crossroads

I am called Karin. I am not called Karin, but she has lost her home and her husband and every safety and comfort, and she holds me as if I am all she has left to cling to in the world, so I let her call me Karin.

It takes me a while to realize that, after I lost my world, she is all I have left to call mine. Maybe it is very little, a malnourished woman with bird bones and weathered hands, but she looks at me like she is very sorry for not being enough, even as she gives everything she possibly can, so I determine she will be all I need.

It is a quaint, self-sacrificing thought, but the truth is we are dying slowly from starvation, and the country is burning down with civil unrest around us, from what little I can glean from her hushed, child-safe versions of events.

Therefore, I push my onigiri on her plate. She pushes it back on mine. I turn my sad red eyes on her. She attempts a smile.

"Mommy's tired," I mutter.

"Just a little."

"And hungry," I add, frowning sternly. "Mommy is going to get sick."

"Oh no, don't worry, Karin-chan. Uzumaki don't go down that easily! We're very sturdy people, you know." She waves her hands energetically.

"Okay," I say, pushing it back on her plate. "I'm an Uzumaki too."

That draws out a small, genuine, sad, sad smile. A smile like she's being cut up on the inside with shards of a broken heart. "That used to mean something, you know," she babbles, "We had a village, a great village. In the whirlpool island, by the river side. You could row by boat from one side to another. It was so pretty in the rain. Have I told you how we used to dance under the rain when it poured?"

"Tell me again," I ask, because it makes her happy. I hold out the onigiri to her.

And we share it, bite by bite. She weaves fairytales about how they used to dance on top of the ocean, in whirlpool, about how they used to catch the wind in their hands, in whirlpool, about how they used to send dragons of water swimming through the river, in whirlpool. I am intensely skeptic, but grateful for what I believe is her attempt to enthrall my childish imagination, with tall tales about a home I'll never know.

I dream of ghosts drifting through the ruins, in whirlpool.

When we have not eaten all day, she presses her chapped lips against my forehead and murmurs an apology that sounds half like a prayer. When we have not eaten in two days, she catches my hands in hers, squeezing them as if to draw strength from my touch, and whispers urgently, "Karin, we need to leave."

She does not say to where. There is raw desperation in her tone, an aching hunger that clawed its way up from her stomach to her throat to her lips.

Quietly, I nod.

We pack our belongings in a knapsack and we still don't have a destination. It is winter. The wind is bitingly cold outside, and there is not much food we can gather from the forest.

"We can go to Kusa, that's nearest," she says, "or we can go to Konoha. They used to be Uzu's closest allies, before. They are liable to treat us kindly. But it's too far. We would have to wait until spring."

She bites her lip and pauses, looking to me very solemnly, as if she is trusting me with something heavy. I am not sure what to say, then, because she sometimes looks to me as if I am a creature so incomprehensibly otherwordly and full of timeless wisdom, when really all I can do is help her budget and cook and share her sewing work. She thinks I do too much, given I am four, but I cannot afford a childhood when we are so very poor. I was born already knowing what the world can be like.

"What is the difference between the two, Mommy?"

"Well, Kusa is just two days away. We should go there. The village has been going through war, but it's about the safest place one can be in Grass Country." She pauses, tucks her chin with a sigh. "Konohagakure is the largest ninja village in the world-"

I flinch back, startled.

Konohagakure. Ninja village. My world tilts on its axis. I feel as though I just fell through the pages of a storybook. I pinch myself covertly in my bewilderment.

I know I have lost my world. I have spent my last four years living in a small village without electricity or internet, in a country called Grass, and my mother has never heard of France or America. She thinks they are fairytale places I've made up, from my description of them. She always compliments me on my imagination.

I know well enough I have been born in a parallel universe, where nothing is the same. I did not associate that with a television show I watched when I was eleven and can barely recall. My mother calls me Karin. That is a common enough name. We live in a small village in Grass Country, which I supposed was as uninspired a name as any for a country full of grassland. My family name is Uzumaki, which I did associate with Uzumaki Naruto, but only to laugh at the coincidence, because that was far more reasonable than to suddenly start believing I was in Naruto.

Now my mother wants to maybe move to Konohagakure, the ninja village, and the synapses go off in my brain so suddenly it makes me lightheaded.

"Mother," I say, very seriously, and her gaze sharpens because I only ever call her mother, I only ever forsake the pretense of being a little girl who calls her mommy, when I am truly in a crisis. "Can we take some time to think about this?"

"Of course," she breathes, hugging me tightly, "I'm sorry to put all this on you, Karin-chan."

I relax into the hug, patting her softly on the back. Somehow, it makes me feel better. We'll get through this. Damage control, I think, breathing in my mother's warm lavender smell. There is a soft sound in her chest whenever I press my ear to it, like bells chiming. It is as much a part of her as the sound of her voice or the feel of her skin. I was never a believer in auras, but in this life I hear them sometimes, like songs ringing out in people's insides, loud bells or drums or violins.

That, I realize now, must be chakra.

The revelation makes me consider the odds of moving to Konoha. I would get the chance to learn the ninja arts, which are full of mystery and superhuman feats, but it's too dangerous an occupation. I am my mother's only child. I have no wish to leave her. Besides, Konoha is hardly the safest city to live in, considering Pein's invasion and Orochimaru's invasion -

Orochimaru. The recollection turns my insides to ice.

I lay quietly in my futon, tracing my shadow on the wall with a hand. Dimly, I struggle to piece together all the things I shouldn't recall.

Red hair. Glasses. The ability to feel chakra.

A scared little girl whose entire village was slaughtered.

Orochimaru.

Sasuke.

Bite marks.

Stabbed through the chest.

The future stretches before me, a grim collage of violence and being used. I bury my head in my mattress, muffling a scream that tears out of me like a cornered animal, furious and petrified.

My mother hears my quiet sobs in the stillness of our dark bedroom. She rises slowly, bridging the gap with a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"What is it, Karin-chan?" She asks me, alarmed, smoothing my hair. "What is the matter, my angel?"

"I don't want to go to Kusa," I sob, clenching my hands into her shirt. "Please. I don't want to. Please. Konoha, please."

"Oh, Karin," she whispers, like my name is glass in her mouth. "Did you have a nightmare?"

I fold myself into her arms and don't say a word.

"Darling, we can't," she tells me, though her face is streaked with tears, as pained as my own, "It's too far. We're never going to make it in this winter."

"Let's wait for spring."

She shakes her head, squeezing me as if I am going to waste away.

"Karin, dear." Her voice is very small. "We might not have enough food left to wait for spring. We might..." She trails off, the edge of fear hanging over our heads like a sword.

I take a deep breath. I wipe my tears on the back of my hands.

I wear my brightest grin as I say, "Uzumaki don't go down that easily! We're very sturdy people, you know."

There is a long silence in the darkness of our rundown shack. Then she laughs, soft and sure as a promise. "Of course, Karin-chan. Spring will be here soon."

We hold onto each other until we fall asleep.

Author's Note: So this popped out I don't know where from? It's in first person, which I don't normally write, but this is going to be more drabble-ish than my other story, so it suits, I think.