Beautiful Imperfections - An Uchiha Madara Love Story

Chapter 1 - Goddess of Healing

This chapter is dedicated to SauceMix! Happy reading! :)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Akina pov:

I closed my eyes and brought a medicinal flower close to my nose to inhale its sweet scent. Besides having wondrous medicinal properties, I'm sure it was a very pretty flower too, in a vibrant color that anyone would find to be one of nature's beautiful creations. Even though I couldn't see its beauty, I could feel it and smell it and that was more than enough to give me joy.

Smiling in contentment, I lowered my hand and plucked the petals slowly. I put them into a stone mortar along with two other herbs and a few rare medicinal stems so I could prepare an antidote to cure paralysis caused by certain poisons that shinobi used in battle. I reached out to the side feeling the wooden floor to find the stone pestle. When I had it in my hand, I began to manually grind all the ingredients together.

I liked the sound of the pestle making contact with the stone mortar, giving different sounds depending on the type of herbs being ground. The soft murmur of the stones rubbing against each other was what I had grown up with and I found it to be the most pleasing of sounds.

I don't remember much of my childhood. Until I was five years old, I believe I stayed with my clan – which's name I don't remember. I have very hazy memories of people with silver hair and violet eyes looking at me, smiling and talking to me as if we were very close. Most of them are pleasant memories that come to me only when I'm relaxing and my thoughts float away – it's something that happens very rarely.

I also vaguely remember being woken up in the dead of the night one day by ear piercing screams. Everything around me was orange and I had felt the blazing heat of fire that seemed to destroy anything that it engulfed. Besides the fire, the screams and the panicked shuffling of people, there were dark figures that appeared every now and then in quick flashes.

The clearest memory I had was of the time someone had carried me in their arms as they ran out of the blazing village, barely avoiding the dark figures that whizzed past him. I was placed in the trunk of an old drying tree – a dark place that shielded me from the dangers that could harm me at that time. I don't remember the face of the man who had saved my life because it was too dark to see but he had mumbled something and touched my forehead with his fingers.

He had whispered the words 'I'm sorry, Akina. Please be safe' before running off on his own. I was terrified to be left alone in the dark so I had crawled out of the trunk in hopes of following him. But when I heard an ear piercing scream echo through the forest I was in, it dawned upon me that if I came out of hiding, I would not live to see another day. And so, I returned to hiding in the tree waiting for a reassuring silence before I could find the person who left me there.

I guess I had fallen asleep while waiting for the reassuring silence. When I was jolted awake the very next day – well, I think it was the next day – I came to realize that I would never be able to see the world around me again.

Frightened about being alone and being unable to see anymore, I crawled my way through the forest crying and begging for someone to find me and help me. I was found by the elder of this village several days later, scared, starving, and exhausted and having given up hopes of being saved. The village elder was a kind and gentle man who took me in and raised me himself like his own daughter.

He happened to be a healer and he taught me everything I know about herbs and medicines. Since I couldn't see, I had to develop my other senses to aid me with finding the right herbs, preparing the right medicines and diagnosing the patients' problems. My sense of smell, my sense of touch and my high sensitivity to the nodes and flow of chakra in a person's body helped me become an excellent healer. I do not know if it is true but I have heard that people call me the Goddess of Healing – mostly because there is almost no illness I cannot cure.