Gaara doesn't sleep. He can feel Shukaku too easily, slithering like sand in the back of his mind. When Gaara closes his eyes, they are gritty and gummed up. The skin under his eyes is loose and bruised-looking. But still, he can't sleep. He can't even relax; every night he sits stiffly on the floor, listening to the village rest. Not sleeping, of course, means not dreaming. Gaara finds he doesn't mind. The sound of shifting sand is like dreaming to him.

There was once an old folktale about the prince of a village whose father was killed by his uncle. The uncle then married the prince's mother, and the prince was driven by the need to kill his uncle in revenge. There are no parallels between Gaara and this prince. Gaara has outlived all his enemies; there is no need for revenge. In this story, the uncle died at the prince's hands, the father at the hand of a snake, and the mother at the hands of the son.

Still, the prince of the folktale had a point: To sleep, perchance to dream. What dreams may come? To die is to sleep, but Gaara will do neither. He shifts uneasily on his pallet, legs folded under him, stomach tight with control, and the constant ache of his head increases when he stands up. Walking over to the door, he looks out over the still sand, awaiting his command, all of it. He doesn't want to wonder: what dreams would come, if they could? There are very few good things to dream about, at least that he will admit to. They would be uncontrollable things, probably violent, probably scary.

Gaara likes to think he is like the desert, powerful enough to swallow any being whole. But there are things sleeping under the surface of the sand, artifacts and ruins left by people long dead and gone. After the most violent windstorms twisted metal frames, the bones of humans and animals and monsters, and sometimes entire buildings appear where there was only a dune before. Things are hidden in the sand, but they are preserved there too. Things better left buried. Gaara will leave dreaming and dying to the little story prince.