Ink
I had origianlly posted this on ff.net, but then i started to crave intelligent responses from readers.
It's extrememly discouraging when your only feedback is "COL!! UPDATE" (yes, spelled wrong too.)
Title: Ink
Author:
tsunamimbw
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: None
Genre: General, drabble
Rating: G
Summary: While doing her mission reports, the kunoichi muses on the various instruments she holds.
She was on the verge of finishing a missions report when she went to reload her brush and accidentally knocked the inkwell over.
Shit, she had thought.
The black liquid slithered along the wooden desk, blossoming onto the rice paper, swallowing her hard work into a shadowy gullet. Desperate to try to salvage of anything she can from the ink ravaging her work space, upending containers of pencils, pens and brushes, swatting at piles of paper so neatly arranged before. They fall around her, the clatter of writing utensils jarring her ears while the papers slowly flutter to the ground. But it’s no use, the report was past unreadable.
This isn’t the first time she’s done this. The veins on the wood of her desk hold witness to this, blackened with the residue of past spills, refusing to succumb to even the most vigilant of scrubbings.
She’s always preferred pens to brushes.
But to the village council, being a ninja meant upholding the village’s honor, and honor meant traditions. And traditions meant writing with a brush while there are perfectly usable pens next to you.
Pens were so much more efficient, so much easier to use, and so easy to control. They became an extension of your hand, rigid and infallible, no pretending to bend to your will only to have you lose your guard… and it springs up again when you least expect it. Brushes… the hair still held the essence of life, and refused to obey your hand, no matter how many times you slicked it. It frayed, split and frizzed, the silence defiance a faint reminisce of the spirit after death.
She looked at her desk, the ink still dripping off the sides onto the floor, creating tiny puddles that will eventually combine to form a giant maelstrom of black taking over the floor. Seeping into the cracks, smearing on the wood, staining the carpet, clothes, and anything else it touched, looking almost like dark splotches blood in dim light.
I've got the blood of civilization on my hands...
She laughs because she thinks it’s only because she’s tired that these thoughts are allowed to run rampant in her mind.
Pens contained the ink inside, like a body holds its blood inside, and when the ink ran out, the pen was discarded, buried other trash and forgotten.
Much like human lives today.
Brushes were almost a mockery, a subtle taunt to the job of a ninja. A ninja was to be accurate, efficient, and in control when killing… but when this analogy of ink and blood came to mind…
Images of mutilated bodies soaked through with crimson, pools of the red… stuff… messily splashed around, dripping…
It spoke of a mission gone wrong, an assassin upon the wrong person, a failure and the chaos that ensued.
A headache.
That was all brushes were.
Nothing more.
She brushes off the last remaining shadows her morbid musings left upon her mind, and laughs.
It’s only because of the late hour, She reiterates to herself as she leaves her workplace in the disorder it is in.
Like blood, the ink is still dripping onto the floor, a foreshadowing of the hell on the battlefield to be seen tomorrow.
Ugh, the ending is so melodramatic. I honestly can't do ANYTHING with it. >__>