Racoons At Day Ten

The gravestone was old. Nonetheless it was well taken care of, just like the others around this area. The Byakko had a closer connection to their ancestor than most other clans it seemed and considering the long line of mikokages, that was no surprise. A lot of them had been leading the village at some point.

However Narashi was looking for a certain grave. When he found it, he sat down in front of it, took the candles out of his backpack and set them down next to it, used a D-Level ninjutsu to light them and finally pulled the book out of his backpack. He was pretty sure it wasn't proper treatment for such an old book to be taken outside the library so you could read it to a grave, but he had made sure to be very careful. It shouldn't die from that.

"So", he said, browsing the pages until her name caught his eye, openin the book at this page. "Let's see what became of you, Racoon-hime. Oh dear, you look like a pancake in this picture. I hope you had a stern word with that artist." There was another picture next to it, that looked a lot more like her. But of course he wouldn't tell, where was the fun in that.

"Never thought I was the type to talk to a gravestone", he continued and glanced at the thing before turning back to read over the villages history. "But apparently it can even happen to sane people. Hm... You know, looking over your life, there isn't all that much in here. But I guess Tenshin was a lot more interesting for the author of this book. I guess it's safe to assume that your oldest child was a daughter and is the ancestor of Eimi Byakko, since it's tradition here and has been for 1000 years already in your time. And you lived a grossly happy ever after life because the Heartstone protected the village. As far as I know the attack had been a few years ago, probably around when your mother was mikokage. At least according to legends. Should have asked you, when I had the chance, huh?"

He shook his head. This was crazy. But yea, somehow talking to a gravestone wasn't as weird as he thought it would be.

"Unfortunately you just used me as an excuse to escape your duties. Now that I think about it, you have been incredibly irresponsible and not overly bright."

She would have been angry at that. And she would have tried to get him to understand her reasoning, why she needed those breaks. He knew all of that. He even understood why she did it, but that had never been a good enough excuse to endanger her life and therefore the lives of all the mikokages after her down to this one. Because when he met Geika she had been 14 years old. She hadn't been married yet and she didn't have children, even though people in that time seemed a lot more mature at that age already.

"Quit complaining. You know I'm not listening to that bullshit."

Okay, it was official, he needed to get his head checked.

"Fine, let's talk about something else. ....uh... here. It's said that you married late, only with 18 even though you were engaged before. Any reasons you took your merry time to get that through? Not going to criticize you here, but the village kind of needs a mikokage and children usually need their parents, unless they fail like certain individuums, and I'm not talking of my parents here, but...were was I? Oh yes. Considering the average lifespan of your mikokages back then, you should have known it wouldn't be easy. Unless you believed what I said about some of them dying due to unnatural causes, but that didn't include all of them."

Turning another page, he scrunched up his nose.

"And see? You didn't reach fifty as well. Told you. An unknown illness. Well, if we had been still there, we could have changed that.. or not, since we aren't allowed to change the past too much. Though I think we already did. At least I'm pretty sure you didn't have such a dogphobia before. But this book even mentions it. How practical that the old books accustomed to  the new past automatically."

For a moment he was quiet, reading over what was known of her private life. It seemed, she never stopped painting, she was very tolerant towards shinobi but strict about keeping their actions within the rules of the village. Sounded just like her. Her Kobiru guard even outlived her, but not for long. Narashi remembered that Keitora guy and he was not surprised. He had been getting panicky every time she escaped his sight and seemed to have something against shinobi. Well, some of them tried to kill Geika. So no surprise there either.

Narashi stayed almost another ten minutes, from time to time annoying a gravestone, before it started to become too cold. He closed the book, stowed it in the backpack, but left the candles there, burning with the pink fire of Koemi's trademark attack, the pink flame bullet.

"Consider these a present. Merry christmas, racoon-hime."

And with that he went home. Good thing that he didn't believe in spirits, because otherwise his actions might have made sense that day.