#orokimi

He holds Kimimaro’s pliant body in his embrace and cards his claws through the god’s moon-kissed hair. The glimmering strands catch on Orochimaru’s scales, disappearing into a pocket void only a moment later. Crystalline fragments of bone and light soon follow.

Each unique opportunity for study that Kimimaro unintentionally presents is snatched up and consumed by Orochimaru’s clever fingers and critical eye. However, the pretty moon god is a mystery easily solved. As soon as the secrets of the stars are covetously gathered and stored in his coils—each burst of new discovery shimmering like a diamond embedded in the waterfall of his hair—Orochimaru’s interest wanes.

Finally, his golden gaze turns to the World Tree.

The branches of the World Tree bow beneath the weight of their bounty and offer up fruit bulging with the juice of elemental chakra. Its potent perfume invades Orochimaru’s senses and slams into his chest with the staccato beat of Kakuzu’s primordial hearts. Tendrils of unease insinuate themselves beneath his scales with each fruit plucked, but he brushes the unfounded warnings off as if they were dust motes.

Belief in omens is the providence of mortals, after all.

Incidentally, serving as the subjects for divine experimentation is also the providence of mortals, Orochimaru thinks. He grins, his smile holding far too many teeth, and fades out into the depths of Kamui with his bounty of chakra fruit in-hand.

He flickers past the tall, gray plateaus and narrowly avoids a burst of fetidness, even blacker than the void. Oddly enough, fire blooms bright in its wake, tasting of angry elder god.

How interesting.

The last dealings Orochimaru had with Kakuzu’s sibling were less than auspicious--he was the one to design the bars to their cage, after all--but even so, Jashin’s freedom will prove to be an invaluable asset. It’s a convenient distraction from his own machinations.

Too, with the pantheon of elder gods preoccupied, he’ll be free to experiment in peace.

Face split into an adder’s grin, Orochimaru burrows down deep and slips between realms.

The mortal world stretches before him, ripe with possibility. Near vibrating in his eagerness, he disseminates each fruit into a dozen smaller portions and scatters them amongst the food markets in select human settlements, one distinct chakra per country. He returns to his earthly nest and settles in to watch the flow of events unfold. Pupils dilating fully, he wonders what the elder gods will do when their tempestuous little pets rise up and demand their own pantheons, wonders how they will react when he’s found out.

Regardless, by the time they realize his hand in this, it will be too late. The humans will have matured his gift and blazed their own path of discovery under his patronage.

When he takes his fill of those appropriated mortal incubators, he will have such ample stores of new and differentiated chakra patterns that Kakuzu himself will falter in the wake of his knowledge and power.

Kimimaro—poor, trusting godling that he is—will likely take the brunt of the primordial god’s wrath. It’s unfortunate, but a necessary sacrifice. After all, no knowledge is without cost.

Orochimaru yawns hugely and scents the currents of power blooming in the distance.

 Blinding flashes of lighting crackle across the horizon to the Northeast.

The ponderous grinding of stone reverberates from the Northwest.

Suffocating heat rolls in to kiss his face from the South.

Gales of wind buff his scales with sand from the Southwest.

And the crisp bite of spring water laps at his coils from the Southeast.

 He tips his head back and fills his senses with the siren call of novelty.

Meanwhile, Kimimaro continues to sleep soundly in the embrace of the World Tree’s roots—content, satiated, and dreaming of pale lips.  

 ***

 In a land thrumming with a discordant note of unease, Madara wakes to darkness.

He presses up from the floor and hangs his head with a heartfelt groan. Dirt and something tacky that he’d rather not think about coat him like a second skin. His hair sticks and pulls as he tries to scan his surroundings.

It’s disgusting and he wants nothing more than to burn it all off—burn damn near everything.

Rage adding more tinder to his abductor’s pyre, Madara reaches deep and pulls at the molten core of himself. He calls forth the flaring hearth fire that sweeps up flues and plants embers in roof thatch, the lava floes that destroy all in their path. This is the all-consuming supremacy of his wrath.

A moment later, he continues to stand in the darkness and gnash his teeth, arms upraised.

Nothing happens. The volcanic veins beneath his bare feet remain dormant. His head remains light with the loss of his godly crown.

Again, he tries. Over and over until he works himself up into such a state that he can no longer do anything more than collapse to his knees and scream through a mouth full of froth.

Time has never been a linear thing for the gods, but in this sightless prison, Madara loses his grasp of it entirely.

Minutes are measured by the rattle of his shackles when he turns in his pacing.

Years are measured by the occasional flash of silver and the raucous, expletive-laden laughter that damn near breaks him each time.  

It doesn’t matter, though. Hashirama will come for him.

Izuna.

Tobirama.

Anyone.

Please.

The gods appear regularly throughout the nonlinear flow of time—some navigating Kamui’s treacherous terrain in the shadow of Obito’s sure-footed paws, others in Katō Dan’s wake, others still under their own substantial power—but stay only long enough to collect their tribute. 

When he comes, Hashirama, the God of Creation and Renewal, offers Kimimaro words of gratitude and a spring-soft smile. He brings with him the curl of autumn on his breath, hair fanning out behind him like wavering wheat, as well as two new spirits with which to commune.

Kimimaro does not speak in the conventional manner Madara invented, instead communicating in flickers and pulses of moonlight as it waxes and wanes beneath his skin. It’s a rarity for any but Hashirama to make even a stumbling attempt towards reciprocal conversation, but these spirits, Gai and Rock Lee, take to him like kindred fireflies.

He finds a rare pleasure in telling them of the other gods’ comings and goings, of the things he’s seen in brief glimpses and flashes among the ether. Their joy, though unusual, rattles his bones and makes his ribs sprout from his chest to make room for the fullness of reflected sunlight within him. 

Together, they braid the roots of the World Tree into the bowl of a fountain, into which they juice the miraculous fruits from its boughs. The resulting concoction gifts immortality in one sip instead of five to offset the chill of Kamui when it threatens to seep into the gods’ souls as they harvest.

It’s a practical solution and one not characteristic of the verdant god and his sun-bright attendants. That it derives from Tobirama, the one god whose essence Kamui cannot adulterate, is ironic, but makes far more sense.

Eventually, even the bright fertility spirits find the vale too unsettling, the cold too invasive to linger.

They retreat with a promise to return. As the echoes of their good cheer is displaced by the void, sentient darkness envelopes him once more.

Kimimaro’s duty is a lonely one, but he has never know anything different.

Time passes in snarls and tangles with events of no more than passing interest. Obito habitually flits about in his periphery, the fountain burbles sluggishly, and the liminal space around him continues to pulse with Kakuzu’s will.

It’s rhythmic and unchanging–until it’s not.

As humans continue to populate the planet connected to Kamui, the world tree’s roots stretch towards the numerous sparks of life and feed on their radiant energy. Kimimaro is treated to phantasmal images of mortal life and allows himself to live vicariously, cocking his head in wonder at their joys and furrowing his brow at their pain. He observes their comings and goings rapturously and thinks that for the first time in his long existence, this is what it is to feel.

Distracted as he is by visions of ephemeral souls, Kimimaro fails to notice the prolonged absence of Kamui’s guardian sphinx, Obito. It’s an uncharacteristic, near unforgivable lapse of duty for them both. In Obito’s absence, the strict control of the supernatural comings and goings in the vale falters.

Thus, it’s with a jolt of surprise that Kimimaro realizes his failure in greeting the next god with all due alacrity.

A naga—calcite pale and kissed by moonlight—cuts a striking image as he lounges amongst the black branches of the world tree. His scales rasp against Kimimaro’s exposed bones when he descends to drape the god in his seemingly infinite coils. He introduces himself as Orochimaru, God of Discovery, and all but devours Kimimaro with the intensity of his golden gaze. This god is unknown to Kimimaro, but the stars in his hair seem familiar, shimmering with the light of gods that have come before.

Obito’s absence only grows more worrisome, until Orochimaru observes Kimimaro’s plight and offers to share his burden, to hold the loneliness at bay. A god so charitable must surely be worth trusting, Kimimaro concedes. As Orochimaru proceeds to fill the space between them with his sibilant voice, there is no secret left undiscovered by his sharp mind and no inch of skin or bark left unexplored by his deft fingers.    

Kimimaro has never understood the subtle intricacies of emotion, but he thinks that this is what the gods experience when they speak of love.  

The hunter’s moon illuminates his skin from within.

***

In his distraction, Kimimaro does not notice the slow twilight of the souls he once watched. He does not see them flicker and die in intervals beneath the weight of something eldritch and old.