Among Wolves [Open to 1]

Tadasada considers himself many things. A dutiful son, a peacekeeper, a mediator, and an archivist. One who remembers. Once a scent has passed his nose, he will never, ever forget it.

Snowflakes dot the wolf's dark pelt as he toes through the streets of this unfamiliar village. The thin layer of snow on the ground is cool against his thick pawpads, a feeling that at once feels like home and disquiets him. Nature's designs for this island are so clearly marred and twisted by humans' whims. It is like that in any human city, really, but the strange pressures of the great storm outside twist his stomach and impede his sense of fairness. 

The band around his throat, its metal plate stamped with the delicate symbol of the Hidden Wildflower village, chafes. His summoner insists it is best for him to proclaim his temporary affiliation to her small hidden village while she conducts business here. The people of this place would rest easier having somebody to hold responsible if he were to hunt here.

Tadasada stops mid-stride, lifting his nose to the air. An unexpected scent. It brings to mind a length of torn, bloody cloth, a young girl lost in war. Somebody who needed them so long ago, and who they are now bound to in mutual debt. 

It isn't Kurumi. Tadasada knows that she has been dead for a long time. He was the one who organized the repatriation of her remains. This scent is of her family, and family of one member of the Pact is family to all.

The black-pelted wolf turns, the charms and trinkets woven together around his throat clinking together and against the hitai-ate, and he follows Murata's trail. 

---

"Come back when you are a Chunin, they say. I will show them. I will be the most... well, I know they were not a student, then," Murata mumbles to herself, stepping out past the gates of the Academy complex. Even after seeing that Hondou's memorial has been visited, presumably by family, something digs at her about the little stone. She had paid the records a visit to see if she could access any information, but there was little there for her. The only potential lead was a brief incident report of a missing Senju boy, and that seemed to be entirely unrelated, being much more recent than the village's past as Shimagakure.

"Perhaps I should just mind my own business?" she hums, looking out over the choppy, hostile waters surrounding the island, snow dancing in the air before being swallows up by the waves.

[431]

Rain roars against the roof of the barn, dull against the thatched roof. Anxiety is thick in the air. Murata's chakra cannot reach the animals, cannot read them or soothe them like she can with her friends. The monks tell her that it is because the animals do not have chakra... but at the same time, she is told that it exists in every living being. How confusing. The massive wolf next to her certainly has chakra.

It's just an idle curiosity. Murata is not sure she could calm the nervous sheep, given the massive wolf next to her. Guilt gnaws at her, and she is tempted to ask Kurumi if it's really necessary to have her summon with them. She decides against it, as she would have to question the wolf's presence aloud, with it... lying right next to her. She leans forward where she sits, peeking to the side. Kurumi snores out of sight, in the dim of the barn, skinny body curled against the beast sworn to her protection. The great wolf peers forward with dim yellow eyes, unsleeping. Then, slowly, its gaze turns towards Murata, and she is unsure how to read its canine expression.

"Go to sleep, kid," it rumbles.

[205]
[TWC: 636]

Murata leafs through the pages of the memoir, words slipping from her as soon as her eyes have scanned them. It's late, and the information is simply not sticking to her. There had been vague, distant murmurs of a major shinobi war back home. In the middle and late stages of Wolf Country's tumultuous series of civil wars, missing-nin presence had ebbed and waned with the motions of some distant conflict - some drawn away to profiteer, some displaced, driven across the ocean. Murata wishes she could step back into her own mind to see the vague images in her head with a clearer lens. The emblems stuck to shinobi corpses had been utterly meaningless to her, then, but she wonders now what they could teach her.

Three villages - Tengakure, Shimagakure, Kirigakure. They all meet here... but it seems so much of the legacy of those villages, so crucial to Kirigakure's rebirth, were burnt as kindling to resurrect an artefact of the past. Perhaps the gentle peace of Shimagakure was considered weakness, but Murata marvels that the technical wonders of Tengakure are near nonexistent in Kirigakure's current state. Such practicality, thrown away for an aesthetic? For the nostalgia of a bit of fog?

[202]
[TWC: 838]

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