Wishlist - Day 1 - Blood and Ribbons
In Konohagakure, a tree is planted at the birth of every child. The Leaf's citizens believe that the seed planted during the child’s first hour will direct the course of the child’s life. Parents agonize over which tree they should plant for their child. Physical properties, appearance, medicinal qualities, legends, folk tales and fairytales are all considered before they make their final decision.
Sakura’s parents choose the sakura tree for her. It is beautiful. Its flowers symbolize kindness, gentleness and the transience of life. Trees with white flowers look like clouds in the spring. As the seasons pass, sakura trees cycle through death and rebirth. They unite earth, wind and water.
They pray for a girl.
When their daughter is born with a full head of pink hair and the most piercing bawl the nursing staff has ever heard, her parents take it as a sign. They swaddle their baby in blankets embroidered with their clan symbol and name her, Sakura. Within Sakura’s first hour they plant a sakura tree’s seed in a red clay pot and potting soil purchased from the Yamanaka Flower Shop.
They never wonder why the sakura tree is such an unpopular guardian spirit. The name is so rare as to actually be obscure in a nation devoted to trees.
Konohagakure’s shinobi know that Konohagakure’s sakura trees once had snow white flowers. Back then, the sakura blossom symbolized purity and virtue. Back then, the sakura blossom had embodied the transience of life without any mention of death or rebirth.
It was the Shodai who turned Konohagkure’s sakura blossoms pink.
During the second winter of the First Shinobi War, the village’s walls were breached. Enemy shinobi trapped Konohagakure’s people between the monument and the river. When the enemy tried to cross the river, Senju Hashirama ordered the cherry blossom trees lining both sides of it to kill the invaders.
Enemy shinobi had screamed as roots and branches reached out to grab, crush and bury them. When the all of the invaders had been dragged underground, the ground smoothed out around them. The soil, the grass and the water were all stained red. Eventually, the blood flaked or washed away.
The invaders were forgotten about until the next spring when the sakura trees blossomed. Every last flower was a delicate shade of pink. They had been vivid and pink every year since then. Every spring Konohagakure’s river wended its way through clouds of blood.
To Konohagakure’s shinobi, the sakura is tarnished innocence and forcible death and rebirth. Its greatest beauty came after it was stained by human blood. The sakura tree thrives on adversity and the blood of Konohagakure’s enemies. Most shinobi are unwilling to cross, much less invoke, the ferocity and duality of such a tree.
If Sakura’s parents had known those things, they would have chosen a different tree as their child’s guardian spirit. She would have been named differently too.
Only her parents are surprised by how Haruno Sakura’s life turns out in later years.
At ten, Sakura and Ino give up sweets, hair baubles, new dresses and buying books. Sometimes they share a single lunch between them. Both of their allowances and the unspent lunch money go into their savings jar.
In Konohagakure, they believe that on certain nights Death’s vast gates are flung wide to allow the dead to visit the living world. They visit their families, tease the living and exact vengeance. On those nights the past, present and future are supposed to be clear to those who knew how to look into them.
The civilians look forward to the Days of the Dead. Families clean their ancestral shrines and leave offerings to welcome their ancestors. Villagers leave out bowls of milk to welcome the spirits that approach their doorsteps and throw enormous parties for the dead. Everyone wears their prettiest clothes and coronets woven from freshly picked flowers or leaves. For the civilians, the Days of the Dead are festive and fun.
The shinobi are much more ambivalent toward the Days of the Dead. They clean their ancestral shrines and leave offerings to welcome their ancestors. Shinobi children carve terrifying faces into turnips or melons to scare the spirits away. The adult shinobi put genjutsu over their families’ dwellings. They rely on their ancestors’ shared blood and familiarity with the living to show them the way past the clan’s defenses. On the Days of the Dead, most shinobi wear masks and have small, intimate parties for their deceased relatives. Shinobi look forward to visiting with their dead. They try to avoid the souls of those they fought, killed or assassinated.
When they are eleven, Ino and Sakura spend their savings on a hand mirror. The mirror is a long, smooth oval of glass backed and framed by real silver. Vines and branches are etched into the metal. They weave together to form the handle.
On the Day of the Dead, Sakura sleeps over at Ino’s house. After they are sent to bed, and before they actually get into Ino’s bed, they get out their mirror. They take turns, one girl holding the mirror in front of the other while she eats an apple and peers into the glass for a glimpse of her True Love.
Ino sees the face that she expects to see. Her True Love has petal pink hair, pale eyes and a soft mouth. When Sakura asks what she sees, Ino says that she sees black hair, pale skin and black eyes.
Sakura glimpses a flash of pale blond hair, blue eyes and a pretty mouth. The only boy with that coloring is Naruto. (But his mouth is huge, chapped and not particularly pretty.) Sakura decides that the mirror’s image is like a reversed photograph. Her True Love has dark hair, dark eyes and a clever mouth like Sasuke. It never occurs to Sakura that Ino has pale blond hair, blue eyes and a pretty mouth.
The next afternoon Sakura declares Ino to be her love rival.
The gods tie either end of a red ribbon around the pinkie fingers of soul mates so that they can find each other again in the living world.
Ino assumes that the love between soul mates is romantic.
And then she meets Sakura.
She looks down at masses of tangled pink hair and miserably huddled shoulders and feels sorry for her. The girl looks up at Ino. At the first sight of her red face, wet cheeks and green eyes, Ino feels a tug on her pinkie.
She soothes Sakura, builds her up and tends to her. Ino loves watching Sakura put down roots, grow taller and become more confident. Ino takes better care of Sakura than her father takes of his bonsai trees. And her father loves his bonsai.
Ino knows Sakura. She knows the way Sakura chews her lower lip when she’s working through a tricky problem with her big brain. A glance at the line of Sakura’s shoulders tells Ino whether Sakura is feeling honestly confident or is just pretending to feel confident. Ino memorizes the shape of Sakura’s knees and all of her smiles and the texture of Sakura’s hair. She knows that Sakura snuggles in her sleep and hates the texture of oil. She learns the code for translating Sakura’s clothing choices into Sakura’s feelings. She can always see Sakura, even when Sakura cannot see herself.
Ino knows Sakura inside and out. She loves every bit of Sakura with a ferocity that startles even Ino.
Before she is ten, Ino knows her soul mate is never going to be her boyfriend or husband. No matter how long they live, who they become or how many lives they live, Ino’s soul mate will always be Sakura.
When Sakura chooses the possibility of Sasuke over the reality of Ino, Sakura shatters Ino’s poor faithful heart. She hates (but still secretly loves) Sakura for more than a year.
(Even if Ino had actually hated Sakura, she would have protected Sakura in the Forest of Death. She is still Ino’s stupid, treacherous soul mate.)
Their match is like draining the puss from an infected wound.
While Team Seven is scattered and disgraced, Sakura and Ino find their way back to being best friends again.
Ino is deliriously happy to make chunin with Sakura and Choji. She is even happier to get an apartment with Sakura. They practice, go to parties and giggle over boyfriends and dates together. When Shikamaru dates Temari, Sakura is right there with double chocolate ice cream, voodoo dolls and violent movies. When Temari dumps Shikamaru for Anko, Sakura is smug on Ino’s behalf.
When Naruto drags Sasuke home to Konohagakure, everyone expects Team Seven to pick up where it left off. Sasuke deigns to marry Sakura.
Sakura laughs until she cries. Then she punches Sasuke through three trees and into the side of the monument.
Ino creates an irrational fear of the color purple in Sasuke’s subconscious… just because she can.
Sakura goes home with Ino.
This entry was originally posted at http://crunchysunrises.dreamwidth.org/46134.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Sakura’s parents choose the sakura tree for her. It is beautiful. Its flowers symbolize kindness, gentleness and the transience of life. Trees with white flowers look like clouds in the spring. As the seasons pass, sakura trees cycle through death and rebirth. They unite earth, wind and water.
They pray for a girl.
When their daughter is born with a full head of pink hair and the most piercing bawl the nursing staff has ever heard, her parents take it as a sign. They swaddle their baby in blankets embroidered with their clan symbol and name her, Sakura. Within Sakura’s first hour they plant a sakura tree’s seed in a red clay pot and potting soil purchased from the Yamanaka Flower Shop.
They never wonder why the sakura tree is such an unpopular guardian spirit. The name is so rare as to actually be obscure in a nation devoted to trees.
Konohagakure’s shinobi know that Konohagakure’s sakura trees once had snow white flowers. Back then, the sakura blossom symbolized purity and virtue. Back then, the sakura blossom had embodied the transience of life without any mention of death or rebirth.
It was the Shodai who turned Konohagkure’s sakura blossoms pink.
During the second winter of the First Shinobi War, the village’s walls were breached. Enemy shinobi trapped Konohagakure’s people between the monument and the river. When the enemy tried to cross the river, Senju Hashirama ordered the cherry blossom trees lining both sides of it to kill the invaders.
Enemy shinobi had screamed as roots and branches reached out to grab, crush and bury them. When the all of the invaders had been dragged underground, the ground smoothed out around them. The soil, the grass and the water were all stained red. Eventually, the blood flaked or washed away.
The invaders were forgotten about until the next spring when the sakura trees blossomed. Every last flower was a delicate shade of pink. They had been vivid and pink every year since then. Every spring Konohagakure’s river wended its way through clouds of blood.
To Konohagakure’s shinobi, the sakura is tarnished innocence and forcible death and rebirth. Its greatest beauty came after it was stained by human blood. The sakura tree thrives on adversity and the blood of Konohagakure’s enemies. Most shinobi are unwilling to cross, much less invoke, the ferocity and duality of such a tree.
If Sakura’s parents had known those things, they would have chosen a different tree as their child’s guardian spirit. She would have been named differently too.
Only her parents are surprised by how Haruno Sakura’s life turns out in later years.
At ten, Sakura and Ino give up sweets, hair baubles, new dresses and buying books. Sometimes they share a single lunch between them. Both of their allowances and the unspent lunch money go into their savings jar.
In Konohagakure, they believe that on certain nights Death’s vast gates are flung wide to allow the dead to visit the living world. They visit their families, tease the living and exact vengeance. On those nights the past, present and future are supposed to be clear to those who knew how to look into them.
The civilians look forward to the Days of the Dead. Families clean their ancestral shrines and leave offerings to welcome their ancestors. Villagers leave out bowls of milk to welcome the spirits that approach their doorsteps and throw enormous parties for the dead. Everyone wears their prettiest clothes and coronets woven from freshly picked flowers or leaves. For the civilians, the Days of the Dead are festive and fun.
The shinobi are much more ambivalent toward the Days of the Dead. They clean their ancestral shrines and leave offerings to welcome their ancestors. Shinobi children carve terrifying faces into turnips or melons to scare the spirits away. The adult shinobi put genjutsu over their families’ dwellings. They rely on their ancestors’ shared blood and familiarity with the living to show them the way past the clan’s defenses. On the Days of the Dead, most shinobi wear masks and have small, intimate parties for their deceased relatives. Shinobi look forward to visiting with their dead. They try to avoid the souls of those they fought, killed or assassinated.
When they are eleven, Ino and Sakura spend their savings on a hand mirror. The mirror is a long, smooth oval of glass backed and framed by real silver. Vines and branches are etched into the metal. They weave together to form the handle.
On the Day of the Dead, Sakura sleeps over at Ino’s house. After they are sent to bed, and before they actually get into Ino’s bed, they get out their mirror. They take turns, one girl holding the mirror in front of the other while she eats an apple and peers into the glass for a glimpse of her True Love.
Ino sees the face that she expects to see. Her True Love has petal pink hair, pale eyes and a soft mouth. When Sakura asks what she sees, Ino says that she sees black hair, pale skin and black eyes.
Sakura glimpses a flash of pale blond hair, blue eyes and a pretty mouth. The only boy with that coloring is Naruto. (But his mouth is huge, chapped and not particularly pretty.) Sakura decides that the mirror’s image is like a reversed photograph. Her True Love has dark hair, dark eyes and a clever mouth like Sasuke. It never occurs to Sakura that Ino has pale blond hair, blue eyes and a pretty mouth.
The next afternoon Sakura declares Ino to be her love rival.
The gods tie either end of a red ribbon around the pinkie fingers of soul mates so that they can find each other again in the living world.
Ino assumes that the love between soul mates is romantic.
And then she meets Sakura.
She looks down at masses of tangled pink hair and miserably huddled shoulders and feels sorry for her. The girl looks up at Ino. At the first sight of her red face, wet cheeks and green eyes, Ino feels a tug on her pinkie.
She soothes Sakura, builds her up and tends to her. Ino loves watching Sakura put down roots, grow taller and become more confident. Ino takes better care of Sakura than her father takes of his bonsai trees. And her father loves his bonsai.
Ino knows Sakura. She knows the way Sakura chews her lower lip when she’s working through a tricky problem with her big brain. A glance at the line of Sakura’s shoulders tells Ino whether Sakura is feeling honestly confident or is just pretending to feel confident. Ino memorizes the shape of Sakura’s knees and all of her smiles and the texture of Sakura’s hair. She knows that Sakura snuggles in her sleep and hates the texture of oil. She learns the code for translating Sakura’s clothing choices into Sakura’s feelings. She can always see Sakura, even when Sakura cannot see herself.
Ino knows Sakura inside and out. She loves every bit of Sakura with a ferocity that startles even Ino.
Before she is ten, Ino knows her soul mate is never going to be her boyfriend or husband. No matter how long they live, who they become or how many lives they live, Ino’s soul mate will always be Sakura.
When Sakura chooses the possibility of Sasuke over the reality of Ino, Sakura shatters Ino’s poor faithful heart. She hates (but still secretly loves) Sakura for more than a year.
(Even if Ino had actually hated Sakura, she would have protected Sakura in the Forest of Death. She is still Ino’s stupid, treacherous soul mate.)
Their match is like draining the puss from an infected wound.
While Team Seven is scattered and disgraced, Sakura and Ino find their way back to being best friends again.
Ino is deliriously happy to make chunin with Sakura and Choji. She is even happier to get an apartment with Sakura. They practice, go to parties and giggle over boyfriends and dates together. When Shikamaru dates Temari, Sakura is right there with double chocolate ice cream, voodoo dolls and violent movies. When Temari dumps Shikamaru for Anko, Sakura is smug on Ino’s behalf.
When Naruto drags Sasuke home to Konohagakure, everyone expects Team Seven to pick up where it left off. Sasuke deigns to marry Sakura.
Sakura laughs until she cries. Then she punches Sasuke through three trees and into the side of the monument.
Ino creates an irrational fear of the color purple in Sasuke’s subconscious… just because she can.
Sakura goes home with Ino.
This entry was originally posted at http://crunchysunrises.dreamwidth.org/46134.html. Please comment there using OpenID.