| [Aug. 29th, 2017|03:29 am] |
They left the next morning, an hour before dawn.
Thanks to Raidou’s standard schedule of early morning punishment, Team Six was bright and alert, though Ryouma still grumbled. They struck out in their ANBU black-and-bone, with enough supplies packed away in scrolls, rucksacks, and belt-pouches to carry them through a month on the road. Kurenai, in jounin blues and minimal makeup, refused to talk to anyone until the sun had risen.
They walked the first leg, warming up and easing in. The compacted dirt road was wide enough to walk abreast, and safe enough to chat quietly. Konoha’s gigantic trees turned the warming light dappled green.
By mid-morning, Kakashi and Ryouma were both restive, and Raidou allowed the pace to gear up to a jog, then an easy run.
The inevitable race was forestalled by a clever little genjutsu that ran Ryouma into a tree-trunk and Kakashi into a ditch.
“I am not sprinting,” Kurenai informed them both tartly, but she did, after some pressing, unbend enough to discuss the finer points of her jutsu with Kakashi.
They stopped for lunch at a small farmstead advertising fresh peaches. The colorful sign hanging on the gate was decorated with child-sized hand prints. A pair of youngsters maybe a year older than Naruto spotted the group and fell over themselves to yell that, ninja are here! One of them has red eyes!
Kurenai exchanged an ironic look with Kakashi.
The adults, sun-weathered and relaxed, took Team Six more in stride. They shared food and little fragments of local news, and pressed a jar of preserved peaches on Genma when they made to leave.
The road here was lined with fruiting cherry trees. It didn’t take Raidou, Genma, or Ryouma very long to push their ANBU masks aside and end up as red-mouthed as Kurenai. The cherries were bursting-sweet or biting-tart. Even Kakashi helped himself to a hidden handful, while Kurenai judiciously filled a small cloth bag for later.
They loped the afternoon away, passing homesteads and small villages. When the sky turned velvet, Raidou allowed that they might find an inn with actual futons to sleep on. They were still close enough to Konoha that, once they decided on a place just off the beaten path, the host didn’t even blink at the shinobi uniforms.
They ate miso-glazed river trout, homemade pickles, and — for the few with a sweet tooth — sakura mochi. The only other guest was an elderly woman travelling with her grandson. She sat comfortably on the back porch, watching the boy try to catch flashing silver fish in a small pond, and told a few of the Fire Country fables they’d all grown up hearing. The White Hare and the Sagacious Monkey, the Hunter’s Wife, the Dancing Kettle.
Kurenai retired first, yawning, to her private room. She wasn’t quite limping, but there was a stiffness in her legs that needed watching.
The woman and her grandson went next — reluctant, in the boy’s case, since the future obviously contained a bath. The host, a short and well-rounded man with salt-and-pepper hair, returned to offer evening drinks. Kakashi and Genma accepted tea. After a brief hesitation, Raidou turned down beer and settled for water. Ryouma, reluctantly following this good example, did the same.
“I’m not sure what we did right,” Raidou said, when the host had gone back inside, “but we should keep doing it.”
Genma stretched out on the sun-warmed wooden boards, propping his head on his arm at the edge of the porch, so he could look up and see the stars flickering to life in the summer night. “My dad would say, ‘Not knowing is the way of the Buddha’.”
Genma’s father had made a recent point of pressing a collection of tiny metal charms into his son’s hands. One of them dangled from Kakashi’s backpack. Another hung from Raidou’s belt. Ryouma had added his to the chain he wore around his neck, with his mother’s dogtags. |
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