Lord Shikashige was said to have contemplated death every morning. At the age of seven, he was given the responsibility of euthanizing the sick and old deer, using a butcher's knife and his bare hands. He was told daily that the way of the shinobi is one of death, and that he should not cry when the light left the eyes of the deer; that taking the life of a man was not one bit different from that.

By 14 he was tasked with executing criminals, and was a killer of men ever since. When asked how he slept so easily after breaking the neck of a man with his shadow, he would point to the deer in the fields, never failing to find one lamed or ailing. The questioning pupil almost always understood.

Shinako's eyes were closed against the morning sun, her mind fixated on the parable and the image of deer in the pasture. Lord Shikashige had lived over half a millennium ago, and shinobi did not kill so young or so readily anymore. However, as her father had always said, even the hand learned something from the errant blade. Shinako had no desire to be like Lord Shikashige, but it would be a mistake to gain nothing from his life.

The young woman was dressed in her usual garb, a red qipao dress, hemmed short at the skirt and sleeves, with heavy black pants underneath. Her tool belt lay folded to her left, weapons of a war Shinako was not yet ready to fight.

The training ground was just awakening to its usual busy state, with shinobi of all ranks and clans moving into the various areas to practice their arts. Shinako had been at it for hours already, though was just preparing for the day's true study. She was here not to study the arts, but the practitioners themselves.

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Rain, it had been raining recently. But today was a nice day. For the first in about 4 days, it had stopped raining enough for someone to actually enjoy. Unless you loved the rain of course. Me personally? Not the biggest fan unless I was indoors keeping warm. I groaned softly, walking with a slow yet gradual speed. A walk would do me good, but right now it was a slight bother. I was about to settle down and do some research but of course, my mother had to kick me out right then. I guess I might as well just read my book outside right? Fresh air, a calm atmosphere, and not to mention the point it was quite cool. Such a beautiful morning, who'd even want to spend it inside huh? As the wind went through the light brown of my hair, I could only take a simple sigh in. So lovely, it was. I finally picked a decent spot to rest, but I just stood and looked at the tree I was about to read under.

I put my hand to my pouch and almost pulled out the book, that is until I thought of something else. I could read while getting some exercise in. Sure it would be a bit dangerous, but it couldn't kill me that easily, not when I had determination. Oh, and a katana. I pulled my book out, "Human Anatomy 101", and began to plan out a small plan for where I planned to walk. As I finished planning, I started to walk once more. Muscles, brain, even a retina. This book had basically all of it. I was learning quite a bit already, like how much the body could heal itself for minor cuts. How some drugs heavily affected even more than I ever knew. But what surprised me was how chakra also helped one's body grow faster, even if it was just a bit.

As I walked, I was sure to pay mind anytime I felt the terrain changed in any way possible. But I was taking aback when I suddenly fell over something. I hissed at the fall, it was minor at best, but still, hurt like a jerk. After squealing out in a bit of pain, I looked at where my book had fallen. To my disappointment, it was sprawled on the forest floor, landing right into a puddle of mud. I screamed in my confusion, a weak moment for sure. But then again, if you screamed and no one was there to hear, to you really scream? "FOR THE LOVE OF UZUMAKI NARUTO AND NAMIKAZE MINATO! WHY THE HELL WAS IT ME!? DAMN MUD!"

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A string of curses, invoking the names of some of the Hidden Leaf's greatest heroes, broke Shinako from her pensive, observatory state. Her brown eyes settled on the young woman, perhaps just a girl, tripping over the root of a gnarled, dead tree. Whatever the newcomer had been reading now lay spattered in mud formed by the raindrops of the past few days. Normally the trees stopped such large puddles from forming, but the constant precipitation recently had soaked almost everything.

Straightening her forehead protector, tied in a sash about her waist, Shinako stood and hurried to the girl's side. As she arrived she clicked her tongue like a mother trying to comfort a child, and reached down into the mud to try to save the book. It was certainly a mess, and the thick mud clung to the young Chuunin's fingertips. It didn't seem to distract her, however, as she reached out her right hand to the other young woman in an attempt to help her up.

"I saw you fall. One must be so careful in conditions like this."

Shinako swept her left hand and the book in a wide gesture, indicating the slick terrain. She then turned back to her fallen comrade, once again offering her hand, this time along with a brilliant smile. A slight, breezy wind blew through the scene, warm enough to remind Shinako that the sun always seemed to find a way back to shine over Konohagakure. She tilted her head and her smile intensified.

"It can't rain all the time."

After doing what she could to help, Shinako stood back and took the measure of the young woman before her. The girl looked strong, and Shinako guessed that she must have been a shinobi. There was very little civilian foot-traffic through these training grounds, as dangerous projectiles were always flying back and forth. The older woman briefly pondered her luck at meeting so many fellow shinobi lately. It was probably just coincidence. Shinako tended to disavow omens.

Offering a slight bow, Shinako returned the book and gave a polite wave, heading back to her camp-site just a few meters away, resuming her observant kneeling posture. Her smile faded somewhat, but a certain pleasantness seemed to play across her features. An idea occurred to her.

"I'm here to observe some Shinobi techniques. If I am not mistaken, you are a ninja yourself. Would you mind a demonstration?"

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The girl was gone before having heard Shinako’s words, and the woman felt a certain sense of sadness that people often feel when they miss an opportunity to connect with someone. It was the type of feeling that only really comes from the realization that everyone around her was living a vibrant and fulfilling life, and that the strings weaved in and out of any pattern that she could recognize, crossing her own string and then separating. She wondered, with a wistful smile, how often she was the one doing the sudden leaving. Her string had touched so many others in this village, that it was almost hopelessly entangled. The Kunoichi imagined long, tick strings, like the Hokage’s, the pulling of which would unravel large segments of the tapestry that was the Hidden Leaf Village. Her own was not so significant, perhaps making up one strand of one relief in the broader scene.

In the past month or so, Shinako had learned a lot about the nature of being a Shinobi, and of fear. This was not the type of profession, in which one could wait with idle fantasies for something great to happen to them, even if that great thing was horrible and gruesome. It wasn’t the breathless terror of hearing the scrape of a Kunai knife in the dark, or even, exactly, the fear a young girl of seven had felt when she had stumbled across a dead stranger in the park. Those types of fear had their uses in this profession, but did not quite encapsulate it. No.

There was no analogy for this fear in the poems of all of the greatest writings of the Hidden Leaf. The writers did not analogize because they lived with it clearly and presently every day. This was the basest of all human emotions, that was with all men before the measured existence of time; before the Hidden Leaf Village and before even the formation of the forest. This was the fear that drove fish from the murky depths of the dark; the fear that taught men to run and to pick up arms; the fear that made men bury their dead.

Perhaps the reason that Shinobi spent so much of their lives being afraid was to prepare their bodies for that very real type of fear whenever it came, but Shinako found herself unprepared. Her skin prickled into tight goose-flesh, and her pupils dilated. A cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck. Even miles away, she could smell the mud of the river; could hear the soft footfalls of sandals.

It was strange that the retreating back of the cute Shinobi girl should bring the notion of her own mortality to the forefront of Shinako’s mind, but the purity of the girl’s act had triggered something in her. Perhaps it was just then that Shinako felt her own string fray and strain under the pull of the Shinobi life. Perhaps it was then that she felt it break, pulling away from its tether and snapping headlong into the emptiness surrounding the very edges of the tapestry, leaving a small and insignificant run on the face of the cloth. Any careful weaver would replace it with another, but most would simply overlook its absence.

Shinako stood, as another warm breeze meandered through the training fields. It did not smell like summer or autumn, but like blood. Her eyes fell on the Hokage monument, and every face pictured there seemed to look not upon her, but deliberately past or through her. She heard the words of her stepmother, reading a favored poem:

“Only there is shadow under this red rock. Come in under the shadow of this red rock, and I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

It is true that no one would leave home unless their home had become the edge of a blade.

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