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Title: as the wild current sings, clarity over skies

Rating: T

Summary: Nagase Kiyo. Former college student, part-time dish-washer; also the very unfortunate victim of a very fatal traffic accident. Currently the resident river kami of a small stream in the middle of nowhere. Or rather, as it turns out… "Damn you, Kishimoto. Shinobi world my ass!" [OC, Spirit!AU, Very AU]

Warnings: … None so far, I think. Just, keep in mind the AU warning, alright?

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

(AN at the bottom.)

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as the wild current sings, clarity over skies

01:

"In which the afterlife consists of kami-hood. Apparently."

[(Re)Birth of a Little River God]

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In her defense, it hadn't exactly been obvious in the beginning.

…

… Okay, so that's a lie. The major differences had certainly been obvious enough –you don't exactly go from living and breathing as a perfectly normal person to suddenly knowing nothing, nothing but the watery flow of a smooth river, without at least consciously registering some of the changes between the two states of existence.

Like, maybe the tiny fact that she doesn't even have a physical body anymore. Which is just sad, really.

(Absolutely-fucking-scary when she'd first realized it, too.)

It's not even a sensation that she can properly describe. It's just… like… like she's floating. In water. Kind of. It's light, buoyant, and there is a gentle current tugging her along the riverbed, except not. Except not, because there's nothing to tug at, and it's like almost like she's flowing along with the water itself, shapeless and formless and–

And do you have any idea how terrifying it is, to be fully awake and aware of something like that?

It's almost like she doesn't exist. But she does. She still has conscious thoughts and a conscious mind, and surely self-awareness means that she exists and remains alive, right?

Right?

…

So… that thing about 'what comes after death?' That eternal debate about what lies after death, whether it be ultimately going to heaven/hell or being reincarnated or just boom, snap, nothing?

None of it included anything about becoming a river. Part of a river, at least.

… All things considered, she might've been able to be slightly less hysterical about this entire situation even if she'd been reborn as an ant or something. Well. She might not even have enough mental faculties to be freaking out like this if that had been the case, but on the off-chance that she did, at least it would be something explainable. 'Not enough good karma in your life, better luck living as an ant, my friend.'

What the hell does it mean if you're a sentient river?

Like, what the hell?

.

.

… She's pretty sure that she's a river, weird as it sounds. Even though she doesn't have a physical body anymore, even though she can't eat or run or jump or move or even breathe –there are new senses open to her now that she finds herself acutely aware of, as a river. Of course she doesn't have an actual body to speak of anymore in the first place, but she's always conscious of a flowing sensation, this indescribable sensation soft water sliding over rocks, the gentle current swirling by.

It's pretty hard to explain using proper words, because it's not like this is something you can find out and see for yourself by reaching out and sticking your hand in a stream; it's not something you can literally feel through physical, tactile senses.

It's not something you feel.

It's not something you feel, it's something you are.

…

… Which… doesn't really explain anything in the end, huh. Well. She's never claimed to be particularly eloquent; that would be Hikaru-chan.

At any rate –the first thing that she really became aware of in this near-mindless, completely-bodiless state is the Flow; the unceasing, incessant Flow that isn't quite the literal flow of the river nor the flow of a physical state of being, but a Flow that is nonetheless constant and ever-present at her call. She doesn't have a better name or term for it. She doesn't even fully understand it herself, what with being pretty darn sure that she's supposed to be dead and all, but… but apparently not. Not dead. Definitely not dead, not if she's still conscious and self-aware like this.

Even though she doesn't have a body anymore and apparently she's a river now.

In some ways, though, being a river isn't entirely different from being human. She can still see –granted, it's not just looking straight ahead with two eyes anymore since she doesn't even have eyes, as a river (and would you imagine that, a river with eyes, what the fuck). It's more of a strange sort of awareness of what's around her, and there's really no better way to put this aside from that.

(She 'sees' a raven flying overhead and the leaf falling from a tree and a rabbit hopping over to take a drink by the riverbed. She 'feels' the wind gently stir her topmost current like a light ripple-tickle, and gracefully leap higher and higher to race the clouds. She 'hears' the rustling of the underbrush, the bright chirping of a flock of sparrows, the timeless trickle of her own, incessant waves.)

It takes awhile for her to be able to confirm her own state at all –a river, oh boy, Masada-kun would have a field day if he ever found out about this– but once she does, well.

Well.

It's rather strange, this floating, bodiless state in nameless suspension. And she's pretty sure that rivers aren't supposed to have a conscious, thinking mind, except somehow she's turned into the only exception. Which doesn't exactly make her feel any better about this entire thing, but…

She can deal with it.

In all honesty, she's not sure if she's supposed to feel relieved about this or not. On one hand she's thankful to have somehow averted death, if by somehow becoming a river through unknown means, but on the other hand…

… On the other hand, there's not much a river can do, other than just sit here and stare.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

And as a direct result of not really being able to do anything at all aside from listening to birdcalls and watching squirrels and counting leaves drifting by in the passing breeze, she finds herself with a heck of a lot of time for reflection on her hands, left alone with her wandering thoughts. It's not an entirely good thing, because she always, always eventually finds her mind wandering to questions like–

How did I even end up here?

Why aren't I dead?

Am I even supposed to still be alive?

And sometimes, sometimes, her thoughts touch on the incident that landed her in this situation in the first place. It… well.

… Can you imagine?

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Think of it like this:

Winter. Light snow. Thin ice on the streets, frost on the windowpanes. You are sitting in a car with some friends, fellow classmates from the same college, and you're driving with them down the bridge to help another friend move stuff out from her apartment, and maybe grab some dinner together afterwards. There's a nice, warm, companionable air inside the car, a sharp contrast to the ice-cold river thundering beneath the bridge outside.

And then, suddenly–

Suddenly there's nothing nice at all anymore, because holy shit, the car is cruising along nicely at seventy miles per hour just like everyone else but where the hell did that random pedestrian run out from, doesn't he know that it's fucking DANGEROUS to tear out across a street full of speeding cars what the fuck–

Furthermore, it just so happens that it is the one friend who's a little twitchy and gets startled easily who's driving for the group today. Because the ditzy girl lets out a startled yelp upon seeing a person directly in the car's path and roughly swerves without a second thought and–

And you're smart enough to put together the rest of the pieces together, surely.

Snowy day. Seventy miles per hour. Sharp, sudden turn of the car under that type of weather, at that sort of speed, all to avoid collision with a brain-dead pedestrian at the hands of a startled, panicked driver.

(It's a recipe for disaster. A recipe that can only end in disaster.)

…

After that…

Well.

She certainly remembers screaming; lots and lots of it. Hikaru had a very healthy set of lungs on her, for a girl who was so dead-set on being silent so much of the time. Daichi's usual low baritone could hit surprisingly high octaves.

… She herself had been screaming, too. So much that her head swam and her ears rung and panic, panic, panic was clogging her throat in that whirlwind of blurry, underwater terror and–

…

… And… she doesn't really remember much, after that. She doesn't remember the exact details, crushed to death by the combined weight and pressure of water beneath the river and drowning, then somehow becoming a river of all things by the end of the mess. But maybe it's a good thing that she doesn't remember, because she is quite sure that she doesn't need to be mentally scarred any more than she already has been. Is. Even though she would appreciate details on how she came to be in her current position… an explanation would be nice.

There's literally no one she can ask, though. And even if there was, it's not like she even has a voice to ask anything with anymore. Which sucks, but… it's okay.

She can deal with it.

She has to.

Nagase Kiyo is a practical sort of girl. The hardy, adaptable sort. Comes with being the eldest, maybe. And this isn't exactly the first time she's been thrown off the deep end, floundering and flailing, even if it's not of the same sort as her prior experiences.

Father and mother fighting day in and day out over the technicalities regarding the financial distributions of a divorce? Kiyo warily side-eyes the increasingly heated arguments over the dinner table and quietly makes sure her younger siblings get to school on time, and checks to see that the kids always have someone to pick them up in the afternoons.

Mother losing her job and finding solace in a bottle? The girl sets her jaw and buckles down to go out to find a job; there's a restaurant down the street that reluctantly takes in an extra dish-washer-slash-occasional-waitress, and she spends the majority of her time after she finishes her schoolwork looking for scholarships.

A lot.

… And occasionally she takes the phone and gives her little siblings a call, too. See how dad's treating them and such, given that the man gained custody of the kids following the divorce. Mother dearest made off with more money on her end.

Anyways, fact is; it's not exactly news that life had and has always been throwing a lot of crap in Kiyo's way. She knows that she certainly doesn't have it as bad it could've been, probably, but she also knows that, in comparison with a significant portion of her classmates, classmates whose only worries were grades and boys and social circles–

No, it doesn't matter.

If there's one thing the girl has learned from her experiences, it's that complaining never helps. Of course, it doesn't stop her from complaining from time to time (stress relief, anyone?), but it does stop her from expecting anything to come of it.

So, Nagase Kiyo. Twenty-one. College student. Formerly.

…

Current status: ? ? ?

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So, kami-hood.

Not exactly something you expect after dying.

(Not exactly something you'd expect to happen, period.)

Kiyo becomes vaguely aware that she's a sentient river (and doesn't the weirdness of that unsettle her) pretty quickly. It's something that she finds herself being rather ambivalent about as a whole, because while she acknowledges that she's lucky for not outright dying, she's not exactly alive, either. Is this what it means to be a ghost, maybe? She'd always thought that ghosts had their own spectral bodies, though.

Or maybe that could be blamed on pop media.

Still, misconceptions regarding the state of deceased souls aside –Kiyo might not be the smartest girl in her class, but she's not stupid. Becoming a sentient river post-mortem… is weird and freaky and creepy as hell when you stop to pause and think about it in those terms, but she's always been the adaptable sort, thankfully. She consoles herself by telling herself that there are worse states of being out there than being reincarnated as a nonliving river, most likely. There are worse things to be than being not-quite-dead-but-not-exactly-alive.

She doesn't connect the dots and think of kami-hood until a kappa comes along and nearly drowns in her river (yes, an honest-to-goodness kappa, drowning… a kappa of unique and unusual talents, it seems).

… Actually, she doesn't connect the dots at all. It's the kappa who calls her kami-sama, and only then does she have the first faint inkling that, maybe–

Maybe she's something more than just a 'sentient river.'

…

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It happens something like this:

Sunlight. Blue sky. Puffy clouds.

Another day of boredom.

Kiyo is counting the leaves again in those trees standing a little ways beyond her riverbanks –and you know that it really says something about your level of boredom when you start counting well into the thousands– and starts slipping into a bit of a blank trance again. She doesn't actually need to sleep, not anymore, but she falls into a meditative trance from time to time, existing and not existing and simply being, of one heart and one mind with the ever-present Flow for an instant and an eternity before coming back to herself again.

At any rate, that is when she feels it.

A loud splash, which is nothing new, nothing of concern. She's had things fall into her river before, from leaves and twigs to rocks and fruits. It's bigger than usual this time, but it's nothing too concerning–

And here, here is where the monotony of her days is irrevocably shattered.

(The arrival of the kappa-who-can't-swim. Not that she knows it at first. All she is vaguely aware of is a splash, and then–)

A sudden spike of panic, fear, terror.

It's startling, jarring, and almost immediately she snaps her attention away from the trees (three thousand seven hundred and ninety-two). The fear mounts and grows at a rapid pace and she –she doesn't like it. Moreover, it's not hers. Kiyo had only ever felt such raw fear when she'd been in that awful, awful traffic accident with her friends, and once is more than enough, in her books. She wants no part of such primal terror, and before she is even aware of it, she's pushing –never mind the what or how when she doesn't even know what it is, when she doesn't even have a physical body, just wholly focused on shoving that ball of fear away from her as terror mirrors itself in her own mind, and–

And she blinks, startled.

Once, twice.

…

Sunlight. Blue skies. Puffy clouds.

Verdant foliage of trees providing dappled shade, leaves stirring in the invisible breeze.

It's something she has grown so used to seeing, but it –it's not the same. It's not the sort of all-encompassing awareness she had of it before. She's still aware of everything, yes, but there's a narrower focus on the subject of her attention now, right before her eyes, as if she has a limited field of vision and–

Wait.

Eyes.

Kiyo looks down, suddenly acutely aware of something like trepidation and anticipation beating in tandem together in her mind, and there it is.

There it is.

Pale, pink-ish hands. Small. Much smaller than she recalls her own hands being, once upon a time, but–

Hands, I have hands again!

She runs her hands –hands, she has hands again, she has hands– delicately, gently over her arms. And shoulders. And… and she can feel it and it's real; after so long of just floating around as practically nothing, the sensation of having a physical body again is… it's…

Indescribable.

"This… this is the best day of my life," Kiyo declares shakily, full of emotion, and is so happy when she hears a voice, and even if it's jarringly different from her voice, it's a voice. This body has a voice. She has a body again–

And in her elated excitement as she suddenly skips into the burst of an impromptu, celebratory dance with legs and limbs that feel small and clumsy and oh dear lord, she finally has a body again, she nearly entirely overlooks the kappa gaping at her. The kappa. The frog-like, amphibian creature standing nearly as tall as a seven year-old child that just… kind of forgets to keep heaving up the water it swallowed as it chokes, staring at her.

Despite her initial oversight, though, she does notice the poor kappa. Eventually. It's kind of hard to miss a giant shiny green-blue froglike creature that just keeps on staring at you.

She kind of freezes mid-dance when she finally sees the kappa to the side. Not her fault. Humanoid frogs automatically equated to monster in her mind, but just before she could start running–

Well, the kappa snapped out of its stupor and reacted first.

The girl gives a small start when the creature suddenly goes and firmly slams its webbed hands onto the ground, before proceeding to dig a hole in the ground with its head in grim determination, repeatedly slamming its head down in front of her. Err, bowing. In a very intense manner.

"My greatest gratitude for the magnanimous mercy that has been shown to this foolish, insignificant one, who has so blindly and unknowingly trespassed in your waters in his ignorance, kami-sama!" the kappa practically screams out, and her jaw nearly drops wide open. It speaks! "Your magnificence and kindness is surely the height of–

"Wait, wait, wait, stop." Snapping back to her senses, Kiyo holds up her hands in the universal 'stop' gesture and peers over at the giant frog warily. The giant humanoid frog was a trembling cross between pathetically sniveling and shamelessly groveling at her feet. Since it looked like it was the farthest thing from wanting to leap up and eat her or something, though… would it be considered rude to start inching away? "… Start over, again. From the beginning."

"… This wretched one now deeply realizes the grave error he made in blundering into your territory without permission, and deeply regrets the disturbance he has caused! This lowly one thanks you with all the stars of heaven, o benevolent kami-sama, for–"

"Speak normally, please."

… Also, 'kami-sama?' Was there something wrong with this creature's head? Why was it calling her a kami?

"This… this unworthy one would not dare be as presumptuous to address kami-sama in such an improper, unbefitting manner as–"

"You're giving me a headache like this, so too bad," Kiyo says bluntly, her earlier joy from having a body again beginning to slowly dissipate. Instead she feels… distinctly unsettled, by the display that she sees before her. "Now at least try to speak normally, because I've got a few questions for you, um…"

Whatever the hell you happen to be did not seem like a very good note to begin a productive line of questioning on. Fortunately, the humanoid frog meekly stopped trying to burrow its head into the ground.

(That was good –if he'd decided to take off and run for it, who knew when she'd see another sentient creature to speak with again?)

"… Yes, kami-sama," the creature whispers. "This lowly kappa shall heed your every command."

Kappa?

She shakes her head, choosing to ignore that detail for the moment. "Where is this place, exactly? And what are you doing here?"

There is a strange look in the kappa's eyes at her questions, but he answers obediently. "From the deep mountain springs of Kaikasan does the Byakure-gawa flow; this unworthy one has been truly blessed, to possess the fortune to kneel down before kami-sama here, at the border of what most humans now call Hi no Kuni, while few others claim to be the domain of Mizu no Kuni."

Something about the names rings a bell. 'Land of fire' and 'land of water?'

… Well, at least she had a name for the river now. Byakure-gawa was a strange name, but there were stranger things out there, she supposed.

"This lowly one… from youth, this lowly one has been unable to swim so freely and effortlessly as all of his fellow kinsmen do, and has often been ridiculed for it," the kappa continues. "Upon hearing of an empty river, this wretched one decided to train in secret here. But this foolish one now realizes that he should never have trusted stray rumors and hearsay, and apologizes deeply for disturbing kami-sama in her rest."

The froglike creature finishes its words with the flourish of another deep bow. Kiyo stares.

"Where did you get the idea that I'm… that I'm a 'kami-sama?'" she finally asks, unable to keep her curiosity contained any longer at the continued, persisted form of address that was grossly inaccurate.

The kappa only blinked large, yellow eyes up at her. "… Kami-sama reached out and saved this unworthy one from drowning in her river, did she not? Kami-sama commanded the waves to bring this lowly one ashore. The river's song is drawn about you, kami-sama. You are the river itself."

"The river–" she abruptly breaks off, whirling around, struck by a sudden thought.

The river.

The river.

Even though she finally has a physical human body again, she still feels the river, the ever-present Flow streaming wildly about her ceaselessly, incessantly, even though she shouldn't physically be part of the water anymore, and–

And there it is, right behind her.

Clear waters, rippling surface.

She can see her own reflection –and it's not her.

When Kiyo looks down, the reflection of a dainty, graceful child stares back at her, pale-skinned and wide-eyed with the color of a soft river dream, a stray, shallow current swirling at the edge of rock clusters under rain. That's not the most notable thing about her new appearance, though. Her hair –her hair is a light, almost-translucent blue, long and flowing and spilling over her shoulders and down her back with a silken, watery texture. Sunlight-hitting-water, bright and dappled underneath the tree shade.

… She's a child. Gorgeous, yes, particularly in comparison to her old appearance as a perfectly normal old girl, but now she's somehow been turned into a freaking little kid.

If the kappa hadn't been kneeling on the ground all this time, she'd probably stand even shorter than the frog. And even despite the kappa kneeling, they're practically still the same height.

She's a midget.

"… Kami-sama?" the kappa questions nervously, lightly, unaware of the scattered thoughts racing through her mind in wake of the continued silence, and Kiyo is struck by the sudden urge to fold in on herself and give in to a bout of hysterical laughter. But she restrains herself. No need to scare off the kappa even more than it was probably already put off by her decidedly un-kami-like behavior.

Kami, her?

Boring old Nagase Kiyo, a kami?

… Give Kiyo her old life back any day; what does it even mean to be a kami? She wouldn't even know where to start. River spirit, indeed.

Maybe… maybe it's all just a hoax? A lie? It's been awhile now, but… yes, yes, it's been awhile. She should be waking up from this crazy dream any day now, and she'll wake up in the hospital and–

"Would kami-sama require any services of this lowly one?" the kappa offers tentatively, obliviously breaking into her thoughts. "This lowly one is not yet skilled enough to pass through the protective wards of the onmyouji-dwelling Konoha, but there are a few farming villages nearby that this humble servant would be honored to visit and retrieve items from for kami-sama in apology for his ignorant transgressions, if kami-sama so wishes."

… Konoha?

Kiyo suddenly remembers the earlier mentions of Hi no Kuni and Mizu no Kuni, and now Konoha. Something about it, in that moment… clicks.

"Onmyouji, you said?" she remarks lightly, and is impressed by how steady her voice comes out to be. Steady is just about the last thing she is feeling at this moment. "Exorcist village, not a shinobi village? Konoha?"

"Yes," the kappa sounds almost confused by her words. "It is the largest onmyouji settlement in Hi no Kuni of the humans, led by an exorcist of the Sarutobi Clan, Sarutobi Hiruzen, who was disciple to the legendary Senju Hashirama of the Senju Clan claiming lineage from the Old Gods. Is there anything amiss, kami-sama?"

Konoha, Hi no Kuni, Mizu no Kuni. Sarutobi Hiruzen, Senju Hashirama?

Naruto. Naruto. A manga.

A manga detailing the story of Uzumaki Naruto, and his adventures as a ninja.

…

…

… Kishimoto, she decides with a fierce vehemence in the privacy of her own mind, is a liar. It is quite evident to her that the man missed out on a few key details while writing about the shinobi world –most notably, the fact that there are no ninjas in this supposedly 'shinobi world.'

So much for knowing the future.

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…

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Edit 25.08.16: Rough edit of chapter. If there are more mistakes wandering around in the text, please let me know.

Edit 25.12.16: Second edit, picked out a few more grammar mistakes and the like. Please let me know of any mistakes still remaining here if you spot them. Merry Christmas!

Author's Notes:

Welcome to as the wild current sings, clarity over skies. Bit of a mouthful, isn't it? I'm just going to call this 'wild current' from here on out.

So… nothing from canon here yet. Don't take any of this too seriously, either, as you can probably already tell by the language of the narrative.

This story was basically sparked by the thought: 'What if the bijuu in the Naruto-verse were really demons, and not superpower chakra beings?' … I will admit right here and now that I've never finished reading the Naruto manga (barely read any of Shipuuden and most of what I know about it is from other fanfiction stories) so I don't really know what's going on with Kaguya. Rabbit goddess? Time to read the Naruto wiki.

…

… Yeah, basically just another wild plot bunny running around here. Anyone interested in the setup at all? Intro here is just to see if anyone is interested in this sort of thing at all, OC in an AU!Naruto-verse.

QUESTION: Any interest in this sort of setup? Also, uh… I guess, leave behind any suggestions for what you think would be cool to see? Ex. Uchiha clan being tengu demons or something, I don't know.

Cheers,

XxZuiliu