Haven
The strings of Sakura's childhood are tattered and split; the loom her mother used to weave on is falling apart. Scraps of fabric spill helplessly over the edges of a basket nearby. It's old and wicker, white, with polka dots painted around the handle in varying shades of pink.
The craft room is perpetually dark, and colder than the coolest desert night. Its walls are so thin, and the floor creaks even when no one walks over it. Her cousins, who had come to stay after the deaths of her parents, take care to keep away from that room.
It is Sakura, always Sakura, who creeps out of bed in the night to examine the paintings on her own walls; products of her mother's creativity. She grabs skirts and tops that her mother bought for her, and she holds them in the darkness, breathing in the smell of a dead woman's perfume, something bittersweet like dirt and strawberries.
It is Sakura, only Sakura, who pulls the door to the craft room open and then sits by the basket, hugging odd bits and pieces of patterned material and buttons.
Echoes swim down the hallway and thrust their way into the room—which no heat can warm—and Sakura listens, staring blankly out the window where no flowers dare to grow.
When she closes her eyes, squeezing memories of days gone by, all she sees are the ghosts that will never catch her.
This is her favorite room in the dusty, empty house. She knows that her parents aren't coming back, and she knows that shinobi aren't supposed to want, but…
I want, Sakura thinks. I want.
Fin.
