of seaweed knots and sealskin pelts
Sumigakure Halloween Event 2017: Prompt 12
Arrowsbane
He sneaks through the shadows in silence, creeps along the windowsill and slips seamlessly through doorways and into the vaults. The scroll must be around here somewhere. Naruto brushes past a towering stack of paperwork and has to lunge to catch a box before it finishes sliding off its precarious placement. It's an old cardboard box, the dust on top of it forming a thick layer – just looking at it makes him want to sneeze. He scrubs the worn label clean, and flinches at the name written in the Sandaime's curling calligraphy.
Uzumaki Naruto.
He carefully nudges the box open. Inside are papers, photos of people with red hair, a fur blanket, and a lot more dust. Reaching in for the papers, Naruto's fingers brush up against the fur, and he has to swallow a yelp as a spark of electricity skitters across his palm. In the back of his mind, an echo stirs.
Come home, a voice whispers, come home.
Naruto ignores it, sniffling in order to prevent another sneeze, and pushes on. There's half a dozen pictures of a red-haired woman, smiling widely in every single one. She's almost always accompanied by a man who looks rather like a dandelion in human clothes. They're strangers, but yet… Naruto can't quite put his finger on it, but something feels oddly familiar.
There's a scuffling noise from three corridors away so Naruto hurriedly stuffs the photos and papers down his shirt, and snatches up the blanket before scarpering out the window.
The graduation assignment Mizuki gave him is long-forgotten, and when morning comes Naruto is nowhere to be found.
…
Twelve years ago, Sarutobi Hiruzen watched his village burn.
Twelve years ago, Sarutobi Hiruzen buried his wife and friends.
Twelve years ago, Sarutobi Hiruzen picked up the dirt-covered cone hat marked for the Hokage's office, and set it back atop his head.
Twelve years ago, Sarutobi Hiruzen cradled a crying child in his arms, and promised a dying woman that he wouldn't deny her son his heritage.
Twelve years ago, Sarutobi Hiruzen inadvertently lied. And he'd regretted it ever since.
He carried Naruto back to the Hokage's tower, wrapped in a strange fur skin – a skin Kushina had made him swear to keep safe and protect as if her son's life depended on it. But after the third assassin found poised over the crib, he'd secreted it away along with all evidence that Uzumaki Kushina had ever existed, and a birth certificate that could never come to light.
He denied Naruto his heritage, and in the end, Konoha lost the last Uzumaki.
…
He doesn't know what he was expecting, but Naruto finds himself mesmerized by the lapping of the ocean waves. He wanders up and down the beach barefoot, sand squishing between his toes as he watches hermit crabs scurry about with a childish curiosity he's rarely been allowed to indulge.
Out in the distance, sunlight turns the ocean to a glittering paradise, and dolphins crest the waves. Seagulls cry out, and Naruto breathes the salt air in. It feels like home.
He spends the night camped out on the dunes, has enough training to know how to build a small shelter – dug into the sand and covered by driftwood and woven with dried seagrass. He uses seaweed to chink the holes and watches his fire burn blue and purple from salt-crusted wood he'd gathered up on the bluffs. It's magical.
The next morning, he wakes to sun on his face and a hermit crab poking his toes, looking as if it's ready to do battle with both his feet and the world. Naruto happily dubs the crustacean 'Crab-chan', and picks the tiny creature up to put on his shoulder.
Predictably, the crab's claw snaps closed on his ear, and he yelps.
Message received. Crab-chan likes to stay on the ground.
His stomach rumbles, and he frowns. Right. Food. Food is important.
…How is he supposed to catch them again? Something about pointy sticks?
…
There's a herd of seals down by the waterline, but Naruto doesn't dare go too close even if he is curious.
That's alright though, because they're just as curious about him, and shuffle up the sands to get a better look at the small blonde boy with the fur pelt poking out of his pocket.
Whiskers tickle his next and face, hi-hi-hi-hi-hi, and black noses snuffle at every last bit of skin they can find, and Naruto giggles.
Teeth tug gently at his pelt, what-this?, and Naruto yelps.
"Hey!" he exclaims, "that's mine!"
The tugging stops, and twelve heads simultaneously tilt to the right. Pup? It'd be creepy if it weren't so comical. Pup-ours?
Another poke of a cold black nose, this time in the belly, pup-ours-now keeping-pup!, and Naruto giggles again, gently petting the friendly snout.
…
Naruto is quickly adopted into the herd, and spends his nights tucked into a pile of seal-brothers-and-sisters, and it's the best thing ever because he has a family now.
They teach him to swim and to fish, and it's awesome.
And then one day, Naruto slips beneath the water with his fur around his shoulders, and finds himself with flippers and fins and actual whiskers in place of whisker-birthmarks.
"Told you so," says a voice from his left, and Naruto turns to see a smug looking seal who can apparently talk and what the hell?
…
Turns out… when he thought of the seals as family, he wasn't far off the mark.
The herd introduces themselves – Taura and Santa, Shizue, Nowaki and Nagisa. Umiko is his favorite, and he is hers. He's the favourite of them all – which is a mindtrip in itself. He's so used to being unwanted, but they love him, want him, refuse to let him go.
The shinobi of Konoha will search and search and search, will scour the world for the ninth jinchuuriki, for the son of the Yondaime and the Red Death… and they will never find him. Not until he wants to be found – and even if he does… well… It's never wise to entrap a selkie. The Fae are not the forgiving kind, and where one is, swarms follow.