The hill overhanging the ocean
Naruto and its characters don't belong to me.
Almost everyday, after lunch, she would go with Naruto to the hill overhanging the ocean. They would take the path that began after the abandoned lighthouse which signaled the limits of the village, the one which was wandering in the moors, the one none villager dared to take, afraid of getting caught in the spells cast by the korrigans, the goblins, the banshees or every other supernatural being haunting the deserted lands.
They weren't afraid. They knew the fairies were there, and they respected them; she would always leave a piece of bread, a slice of cake, a kind of offering to give them at the old cross behind the lighthouse to be authorized to take the path. Naruto would watch her, sometimes adding a treasure as a seven-years-old understood it; a feather, a fissured marble, a strange looking stone. When they came back the next day or the day after, the offerings weren't there anymore.
The path wandered between the carved stones and the bushes that were barely brushing the ground. In the summer, the path seemed to cross carpets of brightly colored and ephemeral flowers. Most of the time, the land was gray and green under the rain.
They would stop at the hill overhanging the ocean. The path continued, ending on the rocky beaches under the cliffs of the coast. They didn't need to go on. From the hill, they could see the boats, far, far away, and sometimes the boats that followed the coast line to the village.
It was why they were here.
Once there, she would often tell Naruto the myths and legends of her people, the stories of gods, goddesses and heroes back from the time her people were still nomads, roaming freely under the skies on the lands their ancestors gave them, before they had been forced to settle, before they scattered on foreign lands to find back one they would belong to. She didn't really taught all that to Naruto, but he learned it with a thirst for knowledge which never failed to make Iruka smile proudly, albeit sadly. A thirst which seemed strangely alien coming from the too mature seven-years-old boy, whose blue eyes rarely smiled.
At the beginning, when she came the first times with the often silent blond boy, he tried to told her the stories of his people. He stopped quickly. The words were slipping through his five-years-old memory, the memories faded with time. She knew that all those memories weren't happy ones; she knew the memories of all three men weren't happy ones. Hers were just memories, green as the moors, grey as the ocean under the rain.
Sometimes Naruto would wander off the path, going to take a closer look at the painted and carved stones, careful not to disturb their inhabitant spirits as she told him to, or continuing the path to the cliffs to bring back shellfishes they ate raw while watching the horizon or brought back with them to make soups of.
They would get back to the village before nightfall. The night on the moor belonged to the supernatural beings and spirits. And she also wanted Iruka to come back to a warm and lighted home, with fire cracking in the fireplace, and with food steaming; always.
There would never be too many people out at this time of the day when they came back into the village. She liked it that way. The villagers were giving them a hard time saying they were all four strangers to this place, no matter she had been born here. It was strange they accepted Iruka to teach their children.
Iruka taught the villagers' children to write, read and count. It was much more than anyone ever do for the village, and sadly it was much more than the children ever would need.
Naruto doesn't go to the village's school. Iruka and her tried to make him go, because staying only with adults wasn't very healthy for a child, but he had gone more and more silent and withdrawn during the two weeks he went to the school. He stopped going when Kakashi said something to Iruka about the kids looking at Naruto "just like back home".
So now Iruka taught Naruto at home, when he came back from the school, in the evenings, and she taught him a little too, the things no-one taught to children at school, like the names of the plants and theirs uses, the stories which were told to children by theirs mother and grandmothers. She knew Iruka taught a lot more to Naruto than what he taught to the villagers' children, and it was things she guessed she wasn't supposed to know of, but he taught it in a foreign language with a lot of "no" and "ha" and rolled "r".
To her, it sounded like Iruka knew more about fairies and supernatural than what he implied.
The money Iruka brought back home was just enough to make two persons live.
That's why Kakashi boarded for the fishing season the last two years, coming back with his hair more whitened by the salted wind and water, his pale skin tanned, his strong hands hurt from the fishnets and the salt. The five months or so of the year he was away were hard months for Iruka. For Naruto too. And for her.
She didn't really know where they were from. They were all three so different from one another. They never talked about it. She had been the only person in the village to let them stay at her house the day they disembarked on the small harbor. They never left since this day.
She loved Naruto, much like a mother loved her child. And he loved her. She knew Iruka loved Kakashi, and Kakashi loved Iruka with all his heart. She loved them. And they loved her. Somehow, they found each other in a kind of family.
Her memories were green as the moors, grey as the ocean under the rain, blue and blond as Naruto's eyes and hair, brown as Iruka's eyes and tanned skin, white and grey as Kakashi's hair and eyes.
Kakashi was on the fishing boat now.
Their bed was cold at night, and she knew her presence wasn't enough to warm Iruka up, even when she was all around him and when he was clutching at her like she was the only thing keeping him there.
That's why almost every day, after lunch, while Iruka was teaching children to write and read, she would go with Naruto to the hill overhanging the ocean by the path wandering through the moors; to wait for the boats to come back; to wait for Kakashi to come back.
She can still hide her belly under her large skirts swayed by the blowing iodized air coming from the ocean, but not for long. Iruka knows. She told him she didn't knew who, from Kakashi or him, was the father. She had never seen him so moved. He hugged her for a long long time. He nearly cried.
She's going to tell Naruto when they'll reach the hill. Not now, as they are walking, his little hand in hers, the wind playing with their coats and hair, flushing his scared cheeks. She will tell him once at the hill, and she will tell him about the legends of the first woman, and about the child who became a hero, so that he will be able to tell those stories to his future sibling. So that his attention will be kept away from the horizon.
She knows Iruka want this child to be Kakashi's. He hugged her because he was happy and sad at the same time at the news. She knows he would have want Kakashi to be there for this.
The despair can be felt in the narrow streets of the village. Iruka begins to lose hope too.
The boat is late.
A one-shot that has stayed a long time in my head. 'She' will remain anonymous, she's a watcher of what is going on. Reviews?