NARUTO
TITLE: ONCE UPON A TIME
AUTHOR: mrredrum
PAIRING: Implied KakashixIruka
WARNING: PG
NOTES: Some sort of a fairy tale?... and this drabble is dedicated to my dear nakama, ginnyvos's birthday (august 19) HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU MY DEAR!... ps: my very much thank you for my wonderful beta-er kakairupowns-san for the beta. Thank you.
Once upon a time, there was a dolphin who lived happily in the middle of the ocean. The dolphin always looked so cheery, with his fins fanned out and always jumping around, living such a carefree life.
The dolphin, though, was jealous when he faced the moon. He always thought that the moon was lucky to be able to live up above the sky, and had the chance to see what happened all over the surface of the world while the dolphin was stuck only able to swim around in the sea. He would love to be where the moon was. That was why, during every moonlight night, some fishermen could see the shadow of a dolphin jumping as high as it could, trying to reach the moon.
Because this happened so often, the moon noticed the appearance of the dolphin and began spending more time paying attention to him.
He always saw the dolphin swimming in the sea, joking lively with his friends, all of the colorful big and little fish that inhabited the ocean. Suddenly, he realized that he was jealous of the dolphin. He may live in a marvelous place, but being up so high he was lonely. The stars would sometimes accompany him, but they didn't try to become too close to him because they were jealous of his proximity to the sun, which made him brighter than all of the other stars.
The moon became addicted to the dolphin. He loved to watch him, and this is why a human can sometimes see the shadow of the moon even in the early morning. By that time, the moon decided he would watch the dolphin as much as he could. Though, sometimes, only half of his face is visible.
This continued until, one night, the moon didn't show up at all, which made the dolphin kind of curious. He convinced himself that he needed to check on the moon. Because he had never been able to jump high enough to reach the moon, he decided to try jumping off of a huge coral reef to launch himself higher.
He jumped high into the sky, and almost made it. But he failed.
His body fell down, plummeted through the sky such a long way and fell right onto the coral. Face first, he scraped along the reef and it cut deep, leaving a single scar. The rest of his body wrecked against the reef, and he knew that he was dying. He started to cry, but not because he was going to die. He cried because, for him, being able to successfully jumped that high, this time the real reason is not a jealousy toward the moon. He cried because he realized the real reason for his jealousy toward the moon, which was not jealousy at all, but a feeling more complicated than that. The dolphin had begun to care about the moon, though he realized it too late. He just wished that he would have had the chance to tell the moon that he liked him, and tried to do so. Sadly, the only sound that came out of his mouth was one last, anguished screech, which every human could hear. And then he died.
That last screech, though, was enough to call back the moon from the darkness of the night sky. By following the dolphin's cry, the moon came back to his usual place. He wanted to talk to the dolphin, thank him and maybe tell him how he felt, but found the dolphin already gone from the world.
He mourned, and caused a lunar eclipse.
This event also caused a never-ending night to descend upon all of the living creatures on earth, and all of the humans who were watching saw, and understood. They all prayed to God that someday, the moon and the dolphin would have another chance to meet and exist with one another, sharing the thoughts and feelings that they couldn't before…