Living Through Time

Words Painted in Ashes

Shorter chapter! 

+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

The sky was a silverish blue, stuffed with an infinite amount of clouds, each as grey as stone.

The vultures had left. Shisui couldn't recall when, the more he tried to figure it out, the more he felt dizzy. One moment they were there. The next gone.

With a slight pang in the heart, the teen went on with his only other hobby: staring at the sun.

It had been a grounding activity for him. Counting down the number of times he saw it rise helped figure the time that kept moving.

Shisui stared at the sun long enough for neon green spots to appear in his vision.

How strange, its energy had somewhat diminished. The atmosphere didn't look as... dry as before. Was it about to rain? Shisui hoped it would, just to witness a flash of diversity in his slow, humdrum life.

He squinted.

Was the sun always this bright?

His eyes ached. Wonderful.

Shisui inhaled and choked, hands reaching over his throat. He could feel himself breathing. What?!

He finally removed his gaze from the misty sky, taking into accounts his surroundings.

Trees.

Trees everywhere, going as far as the eye can see. A forest of birch trees, some taller than 20 meters, besieging him in all directions.

And, as he peeked below him, he could see and feel soft blades of green, healthy grass nuzzling his bare legs.

His bare legs that weren't translucid.

Shisui slowly blinked, ambling his hand - that wasn't transparent - to pluck one out from the lush soil. His fingers didn't pass through the solid matter, taking in a gentle hold the small, cool blade of grass.

And just like that, he remembered.

The old man.

The deal.

He was alive.

Shisui pinched his forearm, jolting back as he felt a slight pain.

He was alive!

His hands flew everywhere, feeling his face, the grass, the trees- everything.

And Shisui would forever deny it, but he was infused with such a vivid sense of glee that he forgot all manners implanted in his brain for an instant. Jumping, rolling, running, climbing trees just to tumble down, going back on his feet every time just to do it all over again.

He was euphoric. He was alive.

It all came to a halt when, as he was climbing yet another birch tree, the words "Are you done?" got printed on the white surface of its bark, at the exact emplacement his arms clutched on. The letters were a dark brown, almost black, as if someone wrote them with straight up fire. Shisui's hands slipped from the branch he was latching on and resulted in a seven-meters fall.

The Uchiha did a flip, landing on both feet with the grace the world appreciated him for. He did a double take, activating his sharingan and staring at the sentence from far away.

Either he was insane, or the words wrote themselves right in front of him.

In slow motion, he observed as "H" scribbled itself on a bark at Shisui's eye level. Without thinking, the teen flung a kunai, the tool burying itself in the tree to the hilt. There were no screams, no shifting of clothes or hiss of breath. He couldn't sense anyone near. Like not a soul other than Shisui was in these woods.