The girl looked interested, curiously squinting at the side bags and harness on Bakashi. "That's a nice mule, traveller-san. You must have come a long-."
"Kio-chan, let's go," the boy said quickly, tugging on the girl's arm and dragging her out of reach. Cautious, a good trait for surviving in such a...isolated region.
The lodge was little more than a rectangular building with a central open hearth. Logs preserved and petrified by bog arranged themselves into a loose oval around the fire, a heady warmth that smelled of greenwood and herbs that left Sasuke's eyes watering.
The doors were warped and splintered on the corners, clearly wood a commodity not easily obtainable. Where stone could be used, it was. Tables and counters made from stacked shale carved indents in the ground for storage and shelves. Ingeniously made, each building melded into the earth and smelled of mud and incense.
The lodge-owner was a stout woman with broad shoulders. Her hair woven and braided yet the humidity caused each strand to frizz until her braid looked like ancient sea-rope. She frowned, a heavy strong expression that gave no beauty- but her skin glowed milkily and her eyes grey. If not for her hair, a coppery sheen in her lamp, she could pass as a very exotic bastard Uchiha.
"Traveller-san," she said, voice thick and accented. She spoke deep in her broad barrel chest, drumming thick hands on the stone counter, "you look well versed."
'Not a Uchiha,' Sasuke corrected immediately. She resembled a shinobi Sasuke remembered hazily from Chunin exams, the proctor that basked in violence and bloodshed.
"Perhaps," Sasuke said, shrugging slightly. The woman's eyes narrowed on his fur, her lip creasing thinly.
"Are you here to exchange in the trader's corner?" she asked boldly. "We haven't seen your face before, and new traders don't risk the mountain pass."
"I'm insignificant, Rojji-san."
The woman scoffed slightly at her title, aware now that she had not given her name. Lodge-owner, was not necessarily rude, but not something subtle.
"I doubt it, traveller," she said pointedly, ignoring the reciprocation of an honorific. "Are you a purveyor? Coming to sell a certain exotic? What now- spice? Wine?"
Sasuke shook his head very slowly and repeated, "I am an insignificant traveller, Rojji-san."
She pursed her lips and said, "then you are here in search of something. Not a trader, or in search to sell to other countries. Not a user either, your eyes are strange and I know the users that stumble to my fire in the night."
She tapped her hands on the stone counter, squinting and smiling a thin-lipped expression, "is that it then? You're a humble man on a long voyage, a desperate fool hoping to buy something from this village that no other great nation can provide? I wonder what that may be."
Sasuke didn't twitch, phantom lessons in expression and tells had cultured his skills without active training. A blessing and a curse. "I mean no harm, I am a simple traveller."
"Maybe you are," she said gruffly, "and I will not turn you away. This village doesn't barter in coins and luxuries, you'd best remember that."
Sasuke bowed his head respectfully, following her broad frame and firm steps across the stone towards one of the thin alcoves carved into the stone. The door, little more than a splintering plank, separated him into a closet of a space. A raised bed- unlike other lodgings, built itself off the ground with thick braided ropes and a meshwork of wool. Suspended little more than a hands width from the floor, it would prevent moisture from seeping through the ground and chilling him.
"This is where you stay," the owner said, patting the carved dark walls with a pointed look. "There is oil in the lantern, this is all you have. There are not many travellers so you will have this room until you leave. You will exchange something for your stay."
There was no upkeep on her and for her hospitality. No meals would be provided or fire would warm his room. She would do nothing for his comfort, which meant she lost nothing for his occupancy.
"A gift of equal value," Sasuke reflected, knowing the ancient Uchiha values better than any idea of coin or finance. The owner's face shifted slightly, thawing from frigid formalities into blatant weariness.
"You know that then," she said with approval, "I do not have feed for your ass outside. You may use the back pasture, there are no others here for it to squabble with."
Sasuke bowed his head politely, waiting as she stormed out with quiet grumbles. The people in Iwa were sturdy like the rock, but the Howling Wolf Village persisted despite fog and flood. They were hardy, built to endure and carried it in their broad bones and square jaws.
Bakashi shook himself like a dog once unbound by a leather harness. Sweat marks dampened the ass' fur into black tattoos across his face and neck. His fur, thick and shag came out in shedding tufts along his back where his cargo for months wore down from friction.
Sasuke pat it's flank openly, avoiding the animal's irritated nip. Bakashi had yet to catch Sasuke's hair- tied back with a strip of cord now that it touched the back of his shoulders, but the animal certainly tried.
Bakashi chuffed, wandering off over roughened growth and heather spotted corral. The black stone fencing reached the mule's chest but would suffice to keep him confined. Bakashi investigated a yellow flower with large leaves growing from a fissure in the ground.
Sasuke took the bags off, hauling them across his shoulders with the smallest use of chakra. The bags, filled with month's worth of travelling goods and camping equipment, swayed gently near his ribs and hips. The lodge-owner didn't look at him or complain when he deposited the bags outside his door to unpack. Both bags wouldn't fit inside the small cranny of a room.
His bedroll unfurled across the lattice mesh of a bed, blankets and fur covering it fully. Food remained packed but placed inside his room. Shinobi supplies, hidden and some sealed, slid under his bed for safekeeping. The more pressing possessions stayed on his body, disguised under the ever-worn ANBU mesh and jacket. Fur cloak over that, boots instead of sandals. He looked like a highland local, travelling the mountains and valleys in search of something he didn't know.
The people here exchanged goods instead of money, a culture based on mutual struggles instead of a caste system. In some ways, it felt more familiar and nostalgic than that of Konohagakure. A gift for a gift, an object exchanged for something of equal value.
Sasuke understood it, the logic of interaction made sense in a rational way that other cities sometimes failed to do. The homes here were made by hands and labour, made with time and care and in return, the people ensured their upkeep.
Bakashi would rest, he had travelled long and had begun to thin along his back and sides. The winter chill required the animal to consume its ample fat created from the lush vegetation from the Land of Grass. The long walk and strenuous mountain climb had worn his spine down, bruising the vertebrae and leaving the animal slightly gaunt. It had done well to get here, halfway across the world.
Sasuke withdrew a bow, something carved and purchased in the weapons shop that felt like a millennia ago in Grass. The last use left Muntjac strung by their legs hanging from Bakashi's sides. The wood warped slightly over time, the arrows were nearly all accounted for.
'Something of equal value,' Sasuke knew, which meant food or fur which gave the village their strength to survive the winter. He strung the bow across his back, it's bamboo placer kept the drawstring in prime condition. It's a harness, little more than an old stiff vine and rope snagged strangely on the fur cloak. The arrows he strapped to his thigh, unsure how to manage both bow and quiver on his back.
"Are there animals I should watch?" Sasuke asked the lodge-owner, bowing his head once more in respect. The woman paused, looking at him with the slightest lift of her eyebrows.
"...yes," she confessed with more casualness than before. Sasuke had earned her honesty through his careful actions and respect for their customs. "There are wild cats, let them be. The sheep with paint belong to shepherds in this village, do not kill or cull any property of another."
A fair request, one that would only increase tensions if Sasuke accidentally preemptively murdered their food supply. "And your culture?"
Her eyebrows lifted further, looking well and truly impressed. "The Rōen sleeps, but its marks remain. Do not kill on sacred ground or any creature on the mountains."
Reasonable request, just as Sasuke would be disgusted if anyone killed a creature in sight of Tsukuyomi's shrine.
The outdoor wind felt wet and cold. Already, Sasuke felt his hair grow damp and wet with the grey clouds. He hadn't seen Amaterasu's glowing eye ever since ascending the mountains of Earth.
"Traveller-san!" a woman called, a woollen shawl flapping about her knobbly elbows. Sasuke had rarely seen a woman grow so old, with exception to the clan elders. He looked at her with a blank face, standing still near the road curb as she hobbled to him.
"You are going out to the moor?" She asked, wrinkling her nose and thin lips. "Will you bring me the bones along the rocks?"
Sasuke didn't twitch, but he took a moment to process her absurd request. "The...bones?"
"Yes the bones!" she said, snapping a tad irritably. "The bones of the feet! The sheep that trip and break their legs die on the moor, I want the bones of their feet!"
Much less macabre and morbid than Sasuke's original impression. At first, he presumed the land a bloody battlefield filled with corpses. Idiotic sheep were much less daunting. "The...feet?"
"Yes!" she said, brightening at his reluctant agreement. "The square bones, in their foot near the ankle. They are square and light, but hard to find."
Bewildered, but recognizing that an old woman in the village held power, and favour would warrant a favour- Sasuke sighed silently and bowed his head subtly. "I will...look for feet for you, Korō-san."
She laughed a breathy wheeze, smacking a weathered hand against her woollen shawl. "Korō-san! Bah, I am old, but not known as an elder! Call me Ekisha-san, hunter."
Ekisha-san, an augur, a soothsayer. An elder believed to interpret the birds and predict natural disasters before they came. Sasuke knew the Uchiha once had them, those that interpreted the word of Amaterasu or Susanoo. They faded when knowledge of agriculture and blight became known, the words of diviners not as needed when the shifting of the seasons became common.
Sasuke nodded once more, murmuring her title respectfully. She looked delighted, old and leathery like worn gloves. Sasuke wondered what other strange cultural concepts existed in this village.
Sasuke departed and walked on lichen and rock beyond the outskirts of the village. A world of uneven ground, of treeless hills and dew-damp violets. Mist-filled hollows and waterlogged cracks where pale yellowed femurs protruded like spears thrust into the earth. The grey endless sky gave hazy light that drew the silhouetted dark shape of horizon hills. Rolling on for miles, emerald green and blue tone flora scratched the ground as far as the Sharingan could see. The honey-heather and raspy blackcurrants embroidered themselves into the slate and rock. Peat bubbled a fetid stench from bog burrows.
Somehow, the air here could be sold to villages for all the heirlooms in their vaults. Sasuke felt a strange yearning, the whimsical sight of lace-petal flowers and the freedom of an endless land carpeted by greenery. He looked at it, and found understanding why a diviner was still used, the land itself retained a romance of melancholy and ancient timeless energy, the demand for poetry and song and the worship of the gods.
It felt light, not that of fire or sun but an open relief of breath and air. Sasuke shivered, cold and damp but felt unburdened and lonely on the rocks.
The greatest strength of the Howling Wolf Village was not it's medicine, but the otherworldly lure of its land. The sky and green and the yellow bones protruding from their broken ankles and bog-trapped death. Sasuke understood why someone wanted the feet of perished sheep. He gathered one, pulling apart rotten sinew to harvest the square knob in the core of its heel.
'This place is beautiful,' Sasuke thought to himself, simultaneously knowing, 'I should not be here.'
How long would he stay before the urge to leave abandoned him? How long until the endless moor drug him from the stone buildings of the village until the bog and peat sucked his feet under and drowned him below the ground?
Sasuke shook his thoughts free, unfastening his bow and laying it across his arm. It had been a while since he last used it; Itachi taught him as a child how to shoot and brought him once on a mission to cull a feral boar. The Sharingan made sure Sasuke had not forgotten how to hunt, but the memories felt hurried and awkward through his body.
Sasuke walked for hours, using his natural agility to leap from rock to rock and avoid the pits. The bugs of the moor found his chakra revolting, avoiding his skin or falling off seizing in death. Twice Sasuke spotted large birds circling overhead, further investigation left him hauling rotten sheep carcasses from water and hacking open their feet to pluck out their bones. The buzzards watched, swooping down to eat on the rancid meat once Sasuke left the carcass untouched.
He walked closer to the hillsides, marked with shifted boulders larger than a wooden cart. Flowers and shrubbery dotted the incline, scraggly with wooden brambles.
The Sharingan spotted movement along the outcropping. Sasuke held his bow and drew an arrow before his brain processed what his eyes saw.
An orange animal looked at him with reddish-golden eyes. It stood a fair distance, frozen in place. Eyes affixed to Sasuke's own, the animal made no noise.
Sasuke had never seen a fox outside that of the infamous Kyuubi. He thought they would be larger, more threatening. The animal was no more than a well-fed cat, with black paws and a tufted golden tail. It looked at him intelligently, a vole pinched between its small fangs.
A fox held value, a luxury to the Howling Wolf Village. Sasuke held his arrow motionlessly, knowing its potential, and thought, 'I wonder how Naruto is doing.'
It was intelligent, a glimmer of knowledge in its golden eyes. Its nose wrinkled slightly, tail twitching in a quiet question. Sasuke swallowed thickly and lowered the bow.
The animal watched him carefully, skirting around carefully with silent black feet. It ran about with a smug pride to it, a silent impression is withheld snickers and loud laughter.
'See! See! Look what I got! I bet that no-good stupid rat thing never knew I was coming! See! Look at me, Teme!'
The fox glanced at Sasuke once more, something transferring across its knowing eyes before it ran off with its vole.
Something of equal value, a life for a life. Sasuke felt the melancholy of the bog pull on him, beckoning with its cruel bubbling pits of tar. His hand shook around his bow, arrow falling and rattling on the lichen-covered rock.
On the crest of the hill emerged several silhouettes, foxlike. One stood near statue still while the other tumbled about, pulling each other over and over in a choreographed dance of tails and tongue. When the foremost fox, with the vole in its teeth, deposited its prize on the ground, the playful kits ceased their banter and sniffed the carcass curiously. The leader yipped loudly, the kits drawn to respond with shrill barking that filled the stale air with their singing. Their hymn, a single song with no true words, just a noise of pure joy.
Sasuke closed his eyes and felt incredibly small.
The butcher accepted Sasuke's offering, three pine marten with arrows through their small skulls, shattering the bone on impact. The rest of the pelt was perfectly preserved, no holes or tears from rocks or brambles.
The butcher stroked his impressive beard, considering the three animals with a frown. "They're tricky bastards, I'm impressed you found them."
Sasuke shrugged under the fur cloak, much less impressive or soft than the small weasels. "I'm good at hunting."
"I'll bet," the man said dryly, "that must be why you're wearing cattle hide instead of a bear or moose."
Sasuke's expression didn't shift. The butcher scoffed, grabbing a small knife with the smallest of warps, sharpened so many times its original blade edge had eroded into a wobbling line.
He skinned and gutted the animals, careful to remove the fatty tissue from the underside of the pelt. The wrists and ankles were snapped, impossible to tear free from the skin entirely. The carcass, little more than a small rabbit, lay weirdly red and exposed on the table.
"I've never had Marten meat," the butcher confessed off hand, looking a bit perplexed with what to do with it. "What do you do with it?"
"I'm going to speak with the Apothocary," Sasuke said quietly, "would they have use for it?"
The butcher looked a little surprised before a knowing frown warped his face. "Ah, sick one, eh? Shinobi come through a tad often, I doubt he'll have what you need. Feel free to take your...weasel meat. What do you want for the skins? Dried foods? Traps?"
Sasuke shook his head, bundling the strange skinless bodies together and looping cord around their exposed ribcages to combine them into macabre firewood. "I'm planning to leave once I get the supplies I need."
"The Kodon run the medical supplies," the butcher warned. He drew out a box from below the stone shelf, opening the lid and pulling out sealed leather and wool pouches presumably filled with roots and tubers. "They're...they were once a shinobi clan. If they don't have anything, they may make you run in the moor to find it."
"Then I'll do that," Sasuke agreed. The butcher barked a quiet laugh, looking well and truly surprised by the devotion.
"Fine by me," the butcher agreed, sorting to the side a small collection of various foodstuffs. Salted meat obviously, but parcels of dried fruits that looked like chips. Dark tubers and stunted misshapen turnips.
"Near the medical home," the butcher instructed with one thumb over his shoulder. "They've got our stores of grain. Take a loaf before you go, one of the rock-hard ones. Won't mould easy, but will soften in a fire."
"Thank you," Sasuke nodded, accepting his reward for a luxury animal pelt. He'd eat the Marten, gnaw on its spindly little ribs and flank before dare touching the preserved foods. He'd likely get sick.
He found the medical home at the far end of the village, marked by an impressive garden filled with pungent weedy looking roots. The door inside was a heavy drape, woven out of itchy fibres that somehow blocked the light.
The man standing there looked shinobi, or with a unique bloodline that warranted his odd appearance. Not stocky like the other inhabitants of the village, the man was tall and lanky with dark eyes and yellowing skin. Jaundiced, yet impossibly so if this man was the maker of the famous medicine cure.
"Traveller-san," the man greeted, voice breezy and disarming. Clearly clan bloodline, too impossibly different to be anything else. "I heard about your presence. We only receive merchants in the spring when the floods have passed, not this season."
"I'm a desperate man, I have no need to abide safe passage."
"That you must be," the man agreed with a wide eerie smile. "To come so far- that bow is from the Land of Grass. What can the simple clan of Kodon provide for such a journeyman?"
'Patronizing,' Sasuke thought annoyed. He refused to twitch.
"I seek the medicine the village is known for.":
"That the Kodon is known for," the man corrected sharply. "Not the village."
Sasuke sensed the unsteady ground. He bit his tongue and swept himself into an ornate dramatic bow, one which apparently soothed the arrogant shinobi who thought himself better.
"My apologies, Kodon-san," Sasuke muttered, "I am but a traveller. I do not know what I speak."
"Clearly," the man muttered. He observed Sasuke with sharp eyes before he sighed and wilted. "Well, get up then. What do you want, what sickness does your friend or sibling or whatever have?"
Sasuke slowly rightened himself, following with loud footsteps as the man shuffled to the wall where many ceramic and glass jars and bottles decorated the alcove. Some held strange objects, the eyes of birds and tails of rodents.
"You've come far enough that it would be rude to turn you away outright," the man explained bitterly, plucking a paper package secured with twine from a pile. "Here, headache? Fever? Let me guess, horrible flu has come to your village and you seek the only miracle cure."
Sasuke counted seconds calmly in his head if only to prevent reacting to the rudeness. "No, Kodon-san. The sickness is not one known."
"Then it's likely pneumonia," the man said bored. "It's always pneumonia to you civilians."
'Don't attack the healer,' Sasuke thought to himself quickly, 'Do not attack the healer.'
"I come asking for Kotarō."
"Doesn't everyone?" the man said rhetorically, rubbing his face exhausted. "I don't have the herb you so desperately need. It's out in the moor and I'm far too busy-."
"Then I will get it," Sasuke said immediately.
The man paused, then faced Sasuke directly. He surveyed his body, eyes lingering on the cloak and bag of butcher's meat. The man's mouth curled into slight disgust before he sighed dramatically. "Fine, go trip into a bog. I need new herbs anyways, tormentil and bog myrtle. You do know the difference between one plant and the next, right?"
'Do not attack the healer,' Sasuke repeated twice before he said, "yes, Kodon-san."
"Wonderful," the man deadpanned flatly. "I need a flower that grows on the hills around the Eastern embankment. Purple flowers, purple. Not indigo or blue. Get me those flowers, the entire flower, and bring it back."
Sasuke breathed twice and bowed respectfully. The man tilted his head slightly, looking at Sasuke with a different expression.
"And don't fail," the man warned with a tad of caution. "The cliffs are dangerous. The flower is called Vetch, it grows above the water in dry areas. They are small, do not break them."
Sasuke had never heard of a flower called Vetch.
"Yes, Kodon-san," Sasuke said obediently, wishing more than anything he could draw Kusanagi and ram it right into the asshole's pancreas.
"I'll be damned," the shinobi said, looking at the leather bag overfilled with various herbs and plants. Those he hadn't asked for, but Sasuke recalled from his shelf of stored medicines.
Finding a supposedly rare herb may be difficult for a civilian. Sasuke had a fully formed Sharingan, and enough chakra to spare a few clones to scour the landscape. He didn't bother with fully used shadow clones, instead, a simple basic form would work to climb the rocks and harvest the annoying little flowers.
He filled a bag with heather and sage, dropping in the potent tubers that could cure intestinal worms or dye fabric red. He was tired of obeying arrogant idiots for the simple courtesy of being polite.
He made it, he had reached the mountain and found the man who could provide the medicine he needed. At this point, after weeks and months of pain and suffering, he was not going to obey the demands of lesser nin.
"I found it," Sasuke deadpanned flatly. "Now, I want the Kotarō."
"Don't rush me," the man said with an ugly look. He stroked the flowers, seeming in awe with the plenty provided. "Damn, I haven't had a store like this in years… "
"The Kotarō," Sasuke repeated a tad sharper, " now."
The man looked at him with a scowl, grabbing a nearby bowl and mortar to slam both onto the counter with a loud noise. The man grabbed a handful of flowers half heartedly, chucked them into the bowl and ground them sloppily. A crackle of chakra, foreign and bitter, and the flowers wilted into a disturbing pale pink.
"Here," the man grunted, sliding the bowl over with a scowl, "now because you've been rude, get out."
'Do not kill the shinobi,' Sasuke thought to himself. He inhaled and held his breath, releasing it slowly.
"My name is Sasuke Uchiha," he said flatly with an apathetic distaste he could muster, "heir of the Uchiha Clan. I have come here politely in honour of your noble clan. This treatment invokes my right as Clan to challenge this village for your dishonour."
The man jolted, looking well and truly baffled. He blinked quickly, struggling to think. Sasuke looked at him and activated the Sharingan, turning the world a spiral hue that revealed the weak pathetic chakra of the 'medicine' the man made.
"Oh Kami," the man said. He paled so sharply his jaundiced skin turned to cream. "You- I...I beg forgiveness, in the name of my Clan for this ah- transgression on your request-."
"I have been polite in respect to your land and people," Sasuke said sharply. "I find my patience has broken under your disregard for my aid."
"I- yes," the man said quickly. He stole glances as Sasuke's eyes, bewildered and beguiled by the unique shimmer of the Sharingan. Sasuke watched him, blinking sporadically as the man's chakra blurred and gathered into a billowing smoke, drifting to the herbs and embedding them with true properties.
"What- what level of strength do you request, Heir of the Uchiha?" the man stumbled, a slight tremor to his hand. "Kotarō manifests in ah, three varieties for purpose-."
"All of them," Sasuke said. "I want everything you have."
The man swallowed thickly, nodding quickly and setting to work. He placed different herbs and flowers into the mixture, combining them and pressing them through strange chakra forms before the room flowered with the smell of juniper berries. Sasuke doubted the man had ever made such a high quantity in one go.
Sasuke watched with half lid crimson eyes as the man scrambled to pack and store vast amounts of medicine and herbs. The flowers Sasuke harvested were mashed and shoved into waxed leather bags and porcelain containers with stiff lids. Vials filled with a purple paste of mashed heather and marigold leaves somehow intended to fight off infections.
Perhaps there were medicinal or antibacterial properties in the herbs and tinctures, yet it all felt painfully primitive. Sasuke watched the man, scrambling to seal jars of strange powdery Kotarō marked with black ink detailing the potency of its strain.
"The- the three strains are marked-," the man said, tapping the jars with the slightest of trembles.
"I know how to read," Sasuke said, basking in the glee that came with finally being able to say that.
The man looked horrified, nodding quickly with eyes affixed to the Sharingan. Clearly this clansmen was no shinobi, just an arrogant man who thought too highly of himself. Cowered in the presence of actual power, it would be an invaluable lesson.
Sasuke pulled the assortment towards him, more exotic and extensive than a medical kit. He sorted it into piles, securing the less breakable sacks together with bits of twine.
"Is- will that be all, Uchiha-san?" the man asked nervously. Clearly anxious, he kept flickering his eyes to the door in hopes of someone else arriving.
"No," Sasuke said bluntly with a blank face. "When you go out, what do you take with?"
The man spluttered, looking well and truly baffled. "Me? I- I have no horse or-."
Sasuke clicked his tongue with a scowl. The man swallowed visibly.
"Forget it," Sasuke said. He paused, thinking better of it with a small tilt of his head. He gathered his chakra, letting it swirl with soothing sparks, and pressed it behind his Sharingan.
The man's expression slackened, glazing under the unique genjutsu that Uchiha bloodline wielded.
"I wasn't here," Sasuke said and pressed the words through a whispering command, 'I was never here.'
The man stared blankly as Sasuke gathered his things, securing the pouches to his leg and the ANBU clothing below the fur. He outgrew Itachi's uniform, the back cut away and hemmed carefully over boring nights and campfire smoke. It reminded Sasuke distantly of the low cut kimono dresses that his mother scoffed at. The deep neckline with a plunging lack of cloth behind the billowing sleeves with only an Obi to secure it to a woman's body.
Itachi would throw a fit to see him wearing such a suggestive thing, especially since it was his. Then again, Sasuke couldn't care less what his brother thought.
Back at the lodge, he used the hearth and its light for assembling his pack into final shape. Adjusting items from his saddlebags and taking the time to oil the straps. The lodge-owner, a woman he still did not know the name of, barely watched him as he pulled free his bow and took a survey of his remaining arrows. He was low on small-point arrows, something to replenish in the next civilian village. He could always use Kunai through the Land of Earth, there were no scouts to detect his throws or the killing blow to birds and fowl.
"You leaving?" the lodge-owner asked him, crossing her arms while holding a broom. "You stayed a bit then, heard you brought in pine-marten though spirits know how you shot one."
Sasuke didn't look at her. He rolled his spare clothing- Shisui's clothing, and placed it over his shinobi sandals. The jars of Kotarō were placed inside and wrapped securely with his spare trousers. Bound with twine, he made sure that even if all saddlebags were lost, he'd still carry his travel bag. The bulkier objects were sealed in the privacy of his room, shuriken and senbon he rarely used but still could. Sealing only lessened the physical size, not the weight of all objects combined.
The lodge-owner scoffed, walking out from behind her store with a heavy felted pile of grey wool. She dropped it on the ground with a scowl, looking at Sasuke expectantly.
"Saw your Ass waddlin' in," she said in lieu of an explanation. "Haven't you ever heard of a saddle pad?"
Sasuke hadn't, but the blanket slumped onto the ground looked like something disgusting enough for that frustrating animal. "...Thanks."
She scoffed with a slight glint in her eye, tapping her fingers against the bulge of her bicep. "I saw your arrows. You have big-point, which means you've shot something decent instead of a boney little shit."
Sasuke had shot animals before, he had taken down deer and boar with tusks as long as swords. He tilted his head slightly, a gesture that conveyed his agreement. Her eyes shifted a little, scanning across his saddlebags and the worn leather.
"You're in fine health," she said openly. "People here only for medicine or to die. You came for medicine then, but you look lean like a bloody stallion."
Sasuke hadn't ever heard the term 'bloody' be used as vulgarity, but it clearly fit with her enunciation. She clicked her tongue, tapping her fingers again. "You bring me somethin' big enough to last me 'till next season, then I'll trade those ratty bags for a pannier."
She paused then explained with a tired level of exhaustion, "no saddle, all bags. That mule of yours hauls and you're too fine to be riding it."
'It was to carry me when Orochimaru filled my blood with venom," Sasuke thought a tad bitterly. 'When Kabuto drilled my legs with scalpels and filled it with something else.'
He hadn't had those dreams in a long time. His nightmares were tinted with a wave of cold dark anger, a level of rage that felt beyond him and inevitable. The Curse of the Uchiha, Shisui told him scathingly with a morbid twist of humour. Shisui braided his hair in small deft strands, tangling short bits together in stunted five-strand braids more elaborate than knit tapestries. He always talked more honestly when his hands fiddled with something- bits of straw or grass or fur dropped from the Uchiha exotic cats they were famed for having.
Shisui liked to fiddle with things when he was anxious, twirling and rolling the long strands of cat fur or bird feathers before braiding them intricately better than leather straps. Sasuke used to think that Shisui could have been a wonderful spinner or shepherd.
Sasuke sighed quietly, trying to dispel the aching nostalgia that sometimes pressed heavily when he least expected it. "...I want to see the bags."
"Fair thought," she agreed easily, leaving him here to fetch the bags. When she returned, hauling heavy stacks of broad stitched cattle leather and willow frame, Sasuke set aside his now empty saddlebags to compare.
The saddle would be a loss, but not a dangerous one. He would always be capable of walking and had done so for quite a while. The pannier was large, enough to carry near double his supplies if filled tactfully.
"It'll last ya'," she said pointedly. The unstable footing of the bog led to greater use of a saddle, a broken ankle could kill a man even in a village with healing skills. "Just some meat for it."
Sasuke could manage felling a large animal, especially one closer to the mountains. The bog had nothing large except the spare deer and nimble sheep that managed to avoid the peat and sinkholes. The mountain held goats and other horned animals, peering down from the slate and shale faces.
"Fine," Sasuke agreed.
The deer on the mountains were larger than in the Land of Fire. They had a thick blanket of fur, framing their throat in heavy tufts with stocky joints and shoulders.
Bakashi grunted under the weight of the deer, looking ready to bite Sasuke for the injustice. The dear flopped about, it's head pierced clean with one arrow. Bakashi shrieked something angrily, jolting about so that the dear nearly slid from his back.
Sasuke smacked the animal gently, guiding him down the slight incline. The deer had been simple to fell, easy to gut and leave its organs on the ground. It bled annoyingly all over the soil, painting Bakashi black.
The lodge-owner took one look at the deer before she gave him the different bags. No question of how or where he caught the animal, instead she accepted it and gave in return. A simple society that Sasuke found easy and familiar.
Bakashi's bags were loaded, extra space filled with thin canvas and simple pleasures. Three loaves of bread slipped inside the left bag, the baker and grain owner giving him a shy bashful smile and a flush on her cheeks.
The elder of the village, the soothsayer with arthritic hands accepted his collection of pedal bones. She traced the white and yellow knobs adoringly, pinching away the remnants of tendon and sinew from where they connected.
"These are nice," she said, patting Bakashi with a wobbling hand. "Very nice, the spirits will speak much clearer now."
Sasuke bit his tongue and held silent. She beamed, reaching into her pocket to pull out a gnarled sigil, carved into broken wood.
"That will keep the spirits away on your long walk, child," she said knowingly. Reaching out to pat his cheek with one of her hands. Sasuke's hand fisted Bakashi's rope tighter, face remaining flat.
"You best pray on the road," she warned with grave caution. "The mountains are howling in anger. I fear we must sacrifice a goat to appease the winds."
Sasuke thought that the village was ridiculously backwards.
The mountains didn't snow, but the weather felt similar to such temperature. Sasuke's face burned in the exposed air, Bakashi's breath clogged with steam and slowly, the village vanished behind.
The trek through the valley had been faster than Sasuke remembered, driven by renewed energy and determination. He had medicine, the best medicine in the world as well as samples of medical cures. Amaterasu woke with gentle pressure, peering about inquisitive as slumber left its voice silent.
"I've been on the road for a while," Sasuke explained out loud. Bakashi ignored him, trudging along loudly. "I have everything we need."
Amaterasu drifted about, slowly merging its chakra with Sasuke's. The molten warmth immediately burned away any sensation of cold, rising gently and leaving Sasuke lazy with comfort.
You've done well, Amaterasu agreed. I have gathered all my chakra.
"Enough for what?" Sasuke asked quietly.
Survival, Amaterasu explained. We will travel to Amegakure?
"Yes," Sasuke agreed openly. It would be a long walk, but not worse than his original climb into the mountains. Sasuke no longer bled, Amaterasu gathered its chakra. Sasuke would face the mountains with chakra guided steps and heightened awareness of the Sharingan.
He walked for four days, chakra fuelling his muscles and bracing his bones from blisters. Bakashi endured as his species was made to do, walking from dawn to dusk and eating the bundled grain and grass stored in the side bag.
The high mountains of Earth began to subside, sloping gently downwards along the floodplains now filled with flowers and fertile prairies. Only temporary, because the roiling storm clouds that haunted the land of Rain were visible on the distant horizon. Sasuke would walk until the rain fell over him.
The Land of Birds, directly between him and the Land of Rain, was not a tropical oasis like that of Grass. Instead, it bloomed an open flatland of bison and songbirds, swift sparrows and hawks circled far above in the sky. Bakashi walked easier, trotting constantly through high waisted grass now that they left the cold of the mountains. The fur cloak and travelling boots were exchanged for sandals and the thin travelling cloak that still smelled of Grass. Bakashi cried out a hellish noise, startling a grazing collection of antelope that bounded away in large jumping strides. The pans and skillet strapped to his flank banged ominously, rattling a loud song that triggered an obnoxious crow to scream. Bakashi shed fur like an Izunuka ninken, dropping hefty clumps that swift cowbirds stole to line their nests. The air tasted sweet with honeysuckle and billowing thistle, blooming purple on the rippling sea of flowering grass.
The heat too increased, a pleasant balm against the frigid chill of the Northern mountains. The land of Birds would be perfect for cultivation, prime with fertile soil below the thick roots of meadow grass. The horizon, brimming with constant rain and dangerous clouds marked the border of Ame where the skies barely parted and the dirt ran thick with mud.
One night when Sasuke watched the stars, he asked aloud to no person, "what do you think will happen?"
Amaterasu rumbled low, its voice had shifted from draconic snarling to something almost human. I don't know.
"Did you never think of the future?" Sasuke asked flatly, Sharingan recording the movement of the celestial shift of the skies above. They were familiar to the nights in the Howling Wolf Village, where different constellations Sasuke had never seen twirled across the poles. The journeymen there named them after animals- the sable, the osprey, the puffin, the red deer.
The land of Birds, just below the cliffs of Earth fringed the cusp of perceiving the dance of ozone and light. Sasuke searched for it with his Sharingan, recalling the phantom trails of fluorescent purple and green slithering through the ozone.
Amaterasu breathed quietly and pondered the thought. I never had the opportunity to see beyond the present.
"Is this your opportunity then?" Sasuke asked, "is this your punishment or mine?"
There were bats in the Land of Grass, small nimble animals that moved in blind choreographed performances to snatch the moths and meadow insects. There were no cicadas crying out their 7-year serenade, only crickets chirping and crooning to the night.
Amaterasu said, sounding humbled and tired, I don't know.
Sasuke had never bothered with extensive training or research into sealing scrolls. Fuuinjutsu never spoke of raw power or use- he knew a handful of shinobi who specialized in the usage of sealing scrolls and those that did never impressed him.
Sealing scrolls were tools for transporting cargo, little more than sophisticated pouches. At the academy sealing scrolls or tags were avoided in favour of kunai practice and simple henge. Drawing a seal could lead to dangerous or lethal accidents.
Amaterasu told him the art of sealing, shared across distant memories and engraved through the Sharingan. Sasuke practiced the movements with a stick in the snow, checking his accuracy only after he left his mark. Constructing exploding tags was second nature, something Kakashi-sensei beat brutally into them while travelling to the Land of Waves. The most elaborate seal Sasuke ever tried had been a simple smoke seal, made to obscure his shape.
Then Amaterasu placed thoughts in his mind and taught Sasuke to place senbon to his skin, dotting with sealing chakra ink along the soft skin of his left forearm. Repeatedly until the limb when numb then hot with pain. He made a summoning seal, still present along his left wrist.
Beyond that, Sasuke truthfully hadn't considered the uses. Now he knew better, able to draw elaborate tags to store precious cargo that may spoil. Hide away the fresh meat and plants that may shrivel and rot, keep it out of the sun's touch for a different day.
Seals were dangerous, capable of extraordinary feats that even Amaterasu eyed with hesitation.
There are ways around them, the dragon told him. The sun chewed at the dew of the meadow, evaporating the little droplets that grasshoppers drank from each morning. Seals may...damage me.
"I wasn't aware anything could," Sasuke commented dryly. Bakashi frolicked, determined to slaughter one cheerful butterfly near a tangle of blackberries.
In both mindscapes of the bijuu, I have been seen clearly. Amaterasu explained reluctantly yet obliging. You have seen the work of seals in both cases.
"The restraints on the bijuu," Sasuke confirmed. He busied his hands with the buttercups nearest him, plucking each petal from the flower before removing the nub with a flick of his thumb. "You think you can be restrained as well?"
It is possible, Amaterasu said. It would be catastrophic.
To shackle Amaterasu...would limit the voice of the creature. Would it silence the loud screaming he heard in his dreams? The phantom pains and ache of growing bones, now settling in his mature body? Would it close the eye on his neck and leave Sasuke quiet in mind for the first time in more than a year?
"Yeah," Sasuke confirmed genuinely with the smallest twists of withheld terror, "that would...be horrible."
In time we will merge. You will gain my abilities and I will fade.
"You're already fading," Sasuke pointed out. He decapitated a buttercup, watching its mutilated head drift to the ground. "It's because I'm experiencing what you have to offer, isn't it?"
A finite amount. One that will ultimately run dry.
Amaterasu wouldn't die- it would fade. There was no such way to ever assign the concept of death to the dragon. Every morning Sasuke felt himself understand and know more than the night before. Every step was driven by a shared experience of something else. Amaterasu would not die, it would fade because its essence and gift would one day be what Sasuke awoke to.
"When will I get your eye?" Sasuke asked openly. "The one on my neck. I know I'll get it."
You will, Amaterasu didn't deny. The dragon never lied to him. It will...be a while yet.
How much longer? Sasuke left Konohagakure a lifetime ago, and each day he lived twice. Had it been only a few weeks since he left Earth? Months since he entered it? Half a year since he breached the Land of Grass?
Cumulatively, it spanned over a year now. Seasons were difficult to track, time slipping distorted through waking moments. One year had been two, and Sasuke had become Sasuke and Amaterasu.
Meditate, the dragon suggested. Sasuke had no destination for the day, the sun drifted finally free of the greedy touch of the horizon. Ame blurred dark far in the distance. Sasuke folded his legs and settled on the flattest point in a sea of wildflowers. Meditate with the sun.
Years ago Amaterasu first taught him how to breathe with the sky, how each inhale nurtured a gentle flame that pulsed and pulled blood and chakra.
Kakashi watched in lethargic amusement as Sasuke ignored everything suggested to him and learned meditation he should not know- could not know. Now, the thought and action of meditation always came with the welcome memory of Kakashi-Sensei's lifted eyebrow and flat maa, that's not meditating.
Amaterasu pulsed like a fire, waning and waxing like a magma field in gravitational flux with the sun. Not Tsukuyomi and her oceans, but the pull of hot chakra through Sasuke's flesh and bones with each breath.
He breathed. Inhaling slowly and feeling the press of Chakra through his neck. Bu-dum, bu-dum, bu-dum. He exhaled, feeling the cycle of body heat and Katon along his throat.
Meditate with me, Amaterasu smouldered. Its weight settled along Sasuke's back and shoulders, intimately pressing along his chakra coils with a tense pressure of warmth. Along the pathways of his throat, they overlapped a restricted tension that felt akin to choking. The weight through his shoulders and chest left him keeling to wheeze into his lap. His right arm- his left abandoned and chill under the sweltering pressure- ached a fierce tremor like the rattling of lightning on a tree.
Meditate with me, Amaterasu repeated. Sasuke's eyes burned and the sockets behind pulsed an uncomfortable hotness that left him crying tears along healed burn marks.
It didn't hurt necessarily, not the way a physical wound or chakra depletion could. It reminded Sasuke of Naruto's face when he ate a hidden pepper thinking it to be meat. Bright red, drooling and crying with his whiskered cheeks red from the spice of it. 'Ahh! Get me some water! Sakura help me! Ahh I can't feel my nose- is it still there? Is it gone? Did that pepper melt my face- stop snickering Teme!'
Sasuke shuddered, slumping forward under the weight. Draped along his back and shoulders, along each thigh and ankle and every toe on his foot. Amaterasu engulfed him like a tailored outfit, choking him carefully without ever damaging his airways.
Breathe in with the sun, Amaterasu said with its chakra rumbling against Sasuke's vocal cords. Sasuke inhaled hurriedly, near panting under the strain. The sun beat down above him, his heart thrumming its warrior's cry in return as his chakra pulled itself through inflamed sore pathways. Amaterasu coaxed it along, painfully and blistering. Breathe out.
When Sasuke breathed, so did Amaterasu. When he shuddered, Amaterasu's presence rippled through the secondhand movements. Sasuke's left arm felt dead and foreign, a useless limb that did not belong to his body although he couldn't fathom life without it.
His back arched the weight of intangible power, settling oddly along his spine. Familiar and not, a distorted freakish anomaly of Nature Chakra and eldritch wings made of wriggling clawing fingers-.
Amaterasu thrummed a soothing power that did nothing to quell the heat. Sasuke suffered, simply put, and endured the twitching spasm of his coils and pathways protesting a change so suddenly without cause. He felt as if ropes were tied around his bones and throat, each jerking a cardinal direction with no relief.
Open your eyes, Amaterasu said. Sasuke did, the field of flowers distorted and glowing in a patchwork configuration of glowing trails. Bright impossible pigments, pastel purples hazing in the darkness with bold patterns and soft mint greens and pastel blues. Something otherworldly, a subterranean environment of exotic flora and fauna that Sasuke had never seen before-.
Amaterasu thrummed, a burning presence that left Sasuke's teeth grinding together.
Visually, everything pulsed. Fading into and out of focus sharply and dizzying. Sasuke recognized he made a noise of pain, vertigo swooping to taunt his brain into a shift in gravity. Sasuke endured, as he always did.
The flowers were warping, the hazy display of bright bioluminescence flickering impossibly to dull yellows and whites- then back to spectacular vibrant shards of stars. Repeatedly, until Sasuke blinked firmly and opened his eyes to a setting sun and the normal haze that dusk brought with it.
The flowers, utterly unremarkable wildflowers (daisies, violets, sunflowers) stood in the same orientation and location of the gemstone flora from before. The Sharingan lit them bright with hyperfocus and awareness of every deformity in the velvet petals. They were utterly unimpressive.
"What?" Sasuke croaked, his mouth dry and stiff from hours of clenching. "How…?"
He never meditates beyond an hour, certainly not for an entire day. The sun was rising when he last opened his eyes, the air was cool and crisp and his heartbeat strong with the sunrise.
Now the settling dusk revealed the ache in his body, unlike anything he knew before. A deep horrible burn like growing pains in his skin. His head throbbed, breath shuddering as he tried to fathom what surreal genjutsu he had seen.
My eyes, Amaterasu rumbled contently. Not exhausted, but strained and tired through mental devotion rather than effort. My sight.
"You see- what…?"
The other sight, Amaterasu explained horribly. The shift of pattern.
Sasuke had used the Sharingan extensively, he had grown up hearing the stories of its power and abilities. He had never heard of the different vision, of the overlapping contrast of glowing colours in a blackened night and yellow flowers turning into moonstone. "No..what was that?"
My eye, Amaterasu said once more.
Sasuke wanted to shout, to argue that such a thing was impossible because he had seen the Mangekyo and it did not give a transformation of all living things. He wanted to argue and remembered the ominous sight of a purple eye swirling forever in the dragon's skull.
Sasuke's mouth turned dry, lacking all moisture. Bakashi, sleeping peacefully a fair distance away snored gently. The bats were emerging, crickets screaming into the night.
"What is it called?" Sasuke asked hoarsely, body trembling. No human could ever wield such a power, it was too much for anyone. Sasuke had seen only a glimpse but knew it to be a forbidden apple on a tree with branches tantalizingly out of reach. "The eye."
Amaterasu rumbled, closer than ever before. The Rinnegan.
Sasuke shivered, his body felt flushed and warm which left the air cold. Bakashi snorted, adjusting in his sleep. The bats squeaked loud overhead, darting back and forth just above the tallest strands of grass and thistle. Sasuke settled from his stiff crouch into an uncoordinated droop near the side bags and makeshift firepit.
It is a blessing, Amaterasu explained quietly, from the Sage of Six Paths.
"The father of the bijuu," Sasuke realized unconsciously, "that's what you're waiting for. You're stalling until you can- can give me that."
Yes, Amaterasu said. It holds the power needed to prevent a horrible future.
Sasuke remembered it, the sight and smell of battlefield and blood. The pain of betrayal and loneliness and the overwhelming urge to give up. Sasuke looked up at the sky, darkening in the night, and slumped relieved that there was no moon in the sky.