Kazekage's Bride

Chapter One

The darkness that had claimed me for so long faded, leaving me to a world without light but filled to the brim with life.

Well, this certainly wasn't what I had imagined death to be like.

For a very long time… I just existed. There is no other way to describe it. Feeling slowly returned into what appeared to be a body now, and hearing developed, letting me notice voices as time passed. I became aware of limbs, heart and something else I wouldn't be able to understand for a long time, and was sent into a period of doubt, of asking – what was happening to me? I should be dead, right?

Had they put me into the hospital and my brain was actually paste from the collision? But why would I not understand the voices then? Had I lost my ability to communicate via language?
None of that really made sense, but I kept wondering regardless, deprived of anything else to do, and sometimes… no, often I was afraid.

After a while the veil of darkness lifted – the world moved and became alive, and the once dulled voices rang sharp and clear. Blots of colors danced in front of my eyes, shadows moved and vague shapes formed and scattered in a moment's notice, a vision that thrived.

I wasn't dead.

In confusion I screamed, and there was a voice, loud and shrill and high-pitched unlike my own, desperate and aimless-

An infant's wail, a young baby fresh from birth. I fell silent then, contemplating this strange fact, and the world stopped spinning, stopped being alive. The pandemonium quelled, voices quieted, I felt like all of existence fell in line with my silence.

I wasn't dead, nor was I alive. I was - by all definitions - reborn, and the old self of me was gone while this new one thrived in its place, filled with old memories and thoughts but gifted – or cursed – with a world and body foreign to it in its entirety, at least for a while.

Settling into this… this new state of existence, one could say… it took time. I was someone else's child now, and the thought of having to abandon my old life so thoroughly was a fact I did not deal with easily. A new beginning seemed great until one remembered that one had to flush out all the pleasant things as well. There were my family I missed greatly, My mom, my dad, My little brother-Garvin! He was unconscious. Did the ambulance arrived? Did they found my body? Mom and dad must be worried sick! the feeling remained – a few I had loved especially, and my heart now yearned.

Around me was a sea of energy, of life, of terror. I felt like drowning, suffocating under this weight that pressed on my body, fell on my shoulders like a heavy blanket and filled my lungs, my flesh, every fiber of my body in its entirety. It was so strange, so entirely foreign – imagine you could feel the oxygen in your body. With time it became distant like a faint tingle, always there, ever swirling, ever itching. It was unnerving, irritating, maddening.

I grew used to it only slowly, and I bet the world around me thanked me kindly for it when it finally happened, for I suddenly became a much more quiet infant. Regardless, I didn't realize what was drowning my senses until much later.

For a long time – (a week actually, but I didn't know that) I thought I had no mother. There was a man who cared for me tenderly, who sang me lullabies and spoke to me with a soft voice as smooth as a gentle river current, but there was no woman to accompany him. I had heard voices, male and female, during my time in the darkness, but none of them were here now, none spoke to me the way I heard them murmur before.

There were servants, I believe. Women mostly, with a soft demeanor and low voices, obedient and often strangely passive. I couldn't understand their words nor see them properly, but they seemed to be… below us in standing, for lack of a better word. My family had to be of noble birth or at least considerable wealth to maintain a servant branch.

Thus I spent my days, wondering, questioning, observing as much as I could – trying to understand this strange world, this strange circumstance, this foreign path fate had led me to. I was a baby. Okay. I came to terms with that. Free service?

My old home, friends and so on and so forth were gone. Okay, I would come to terms with that surely… one day. Probably. Maybe.

I had no mother? Okay, that… that wasn't so great. I could come to terms with leaving my old life and all its problems behind, but if I had to start a new life in the first place I'd really like the full package. I wanted a mother.

And… I feared. Feared that maybe she was dead, or that Maybe she didn't care. Those thoughts, the implications, the consequences - they scared me. Here was this man, warm and caring and nurturing and all the things a mother should be - a circumstance I was entirely new to - and to him I might actually be more the remnant of a tragedy than anything else.

It's been two weeks, I finally opened my eyes. The blurriness slowly disappeared. In front of me was pair of emerald orbs. The man, my father perhaps, cooed as I stared at him. He started talking in different language Sounds awfully like Japanese.

"Chizuru.." was he usually cooed. It's my name. I raised my small fist pulled on the brown beard. Expecting him to be angry but he let out a loud, hearty laugh.

Time changed. Weeks changed into months. I was able to understand their language. I got to know that my mother died in child birth. She was my father's third wife. My father is also a chief of the clan. The first wife is very gentle. She has two daughters. One is ten years old while other is six years old than me. Second wife doesn't exactly like me as I saw her shooting me nasty looks at me as my father spend time with me. Both of the wife are beautiful. They both have long dark hair, usually pinned in a bun and other hair ornaments. They both wore very beautiful, silk kimonos. They both held an aura of superiority and royalty.

I was usually with the servants, my visit me once or twice a day. Like today, I crawled towards the bookshelf and clutched it with my small hands. I tried to stand up and succeed as my legs wobbled.

My father was watching me with pleased eyes. He quickly walked over me and swept me in his arms.

"My darling, chizuru, I'm so proud of you." He kept showering me with praises and gave him a gummy smile.