#bonding...

"Uh, I live here?" Kirby interjects, when he gets the chance. He'd come over because this kappa looked- well, like him. Not like the local kappa, but HIM, specifically.

The other didn't have a bowl to hold water on his head- and he had markings on his face like Kirby, even if Kirby's were black and this kappa's were red. He really couldn't help himself from going up to the other, though now he felt like maybe he'd made a mistake.

"I'm not a baby, I can go outside and nobody's gotta hold my hand," he insists, scowling. "I just wanted to ask what kinda kappa you were. Cuz you don't look like anybody I know in the River District, that's all."

👄 + music!

"Did y'know plants are fond've music?" Hikari mutters, half a question and half a lead-in. She's cradling a flower pot in one arm, and a radio in another that was playing a soft classical violin. "It stimulates their cells, increasing growth. Some prefer jazz, but those in the Rosaceae family like music like this."

Its a type of shrub, when one looks close, with green, leathery long oblong leaves kept warm with her Hamon. "I got this one fer you when I was on the mainland-- have y'ever had a loquat? It's a little like a cherry an' an apricot. It grew around where I lived. Sometimes my family'd drive our old truck to Louisiana fer Mardi Gras, an' they'd be in every yard." She had meant to get Lisa Lisa a fig instead, but the florist didn't have one available. She had been in search of seed packets that contained trailing plants or vines-- under the assumption that an adequate charge could bind the feet of a fleeing foe. Might as well pick up something for everyone, torn between something that reminded her of them ( which was too sappy; she had an image to uphold, after all ), or something practical. She assumed her coach preferred practicality. Everybody liked fruit.

@shikkotsunin​

That it had been almost twenty years since the end of the war still boggled Sakura’s mind, but the advancements made since made the world seem like a much brighter place. Uzushiogakure was nothing like the ruination that had once claimed it almost 40 years ago, the archipelago bustling with activity that seemed surreal to find. Though few of the village’s residents were related to the Uzumaki by any means, it still warmed her heart to see it flourishing so well, especially since one of Sakura’s own mental health clinics had been established in the island nation. A pleasant sea-breeze tugged the strands of her choppy orchid locks, Karin having since opted to an undercut sometime through the years. The surf languidly pounded the ivory shoreline and cliffsides rose and cascaded into the sea over yonder. It was a beautiful day, and she almost became lost in it when she felt Karin touch one of her scars: the stab wound from when Sasori impaled her through with his sword. She’d made the decision to retain it, after all.

“Man, hard to believe it’s been 20 years since then, right? Yeah, I probably could’ve healed the scar tissue away, but I like the reminder, y’know? It’s kind of like... a morbid goalpost, yeah!” Sakura chuckled at that, gaze warm on the Uzumaki. “Not that I ever want to go back. I like the way things are now, because it means we’re friends instead of enemies.”

In the last two decades, Karin has died and been reborn again what seems like a thousand times. Staring heavenward, she wonders if she could stake a piece of her myriad selves on each star and still have some sacred, fixed point left. She has walked through the mouth of death and been regurgitated on the other side, raw as an infant, covered in cosmic bile, blinking in the devastating light of a new and strange day. She is not the only thing that has been remade anew by the steady churning of time. Kusagakure had remade itself shortly after its ruination, and she had found it an alien, no marker of her childhood but for the mass graves, the figures of her past made eternally anonymous by the absence of a witness. Otogakure, too, had become some fledgling society, and though once it had been a site of terrors, Karin had some feeble hope that it, too, could become something worth living in. She had to hope, because hope for the Hidden Sound meant hope for her. Maybe she, too, could be someone worth coming home to.

Geez, the ocean made her melancholic. Karin eyes Sakura, the curve of her shoulder, the way the sun hit the edge of her hair and turned it to fire, to halo. Wonders what she thinks of this, this attempt Karin has made to reconcile the past with the present, to give homage to the dead. Her parents had fled a village on the edge of collapse just to die somewhere else. They could have ran again had Karin done better. Had she been better. 

Right, this isn’t melancholic anymore. This is downright depressing. She’s sitting at the edge of the world with one of the few people she thinks could understand her, maybe, if she let her, and all she’s thinking about is aw, man, I hope she likes it. 

Get a grip, Karin. You’re a goddamn political figure. 

She occupies herself instead with observing her company while she has the freedom to do so, and the recognition of a scar draws her attentionー and her touch. Even after all these years, it’s hard to reject the impulse to reach out and touch something. Otogakure didn’t exactly breed boundaries. Still, she is gentle where once she would have been cruel, her touch light, empathetic, curious. There’s a tender innocence to it that inspires a sort of reverie, so much so she starts when Sakura breaks the quiet. Never one to be alarmed for long, Karin slacks, voice dry and smile loose.