Hope you'll like. I don't own Naruto et cetra, et cetra...Enjoy!

Two

Sakura raised her fan. "The door's open!"

"Your mama didn't raise no dummies!" Naruto snapped, from behind her. "Something hit me!"

"The door," Sakura said looking like a happy cat with creamy whiskers. "Hocus bogus, huh?"

Naru elbowed her. "You can put down your wanna-be-wand now."

Hinata aimed the gooseneck lamp at the room. "It actually is a room- ah! That's the most beautiful fox I've ever seen!"

"It's vibrant," Saku said.

"It's gorgeous." And familiar, Naru thought. He touched its mother-of-pearl, fangs, fiery red, fur, nine long-curved tails, and the little dragon by its side, and he knew it wasn't the first time he had touched it.

"Dragon looks pretty tame. What do you make of it?" Hina asked, propping the door open with a chair.

Naruto fingered the gem-encrusted stars in the kitsune's collar. "It has to be handcarved, but I think the fire spurs were an afterthought. The hole in the center has smooth, metallic markings, see? This fox rode a carousel once. Can't you picture it in the bay window of my shop?"

"Way to bring the Immortal Classic some publicity," Hina said. "See, your destiny's a tame old fox."

Naruto inhaled deeply. "Do you smell zannihillas?"

"Cedar," Hina said. "I smell cedar."

Naruto untied the watered silk ribbon around the fox's collar to see the giftlike envelope attached.

Sakura beamed. "Open it!"

"You must be a hoot on christmas morning," Naruto told Sakura, taking a tarot card from the parchment sheet folded to form an envelope.

"Isn't that from Nana Tsunade's tarot deck?" Saku asked.

"Victoria hand printed Nana Tsunade's old deck. It's been in the family for years. This is the missing high Priestess card."

"You mean, Nana Tsunade didn't read with a full deck? Oh, sorry, didn't mean for it to sound like a slam."

"I asked her about reading with an incomplete deck once, and she said I'd get the reading I needed when I needed it. She said all things would come in due course."

"Makes a mystical sort of sense," Hina said. "What does the high Priestess card mean?"

Naruto felt dizzy. "My interpretation would be 'opening to dreams.' "

"Even I'm spooked," Saku said, "after hearing what Nana Tsunade said, because my instinctive interpretation is to allow your destiny to come to you 'in due course.' "

Naruto shook his head. "Guys, I-"

"Wait!" Saku said. "You opened Victoria's room. You're a demonic warlock!"

"I don't believe that, but given the High Priestess card, I have to admit that I've seen this fox before. You're gonna think I'm a whack-job, but I dream about it." On the carousel, where I kiss someone wearing a skirt. Naruto shivered.

Sakura did a fan-wielding happy dance and high-fived him. "Welcome to my world. Talk about opening to dreams. Yours are prophetic."

"Wait a minute," Hina said. "I hate to trip your twinkling toes, Sakura, but Naru, couldn't you be dreaming about a different kitsune?"

Naruto stroked the figure. "How many carousel kitsunes with dragons curled around their sides and zannihillas around their collars do you think there are with my birth sign, Libra, carved in their eyes?"

Sakura smirked. "And we have . . . magic!"

"My stars," Naru said, hands on hips. "You don't seriously believe that?"

"Only one way to find that out," Saku said. "Pop quiz."

Hinata curled up on Naruto's bed. "If you use me for levitation, don't wake me. The baby kept me up all night."

Naruto grinned, and Sakura raised a brow. "This is serious stuff, Mister Naruto!"

"Serious, right, duly noted."

Sakura whacked him on the head.

Hinata chuckled.

Sakura frowned, and Naruto held his injured head. "When you were six, you wanted to go to the circus, remember? You begged and cried for days, and just when you knew your mother would never cave, your father showed up for like the first time in years?"

"Uh, yeah, and they fought like maniacs, about babies of all things. Didn't feel like magic to me."

Sakura waited for him to remember everything

"Oh, right," Naru said. "I almost forgot. Nana Tsunade came and took me to the circus to get me out of there."

Sakura nodded. "Senior year hockey finals. Ron Dumbrowski-accent on the dumb-paid the sign guy to flash 'Naruto Cartwright is a big fat evil Devil child,' pn the scoreboard before the game?"

"Stop; you're making me hate my life."

"You were so mad, you focused on making the Dumbzer screw up, remember? You said you were. So what happened?"

Naruto grinned. "He scored a goal for the wrong team and lost the state title."

"I rest my case."

"Yeah," Hina said, "I'm thinking that a lot of wierd and-excuse my honesty-ditzy things have happened around you, Naru. I may have been at boarding school half the time, but even I remember a few zingers."

Naruto crossed his arms. "No way."

"Way," Hina said. "Cheerleaders, Thanksgiving football game, tenth grade?"

"Those self-centered snobs said rotten things about you, Hina."

"They did? And you defended me? You're so sweet."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "I didn't do anything."

"Right," Hina said, "so we're in the first row, the cheerleaders are in a pyramid in front of us, and you point and say, 'As you sway, fall away,' and they fall!"

"I didn't want them on top of us."

Hinata smirked. "How did you know they'd fall?"

"How do you remember what I said?"

"You rhymed and scared the pom-poms out of me."

"Seriously?" Naruto grinned then he sobered. "Hey, they were teetering. Really. I remember being glad the grass was soft, because I knew . . . which doesn't prove a thing."

"It proves wishful magic," Saku said.

"Magic?" Hina asked. "Was that you, then, Kira?"

"Nope. I was a late-blooming witch. Neither did I whisper a rhyme for the breeze to take our exams off the ledge and out the fifth-floor window, because I'd pilfered my mother's 'dirty tapes' instead of studying the night before."

Mel gave her a thumbs-up, and Naruto chuckled.

"It's true, Naru, and it was all you," Saku insisted. "You're like a loose cannon in the world of witchcraft."

"See," Hinata said, getting up, "And I always thought he was a loose cannon in the regular world."

"Thanks, guys. So glad I invited you to the grand opening."

Sakura snuffed the smudge stick."Naru, you need to make peace with your magic, learn to accept and control it."

Naruto huffed. "Those were flukes, quirks, twists of fate. And did I mention coicidence? You, Sakura dearest, need to make peace with the fact that I have no magic."

"But you have a kitsune," Hina said. "Get it appraised, find out what you've got." She turned to the sound of a baby crying. "At least for insurance purposes. I gotta go rescue Gaara."

Insurance? Great, Naruto thought, another bill he couldn't afford to pay. But if the kitsune had some value, it might attract customers, which would help pay Nana Tsunade's bills.

Naruto followed Sakura down the stairs.

"Hina," Naruto said, taking baby Naomi from her. "Where the heck do I get a carousel kitsune appraised?"

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