[T]o Claim the Sky

It felt a little awkward, considering his age, to look back and consider the halcyon days of his youth where he had grown up with friends and dreamed of the days yet arrived in which he would attend the Academy. Back when the concept of jutsu, and controlling ones Chakra seemed like a fantasy only spoken about by adults in their world weary ways. What had once seemed like it was a life time away had become months, and then weeks, and then days before finally arriving.

Now, Aoi was in the midst of it, and it didn't still arrived each morning with serendipitous feeling of unreality, like any moment he would wake up and find the monotonous grind of real life the reality that he would return to. Each afternoon then, also came with its own renewed serendipity at the fact that he had not awoken, and the dream would live on.

There was one sprinkling of reality though, one nagging little reminder that he was a human being living in a world where humans sometimes do very foolish things. In his introduction into Naomi Sensei's class, he had very boldly declared that the sky was to be his.

This little declaration at the time had sounded very good and bold in his nervous, adolescent mind, but in reality he hadn't the foggiest clue how he was going to make good on that claim.

And so he had had a thought. Maybe he had been a bit bold to claim the sky. Perhaps it had belonged to someone else first, and maybe, just maybe they would have left a way for him to follow. A trail that would have seen him leave the ground and ascend to the heavens, just as they had done before him.

So far, in all the books and scrolls he'd been able to find, the answer was simply, that no one had. There were plenty of reports of Justus used to create vacuums and wind walls. To spit raw wind at someone, or create a small tornado. To the best of his admittedly short research time and at the limit of his extremely limited research abilities however: no one had tried to claim the sky.

It seemed very sad to Aoi that this was the case. While it was cool to create a tornado, or shoot bullets made of air, to him that seemed so limited in scope. That maybe the ninja world, or at least the ones with well known techniques lacked a little audacity. They spent all their time and focus on missions and destroying the enemy that they didn't look beyond that, into something a little more grand. He aimed to fix that.

So it was that now, at the end of his school day, he found himself alone in a secluded part of the village, eyes closed and focused on the air around him. Aoi tried, and with some success to clear his mind.

For a few precious moments at a time he would be at peace. He could feel the air that slowly crossed his skin on currents unseen. The chill air of the late afternoon and the coldness of the ground would fade, and for a moment, for a tiny moment in time he would be as the air around him. He existed, immaterial of the state of the world around him.

Then, inevitably, from the depths of his mind he would think of something Noami sensei said that he didn't quiet understand, or think of a clever retort for something Kazusa had said. He would imagine himself looking cool in front of the other kids and it would all fade away.

Before Aoi knew it, he would imagine having long conversations about the practice he did in his free time and the mediations he had done. Naomi sensei would be impressed by his effort and his peers would think more highly of him. He would be a leader among his classmates, and the future would be bright. The dream would stretch on and on, and then a shiver would reach him, and he would know that he had lost his moment of peace and instead found that he'd been drawn into fantasy.

It wouldn't do, and Aoi knew it. So he turned his efforts from the mental to the physical. He worked himself, sprinting and climbing. Pushing up and squatting down. He found sticks and practiced proper sword form, and let his fantasy become shadows that he would always eventually best with speed and grace. He would catch himself in these fantasies and remind himself that this was how bad habits formed.

He would do this until he became winded, and needed a break. As the sun hung low in the Konohagakure sky and night rose up to embrace the village in a hug of purples, grays, and blacks, he would return to his meditations.

His mind would begin to lull, and it would fade, embracing that hug from Lady Night and it would envelope him and his mind would find silence. A quiet place where there were no conversations with classmates. No quippy gotchas. No shadow enemies that needed slaying. Aoi found peace and oneness with the wind and the air around him.

He turned his inner eye inward upon itself, and felt as the air crept and rose. He noticed how it had felt more free and alive when the sun was up, and how it felt dense and tighter now that the chill of the night had set in. He could not quantify why this happened, but he felt for certain that it did.

Somewhere in the distance, at a nearby building a light flickered on. The buzz of electricity reaching out to him, grabbing him in his quiet place and pulling him away. No more revelations would come tonight. No more dreams of seizing the sky and soaring above his peers.

As Aoi opened his eyes to the old world, his mind racing with the possibilities that might come from his revelations, reality returned as well. It was getting late, and his stomach growled, its calories burned as he half played at ninja and half exercised his body. He needed food, and he had homework to do.

And so Aoi bid farewell to his quiet place, the afternoon spent shared between fantasy and reality. Lessons learned in the mind of a child not yet learned enough to put them into action, but as surely as Aoi would remember the coming lessons under Naomi sensei, he would remember the lessons of his meditations and his understanding would grow. Though he had accomplished little, he had accomplished something, and tomorrow he would accomplish something else too.

So with peace of mind and light in his heart, Aoi made his way home, and he was just in time for dinner too. A good thing, because Mama Aozora would not have liked him being late again, and he could not find his quiet place if he were grounded.

(WC = 1171)