heritage

Chapter Ten: Daisy Bouquet - Three Stems

 Dear Naruto,

I wish I'd had the courage to talk with you. Maybe then you would have had a warm place to sleep. The shrines would've taken care of you. I should have helped take care of you. I might be able to, now. Not just you but the whole village. The last shrine is waiting for me, y'know? I can almost tell what the kami are singing.

—Sakura

—

"Cherish every part of yourself; even the parts that bleed."

          When she opens her eyes next, she is safely within her mindscape. Enkai is gone. And so, too, are the kami, their music quieting into nothing. Sakura blinks once. She is flat on her back. Her eyes stare up at the light grey sky, her mind twisting in a whirlpool of confliction.

She forces herself to keep breathing in sets of eight, vaguely remembering to have read the technique somewhere before. Or maybe she learned it from Kakashi-sensei. Her mind spins, jumping from one thing to the next. She takes in another deep breath, starting a new count of eight. It doesn't matter where she learned it from. It keeps her calm, for the most part. She stops herself from thinking any further than that.

Once her heartbeat steadies, she considers stopping the exercise. But she still doesn't know what to think about everything that's happened. Whether or not she should forgive the kami or not.

If she ever will.

She is still in shallow water. Lying down, she can feel sand pressing into her back and legs. This sand is different to the homogenous floor from before, however. Here, in her mindscape, there is variety. She can feel the different pieces. Shells, stones, bits of coral and large to small grains of sand. Uncomfortable. It grounds her; opposite to the way that in-between space from before left her numb.

The water reaches up to her chin, slow waves lapping at her neck. It's warm. Like an ever-shifting blanket. It is yet another thing that anchors her. Filling her with comfort and soothing her throbbing heart. Her scars, too, feel alleviated. The gentle warmth smoothing over their rigid edges and sinking in, chasing away the cold.

Now that she thinks about it, the water in that in-between place had only felt wet. There was no particular temperature that could describe it. Perhaps cold? But only in the way one describes the absence of heat rather than a true chill.

Here, lying on the shores of her landscape, surrounded by the shallow waters of her happier memories, Sakura finds it easy for her mind to fall silent. For her thoughts to dissipate. It's almost as if they follow the clouds, getting farther away as she watches them float across the sky.

When the undercurrents tug her deeper into the endless waves, Sakura does not struggle. She does not dig her nails into the seabed. Does not scream, or cry out as she did before.

She is too empty. Too worn and uncertain to thrash about like that. She still feels the weakness in her bones. The hollowness in her chest, though the warmth of the water has helped. And another thing, too.

There is no music. No voices coloured with the violent memory of loss. No. Instead, there is only one voice. A new voice. A voice that naturally melds in perfectly with the atmosphere of the ocean.

"Come," Enkai whispers, the skip of a stone on water coming with the word, "Be happy, Sakura-chan."

Sakura smiles.