Bamboo Hearts Firefly

Little Bamboo Hut

You ask my thoughts through the long night?

I spent it listening to the heavy rain

beating against the windows.

-Izumi Shikibu 

________________

That arrogant cockroach-breeding fruit fly!

She fiercely bludgeoned a bamboo limb with a blunt rock, pretending it was Shino Aburame's bug-stuffed head instead.

In fact, she'd spent all afternoon beating "Shino Aburame" to a pulp, breaking bamboo limbs off from the forest to build herself something of a competent shelter on the sliding mud around her. 

But building a shelter was much harder to do without her ninja tools, and splitting bamboo shoots with just rocks took literally hours.

How could one bug-kisser be so infuriating!

Would she even be in this position if she had brought herself to kill Shino when she had the chance?

Wet, shivering, and covered in sticky mud, her numb fingers slipped off the bamboo she was beating, leaving her other hand exposed when her rock smashed down again. 

"Gnats!"

Waving her injured hand that dripped blood from under her crushed fingernails, she frustratingly threw the useless rock back into the forest. 

Sighing deeply, her melancholic honey eyes sullenly studied the broken bamboo pieces in front of her.

All she ever really wanted in the end was to be home. 

And she missed her village now more than ever. 

She wanted to feel warm, and safe, and clean, and in control again, with a nice steamy cup of honey flower tea back in her own cozy apartment in Iwagakure, and to forget that all of that hadn't just fallen apart for her in a matter of days without her truly understanding why.

But it was useless.

The bamboo was just too strong to break without any tools. 

She wouldn't be able to finish her shelter by dark at this rate. 

'But if I don't, I'll freeze to death when the storm comes,' her worried thoughts drew her eyes back into the stirring mist around her. 

"You should know, if you don't find shelter soon, you'll freeze out here," Aburame's voice echoed her thoughts, coming suddenly from behind her. "The reason is because the insects around here are getting quieter, which means it will rain soon."

She rolled her eyes.

Did he really think she didn't know that, and that she wasn't already ahead of the egotistical know-it-all?

"Even a common housefly can predict the weather," she answered him dryly. "The bees in this forest flew back to their hives hours ago, which obviously means a rainstorm."

Which also meant that, despite what Aburame obviously believed about himself, his insects were nothing special. 

And holding her stubborn head proud and high, she went on pretending Shino Aburame was invisible, choosing another rock and continued working at her shelter. 

Beating his imaginary face and sunglasses into the bamboo limb again, as she ignored him and his hellacious obsession with his little bug pets.

But if pretending he didn't exist anymore was her silent way of saying 'just shut up and go away already', Aburame didn't seem to take the hint.