Adopted: Book 1 Refracted Sand [REWRITING]

Adopted Ch. 62 Change Comes in Many Forms

One morning, Suzume's nose was attacked by smell. Her hand slapped onto her nose in a pathetic attempt to cover it.

They weren't all bad smells, but they were all strong and mixed together strangely like bread and paint and trash.

She jumped out of bed and grabbed a clothespin from her laundry basket to squeeze her nostrils closed.

The smells were dulled and she was able to breathe again. Suzume sighed.

She held out her hands and started to count on her fingers while mumbling nasally under her breath, "Weird heat sensitivity, weird sleeping patterns, weird animal attractor, weird chakra, weird oasis finder, weird nose..."

She looked down at her six fingers. She wondered if she would be able to get to ten someday. She had hoped it would stop at oasis finder but she just kept getting weirder, and at this point she wasn't even surprised anymore.

Suzume lowered her hands, shook her head out of its haziness, and decided that she should start her day to forget about it all.

She made it all the way to the front door in her uniform ready for work when she put on her shoes only to dislike the feeling completely. It was tight and obstructing. She kicked them off without thinking and sat there for a second.

Rationalizing with herself that without shoes she would burn the skin off her feet on the sun-cooked sand of the desert, she put on the shoes again. She rotated her ankles and wiggled her toes experimentally. Still felt weird.

Suzume lifted her six fingers up again to add another finger, making seven.

"Weird feet..."

Suzume stood up aggressively, ripped the clothespin from her nose-- leaving behind angry red marks where it had pinched-- and with determination, left the house in her shoes.

After a day of training, she came back home and opted to skip wearing house slippers after a long day of bothered feet. She tried to get used to her heightened nose but ended up asking Akira for some tissue to shove into her nostrils. Ritsu didn't look her in the eye for the entire training session while Baki and Akira laughed at and teased her.

Suzume noticed Temari's and Kankuro's chakra in the kitchen so she made sure to take out the tissue and throw it away in the bin before entering the room. She was glad they smelled good enough today, both smelled like their natural smell, meaning they hadn't trained yet. Temari smelled more minty while Kankuro smelled more fruity. 

Kankuro was sitting at the dining table with Temari standing over his shoulder, both considering a blueprint and bouncing ideas back and forth from each other.

"Good evening," she greeted.

"Hey, Suzume," Temari said, looking up at her.

"What're you guys doing?"

"Temari had an idea on how to use the winds to make energy." Kankuro waved her over to see the blueprint. "It's ingenious! It could change everything. Look."

Suzume looked at the blueprint over Kankuro's other shoulder to see a pinwheel drawing in his handiwork with notes to the side.

"The blades work as rotors and as the wind turns them they spin a generator and then we store it as energy to be used for later. No man power needed! Just the wind, and buddha knows how much of that we have around here."

"That's amazing!" Suzume looked at Temari with stars in her eyes.

"I know," Temari said pompously but broke and laughed when Kankuro shoved her playfully. "We need to figure out the specifics before it can be a thing though. Gotta hand the idea over to the engineers and it might be a few more years before they're even built."