Kindling

Tobirama curled his fluffy tail tighter around his bare toes, kneading the rough bark of the tree he was perched on with fingers and toes in anticipation he couldn’t quite hide. It was stupid, what he was doing; foolish and almost certain to end with him cut up and rebuffed as it always had before (as it had ever since Butsuma Senju sent him from the clan in disgrace- full yokai he might be but somewhere he had…twisted- and Tobirama had looked back to see not even his brother watching him go) but he couldn’t force himself away from the other yokai, couldn’t stop himself from looking for company (looking for a mate) when the Call hit him every few months no matter how often it had gotten him hurt. Oh he was plenty strong to put ninety percent of the yokai that he had met in the ground but that didn’t help with the shackle around his ankle that Butsuma hadn’t taken off before he was banished binding portions of his powered to tight for him to access it and…well. when he was following the Call he could hardly convince himself to fight back very hard anyway. It hadn’t been a problem for a while, Butsuma had kicked him out when he was young, newly endowed with his markings only a year or two before (only a few years past being a child) and he had spent years after that trying to answer the Call only to be turned away with hatred by all he met; now he hardly tried, doing his best to curl up in his den and suffer through it until the need to not be alone faded again and he could…fine, again.

 But the last few years had been different, ever since he had moved closer to the cliffs and he had first felt the yokai the lived there (Tobirama didn’t think he had been there long, he would have noticed if the yokai had he was sure) Tobirama hadn’t been able to spend the Call alone the way he used to; now he spent the days running up to the Call haunting the edge of the yokai on the cliffs territory in an attempt to catch more of the taste of his power and maybe a whiff of scent if he could before forcing himself back to his lonely den and the seals that waited there for the rest of the Call. He was well old enough to be rid of childish notions and the idea that some powerful, protective, clever yokai would do anything other than chase him away was the height of foolishness; no yokai would welcome him and certainly not a Daiyokai. No he was better here, on the edge where he could get a scraping of a feeling and then leave without having to hear ‘no’.

Tobirama sighed and stretched his senses- never as good after the cuff had been put on, like everything else they were dulled, but he made do with what he had and it was still enough to feel over several territories and most of Fire county, just with none of his former precision- and shivered a little as the feeling of warmth and ash rolled over him from the Daiyokai; letting it swamp him for a lingering moment, relaxing into the shadow of the tree and trying not to lean towards where he could feel the other yokai in the west. After some time he reluctantly dragged his senses away from lingering on the Daiyokia (who was not even alone, if he did feel the Call- not all of them did- he wouldn’t be touched by it) and back to himself; there was too many people in the area and he didn’t want to encounter any of them if he could avoid it. It took a good sharp bite to his lip and the accompanying bloom of pain to drag himself all the way away, swiping at his chin and the blood there as he readied to run, it was time to go before the Call got to strong (Tobirama could never decide if it was better or worse to have felt the Daiyokai in the short moments he let himself, it was wonderful but leaving…well, he couldn’t decide).

His den was well hidden (very well hidden) it had to be; technically he had territory even though it was small and few knew much about him as anything other than a rumor to not go past the guardian marks because cured things lived there, after the first marker had been set up and he had seen how they kept people away he had made the effort to find more and have them put up around his small section of forest – dark and wild and fell with the seals he had carved and the steady seep of his chakra (Tobirama had been here a long time) into the ground. But no matter how much his territory was called cursed and felt it, there were some who would come looking anyway and there was rather less he could use against them then the simple fact that he knew this forest, knew it well; the traps and seals and mazes his territory was filled with weren’t always enough (he wasn’t always enough, no matter how he out though all that wanted his land for their own he was still shackled in a real fight, had been ever since Butsuma closed the cuff around his ankle as he sobbed dryly) and so his den had to be hidden, had to be safe, had to be given how often he trapped himself in a web of seals to wait out the Call.

Tobirama chewed at his lip sharply again, ducking through the tumble of tall jagged rocks- all shale and blade sharp edges- and ignoring the dizzying maze of seals and natural rock confusion; slipping off the main trail that led to a fake den and ducking under several tumbled rocks and eeling through almost too small cracks to jump up and climb to a ledge and into a small cave then down into a drop down to his den proper. It was comprised of four rooms the largest of which was a main cave that was almost tall enough for him to stand and filled with low rough furniture (his favorite was the desk tucked against the wall and it showed in the smoothness of the wood the other furniture didn’t possess) the next direct across was smaller and had his cooking things (glad he had figured out how to heat and cook without fire and the tell-tail smoke, he liked cooked food) as well as the beginnings of an escape route that he could blow out if his home was invaded. The third room was filled with his favorite things, a think pile of fur in the center and books and scrolls and paper all over; the fourth…he hated. It was his seal net, he had carved it out on his own, deep and somewhat small and low ceilinged it was only just tall enough for him to sit up fully and completely bare of any comforts at all, nothing but he seals carved deep into the ground.

Tobirama stared into the room for a long moment and then gave himself a shake; he had already cleaned up outside, all that he had left was to change and then get settled and then…he gave himself another good shake and started stripping off his clothing. There was no point in fucking up perfectly good clothing by sweating though it and rolling around in the dirt, not to mention the blood that would end up all over him he was sure (it was hard, in the middle of the Call, not to try and get rid of what was trying to hold him down by anyway he could); he grimaced a little as he yanked of the old soft yukata, ignoring the old stains on the threadbare gray cloth. Once this had been his favorite, back before he realized what the cuff on his ankle meant, now it was still the most comfortable thing he owned but the memories made it all but unwearable except for this. A few finishing touches to the complex protections around his forest patch and the net tight around his den before it was time and he reluctantly crawled into the seal room and knelt in the middle of the array; a deep breath and fingers hovering over the seals he sent out one last desperate wave of his senses, catching one last (slightly frantic) second to feel the Daiyokai before dropping his fingers and letting power twist through the lines, catching them and burning through them as the burned fire bright and snapped shut around him – oh gods this alwayshurt so much.