intense, bloody combat and trying to avoid a rising nauseousness.
"He... My comrade, he told me to run, to get away," he faltered and turned his eyes back towards Suzuri, suddenly awash with a deep regret. He must've been trying to give me a chance to get back to the village, but..." He fell silent and shook his head slowly. It had been a hard order to follow, but far easier than hearing the sound of his fellow Kirigakure ninja being cut down mercilessly moments later, behind his fleeing back.

"After that... It's pretty much as you told. I don't know who they were - the people, the ninja who attacked us - but most of them must have remained behind with him. Or perhaps I lost them in the forest. I thought I'd gotten away." He would've chuckled at that if the memory weren't so bitter. Who knows how long the battle continued before Suzuri stumbled upon the tracks?

His eyes widened in surprise as she continued her retelling, detailing how she'd managed to save him and bring him so far. At her suggestion he checked his ankles and knees; a few faint marks were still visible about an ankle, and his left knee still showed a slight swelling, but next to his other wounds he had noticed neither. He nodded a silent 'they're okay,' as she continued talking. The story itself was a wild ride, and he found himself thoroughly impressed with the girl before him. At her last sentence he leapt up in alarm.

"Two days?!" He swayed, dizzy from the sudden movement, and sat back down dumbly. The weakness he still felt throughout his body had convinced him until now that the battle had only just ended, and that his exhaustion was drawn solely from that. But two days? Of rest, on this island? The journey here itself must have taken some time beyond that, too. He shook his head in disbelief. He must've been unconscious or delirious the entire time.
"I..." He stammered, "I was meant to be back at the village by now, they must be... they must think..." Whatever colour there was in his already-pale complexion drained from his face, and he stared blankly until the girl spoke again.

"I... Yes, please. Thank-you." Trying to collect himself, he graciously accepted the offer of stew. His earlier convictions about accepting anything from Suzuri were entirely forgotten.

"Tracking, fighting, fleeing. Those men were far more experienced ninja than I am..." he mused, half to himself. "You can build rafts, sail and navigate the seas with them, and your first-aid isn't half bad either." he glanced down at his stitching again and whistled softly, "You're quite the painter, Suzuri." He grinned, and shifted himself to sit back underneath the umbrella and out of the burning sun. "But after all that, I'm still wondering: Why? You helped me, a lot, but to what end? If I can repay you, I will, but... Well, what's the next move?" He looked across at her again, hoping to glean some hints from her face. There were no words great enough to thank her for the service she'd delivered unto him, a helpless stranger. But in a world such as this, the selfless rarely flourished. Unless they had a wide array of useful talents, perhaps; who was this woman, really?

[Suzuri]

“I’m sorry.” Her words fell down in the sand. Her toes curled around a common black mussel shell.

Suzuri slowly removed her arm from around the boy’s shoulders and stood up, throwing furtive glances in case her support became needed. She murmured a thought of thanks for the unknown ninja who’d died so they could live. Her heel sketched a dimple in the sand just in time to stabilize the lazily bubbling pot she’d taken out of the fire. It looked crackled and misshapen, something that a child might have crafted out of clay. She’d had to paste the cracks with clay-covered straw the first time around. In comparison, the smaller, bulky travel mug in which she poured part of the contents, with its worn wooden exterior and metal inside that could be detached for hanging over a campfire, was advanced technology. Suzuri normally travelled alone.

She kneeled near her patient again, constantly stirring with a spoon – her spoon – to bring the stew down to comfortable warmth. It might have looked like something that crawled out of a swamp, but that was merely the effect of cooking on low heat until the rabbit meat and wild roots became as soft as butter. An uneasy, repressed feeling stirred at the back of her mind, that the ninja had made her speak first so he could check whether she'd seen anything he'd have to kill her for. Her eyes widened in lack of understanding as he spoke. ‘To what end…?’

What was he talking about?

“There should be a small fort about a half day’s journey away from here, sunrise-wards.” She raised a full spoon towards the sea. “They probably have messenger pigeons. You could go back to your village. Or you could not. I’ve heard that becoming a forensic accountant, an evil mastermind, a professional karuta player, is an enjoyable and fulfilling life path. But that’s hardly my responsibility, and kindly don’t make it be.” She shrugged and blew over the spoon, before moving it towards her interlocutor’s mouth. Suzuri expected that there should be a less awkward way to do these things, but it’s not as if she had much experience with injured people or children. “Have you ever considered being something else than a ninja?”

Moments passed, as she helped him eat. Suddenly the spoon shook. Stick-like fingers clenched so they could keep it steady. She understood his earlier words, in the same way that a sharp shadow in a tree suddenly becomes a knife.

What was wrong with the world, if such a young mind was twisted to expect the worst about it?

“I’ve done it so there would be no end. Anything else is too civilized for me.” Suzuri spit out the words as if they were gravel.

Barbarians could be mean and cruel and smash your head with an axe, but you had study civilized folk for the real art of treating people like tools.

“I grew up on the fringes of the world, where people are fragile enough to die from a ripped glove. Sometimes it’s that cold. There aren’t many people. So we help each other.” She stuttered quietly, in a timid attempt of bringing across her world view.

A world view in which you couldn’t play knife diplomacy at minus fifty degrees, because the effort alone would kill you.

But life didn’t become less valuable just because there was more of it here.

[Valkier]

The boy turned his blue eyes eastward to follow Suzuri's directions, staring out over the rolling waves. He could see nothing on the horizon, and frowned. Half a day was a sizable journey, especially for someone in his state. He'd need a raft, or better. He turned slowly and traced the line of where sea met sky, searching for anything that stood out. Perhaps the village they'd passed through before would be more accessible? Hostile or not, it sounded like it might be an easier journey, and he should have no trouble slipping in unnoticed. He might be able to send a message from there, or find enough supplies for a journey over land. He pondered silently while she continued speaking, returning his gaze towards her.

"Wha--" What did she mean, talking about accountants and masterminds? It was an odd reply, but his question was cut off as she pushed the spoon towards his mouth. He hesitated and almost raised a hand to take it from her, embarrassed to be spoon-fed, but stopped himself. Maybe it was best he showed her a measure of submittal; the time for her to have harmed him was long past, after all. He almost felt guilty for suspecting it, knowing now all that she had done for him. He dropped his hands back down to his lap and peacefully allowed her to help him eat. Whether it was her cooking or his hunger that made it so, the stew was exceptionally good, and he smiled and expressed his thanks after the first taste.

Her next question took him off-guard - as if he hadn't been already - but he didn't delay before answering. "Something else?" He shook his head between mouthfuls. "Never. It's all I've ever dreamt of being." After a moment he hesitated. Never before had he - or anyone - questioned the decision. What else was there, for someone like him? He looked down at his palms and flexed one open-and-closed. What desolation would these hands, that held such power hidden within, one day work? They were already far from clean from blood. He grew solemn at the thought, and continued quietly. "I think that's all I can be. It's what I'm for. For... someone like me, there is no second path to walk." At least, he continued mentally, not one that is any less bloodstained.

He fell silent and allowed the subject to grow cold as the girl continued to feed him. Was she distressed? He was finding it difficult to read her, although her next words seemed to drip contempt.

"Suzuri, that's...!" incredible, he had wanted to answer, but he wasn't sure how he meant it. Incredibly what? Noble? Naïve? He continued to watch her, intrigued. Her words were honest and blunt, as if spoken straight from the heart. Did she genuinely just want to help, because not doing so would be unforgivable? The concept was incredible, to a boy raised among the ninja elite of kirigakure. A quiet whisper in the back of his mind recalled words his father had spoken many years previously. Mercy and compassion are the heralds of failure, he'd said, voice resolute, in our world, trust is a weakness we can ill afford. He shook his head; he'd never fully learnt that lesson. It had always seemed so unnatural, so heartless and unnecessary. For years he'd clung to the belief that being a ninja didn't mean that he had to abandon all compassion - and finally, far away from the village on this secluded spit of land, he'd found someone who seemed to share that feeling. He was shocked, but whether his face showed it or not, a warmth of happiness began to grow inside him.

He looked down. "Thank-you," he muttered again, and then tried to give the girl a sincere look. "And I'm sorry. You've done so much for me, I shouldn't have doubted you." He felt honor-bound to apologise for suspecting that she'd only been acting in her own interests by saving him. Was he really so cynical?

Yes, I am. He realised in sudden clarity. Because I must be. Because this is the life I chose. He looked at her in a new light and for a moment, though it passed just as quickly, he felt genuine envy. What would it be like to live with her optimism, her desire to do good and with no heed to mistrust and betrayal in every meeting? It... appealed to him, and strongly. After awhile he spoke up again.

"Maybe I misspoke. There was a time, once, when the world seemed wider, before I learnt for sure what I was to become." Before I learnt about The Gift running through my veins, he thought. "I wanted to travel, and see everything I could of the world. I think that if I weren't a ninja, I would be something that would take me far and wide, out to see the corners of the world and all the wonders that they hold." He smiled as he entertained the thought, like a child lost in a pleasant daydream. Eventually he shook his head and refocused on his new acquaintance, settling down as comfortably as he could without straining his injuries. "But the reality is I didn't grow up in a world that would allow me to follow that life, even if I had chosen it. In my world, people aren't fragile. But we die anyway."

He waited for a time before talking again, enjoying the warming feeling that the stew granted. He wasn't entirely satisfied with what he'd been saying so far - what must she think of him, and the life he led? He thought back over their discussion, and realised it had been almost entirely for his benefit so far.

"How are you doing, Suzuri?" He asked eventually. She hadn't given any signs of any injuries of her own that he'd seen, and so far he thought her quite capable, but she had gone through a lot to get him here. Not many people could intercept and evade an encounter with ninja and escape unscathed.

[Suzuri]

“I’m flattered, actually.” Her pointy fingertips tapped together shyly at the boy’s admission of doubt. “To doubt people is to try to understand them better. D-don’t worry!” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “I did doubt you too, a bit-“

Her eyes pointed in all directions at once, frantically seeking a way out. Spending one’s childhood hunting in the woods didn’t really help with manners!

“…there’s no way I can make that sound less offensive either way, can I…” she muttered, shaking her head. In the end, she was just a normal person.

She listened attentively, following him as his words opened the door towards his life, his dreams, and the reality that slowly choked them. Suzuri wondered whether she was the first person he shared this with. It made her heart ache that she couldn’t tangibly help. Somehow, she felt that showing him her paintings of distant places might only scratch a wound. But what alternative could a mere vagabond offer? A faint frown twitched like a ripple on the mirror of a lake. She’d had to cast away the safety of her family and crew for her freedom, and that was without a family that would hunt her down and use her corpse for dissection practice.

“Farmers tied to their land, noblewomen married off like prized cattle, merchant heirs taking forced pride in their store’s tradition…” Suzuri sighed. “The world is sorrowfully tiny for too many people. But shinobi-“ she paused, “- are strange. Unlike everybody else, it is not their lack of applicable skills that keeps them in place.” A shinobi’s strength and resistance, Suzuri believed, could make for a pretty good farmer. Or postman, for speed. Calculating, deceiving and ruthless nature? Well, people needed bankers too. “It’s their skills.”

“A talent should connect people, not alienate them. Not kill them without offering something selfish in return, like the speed-high of black-water racing.” Suzuri’s breath quickened for a heartbeat, as her eyes narrowed, shadowing the sea until it became ink. At minus thirty degrees, channels of seawater could be covered by a layer of ice as thin as a die. It rattled when you skied over it, and slowing down meant death. So, often enough, did speeding up. Was it the same thrill that now made her skim over the surface of such a dangerous topic in the presence of a ninja? Or was it the same question?

‘Hey, what would the person on the other side think?’

“It particularly nonsensical since…Inherent affinity to magic…isn’t limited to ninjas, you know? Uhm…” She entwined her fingers and clenched her hands, struggling to put into words the concepts that had been crystallizing in her mind since she was a little pirate princess on a ship. “But magic is dangerous, so ninjas are ‘entrusted’ with it.” Silent inverted commas nailed the euphemism to the air. There was no law against people outside of ninja villages doing magic, of course, not when they had all these opportunities to help society, such as joining a ninja village. And, of course, joining a ninja village. Preferably in pieces.

“And because ninjas are entrusted with it, magic is dangerous. It is a self-sustaining cycle.” Her voice became fainter and fainter, as if condensing emotion to razor sharpness. Suzuri took a pinch of sand in her palm and watched it disperse in the gentle breeze. “To study the bottom of the oceans and the depths of the skies, to understand why fire burns and plants are green, to build bridges and forests, to expand one’s world, are trivial purposes compared with fighting heart and soul to protect the world that one has. Such slack would be immediately penalized among the five great ninja forces of this land.” A ninja could afford not to be wise, but couldn’t afford to be weak. Suzuri had heard that the villages even picked the strongest among them to lead them, but she doubted that even ninjas could be that stupid. “And even if someone were to find something, to share would be treacherous. Therefore, to be able to afford the present, one must forego the future.” Her voice was little more than a murmur.

Suzuri leaned forward, shoulders slumped, and traced a ring in the sand.

“I once met someone who worked on a new branch of numbers called ‘sta-sticks-ticks’. He said that sometimes history gets stuck in circular tracks. In retrospect, they don’t have to make sense.”

Suddenly she punched the ground, using the impact to straighten herself. When her face rose, it revealed a wide smile.

“But then, I’m totally stupid and devoid of any common sense!” She tilted her head and knocked mockingly on the side of it. “It’s common sense that common people can’t survive ninjas! So if those people find me again, I guess I’ll just have to make something up on the spot!” A thumbs-up shot up.

There was a long moment of silence, and then a question that made Suzuri’s shoulders stiffen. He cared about her!

“W-was it that obvious?” Her right hand reached for her left shoulder, and stopped with a wince. “I-it’s okay, though! T-the bone went back in place. But I’d appreciate if you got better soon and gave me a back massage. Can’t exactly…reach…” She chuckled.

[Valkier]

Naohiro's face cracked into a smile upon hearing Suzuri's admission of doubt. Not that watching her squirm was entertaining, of course, but to doubt strangers - particularly where ninja were involved - was logical, and he'd expected that much at the very least. He smiled because that caution was the first thing the two of them seemed to have in common. Not so different after all, huh?

Having sat still for awhile he decided to stretch, standing up and slowly, carefully working the muscles in each limb. He was still weak, and tired, but Suzuri's various concoctions and attentions had provided a surprising amount of relief. His arms at least seemed fine, their scratches and cuts mostly superficial and well-tended. His legs supported his weight well enough for standing, although a slight sway and the feeling of deep-set fatigue in them told him that he wasn't going to be doing much travelling any time soon. Blessedly, his head didn't swim from the movement of standing this time. That left his main concern, the stitches and cuts on his abdomen, which strained when he moved and sent partially-dulled waves of pain lancing through his body. He grimaced and sat down again as his new companion began talking. Better try and rest while I can, he decided, else I'll undo all her hard work in getting me here.

He nodded as she spoke, listening attentively. She did have a point; the skills he and his kind developed as ninja, both mental and physical, meant that they were probably among some of the most diverse, talented and adaptable people in the world. The list of things they wouldn't be capable of was relatively short, compared to other men. But... Well, it was never that simple, was it? With power comes responsibility. The saying had always been true, and it was doubly so for the duty-bound shinobi. What they had in skill, they lacked in freedom.

Wait, did she just say "magic"? What? He smiled involuntarily, but managed to avoid the rudeness that would've been chuckling aloud. He waited for a pause in the conversation to ask: "By 'magic'... Do you mean ninjutsu? Chakra?" There was no such thing as magic, of course. The wonders produced by ninja in their arts were all part of a natural process, a science of their own that only soldiers dared study. I guess it's conceivable that someone might think it as exotic as magic, he reasoned with himself, but it's not quite on the mark.

She was correct on another point, though; there was no law against civilians learning that "magic". Anyone and everyone was capable of it - even, or so rumour claimed, some species of animals could achieve it! - but he'd never heard any credible accounts of it actually happening. There were rogue ninja, those that had condemned themselves to death by abandoning their duties and betraying their fellows, but even they were almost always village-born and had learned their deadly arts before defecting. Could someone learn the methods of ninjutsu without any formal training, all on their own? He was skeptical, but theoretically it should be possible.

He continued to listen, leaning in and tilting his head to the side to catch her words as she quietened. His efforts allowed him to hear the words she said well enough, but he quickly became lost to their meaning. It didn't sound like idle chatter, the sort that some people were wont to do when they were nervous or sleepy, but it may as well have been for all he could follow it. "You seem far from stupid to me," he confessed, shooting her a smile and shrugging. "I have to admit to being lost at what you just said, so if you're stupid, then I'll count myself lucky that I can even form words!" This time he did laugh, a small but light-hearted chuckle. When had he become so relaxed in her company? It was abnormal for him to be so at ease with a stranger; perhaps he was subject to some lingering euphoria from an ingredient in the tea, or some after-effects of the fever.

"I wasn't sure, actually," he shook his head and shifted over towards Suzuri, sitting just behind her and leaning in to examine her shoulder. "You hid it well, but ignoring it never helps. Can I take a look? It's the least I can do." He offered her a smile and placed a hand on the ball of her left shoulder, feeling the joint without applying too much pressure. It was red, inflamed, and stiff. "Try and relax. This might shock you a little. I'm no medic, but I know that swelling can be eased by cooling the area. And I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to cooling." He grinned to himself, then took a deep breath and brought his hands together in his lap.

Should I? He only paused to question the action for a moment, and probably only because of the conversation they'd just been having. There was no rule against performing techniques in front of civilians, but he'd never done so before and it felt awkward doing so. Maybe I can show her that not all ninjutsu is dangerous? His fingers twisted to form the ushi, the seal of the oxen, and almost immediately a welling of chakra rose from his gut and pulsed into his hands. Transformed by virtue of his bloodline, it became a wave of chilling Hyouton. He'd expected it to be more difficult given the wounds he'd taken - but perhaps the technique was so simple, drawing so little exertion, that it didn't matter. It was usually risky to perform ninjutsu while wounded, and the strain of consuming the body's energy would impede recovery.
Heedless to that, he cautiously reached out and cupped Suzuri's shoulder with his right hand. He waited for a second, and then sent the chakra through his palm and into the joint in a slow, radiating wave. If he'd calculated the amount of chakra correctly, it should be similar to the sensation of a palm-sized sheet of ice being gently pressed over the injury. Hopefully he hadn't overdone it. Sometimes the line between surgeon and assassin was fine indeed.

[Suzuri]

“Names have power.” Suzuri replied quietly. “Ninjatsu –sorry- ninjutsu – sounds as if it is the ninja way, but it isn’t the only way.” Palm turned towards the sky, she slowly clenched and unclenched her fingers. “There are more ways to focus one’s power than handsigns. Words. Motions.” Her hand swiped through the air. “Objects. Kotodama; onmyodo; the Angakkuq-path. These are names that people used for their magic. They’ve lost the power to be more. They perished, for the most part, sometimes through faults of their own.” Some were choked by pointless ritual; some were simply choked out. And she would be very careful about speaking about those that weren’t. “But chakra sounds like a neutral word. Thank you.” Her fingers came together under her gaze, as if examining a silver jewel.

In a nomad’s life, all that you own you carry with you. Or: all that you carry with you is your own. Henceforth, words are worth far more than their worth in gold. And gold is often worth as much as a curse.

“Arrhhhhh…” The girl melted under the soothing touch of ice magic…chakra…radiating from the boy’s fingers. It was as if his hand was physically ripping the pain from her shoulder. For the briefest moment, Suzuri’s eyes narrowed and nostalgic snowflakes flickered in spirals through the blurry sky. The cold would always remind her of her grandparents’ home, the smell of old rope and the way the carpet on the wall would rustle as it gave in under the weight of her temples.

Home…

“I wish I could be able to do something this useful…” She sigh-chuckled, before remembering her manners with a tilt of the head. “Thank you. I wish…” Was it the bittersweet mixture of safety and homesickness that made Suzuri throw all caution overboard? Her left hand moved in absent, flowing motions, reminiscent of water flowing down a natural staircase, rushing through canyons, floating in droplets down a waterfall and, having build momentum, spinning in a whirlpool. Something like a frozen drop of sweat dripped down – no, inside - her arm, warming up as it did. Nerves tickled, whimpering to be scratched. “…I knew more…”

A single droplet of transparent energy trickled down fingers, from forefinger to pinkie, and extinguished itself in the sand. Suddenly awareness of the last seconds crackled through Suzuri’s brain, making her shoulders stiffen. ‘…Moron!’ Then she relaxed.

“So now you know. If you’re planning on killing me, I’d rather you try it in a way that doesn’t stress your wounds.” She jested.

If you joked, people naturally assumed you weren’t being serious.

Was this part of the reason that every fiber in her body longed for the horizon, no matter where in the world she was? This solace that could only be found by going beyond fear?

She’d trusted the ninja boy instinctively, the moment he offered to take a look at her shoulder. Perhaps she was too stupid to live in a world so tied up in schemes and schemes within schemes, but she would gamble on her instincts until the end.

[Valkier]

Naohiro found a faint smile upon his face as he listened. He was focused on his ninjutsu, but Suzuri's words still filled his mind and threatened to pull his attentions away and on to other, far-away things. This was a woman - a painter - who'd seen the world and lived to paint pictures of her adventures. What sights had those eyes seen? What art could she manifest with those fingers? So far he'd only known the brush that was her voice, his own ears as her canvas, and yet the impression remained in him that that was but a fraction of the woman's true experience. He held his hand on her shoulder as she sagged into it, obviously feeling some relief from its swelling. It would do the joint some good to be numbed for a time, although he did have to be careful not to overdo it; his techniques were typically designed to maim, not mend.

They sat quietly for a moment as his chakra (magic, he thought with a flicker of humour) penetrated into the muscles of her shoulder, circulating through the joint and returning to him in a cycle like a refrigerant as it soothed. Wow, her shoulder must've been bothering her a lot more than she let on, Naohiro thought as he watched Suzuri relax. With her back to him and the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, she seemed to have relaxed entirely, lazily waving an arm through the air and muttering... muttering... What was that?. Something had moved under his extended palm. An odd twisting, a churning of his Hyouton as something interrupted its flow and pushed down the girls arm. He could feel the disturbance of his technique. Suddenly the cycle of Hyouton stopped and he pulled his hand away, sitting up and alert. The chakra in her shoulder would remain for a short time, likely continuing to soothe the area for the next few hours (although by then she'd likely have some sort of natural anaesthetic ready to treat it further, he guessed). He felt her stiffen infront of him, obviously realising what she'd just let slip.

"...More?" He spoke in a half-whisper, partly to himself. Is that what she said? Does she mean what I think she...? And that feeling... He grew tense. He'd never felt someone elses chakra move before - it felt odd to have done so, even if accidentally, as if he'd intruded on something incredibly private - and part of him wanted to jump away, to round Suzuri and meet her gaze, and confront her. On the other hand, he was already at her back, which was a natural advantage if she reacted badly to what she'd just done infront of him. Then she spoke again, cutting into his reeling chain of thought before he could make any decision.


He hesitated. What should he do? For a moment it felt like his mind was being pulled down numerous different thought-paths. She was a ninja! Well, no. Not a ninja. But she's close to learning a ninja's secrets. Headband or no, that could be dangerous. She didn't share the years of formal military training that he'd been subjected to - if she had, her talents would've been coaxed out years ago, and be wholly more dangerous - which meant that she likely wouldn't be able to control her abilities. But on the other hand, that also might mean that she didn't learn them to fight and to kill, as he had. His village would probably want her brought in for observation, or for... He grimaced, and looked away to the side.

Then something clicked in his mind. Is this what she was talking about earlier? 'A talent should connect people, not alienate them,' right? He'd taken so long to think of a reaction in his stunned state that she actually seemed to have relaxed a little, still sitting with her back to him. She was smart enough to know that that made her vulnerable, which meant... she trusts me still? His hand returned to her shoulder, although he didn't continue his technique. That wound was treated, and it could be dangerous to meddle with her chakra circulation if she was likely to draw on it herself again. If his Hyouton had been drawn backwards instead of forwards, towards her heart instead of fingertips...

"I'm not going to kill you, Suzuri." He found the words coming from his mouth before he fully realised he was going to say them. How many times had she saved his life in the past few days? "I'm going to help you." Anything less would be a chilling betrayal of her kindness and her trust, and his mind grew bitter at himself for even considering it. He couldn't harm her, or haul her back to the village in fear or caution of her abilities. She wasn't a hostile ninja that would threaten Mizu no Kuni; she was an untrained girl who'd stumbled into a dangerous future. Perhaps he could lessen that danger, just a little. It was the least he could do to repay her honest kindness.

[Suzuri]

It was strange to lose awareness of Naohiro’s presence, as feeling in her shoulder died down. Her gaze pointed to the horizon. There, the sky faded out, until it was almost white. The breeze wrapped her, from face down, like a blanket. The cyclical crash of the waves swirled into a single moment that could not be described in seconds. If one was to die in this very instant, it felt like they would continue to exist simply by virtue of the world forgetting about them. His warmth lingered, like a flame above ice, even after his hand was no longer there. She shook her head slightly. No, it was. She could tell by the way her hair encountered resistance as it brushed over her shoulder. She raised her arm across her chest, grasping his fingers. He said he would help her.

“Thank you.”

Their silences joined hands. She didn’t know what her young rescuee meant with those words, but eventually he would explain. It must not have been easy to make his choice. With any other headband-stranger she would have been walking on tiptoes, for surely joining their village was the best thing they could imagine for another. Was it not for the peaceful atmosphere, the girl would have shuddered. To be locked in a place, bound by laws one did not choose… Confinement in a small enough space was considered an exquisite form of torture, and a single village would have felt skintight for the painter for which a whole country didn’t have enough air. However, her brief interaction with Naohiro had given her the impression of a considerate individual, who might have thought more deeply than his superiors wished. That was the main point of ninja villages, some said. Security was a side-effect.

Not to keep people out, but to keep their minds in. To built in their loyalty. To create a culture in which the excesses of the most raving psychopath could be replicated by normal people simply doing their jobs.

“Wait. I’ll show you…” A rebellious spark lit up her eyes. She stood up, arms raised to the side, unequally as to avoid the fire, facing the sea and the wind. She spun on her heels out of sheer joy of movement.

“…the world.” Why had she even hesitated before?

A few steps, and she was back, letting a ragged drawing block closed with a silk ribbon fall near him in the side. She opened it to reveal:

…Rivulets gleamed across moss-covered stones, entwining in a cobweb without ever becoming one. The pristine colors of the piece spoke of a bright, cold alpine sun…

…The sun fell over an oasis in the desert, drawing sharp shadows from the date palms. It was a rare image, for sunset in the Wind Country only took moments. At the horizon, between the golden band of the sun and the washed-out blue, there was the faintest hint of green…

…The sea, watched from a stony shore, twisted awkwardly around buried rocks…

…her own hands, underwater…

…A frozen sea edge painted in painstaking detail. Under the grey sky, white blocks detached into the black sea. Closer by, faceless children played a ball game across one of the frozen waves, while a passing hawker was nearly obscured by the steam rising from his tray…

…A narrow street with delicately carved buildings, brimming with color as geishas with sleeves down to their knees hurried around under matching umbrellas held by their even more elegant apprentices. The rain seemed to dissolve the elaborate patterns of their kimonos. Like in the previous painting, a strange contrast was created by faceless figures among a highly detailed landscape…

…And there were more, most unfinished, some still smelling faintly of solvent. Suzuri felt a knot in her stomach as she spread them around, like windows to different worlds. As her brush strokes hinted at, she wasn’t good with people. What if her attempt to be friendly was misinterpreted as callous and narcissistic?

[Valkier]

Even after his pledge to help the girl, Naohiro was surprised at her sudden touch on his hand. It was friendly, trusting... And warm. His hands, though used to their frequent task, were still chilled from acting as a conduit for his Hyouton. He fell quiet, and a moment later her touch was gone. He sat back and watched as she rose, spun in what seemed like sudden elation, then retreated momentarily.

The book kicked up a spray of sand as it hit the ground beside him, and then she was back.
"Wait." Suzuri said to him, "I will show you... The world."

And show him she did. His attention was seized immediately, one picture after another whisking him away to lands beyond the edge of his imagination. They lit a fire within him, a desire to discover firsthand the beauty contained within the pages.
Some, he thought, were magical, with their depictions of too-beautiful valleys, sharp under starlight, and storms as they rolled in across churning seas. Others were mournful, with over-shaded figures and sombre colours, scenes of intense, anonymous emotion. The mist-wrapped ruins of a recently torched village; the heart-wrenching scene of a father burying a son. Were their faces blank and undefined on purpose, a stark emphasis to their sadness?
Yet more images were majestic to his eyes, with glimpses of cities sprawling beyond sight of the painter, alight with activity and wealth. In one, odd round-tipped towers rose over a nightcloaked city, with a pair of figures sitting resplendent in strange, exotic clothes, rich silks and heavy wrapped fabric adorning their heads as they were borne into the sky by an invisible power. Every turn of the page was a surprise, each a new horizon or a moment of nature frozen in place, its beauty chased and expertly captured by Suzuri's brush.

It was difficult to speak following the images, and upon reaching their end his mind longed to see more. The past few years had nurtured in him an appreciation, perhaps even a love for, the arts, and yet he suddenly felt like he was only now experiencing them in truth. Pictures he could remember in the markets of Kirigakure suddenly seemed lesser; still beautiful, surely, but as if viewed through a misshapen lens or drawn with a too-worn brush, their colours turned drab and bland in comparison to the works lain before him in the present. The girl sitting nearby certainly had talent (her claim of painter was evidently true; he was still impressed at whatever feat of skill had allowed her to paint her own hands underwater), but, just barely present beneath his wonder was a second, nagging sensation; he couldn't help but wonder why he was being shown what he was.

Perhaps it was to distract him from their previous topic, that of her ability to mold chakra and his offering to help with it? Or maybe she was making an attempt to have him long for a life like hers, free to travel and see such wonders, free from the bonds of a village? Or could it be nothing more than simple bargaining, a convenient way of earning favour lest he change his mind and betray his promise to help her?

No, that's not it, he realised as soon as the thought entered his mind. His impression of the girl so far didn't lend any weight to that theory, and-- and the straightforward emotion that she wore on her face was too genuine. She didn't appear suspicious of him, even though any sane person would be. Should be. But then, any sane person would've left him to die in the first place, not involving themselves in the affairs of a ninja, and let alone an unfamiliar one locked in combat with unknown assailants.

Despite the confusion he found a faint smile on his face when he eventually spoke. "These... These are incredible, Suzuri." The book seemed to be prized by the girl, carrying a great personal connection, so he continued with a simple, quiet "Thanks." Whether she meant it to be or not, it seemed like an experience that he would treasure in times to come. The thanks was genuine, although it probably sounded a little awkward. Then followed the inevitable question:
"Why did you show me this? It's... amazing, and.. Well, I'm impressed." he reluctantly tore his eyes away from a canvas upon which a pine forest glistened from rainfall and instead looked to its artisan. "But why do you share it with me?"

[Suzuri]

“I’ve always been greedy.” Suzuri mused after a few moments. Naohiro’s question forced her to put in words parts of her that she had considered as natural as her heart and lungs.

“Not for ‘things’, but ‘places’… My parents used to travel a lot, and always having to leave sometimes got tough on me.” She gazed at the ocean. Growing up on a successful pirate ship desensitized you to the value of things. Weren’t water drops more precious than gems, because of their thousand fleeting faces? Weren’t these sand grains more precious than diamonds, because you might never see them again? She remembered how hard she had cried when The Paper Boat was repaired, and she had to leave behind the friend she’d made in the Tribe. She’d nearly choked on her own snot that he refused to ‘elope’ with her (where had she even heard that?), and that the crew refused to kidnap him. It was the only time that her father ever hit her. She was six. “So I learned how to carry scenery with me.” Taught by a hostage, as it happened, because it was perfectly fine for adults to bend the rules they made for their children. Her memory then jumped to her grandparents’ house on the edge of the sea. “Eventually, when I settled, one place was no longer enough.”

She cupped her hands together, as if to hold all the images she’d been carrying with her since, then touched the edge of her drawing block. It was a basic human need to have a place of your own. Suzuri hadn’t surpassed that by always being on the road, but instead vividly expanded it. Everything she saw became her home. It was a kind of madness that may have shaped others into great conquerors, that which she poured into painting. It brought her much joy, but also made it much harder to surpass suffering. She spoke softly:

“So I travel the world, and make the world my own. I capture its beauty, and sometimes, lock up its sadness, so I can go on. But I know that I am one of the few given this freedom. So I share. It makes me happy. If you want to keep any painting, you can. Giving people respite and wonder, windows to faraway places, is the least that a no-good vagabond like me can do.”

But he wanted something more than that, didn’t he?

“In your case, particularly…”She clenched her fists. “It is beyond arrogance for me to think so, but I hoped to bring the world a bit closer to you.” She pressed her arms tight across her chest. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid of people starting wars because they only see another country in numbers and maps, or its people only in the criminals that they are sent to hunt. Ignoring important data, such as the beauty of the world, leads to biased conclusions. So I fight. I think of it as sharing information, even though it is said that art is in itself a lie.”

As Suzuri listened to her own words, an uneasy expression crept on her face. Was she any better than a maker of her own propaganda? Trying to sway people’s thoughts, hoping to protect what was ‘hers’, wasn’t she guilty of the same mistake that she accused ninja villages of? But then, could truth be ever truly objective, ever full? Her eyes lost their spark. It seemed that she had only confused herself more. She bowed deeply.

“I apologize.”

[Valkier]

Naohiro sat still and watched Suzuri as she spoke, and found himself quietened by her words. The pains in his abdomen seemed to fade to the back of his mind, either by drug or by distraction, and he found himself relaxing again. Suzuri's words had a beauty to them, an honest optimism and directness that he almost felt ashamed for not considering himself. Was he so indoctrinated into his current life that simple acts of kindness should seem so foreign?

"I... Thank you." He said simply. She had such a way with words that he seemed, time and again, to fall short of giving her satisfying rebuttals - mostly because he could find no fault in her logic. Everything she said told him that she came from a very different world than he, and yet what he'd seen of her way of life wasn't something that he could criticism in the least. Envy, perhaps a little, but fault? Not at all. He tried to catch her eyes and bow his head to her in acceptance - or apology - and then found himself drawn irresistibly back to her art-book.

"I can keep one?" He hadn't expected that, though after her explanation he couldn't be too surprised. "Are you sure?". He leafed through the pages, each picture calling to him more than the last, until he settled on one showing a towering mountain peak, pristine snow-clad slopes rising up to crest the great monolith of nature. The view she must have had while painting the picture astounded him as much as the intense detail in the artwork; ever-smaller strokes depicted branches and leaves on trees that must've been kilometres away, far below the perspective of the shot where the treeline encircled the mountain, and he felt like he could pick out the eyes on a faint speck of a bird sailing high above. The wintry scene called to him, with its scene of frost and ice... And yet he stopped himself, tearing his eyes away, closing the book and shaking his head slowly. It felt wrong to take a page.

"No, you're right. These are your memories. They don't belong to me. They're beautiful, and I could see any page of them every day for the rest of my life and never once grow tired of it, but... I can't take one from you. It's not right." He carefully slid the book back towards her, being careful not to let it slide into the sand. "But... Perhaps, if you wish to share, I'll take this memory." He extended a hand and waved slowly to the scene around them, with the high cliffs, ocean and forests. Even though - or perhaps because - they were out in the open and unprotected, he felt a satisfying solitude form the place around them, the comfortable feeling of being utterly relaxed and at home in one's favourite place. Plus, though he skipped over the thought rather than letting himself dwell on it, he had no idea when he might next have a chance to travel outside Kirigakure or meet someone like Suzuri, much less see her again. This way, if she would agree to paint the scene for him, he could do as she did and take it with him forever.

"Will you bring me closer to the world by painting this memory for me, Suzuri? Maybe... If you are able to include yourself, I would like that." He glanced at her, then smiled faintly and turned his eyes back to the sky visible beyond the edge of the umbrella. "But you don't have to, obviously. I know it might be weird to draw yourself, or... Well, if you don't want to, it's okay." Maybe she wouldn't like the idea of her face being taken away by a ninja, visible to a whole village of his kin. But speaking with her, learning her views of the world and her honest intentions to care for and bring people together -- that, he felt, was an important memory that he never wanted to lose, no matter where his volatile life might take him.

[Suzuri]

Moments like these had a magic of their own. Suzuri watched Naohiro get lost in her paintings, leafing through the slices of her mind. Her brain, splattered on paper. To amaze was not the reason she painted, but to achieve that spark meant that, for an instant, a link was made between viewer and author. The girl who felt at a loss among people, who empathized with places, could in those moments feel like she could understand others. It was like swallowing a kitten and having it purr in her chest. Memories flashed free from the pages. The frozen mountain resting in the boy’s hands spoke to her of crisp beauty, of the sweetness of fresh cheese, of the exhilarating pain of holding a brush with frozen fingers while huddling under kindly-lent blankets smelling strongly of sheep. It hurt when he returned the paintings, keeping none.

The girl reached half-way to recover the notebook, burning with the need to apologize, if only she could figure out for what. That tension eased as Naohiro explained, her eyes wading through deep confusion before arriving at gratitude.

“This…? Oh!” Her face lit up. She felt the need to dance, in the crackling of the fire and the rustle of waves. Anything, just to relieve the energy threatening to burst her heart at the seams. She had been asked to paint before, usually by people who never saw her, who mistook her hands for machines of making images out of money. The fact that Naohiro understood the soul put into her memories, made his request even more precious. It made his suggestion of having herself among them even more puzzling.

‘Why?’

A vagabond was not used to being remembered.

“I…you…If…You see…” Confusion bit her words. “When I get an image on paper, it’s somehow painted-“ She put her index finger on her temple, “-here. So you shouldn’t have worried. But now I’m so fired up that you couldn’t stop me either way! Let’s see…”

She threw her head back and chuckled, fidgeting so rapidly that any cats nearby would have crackled with static. She touched the sand, the air, teased the fire, played with the beads in her hair. They might have looked innocent – some called them ‘barbaric’ – but the truth is that, like many seafarers, Suzuri could use her beads as a multiplication-division abacus, note-to-self notes, the square root of number 2 and several puns. She calculated:

“I think I’ll have enough time. You need to regain your strength, and we need to wait for the spring tide to travel safely. No worries –,” she grinned, “-it has no connection to the spring. But…you know…there’s a reason why the people in my paintings have no faces.” Her shoulders slumped. She gnawed on her lower lip, her honest nature shying from the fear to disappoint. It was only because he’d survived, that she would be able to put her feelings into such a bright painting, but she couldn’t fully fulfill his wish. “It’s not artistic fancypants, I…I just can’t sketch those things. I can’t paint things that I don’t ‘see’, and, well, it’s impossible to see myself from the outside.” She looked down at her palms. Sometimes mere moments could stab into her mind such that she had no choice but paint them, but she had to have seen them in the first place. And even though she could look at others’ faces, her mind couldn’t focus on them. “But…I’ll do my best with what I can!” Suzuri exclaimed.

She clung tightly to her thread of positive thinking, unable to imagine any other option. When she spoke again, her voice was full of hope.

“You…you said you’ll help me. Can I hope that means that, if given the choice, you won’t tell others about my little…affliction?”

[Valkier]

Disappointment and concern quickly faded to a pleased grin on the boy's face as Suzuri understood his request. "I see," he countered quickly, "but I'm sure you understand what I mean; I like how you've begun to take your memories with you like you do, and I think I'd like to do the same." He leant to the side suddenly, ducking in towards the campfire and retrieving a small object that was threatening to be buried in the sands through their inattention. When he sat back again, the wooden spoon that Suzuri had been carving when he'd first awoken spun merrily across his fingers, turning and rolling through hands used to dancing with kunai. "And so the memories have to be mine, too, like this one. I feel like that's an important connection." With a deft twist of a wrist the spoon disappeared from view, only to appear in his other palm a moment later. There, he examined it carefully, appreciating the craftsmanship that had created it only a short time before. It too was a piece of the present memory, a fragment of the world around him turned corporeal through the artist's touch, and one that he hoped to keep.

A moment later he snapped his attention back to the girl, who had suddenly shrunk forward as if hesitant to fulfill the request that had so excited her a moment before. "Things that you can't see..?" He repeated her words slowly, then caught her eye and cocked his head with a smile. "I may be able to help with that. I'm no artist, but I think I can give you the means to see what you need. In a way, then, I can pretend I've contributed a little to your work." He sat forward slowly and brought his hands to cup one another in his lap, then closed his eyes and began to focus on steadying his breathing. Her hopeful words wound their way into his mind right as he stoked his reserves of chakra, the energy slowly returning through his rest under Suzuri's care. He drew on it greedily, relishing in both his ability to shape it to his will and the exhilarating rush of energy that it emitted, then formed his first handseal. Five more followed in quick succession, each turn of his fingers flaring the chakra and moulding it through well-rehearsed stages of progression in his gut.

Though it felt like several blissful minutes, wherein the compressed lifeforce of the chakra sustained him, in reality only a few seconds passed before he extended his left hand to the side and opened his eyes. He caught a glimmer of motion in the air as his technique reached its apex, drawing unseen moisture from the environment and forcing it to gather, condense, and rapidly freeze. In an eyeblink, a thick sheet of frost seemed to grow outward form his flat palm, reaching down towards the floor and then thickening into a wide, smooth-sided pane. Angled just so, slightly off-perpendicular, it caught the flickering light of the campfire and presented Suzuri with a smooth, mirror-like surface within which she would be able to see her own reflection.

Naohiro lowered his hand and exhaled deeply, then let himself slump backwards again into the sand. The one-and-a-half metre tall mirror of ice stood between him and Suzuri, temporarily cutting him off from her view - for which he was, for a moment, very glad. He let himself lie flat and breathed deeply, but quietly, trying his utmost not to alert the girl as to how much the simple technique had strained his tired and wounded body; and what was worse, he'd caught his own reflection in the rear-side of the mirror and almost felt faint from the shock. Anyone else would have focused on the dirty and bloodied skin, with its various stitches and growing bruises, but to the young Aisu the worst atrocity of the day was surely his dishevelled hair.

He closed his eyes again and waited until he could talk without wheezing, then spoke aloud; "Of course." He picked his head up and began gazing across their campsite, trying to locate his jacket and its comb-containing pocket, then continued. "I won't give up your secret. And not just because you saved me and I owe you that debt," he sat up properly and began trying to drag his fingers through his hair as a temporary solution. "But because, I think you've helped me realise, it's the right thing to do. Because it's okay -- no, it's correct -- to help each other for no larger reason than itself." There's honour in that. I can take pride in that decision. "But speaking of debts, in exchange for your art, I'll share with you mine. If you want it, that is." He hesitated, stopping his futile attempts at self-grooming and growing serious for a moment, then shifted to the side where he could see Suzuri again on the other side of the mirror.

"It's not... It doesn't have to be an.. affliction. I... I can help you to control it, I think. Your... magic." He looked down and flexed a hand, remembering the feeling moments ago of using his ninjutsu. Sharing that feeling of pure exhilaration was surely the greatest gift he could ever grant unto another, and if anyone had earnt it, it was this girl. The knowledge that not doing so might be dangerous to her - leaving her vulnerable to an uncontrolled outburst of her unrefined abilities - only steeled his resolve.

Jutsu used...Show

I always forget this part, huh?
Cryogenesis
C-Rank Ninjutsu
Prerequisites: Cryosynthesis
After performing a series of hand seals the user focuses Hyouton chakra into their palm and draws moisture from the air, freezing it into an object, tool, or weapon no larger than 2x3m. The object forms at a speed of 7 and has a strength of 13, and remains for four posts before losing its strength. Outside of combat the technique can be used with increased focus to create objects of intricate or delicate detail. Objects may remain as regular ice if kept in sub-zero conditions.

[Suzuri]

“Remember to keep it light,” she said, a bit in a daze, still surprised that someone would choose to empathize with her. For someone always on the road, such moments of connecting with others were rare and fleeting. Acceptance was even rarer. Her eyes took it in. She gaped in delight at his magic trick, and burst into chuckles infectious enough to bend her down, beaded braids tickling the sand.

“I remembered…an old story.” Suzuri explained, smiling at the wooden spoon. Her hands flew in wide arches. “There’s a legend of a warship that once came across a floating banquet table, on which stood a pirate girl. Laughing, she defeated them all and stole all their spoons, so they had to eat their soup with their knives.” Her lips sharpened into a grin.

She gasped as the air solidified into a sheet of ice between them, shuffling closer, torn with the need to press her forehead on the frozen mirror. Magic fascinated her; ice even more so. And no matter how close to the fire or how strong the sun, it didn’t melt. She glanced at the girl in the ice, at the dry lips, scratched knees, confused hazelnut eyes. Suzuri exhaled and went to get her painting kit almost as an afterthought. “T-thank you.” Somehow, the situation didn’t feel quite right. Naohiro’s mirror was practically flawless, even more than the expensive silver ones. But to paint from it would be the copy of a copy, and her feelings for the world around them might be diluted in the process.

Unless, that is, she could have feelings about the magic mirror itself.

“Tch.” She clicked, giving the boy The Look as she returned holding a set of colors and brushes, and a graphite pencil behind an ear. He sat there, as worn-out as a deck-swabber’s dishcloth. “Should’ve realized. No more ninjutsu for now. Doctor’s orders.” Her clenched fists and relaxed voice betrayed someone who didn’t take herself seriously, but did so towards others. She mused. What if she painted the scenery as she saw it, and used the mirror only for the girl in ice?

Then the sky fell.

The color-splattered cardboard box of colors slid with a faint thud in the sand, as Suzuri first grasped her fingers, then wrists, then elbows. Her lips shook. He offered to teach her magic –ninjutsu- the ninja way. To accept would be to lie, but to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, would be to stab it sharp between her ribs. He wouldn’t teach her then, she wouldn’t find Kree. Silence ticked. Cornered, her mind did backflips through memories in its attempt to escape, zooming in on details that previously she hadn’t seen.

“It’s not a debt. But I think you’ve come across something called ‘gift economy’. And it’s a gift more precious than anything I could do.” If a piece of art is a candle, then the art itself means learning how to build a fire. It’s about staying warm from the inside. She was grateful.

Either that, or it’s about setting people on fire.

“Oh, you’re looking for…” She frowned, neurons more used to interpreting wild beast behavior than human, springing into motion. Anything, as long as she could postpone the need to think. She ran, feeling free as she did so, but returning , it felt, too soon, with a jacket draped over one arm and a few kunai hanging awkwardly by their rings, from her fingers. As she let the items near Naohiro, Suzuri apologetically rambled about the difficulty of washing bloodstains out of clothing. She pressed the sleeves to her cheek; still slightly damp n places, but nothing that a few more minutes in the tropical sun couldn’t solve. White threads zigzagged awkwardly across rips and cuts in the blue material, clumping in loose-hanging knots.

“One of those smoke-thingies exploded when I was pick-pocketing you.” Suzuri stated matter-of-factly. “Also, because they were heavy, had to leave most of your kunai behind.” Suddenly she had said all that needed saying, and she was faced with the same old choice. To lie by omission, excusing it as not doing it for herself, or to risk never meeting her childhood spirit-friend again, never know whether he needed help of whether he’d left the bullying behind him.

Tell what you have to tell, hide what you have to hide. There were things that she would never reveal unnecessarily, such as her pirate ancestry, not because she was ashamed of it but because it made people stop seeing ‘her’ as she was. But some things had to be spoken.

“I would…I would very much appreciate being taught. But before you chose whether to do it, you should know. I…I tried. To train. Even though I barely reached the basics of focusing my chakra, even though I wasn’t good at it…” Her eyes shone with defiance. “I tried.” It would be his choice whether to help her control her power, once he understood that it wasn’t the ticking bomb he might’ve assumed it to be. That she wasn't someone who hadn't had a choice.

Shed simply chosen the 'wrong' choice.

[Valkier]

Everyone knew that the first rule of recovering was simple rest. To take it easy. Naohiro, apparently, had forgotten, and obeyed Suzuri's command with a sheepish nod. There was no point in putting to risk her handiwork, the stitches that snaked here-and-there across his body - and the washed-out feeling that remained after performing the simple technique was lesson enough against trying to move further. "You're right, sorry. I'll rest." He promised quickly.

He claimed his jacket thankfully, hardly sparing a glance for its wear and tear as he leant forward and slipped it over his shoulders before settling back again. "That's okay," he reasoned as soon as the girl began to explain about its strangely empty pockets, "I'd say they were a fair trade for what you did save." He shrugged and smiled, then fished a hand into one pocket, another, and a third before finding the white comb that he was after, and stowed the wooden spoon safely away in its place instead. The fragment of shark-bone wasn't quite the well-oiled brush that he used at home, but it was small and concealable enough to keep at hand; and on days like this - out in the field and looking like he was recovering from a night spent in a mortuary - it was his saving grace. He carefully rolled onto his side, propped himself up on an elbow, and began to idly run the teeth of the comb through his hair with slow, steady strokes. It caught and pulled a dozen times with each pass.

The preening was a good distraction from his body's aches. Focusing on the strokes was calming, in a primitive sort of way. It felt a little strange to be doing it infront of someone else, though, however there was very little about the situation he was in that wasn't somewhat strange. Being wounded was strange. Being so far away from the village, without a comrade or mentor in sight, was strange. As was being in the company of a civilian. As was the feeling of sunshine on his body, the rays unblocked by the veil of Kirigakure's overhead mist that was as familiar to him as a parent.

He supposed he didn't really need to be able to move, up and active, in order to show Suzuri the ropes of ninjutsu - especially if, as she claimed, she'd already achieved the basics.

"That's impressive," he admitted when she revealed that tidbit, "and that means we can probably do something productive with it today. So much of learning ninjutsu is in the fundamentals of actually learning about and becoming familiar with chakra. Most children spend years becoming familiar enough with their bodies just to draw on it their first time. So if you know that already... Well, it's a huge start." He paused, tackling a particularly tough knot with the comb while he thought. How much could Suzuri know? She might have been able to teach herself the essentials - as was evident by her controlling a drop of chakra not minutes earlier - but what might she have missed without formal training? Without all the theoretical knowledge that came from an academy education? He looked back at her and tried a simple explanation. Perhaps her reaction would clue him in to her level of knowledge on the topic.

"Chakra is.. well, as kids we're always told it's an internal energy of the body. It's created by our cells, organs, and muscles, and a huge part of ninjutsu is becoming aware of it and learning how to control it. In reality, of course, it's not quite so simple-" he hesitated for a second, remembering also how she'd talked circles around him soon after he'd first awakened. At the time she'd seemed considerably smarter than he, and so he hoped silently that he wasn't being too condescending in his overview. "-we eventually learn that chakra exists all around us in one form or another. There's many types; spiritual and natural chakra are two examples beyond the comprehension of most students, but very powerful ones."

"Anyway," he forced himself back on track and continued, "a persons ability with ninjutsu improves as they practise. Partly that's familiarity and understanding of the process behind drawing and moulding chakra, exercising control and finesse, and partly it's the natural consequence of getting stronger physically." He briefly glanced Suzuri up and down, noting the litheness of her form - she likely had enough physical fitness to draw a considerable amount of chakra, once she knew how. "As we push our bodies and get stronger, the amount of chakra we can produce increases too. Therefore, simple exercise is usually the easiest way of improving a ninja's potential. In your case... I think it'll be opposite, at least for now. The fact you dragged me so far alone is clue enough that you're strong enough - we just need to vault the hurdle of applying that energy into ninjutsu. Are you with me so far?"

The conversation soon struck him as being even stranger than the rest of his current circumstances. Here he was, lying immobile in the sand, exhausted and sore, and lecturing a girl who was both older, smarter, better-travelled and quite possibly as strong as he. In any other situation, their roles would probably be reversed, she the teacher and he the ignorant student. The feeling was worsened by his suspicion that she'd already know most, or all, of what he was saying.

[Suzuri]

He didn’t hold it against her. He didn’t blame her that she wanted to learn. Impressive, he said, and Suzuri felt her doubts cracking. Too weak, too old, too late, too not a ninja – others would have said it. Others would have laughed at the audacity of the girl who wanted to grasp the basics of magic at an age at which shinobi were either dead or leveled mountains. Worthless, they would have sneered; like an elder learning how to read and write. And Naohiro said none of it. Warm tears pressed on her orbits, as he spoke of how hard it was to grasp chakra. Took years. Perhaps…Perhaps spending a third of her life chasing a single droplet of magic wasn’t as in vain as it seemed. Perhaps the vain thing had been to compare herself with a genius. Her father, the Wavemaster, wouldn’t have wanted her to live in his shadow. It might be part of why he refused to teach her once she didn’t show the uncontrollable talent of his younger years. And neither did she.

In clear words that would’ve satisfied a beginner as well as a chakra aficionado, Naohiro walked her through the theory. The girl’s expression flickered from ‘s’-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue’, to nods of approval, to curious tilts of the head and aggressive gawking.

“Interesting!” She exclaimed. “You learned it the opposite way.”

It was like hearing her grandparents’ lessons through a mirror. In what was the same concept, some elements became acutely focused, while others blurred into fuzz.

“The way I was taught…” And she’d already said too much. “Life is magic. Within us, and outside. There is potential in everything, but to draw it, one has to understand it. Synchronize. Empathize.” She gestured as if writing on air. “Some people are so attuned to this web of energy that their temples throb with faraway storms, and at lowest tides they can’t raise from their bed. Others…” She sighed. “Well, I have to train more. Say, is natural energy really that unusual among the ninja?”

Her gaze lingered. Naohiro had pretty nice hair for a boy, didn’t he? That color…Suzuri wondered how it would have looked in oil paint.

“I didn’t know that physical energy played such a large role. I mainly trained by meditating, although, to be fair, some types of it can be fairly physical.” She laughed. “Would call myself stubborn rather than strong, but…if you think I’m ready…I’m all for it.”

She shifted a few steps away until the perspective just clicked. Sitting cross-legged and with the drawing block on her knees, the girl started her sketch. Her touches were light, almost invisible – a skeleton that was destined to be covered by colors.

“I might need a bit of time to get the right sort of focus, though…I’m very slow.”

It happened when she started mixing the colors. Painting had the curious characteristic of requiring regular, but ultimately unpredictable motions. It never had occurred to the girl to use it like she did. What happened…just happened. Gradually, her movements became smoother, stronger, gentler, freer, her eyes burning blind with focus. The sound of the waves, the color of the wind, the ripples in the sand, the crackling of the fire – they were all patterns. It felt like a particularly stable pattern, giving its complete elemental nature. Small gestures became triggers. Tracing the outline of a rock sent an energy pulse up her spine; partially erasing pushed it to her phalanges. Chakra flowed throughout a person’s body; movement might cause local ebbs and tides, as with blood rushing to the legs during running, but inevitably they evened out. However, by a sense just below the conscious, Suzuri could build up on those natural oscillations. A second movement sent a chance maximum higher, and higher. Pulses of chakra ran alongside her veins, and multiplied, until their combined buzz almost dizzied her.

The first hint was when she started mixing the blues. The third time that her paintbrush reached for the solvent glass bottle (kept on the opposite side to the fire, for safety reasons), the turpentine inside rippled just before the brush tip touched it. The fourth time, the ripple was worrying enough for Suzuri to push the bottle halfway in the sand.

The fifth time, the solvent kept rippling for several seconds even after it was dripped on the palette.

“Ready.”

[Valkier]

Naohiro found himself smiling as he explained, watching Suzuri's expressions roll from doubt, through curiosity, to apparent fascination. Apparently his explanation hadn't been as crude and silly as it'd sounded to his own ears. But before long, it was he who was leaning in, listening with piqued interest. He nodded along as Suzuri began her own explanation, describing the way she'd been taught - it was surprisingly good, enough so that no small part of him began to wonder at who her teacher was.

"You're right, really," he tried to find the words and, struggling, replaced them with a shrug. "It's like... We're approaching the same door, but from opposite sides. In the village, we first learn about chakra within our bodies and all the theories and training of drawing it out, and then the few with great potential go on to discover its further secrets. But at the end of the day, even those without so deep a talent can utilise chakra and ninjutsu, enough so to be effective even if their real skills lie elsewhere. It sounds like the way you were taught was the opposite, where you first learnt about the vibrancy of energy in the world, all its wonder and potential, but..."
...But those without the seed of great talent never end up accessing it, he had been about to say, before he caught himself and stopped. That logic was obviously flawed; Suzuri undoubtedly held such potential, and yet wasn't proficient with using chakra. At least, not yet. It likely wouldn't take her long to change that, if the drive to do so entered her mind. Or if he gave her a helping hand.
"...But the understanding of it comes before the practice, right? I suspect there's a good deal you know that I don't, even though I'm quite proficient with ninjutsu myself." He tried to recover as smoothly as he could, and continued right on to answer her next question.


"I think so," he replied with only a vague certainty, "Ninja are all about refining themselves into weapons. Their body is the hilt, their chakra the blade that strikes. I've heard of 'natural' chakra, something that exists in everything around us, but I'll be honest in that I'm probably an exception. Older ninja? Sure, they might know more about it. Some might even make use of it. But... I don't know, I guess people feel it's better to be able to rely upon ones own strength, sourced from their body? I can understand that; when your life is on the line, you want to know that you have a steady source of energy, something that is always the same and always familiar to you wherever you go..." He paused for a moment, then added, "...Or maybe it's just easier to utilise ones own bodily energy?" He shrugged again, aware that he was now debating the topic with himself as well as with Suzuri. Natural chakra was a topic that some ninja - the more scholarly types - could spend lifetimes researching and still not fully understand. Maybe father will know more about it?, he thought suddenly, and made a mental note to ask next time he was home. If he got home. Although Naoshige had now retired to a quieter life, in his prime the man had been a ninja of terrifying strength and ability. Hiro wouldn't put it past his father to have experience with something so exotic to village shinobi as the chakra of nature.

"Is it common among... your companions?" That inner part of him that was ever-hungry for knowledge took over for a moment, and despite its prying nature he couldn't help but ask the question. He managed to refrain from asking who her teacher was, though. Right now he was more interested in what such a teacher might know, if they weren't village-educated. At least, not Kirigakure-educated. Who knows what was taught in the academies of far-away places?


As the conversation fell to a lull, he watched her settle and prepare to paint. He felt a wave of self-consciousness hit him as she began sketching, swiping across her page with strokes that we all of fond, familiar, and expertly skilled together. He quickly set aside his small comb, swept his now-loose and sleek hair back over his shoulders so it didn't obscure his face too much, then forced himself to remain still while she continued her drawing. Though he couldn't see her side of the canvas, his eyes followed her brushstrokes and tried to predict what she might be outlining. Soon he found himself thinking back to her other paintings. Would this one emerge as grand, with himself the subject? Even though he was sitting still, unable to see the work being painted, he watched in awe as Suzuri grew faster and bolder with her strokes. It was like she was performing a dance that only her own eyes could understand.

Suddenly he blinked, drawn back to reality. “Ready", she'd said. Ready?
"Er.. The painting? Already? Or something else?" How long had he been watching her paint, oblivious to all but the thought of her art? Maybe she'd finished already, and it was time for him to hold up his end of the offer.

[Suzuri]

Listening to Naohiro brought new light rushing among the corridors of her mind, brushing off the dust off old ideas, revealing new doors underneath. Judging by his expression, her country-yokel ramble wasn’t boring him either. It was a shock. When the boy hinted that she might be even better-versed in chakra theory than him, the painter buried her head between her shoulders. Yet under the awkwardness and joy, a thorn of frustration stuck. Wasn’t it fine like this, she wondered. Wasn’t it wonderful to reach out from their worlds, building together thoughts that would have otherwise not come to pass?

Weren’t they smarter than the adults who would bridge the space between them with sharp objects, then try to rip out answers from each other with bone screws?

“Coming to think of it…” Suzuri closed her eyes. She thought back at Windmasters tasting the weather, at her father wearing shorts in a snowstorm because his mind bathed in the warmth of the tropical current underneath the hull, at her grandparents reaching out to the spirits of the land. “Nobody aims to ‘use’ natural magic at the start. Not in the sense of moving boulders or summoning lightning.” She gestured as if doing so herself. “It’s more about sensing. The people that drift towards it are the naturals, who need the knowledge of keeping their gift under control, lest their soul leaves with the dolphins or is swept away by the clouds; and the ones whose work brings them so close to the elements, like shamans or- …” She hesitated, “that their skills begin to transcend reality.” There was danger in getting too specific. “I guess…Natural energy might be more of an issue of ‘knowledge’, rather than ‘power’, at least in the beginning. Not saying that its practitioners lack their healthy share of battle-hungry bastards, but…” Suzuri sighed, trying to find a kind way to express cultural genocide. “We live in a world in which healing somebody through chakra can get a non-shinobi more attention than killing hundreds by steel.”

It was strange, and oddly gratifying to find out that the form of magic most common among ‘her people’ (she still thought so, despite her years-long estrangement) was something that baffled even the most powerful of ninjas. It made her feel very proud of her father, for surviving this world, and of her mother, for refusing to capture him back when she was still in the Army. It made her wary of the fragility of that world, of her words. It was tempting to feel smug when Naohiro suggested that natural energy was simply more difficult to grasp than chakra, but Suzuri was too honest to herself for that.

“It makes sense.” She started, but her expression read ‘It Might Be More Complicated Than That’. “If we imagine one’s life as a whirlpool on a river that represents the energy of the world, then it seems more intuitive to use the closer source, rather than ‘translating’ the energy of the surroundings in an usable form, which in itself takes energy, time. That is, unless one already has enough power.” She grinned as if stumbling upon the solution of a puzzle. “Conversely, for sensing, it seems more energy-efficient to grasp ripples of natural energy, rather than – I assume – sending one’s own chakra to investigate. Therefore, I would argue that neither form is inherently more difficult; they just have different uses.” Suzuri chuckled lightly. “I guess predicting the weather wouldn’t be a terribly useful skill for a ninja, though!”

The girl thought of shinobi, how they were trained to think of themselves, and frowned.

“Perhaps it’s the psychology of it.” She mused, as if to herself. “It’s one thing to view oneself as a weapon. But to view nature and life itself as tools makes one blind to their true shapes.”

Wasn’t it fine like this, Suzuri asked herself, her heart aching. To exchange thoughts and ideas about the nature of the world, without care for borders made by people that she could not respect. Yet borders existed, and on them depended the safety of those she knew. Some of them, like her grandparents living in far-off villages in countries that no one cared about, were only protected by secrecy.

“Maybe.” She replied. Her smile hurt. “My memories or their interpretation might not be the most reliable. I’ve lost contact with those people years ago.”

She sunk into painting, finding her calm in nuances and tones. Naohiro’s question merely sent a ripple in that focus. She hesitated, unwilling to spend too many words lest she broke her concentration.

“Look.” She eventually spoke, and dipped the paintbrush in transparent blue. Chakra pulsed in her fingertips. With a clear swipe, she left a horizontal line hanging in the air for the better part of a second. Her shoulders slumped, tendons tensing as if she’d just pushed a boulder uphill.

“I don’t have a lot of chakra. So it takes time for me to draw it out.” She gasped.

[Valkier]

Throughout the short years of his life, Naohiro had always claimed to have a fair appreciation of the arts. A fondness not restricted to only paintings, music, and poetry, but also for those more scholarly in nature: Histories, research journals, treatises and essays covering all manner of subjects, ranging from the genealogies of local wildlife species to weapons engineering reports, from caste system behavioral studies to tables of data showing the moving of the heavens in the skies above. But for all his love and hunger for knowledge, he was not himself a scholar. A muffled inner-voice still tried to tell him that, sitting on an unknown spit of sand and recovering from a near-death encounter, he had better things to worry about than the origin of chakra -- and yet, hearing Suzuri's speak, he found himself wishing beyond all else that he was back in comfort of his father's study, surrounded by writing implements, creamy sheets of thick vellum and jars of ink, with all the reference books and histories he could hope to need in the understanding and recording of her words.

How many people had left Kirigakure searching for knowledge such as flowed from the tongue of this girl? What probably seemed like idle chatter to the outcast painter held gems that Naohiro's mind latched to like a miner would an unexpected seam of gold. This was certainly not information he'd find casually recorded in the archives of the village, no; explorers and analysts alike had probably tried and failed to learn such things, to unearth such secrets that only a ninja could succeed in learning. And ninja had an awful tendency to forget such thrilling questions until long after the respondent was filled with considerably more steel than could ever be deemed healthy.

So as it was, Naohiro did his utmost best to focus and remember all that he could. He nodded eagerly at every point, leaning in and listening with open interest - the fact he was being painted and watched as he sat was quickly and entirely forgotten. "It would definitely be useful for some of us," he chipped in eagerly when Suzuri paused to think, "being able to feel and know the level of moisture in the air..." He looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers in thought; so many of his own techniques, both Suiton and Hyouton, relied on things as simple as the availability of water. More often than not it was drawn from the ground, the air, or his own body.
"...And not just for ninja. A general who could predict the weather, or--" he hesitated, catching on to his mind's ingrained reaction to think in terms of war and then quickly stamping it down, "--or a sailor, or.. a farmer, maybe. You raise a very good point."

He did his best to hide a hint of disappointment at Suzuri's admission that her tutor in the arts of chakra was a long-since-finished chapter in her life, and decided not to risk further enquiry on the point. The girl seemed to quieten after she spoke it, and he didn't want to disturb a topic that could be a sore, or personal, memory.

He followed the motion of her hand through the air as it left its trail, like a transparent residue splayed on a hidden screen. "Isn't that something, a painter who needs no canvas?" He caught her eye and smiled briefly, before a frown crept on to his features. Something about the arc of her fingers as they'd moved through the air, something about the butt of the brush angled outwards just so, perhaps entirely coincidentially, seemed familiar to him for a fleeting moment. It was almost like...

"The Bird!" He had to quickly force himself to keep still, having almost leapt up as he recognised the hand-seal. "That was almost the bird seal! The way you held your hand there," he tried to emulate it, using the spoon from earlier as a mock substitute for the brush that Suzuri's held. "It's a little off, because we usually form it with two hands, but the straight edge of the brush, and the curving of your thumb and forefingers around the nib are precisely on, I'm sure of it!" The rush of excitement at the realization was unexpected, but once he'd seen a hint of a handseal in Suzuri's display he couldn't keep himself quiet. Trying to demonstrate what he meant, he brought up his other hand and used it to outline the angle and straightness of the spoon's handle relative to the hand that was holding it, then removed the spoon and used both hands together to form the seal.
"This shape is what we call the bird seal. It's one of the basic seals. We use them as an aid to our body's control and channeling of chakra. Some advanced ninja can get by without using them, and I suspect that's what you've been half-doing without realising it until now." He paused for a moment, then let the seal drop. I wonder...

"I can show you the basics of them, if you want? From what I've seen so far, you have the control and ability to use your chakra, but doing so is a slow and careful process that doesn't always end up working the same way each time, right?" He was taking a bit of a guided leap in his assumption, but with the solution in his mind he was eager to get Suzuri's assent; and he wasn't lying by any stretch. The way she slowly teased her chakra out in the motions of her art, or through the idle waving and gesturing she'd exhibited in their earlier talks, made a lot of sense now that he considered them in this new light. "Hand seals are how we all learn to first control and form our chakra into techniques, in the village. I think it will help you - and we can start simple and see how it goes for you."

He waited for a moment to see if she would disagree, while trying to contain his eagerness. His usual reserved and restrained nature was quickly being overwhelmed in the heat of the discovery. After a moment, he formed just one hand into a different arrangement and held it forward for her to see.
"This is what we call the Chakra Kai seal. We learn to associate this seal with our chakra in a way that helps us focus it onto something outside of our bodies. And so it becomes an integral part of most techniques that target external things. We prepare the chakra, attach a... a piece of it, I suppose, to an object, then use the seal to resonate between the chakra we've got inside and that in the object - like so." Believing that a visual demonstration would be far more coherent than his spoken words, he leant forward and stuck the spoon handle-first into the sand, just deep enough for it to hold steady. He repeated the seal, concentrated just for a moment while fixing his eyes on the utensil - and it spun once, twice, three times as if prodded with a stick on one side, then fell over onto its back in the sand. He quickly retrieved and brushed it off, then looked up and grinned.

"It's one of the first things most of us learn, and I think it's a good place to understand how the seals work. Why don't you give it a try? Mimic exactly what you did before, but try the seal rather than moving with the brush as you did. Pick something small and light to focus on, and... You should almost be able to feel it working, the chakra surging and moving, connecting with something and acting upon it, almost like you were using a hand."

Techniques Used...Show

*[Basic Jutsu • Chakra Kai]
E-Ranked Ninjutsu
A jutsu used with the purpose of activating seals and a range of devices and weapons, this technique begins with a single handseal. Once this has been performed, the user will focus a dollop of their chakra into what they are looking to activate in order to complete the task. Seals activated with this technique must be within 20 + (Control/2) meters of the user's position.

[Suzuri]

Her technique, drifting towards hand-seals? As she listened to Naohiro, Suzuri unconsciously tucked her hand into the nook of her other elbow, as if caught doing something shameful. Her expression grew apprehensive. It took the girl a few moments to understand that this came from guilt, as if part of her expected her parents to jump out of the bushes and give her stern looks for going ninja. Such absurdity! A meek smile clung to her lips. Her freeform training was all about being aware of the ebbs and tides of her own spiritual power. It was inevitable that some energy patterns would be shared between people, and this is where similarities in methods were to be expected. If anything, it showed that she was doing something right.

“True.” Begrudgingly, though good-naturedly, the girl admitted the weaknesses of her method. “‘Instinct’ or ‘dogma’…,” she mused, “The true answer surely must lie somewhere in between.” At home, in the rogue culture of the seas, one would naturally drift towards the magic and focus method that they felt the closest to. Later in her life, Suzuri would reflect how in that culture, between the naturals and the normals, there was no space for suicidal freaks like her, wishing to develop their single spark of magic. There were none of the guidelines that shinobi villages had built over centuries. But for now, she just felt stupid and lost. “So, how do I do this?” Enthusiastically, the girl flailed her arms.

Giving in to a monopoly was bitter-sweet. But the same could be about the perpetrator of a heist giving in to diamonds as it climbed down a rope between alarm-seals.

Her pinkie and ring finger curled up, while her middle and index finger extended to replicate Naohiro’s gesture. At first Suzuri held her hand awkwardly, as if it might just explode in her face. She placed her drawing block to the side, revealing the sketch of a shore with two figures sitting near a fire. A glimpse made her throat tighten in embarrassment. She hadn’t asked the boy of he’d be fine with it, but her fingers had just moved on their own. She could not paint scenes that didn’t ring true. She wasn’t alone. Focusing on her breathing, on the pulse inside her that wasn’t quite her heartbeat, Suzuri lost her worries. She plucked an iridescent-blue kingfisher feather from among her hair decorations, and brushed it along the inner lip of the stew pot to collect the condensed vapor.

“I’m most comfortable with water.” She explained, and stuck it into the sand. “That paint trick before…it was actually my first time.” Suzuri grinned to her ears.

As she focused on the task, her eyes glazed over. Energy trickled to her fingers in discrete pulses. A moment of carelessness and she would lose it, just like a song at the edge of her hearing. The girl didn’t realize when she leaned over the feather. Her instinctive building-up of chakra was so ingrained that she didn’t realize that, while her right hand shaped the Kai seal, her left inscribed the air with swift gestures. She touched her wrist, elbow, creating lightning-arches of chakra. Clouds moved overhead as the travelling girl concentrated.

She felt a wave, stirring.

Awareness came to her piecemeal, like a song partially heard. Chakra rushed through her veins, building up in a single point at the tips of her fingers. But it was more than that. The girl’s eyes followed the lines of her tendons. Some of the threads didn’t make it the first time, but looped along her pinkie and ring finger, like a wave crashing as it hit a rock. This loop added force to the main current.

Having practiced reaching out her chakra countless times in front of a saucer of water (or mug, or her hands, or a puddle of mud), Suzuri could tell that the seal was having an effect. It didn’t so much increase her power, as smoothen it. It removed the sharp blue high of energy-rich oscillations, like a channel taming a river, but also the dead-weight falls. It was uncomfortable, her magic bubbling up at the frustration of immobility, it felt like holding a heavy poker up to a lightning-storm while she’d rather fly a kite, but it worked. Blending it with gestures made it bearable. Energy built up in her fingertips faster than Suzuri could keep track of it, dizzying her. She spoke under her breath, her mumble an outlet for the power inside her, like a swear.

“Water, share my pulse, for we are of a kind.”

The feather jerked to the side, then overcompensated back. Very slowly it started gyrating around its axis, as the girl tilted back for fear of cheating with her breath. Her eyes were large glassy orbs. She felt the feather like ridges on her skin, not soft at that magnification but rather barbed and branched. She felt light curving inside her, warm, for it wasn’t the feather, but the water droplets that her mind was able to wrap around. Guided by the ripples in the beads of water glistening on it, the feather slowly spun clockwise, then anticlockwise. Long minutes passed.

The girl shifted around and rested her head on a knee, her tiredness glowing with satisfaction. Her eyes radiated gratitude.

“It’s awkward.” Suzuri admitted. “But fast.”

She looked down, as if through the feather, at a world that only she could see.

“How far can this technique work?” She wondered. Her heart beat a little faster. “Far like…the Spirit World?”

In the first place, she had a goal.

657 words (the relevant bit) out of 620 words required for chakra Kai (280 words reduction because of 1 ninjutsu, 13 instinct). So technically learned.

[Valkier]

Nao watched silently as the girl puzzled out the seals and her technique, content to rest his own body a little further while she progressed in her understanding. Once or twice he felt the urge to jump back in, to give a tip or correct a gesture, but he managed to restrain himself - he believed that the best way to learn was through one's own practise - both successes and failures. Her comments about working with water best were of particular interest to him - that, he assumed, would be evidence of a natural chakra affinity, and an affinity that he himself shared. Had they the time, and he the energy and freedom, there would probably be quite a few things he could teach her - and the process, short as it had been so far - seemed to be very satisfying. To see the seeds of understanding take root in the girl's mind as she concentrated was a wholly new experience to him. Where he found joy in learning himself, there was a counter-thrill to imparting such knowledge onto others.

He brought his hands together and clapped slowly as she succeeded with the technique, making her feather spin without any physical stimulus. "That's amazing," he muttered, partly to her and partly to himself. "Most people struggle for a long time with their first techniques..." he realised he was repeating an earlier point, and caught himself. He already knew the girl was talented - he just had to learn to see that without having to be reminded.

"I think you'll get used to it, in time. A surprisingly short time, if your progress so far is any gauge. I'd tell you to keep trying it daily until you can do it flawlessly and without thought... But if you're anything like me, you'll be so drawn towards ninjutsu now that you've tasted it once that no reminder will be needed." He gave her a wink, and then considered her next question.

"How... far?" He hesitated, raising one hand to scratch at his head. "I.. I don't know about any sort of Spirit World," he emphasised the term with a slight frown, as if he didn't quite believe such a place existed, but continued without further comment. "But it's good that you're thinking about range with the technique."

"Part of the reason this is one of the first techniques we learn is that it's such a good starting point. It can teach the basics of so many things - hand seals, the formation of chakra, the right mind-state to get yourself in to. And, usually, the frustration of failure... Though perhaps that last point will require another lesson. Range is also one of those further considerations, and actually, that thought could lead us nicely into another technique. Still basic in the large scheme of things, but far more complex than this, and far more useful. Perhaps this one will challenge you, hm?" He smiled with a hint of wickedness, a part of him quite keen to see the extent of Suzuri's talent.

He took a moment to check himself over, flexing an arm to make sure he could freely perform more complex seals without any risk of pulling stitches or damaging his recovery, then nodded with satisfaction when he found nothing wrong. Whatever the earlier salve had been, it'd definitely been effective. He brought his hands together and this time performed a short series of seals, forming one, breaking it, then forming another, then another. He did this slowly, and obviously, so that Suzuri could see them. A moment of concentration, wherein he seemed for a moment to peer right past the girl, and then--

--he was gone. In a blur of apparent motion, his body disappeared from in front of Suzuri and was instead replaced with a sizeable chunk of driftwood, just over a metre in length. It hung in the air for a moment, almost comically, before remembering the laws of physics and thumping back down to Earth beside the girl and sending up a small spray of sand. Any tense silence that might have remained following the technique was broken by a satisfied chuckle from behind Suzuri.

Naohiro stood tall, one hand supporting his stitching as his torso shook with the laughter. "That's always satisfying to do," he admitted as he walked back around to where he'd been before, and sat himself carefully back down on the sand. "Most especially if someone hasn't seen it before."

Once the moment had passed he set to explaining and showing Suzuri the tricks of the technique. He slowly went through each hand seal, commenting how one should flow into the next and how that interacted with the chakra being formed in a body. "It's similar in principle to the last technique we did, where we're imbuing a nearby object with our chakra. Just on a larger scale, and... Instead of pushing on it, like when you turned your feather, you pull - and pull hard. Pull like you're hauling yourself up a ladder, or dragging a heavy piece of furniture. It can take a lot of effort, and a lot of chakra, the first few times you try it. You're swapping yourself entirely with the object you're focusing on - and it needs to be almost as large as you, too - but you're exerting that swap through the chakra you've pushed into it."

He tried to explain a little further, but eventually stopped and rapped a kunckle on the large chunk of driftwood still resting on the sand instead. "You seem to learn well by trying, why not give it a shot? Take your time gathering your chakra, let it build until it's almost unbearable until you get the hang of the technique." He moved himself a little further away from the driftwood to give Suzuri any room she might want, and then stood by ready to offer any further advice.

Techniques Used...Show

*[Basic Jutsu • Change of Body Stance Technique]
D-Ranked Ninjutsu
After completing the necessary handseals, the user is able to quickly substitute his/her body with a nearby object that is at least 2/3rds his/her size, but no bigger than their body. This substitution allows the object to take the force of the attack that was meant for the user, additionally allowing the user to create distance between him/her and the opponent. The object used in this jutsu may not be objects that are imbued with chakra or controlled by it, and they may also only be single, solid objects within a 20 yard radius of the user. This technique may only be used a total of one time in a single thread, give or take how many times Shunshin no Jutsu has already been used.

[Suzuri]

It was like magic. Not the chakra art – the real magic, the magic of a snap of the fingers misdirecting attention while pulling a scarf from behind. One second Suzuri was focusing on Naohiro’s hands making strange shapes, the next he vanished and transformed into a salt-whitened log. The girl stared in shock. Clouds crawled, waves rustled, but her mind was stuck in a loop as tight as a dot. Then the boy’s voice brushed the back of her head, and Suzuri found that it was hard to grasp his words while her body shook with laughter. She bent down almost all the way to the sand, having to bring her hands together at the same level of her head in order to clap. Her conscious still hadn’t caught up, but simply unwound like a string, releasing tension. When she sat back up, her cheeks were wet with tears of laughter.

“Wonderful.”

This was the real magic. Something that brought wonder, not death. And the best of magic did not pale when its secrets were revealed, but shined even brighter.

At first she listened. Her eyes silently gulped down the physical-spiritual details of the technique, while her hands imitated the foreign gestures. She asked the boy – her teacher - to rephrase a few times, just to make sure she had understood. Her eyes narrowed slightly. This was challenging, orders of magnitude beyond the previous attempt, or even anything she had ever trained. She sucked air in. Not a single handsign, but five, each representing a different change in the flow of her chakra. Pangs of fear entwined with the warm fuzzy butterflies of praise. She had never considered herself talented, having needed half of her life just to get this far. Perhaps, Suzuri lashed at herself, she’d just been lazy.

Maybe sensing his student being overwhelmed, Naohiro suggested that she start with building up her chakra. Hesitantly, Suzuri did so. Legs crossed, back straight, eyes closed, she let her awareness drift until she could just about glimpse the pulse of her soul. With a sudden start, the girl opened an eye:

“Say…there’s no chance of bits being left behind, is there?” Her voice had a self-apologetic tremble, covering up her nervousness. ’Stupid.’ As if he’d risk that sort of mess.

Gradually, the girl calmed down and was able to reach out to her spirit. Like before, her right hand formed the Release seal, while the left sketched arches in the breeze. Yet this time she did not release the energy, but kept it within. Her expression grew increasingly tense, one of her upper canines burying into her lower lip. When it got too much, fumbling, she put her hands together to shape the Tiger, the first of the five seals. It looked like two entwined Kais. Shudders passed down her body, and Suzuri felt sickness building in her throat. It was too much, it was impossible. Energy leaked out of her, together with tears. Chakra capacity had always been her weakness. A grimace twisted her face. A mere puddle wasn’t made for containing a river.

‘Fail after you’ve spent each day trying. Before that, you have no right to give up.’

Tugged by instinct, Suzuri stood up. In the darkness of her eyelids, she felt her own body shimmer. Waves of energy flowed out of her grasp. They bent the air currents into faint, circular sand ripples around her feet. The girl gasped for air. And then, absently, she started spinning.

Over the small, overflowing container that was her soul, a whirlpool formed. With her movement, as sand flew around her legs, the force of the soul-current grew enough to break the vortex from the surface, maintaining it in a precarious balance. Suddenly, the vortex, the energy she could contain, became independent of the size of its container. Her magic was one of motion. The energy swirled further, rushing along her nerves, more energy than her soul had ever grasped. Suzuri felt like a juggler that had added more and more items to their daring trick, until their collective weight would crush her if she stopped.

And she couldn’t stop accelerating.

Chakra burned her veins. With her arms pressed to her chest, still forming the Tiger, she spun as fast as her heels could carry her, while her beaded braids shot out. Boar, ox, dog, snake – she went through the sequence as quickly as she could make her frozen fingers move, but she was panicked, and thus her heart wasn’t really into it. During the following days she would slowly get them right – the Tiger, the sharp sign that focused one’s power; the boar, the curled-up fists that turned one’s chakra within itself, turning matter to energy, and the snake, its mirror-seal, that freed that energy in an expanding spiral; the ox, the balancing sign that equilibrated the two; and the dog, so called because it was a soft, ‘obedient’ sign, that felt like the flow of water, and signified transformation.

However, that first time, the gestures clashed with each other, disentangled her energy, and Suzuri collapsed biting the sand. There was a loud cracking sound, and the girl felt as if she was stuck by lightning. On her hands, water droplets condensed from the air for the next hour. Stray magic could bring surprises, even if it didn’t work as planned.

She spent one day simply facing the log that she would switch places with. She traced her fingers over its deeply creased surface, its grain made sharper by its time on the sea. She rested her head against it, and tapped and knocked and whistled in order to understand its inside shape. She licked a salt-encrusted edge. And, as she’d learned from her grandparents, she tried to let the tendrils of her spirit extend along her senses, to understand not only with her mind, but with her soul. Her soul had only ever understood water. Thoughtfully, she rested her temples against the object. The driftwood wasn’t water, but it had been shaped by it. Its fibers were veins, its cross-section a history of drought interspersed with plenty. It carried her imagination far away. Perhaps a storm had broken off that tree. Driftwood might be shaped by water, but it isn’t a fish – so her mother’s saying went. But the patterns she could glimpse were similar enough for her to cling to as she reached further.

Of course, Suzuri didn’t spend all her time training. There was food to be caught, a raft to be strengthened for the spring tide, a shinobi to be watched like a wolf so that he wouldn’t exhaust himself. She rambled to him of all sorts of things, from the traditions of women-only villages in Wind Country to the basics of navigating between islands (‘Waves map the sides of an island. They reflect into choppy seas where the island meets the main current, you see?, while on the opposite side all is calm, and on the sides, they refract as the earth bends them’). She couldn’t help but feel close to the boy after what they’d lived through. To unwind, she painted. The paper scene along the shore slowly grew more and more real as time went on. Eventually, gulping painfully, Suzuri tucked the finished page near Naohiro’s sleeping form.

It was a glistening memory of sea, sun, sand, and two faceless figures of exquisite detail talking near a fire. One of them painted. Jutting subtly in the background, like the butt of some joke, was the log.

“I-if there’s anything you’re not happy about, I c-could just paint above it!”

That day, a handful of raindrops splashed their shore in full sunlight. The winds must’ve carried them quite a bit away. Suzuri wasn’t sure what happened – perhaps she’d tried to recover her oil colors or cover the food, but regardless, that annoying piece of driftwood hit her straight in the shins, and started rolling to the sea edge. Soon she would go and recover it. There, with waves lapping at her ankles and large raindrops trickling down her skin, with her eyes glued to the sky and splashed with water, she felt incredibly content. Surrounded by such distinct shapes, colors and motions of water, the girl felt like a rookie in an orchestra, filled by courage and inspiration. Smiling widely, she spun in arches of water, her arms wide. Her hands came together to form seals, and it was then among the pattering rain that she finally understood it: how one’s soul dug its tendrils in an object, holding on tight as their energies spun together, a weight that would have been impossible to carry being turned bearable through motion. Her spirit held the energy of the piece of driftwood, swirled, swirled.

And let go. In the opposite direction.

Driftwood and girl, a mere meter away, exchanged places. As the ground changed under her feet, she stumbled and fell. The rain let out a final sneeze, then faded. With her face among the pocked surface of the sand and her feet in the water, the girl was too tired to even look whether her attempt had worked. But on her face the smile remained, happy with what she’d understood.

Handseals were a language. However, more than that she’d have to figure out on her own, because…

“We’re leaving tomorrow.” She whispered. “And from that town, we’ll go our separate ways.”

Training the basic Body Replacement technique: more than 1100 words out of 920 required. Therefore, learning successful.

SpoilerShow

I took a few liberties with the timeskips and whatnot, because it felt more natural, but if you’d rather not do this then just tell me and I’ll edit ) Also apologies for the gianormos fluffy post ^^’’’’

[Valkier]

Nao couldn't help but smile at Suzuri's fit of laughter after the demonstration of his technique. It was refreshing to be around someone so lighthearted, as opposed to the serious and severe ninja of the village. Not that it was better, of course, just different. He and his peers would usually be so uptight and tense during training - one could argue that you almost had to be - that to see Suzuri fighting tears of laughter in the midst of her ninjutsu education was an experience he had to admit was new to him.

But, he'd made his promise, and meant to keep it as they continued. This girl had saved his life, probably several times over with her care, and his chances of returning home safely were dire without her aid. She gave it freely, and so he helped her understand her innate talents in return; as he'd presumed earlier, it would only have been a matter of time anyway, and teaching her properly ensured that she would be safe from herself, at least, for the near future. She didn't strike him as being a threat, and so the lesson went onwards. They progressed slowly, him trying to explain things in a way she would understand, she probing with surprisingly intuitive questions. Most of the time, anyway. He got a good laugh himself at the thought of only transporting part of oneself via the Change of Body Stance technique. That wouldn't make it very useful now, would it? he'd reply with a smile.

They continued for some hours, Suzuri displaying increasingly-odd methods of accessing her chakra. He'd seen her weave her hands through the air as if painting, during the last technique, but this one drew her to what seemed to be full-on dancing in the sands. What a wonderful life she must lead, he couldn't help but think, to behave so freely and carelessly! She's like a leaf spinning in an autumn wind, or... No, a leaf twirling on a fresh sea breeze. That's more like it.

Eventually night came, and Naohiro was surprised to find that he felt comfortable enough to rest within the girl's presence. Throughout the long day she had proven her good intentions, and he slept peacefully through the night. Come morning, he woke feeling stiff and sore, wounds tender, but had considerably more energy and stamina than the day before, no doubt due to the various concoctions and salves applied to him. He put himself to work as often as he dared, learning from and assisting Suzuri in preparing meals and tending their small campsite, then resting further under her stern instructions whenever he pushed himself too far. And all strictly without the strain of ninjutsu, of course. He learnt a good few things about firecraft, about surivival in the wild, about navigation - and about how it was okay to trust new people, sometimes.

He quickly claimed the finished painting when Suzuri bequeathed it unto him, and spent several hours marveling at it. The girl had been correct - the painting was even more impressive, ten times so, when it complimented his own memory. He felt a connection to the piece, and not only because he was featured within it, but because it was part of his own experience. He quickly moved to protect it from any further modifications when Suzuri hinted that she could paint over it with something better; to him, the picture was already perfect, a frozen instant of their time together on this unknown shore.

It seemed all too soon when Suzuri achieved her goal in training. It had been exceptional progress, admittedly, but in the mean time he had spent the days obediently resting. When her announcement came that they would leave the following day, he found that there was no argument against it. Despite the wounds sustained and difficult lessons learnt, he felt glad to have spent the time as he had. He loved the open world, being out in new and beautiful places - but he also loved Kirigakure, and was beginning to miss it terribly. His wounds were recovering well and he was through the worst of their pain, and he knew that any further treatment would probably be best done by a skilled medic in the village hospital. There was always still a risk of infection, after all. And so he nodded, and was solemn for the next hour as he helped his new friend prepare their camp for one last night. With her instruction, he finally succeeded in catching their dinner alone, and prepared it without assistance; he too had learnt a new thing or two during their time together.

"It's been... Well, I think the past few days have been a wholly unique experience, Suzuri." He admitted later that night, sprawled out on the sand near the fire and looking up at a clear starlit sky overhead. "You've taught me a lot of things, some useful skills, some moral points... And you've treated me better than any stranger I've ever met before. You've saved my life, and more. Thank-you. I will remember these days fondly..." He trailed off slowly as his eyes drooped and sleep took him. The painting lay near him still, protected from the elements by a careful wrapping of wide leaves, as he enjoyed one more peaceful, restful night before their departure and his return to a wholly different life.