Disclaimer: Original plot, characters, abilities, and places belong to Kishimoto. I only own my OCs, changes in plot, and the sprinkles on top.
CHAPTER ONE: Prologue
Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man's memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull."
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns
I felt her mother's hand through my hair. The dull brown locks that I had always hated, had always wanted silkier or glossier. My mother combed my hair as if it was her treasure.
No. That wasn't right.
Like I was her treasure.
"In the evening, where I lay"
Her voice wasn't as melodious as my father's, or anyone from the home that we used to have. But it was my favorite. Its vibrations echoed from her to me as the woman sang the mournful song. The tune carried me away from reality. Only my mother can do this.
Was that shouting coming from outside? Was the wind howling louder than usual, slamming into walls of the fragile buildings and towers of Sand? Was that a scream of a frightened child younger than myself?
Why do I hear sand shifting like thousands of tiny, hissing snakes slithering across gravel?
"There's a song, in my wake"
The shadows of dancing lights coming from outside moved across the wall in front of us, as my mother and I sat with their backs to the windows. Our own shadows were surrounded swirling shapes and lights, the only still darkness in the chaos. Chaos that I didn't know when started, when will end, but hoped would stop.
Stop.
"What's going on outside, Mama?"
"I don't know, Mirai. But don't worry, my dear child. It will end soon."
It was one of those times when my mother was both lying and telling the truth at the same time. She had been doing that often, and while I was scared, I trusted her mother.
Surely, my mother knew what she was doing.
"In the meadow, where I lay"
"Where was father?" I wanted to ask.
But I didn't.
Surely... it will all go away as my mother said. And everything will go back to normal, happy, happy normal…
A loud bang erupted from behind them. The door in the other room was shuddering, cracking. I peeked hesitantly out the window, unsure of what I would see.
As if forgetting itself, the desert had turned into the sea, waves of silver in the moonlight. The streets were filled with frightened people, specks of humans in the distance. They were tiny, insignificant. My family lived alone, in the suburbs cut off from the world. There was no one close to us as the population fled. To where, I wasn't sure. The world was raining down glass, fragments of lives, and sand. Torrents of sand.
"There's a child that's weeping for my sake."
"Mirai," my mother's whisper carried over the noise outside. I looked at her, away from the opening to the world.
"Mama?" my voice shook. I sounded terrified, and didn't even notice that I had been frightened by what was happening outside.
"Close your eyes for now, Mirai. I'll be back."
I stared at my mother, and for a second, I could almost see myself, sitting there with knees drawn up to my chest and arms wrapped around my shoulders, as if viewing the world in another body, or as if I was hovering in midair, watching from an observer's perspective.
Then, that moment was gone, and to my mother, I nodded.
I closed my eyes.
-.-.-.-.-
Blank, blue eyes opened, taking in the sight with a placid stare.
She had stumbled into a ruined place. It seemed no one had bothered to clean it up, which wasn't much of a surprise. The majority of Suna was not here, in the outer suburbs. They are all in the center of the village, generally safe. And small, as Suna's population had become.
Mirai had been to these ruins before. After all, this was her birth place, the place where she first opened her eyes.
She had decided to visit it, after four years.
The door hung awkwardly from its hinges, creating rusty squeaks every time the wind made it swing. The paint was peeling from the walls, and a blast of what seemed to be pure power never left its marks from years ago. What caused it, Mirai did not know. But it left waves in the concrete ground, spilling out sand from underneath and cracks crawling up the walls. The house, which once might have been a nice place to live for any small family stood broken in the midst of other abandoned homes.
Mirai pushed the door slightly, halting it from its dazed swinging. The hinges emitted a shrill squeak in protest, but held on. Silently, she stepped into the house.
Sand was scattered everywhere, twitching and swirling with new life from the gusts of wind blowing through the open door. A crater in the east wall dominated the area. Overturned chairs and shattered glass littered the floor along with the colonies of sand, dust coating the surface of everything like a pale blanket. Mirai kept walking.
In the next room, there was table with cloth draping over it. And Mirai remembered how she first woke up, in this unfamiliar house, with no name, no family, and no control or expression.
She remembered her first live memory, the first that actually connected with herself.
Thump, thump, thump. What was that? The drums that she heard shook her whole form, and vibrated everything around her.
Ba-thump, thump, thump. Ah. She recalled something It was inside her, the existence of her life. Her heart.
Did that mean she was alive? What was she? Was that heart beat just an illusion?
She felt something solid beneath her, and it felt like she was being tied down with an invisible and untouchable force. She recalled it was the ground. Smooth, but small specks of stuff poked into her body, her side, her hands, her arms, her legs, her face. She vaguely feels something wrapped around her loosely. Clothes.
Ah. So she really must exist.
Finally, she did an instinctive thing. She forced open what she remembered as eyes, and looked around her.
There was something woody with four straight legs and a flat surface, and a soft thin fabric covered it. The floor was covered in pale specks like everything else. Sand. She sees her own pale skin and raised her hand close to her face, a few cuts scraped into the palm of it. Human. Girl. Blood.
Who was she?
The girl waited patiently for the answer to come, as it had before for everything else. But nothing came to mind. She warranted panic, but she felt nothing. No pull of the brows, no tilt of the lips, nothing except a suffocating feeling in her chest and the churning in her stomach. She touched her face with shaky hands, but can't feel control over her own expression. What was wrong?
She stumbled to stand up and she saw something on her arm. A band. It felt soft and worn, leather.
A bracelet. Brown, soft feeling when rubbed between her fingers, with white markings scratched onto it. She scrunched her face in concentration, and the words seeps into her mind slowly.
Mirai.
So, that must be who she was then?
Mirai. Mirai. Mirai.
It had a nice ring to it.
Why was she here?
Mirai walked toward the door, and slowly the world started making more sense Her footsteps echoed quietly in the silence. Her bare feet was soon embedded with the countless sand. She reached up a hand and pushed open the door.
She can't see anything familiar. Just a room, very messy. Where was she?
Drops of dark liquid decorated the floor. Curious, Mirai bent down and touched a spot. It was sticky, and when she lifted her finger, it was red. Blood. Large amounts of it, and by the looks, someone was gravely hurt. Mirai didn't herself really care though, since it wasn't her blood, and there was no one around that she knew who would get hurt. In fact, she couldn't remember ever knowing anyone. She stepped over the dark blood.
Light streamed through the broken windows, the shards of glass scattered around the room, reflecting faint bits of white against the walls and the ceiling.
The soft sunlight of early morning enchanted the girl, and she stepes slowly to the windows. Before she made it though, a flash glinted sharply from an object on the counter at the corner of the room.
Mirai trailed curiously to counter where there were, what she named to be, a mirror, a flute, and a little stuffed bear. The mirror was toppled over, and the bear was sideways, with the flute digging in the stuffed bear's cotton filled stomach.
She felt drawn to that table of small oddities, and picked up the flute. She remembered bits of information like notes, fingerings and songs from somewhere at some time. There was something else about this instrument, but she couldn't remember. She tucked the flute into her large pocket in the front of her dress. It should have been wrong, as if it wasn't right to take something that's just there.
She didn't care.
Besides, there wasn't anyone she knew that she could steal from anyways.
Mirai picked up the mirror and started. Large, blue eyes set in a pale face stared back at her. A short, thin nose and open mouth, with dull brown hair. She rubbed a red line on her cheek, and felt the ridge of a cut with her fingers. She blinked, the mirror blinked. It was herself. She put the mirror in her pocket too.
She had herself with her then.
Mirai glanced at the stuffed bear. At the sight of it, her blood turned cold, and she felt a crushing weight in her chest, her feet glued to the ground and her hands stuck at her sides. She felt her breath catch and waited for her emotions to spill, as they built up at the back of her eyes, even if she didn't know why...
Her steady drum in her chest suddenly quickened, and fear pulsed through her. Her only escape was cut off, release from her mind. She can't think, not with the unsteady feeling of detachment and panic, both battling for dominance in her mind before fear took over them all.
Why was her blood running so cold, freezing her from the inside?
She did not know.
Mirai turned and ran, pushing the door open, out the house and into a destroyed street, everything a warm colored sort of monochrome. In a confused frenzy, she ran farther and farther, to where ever her feet led her. She was found by the people curled up in a tight ball next to the swings, still unable to make the tears flow, unable to distort her face into a wail, her feet cut and bloody from the glass shards she unknowing stepped on with her bare feet when she had fled.
She is probably the only child most knew, who ached to cry, but could not.
Mirai stepped towards the blood, now dried to a rusty red brown. She had a new interest towards it, now curious to where it could have come from. A family member of hers, perhaps? Who knows?
After a few minutes of staring at the grimy spots, she turned to the table, her boots crunching on the broken glass and sand. She lifted up the bear from its toppled over position and examined it with unreadable dull, blue eyes. It was dusty and one of the button-eyes had fallen out. Its stitched on smile was frayed, and a ear had been chewed through by something.
Her stomach churned. Was this regret? Guilt? Nervousness?
Even if she can't remember, she can still see. Even if she can't see, she can feel.
She finally pocketed the bear and left.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
― Robert Frost
Important Note That You Might Want to Read-
I really like Gaara, but, no offence to those who love Hinata and Gaara or Sakura and Gaara, those pairings just doesn't seem right with me, so I make stories about him and a character of my own. Maybe it's because I believe in Hinata with Naruto, and Sakura with Sasuke...
So! This was just introducing you to a character I made myself. I am fully aware that this idea of GaaraOC is already used by... at least twenty other authors, but this story is mostly about trying out OCs and inserting them in the Narutoverse timeline as naturally as possible while majorly changing some stuff... I hope it works out... unfortunately, this story already has one possible Mary Sue, one definite Mary Sue, and cue major tragic pasts. Well, at least it was fun for me to write about my characters getting serious reality checks when they were little. And it is true that the Narutoverse has many Mary Sues itself.
So I'm just widening the variety.
Also will have new abilities and warping of cannon. You have been severely warned.
This fanfic will follow the manga translations online.
Aaaaaaand, for the people that has been reading it before and now are 'wtf'ing because the story went kaboom, I'm rewriting the whole story. This is the repost of the original Sand in the Wind, which was formally posted by me but then deleted because of major changes.
Such as Mirai's name. Used to be Miku. But whatev...
- the goldfish killer