Please review, ppl! I only got one review from the first chappie, and it was from Kitsunegirls (THANK YOUUU)
Disclaimer: I climbed a waterfall, got stuck, and had to jump back down into the water to get down. If I can do that, maybe I'll find a way to own Naruto. XD (just kidding, if the creator of Naruto happens to be reading this o.O)
--Sanded Silk--
When the tears stopped, Sakura sat up against a tree, ignoring the underbrush digging into her backside. She forced herself to calm down and think. Going home wasn't an option now. Perhaps Sakura should go home and wash the blood off of the wall and bury the bodies, but the thought of all of the blood made her sick to her stomach. Leaning over and dry-heaving, Sakura sat back up again and wiped shakily at her mouth. Nope, going home was a bad idea.
So now what?
The first and foremost necessity for survival was water. So the first thing she should do was to find a river. Getting up and wiping sweat off of her brow, Sakura set off in a random direction.
After a long time, Sakura's ears picked up the sound of rushing water. She walked towards it, and found herself at the edge of a thick band of clear water, gurgling and laughing to itself. Kneeling by the transparent water, she splashed water onto her arms, legs, and face, and watched as the traces of blood floated down the river.
Sakura found a relatively flat rock to sit on and to think. Next was food, but Sakura was a huntress, and when she fled from her home, she had brought her bow and arrows. And from her mother, she learned to recognize some of the wild vegetables in the forest that were safe to eat. Which left shelter.
Sakura frowned to herself. Sleeping under the stars was a bad idea, because chances were that the soldiers she had killed were probably not the last to pass by in the forest. She needed a real roof above her head, but not one that stood out in the forest. Which was hard.
As she sat thinking, her mind roved over the treehouse her father had promised her but never built. A treehouse! Maybe that would work.
Standing, Sakura scanned the treetops, looking for a suitable tree, and found what she was looking for.
Walking a shade deeper into the forest, Sakura came to a tall, thick tree with widespread branches from the bas to the top. Most of the leaves that covered its thick branches grew at the tips, which would provide as a sort of cover, because Sakura planned to build her treehouse against the trunk.
Grabbing one of the lower branches, Sakura hauled herself up into the tree and climbed with years of experience from a childhood surrounded by tall trees. When she came to the point where the branches became too sparse and thin to build anything on, she looked down and around. Through the thick leaves and branches, she could barely see the ground or the river. And the snatches that she could see told her that she was far enough from the ground to avoid being seen.
Jumping back down, Sakura began to search the woods for the wood she could need for her treehouse.
Days went by quickly. Sakura cut down and split thick branches with sharp rocks that she found by the riverbank. Storing the wood under a mysterious formation of rocks that formed a little room-like hole at the base, she worked as fast as she could, first making a floor that surrounded the trunk in a circular fashion. After she was done, she built reinforced walls on the ground, and notched them cleverly into the floors, righting them correctly. Then came the ceiling, the hard and annoying part. Sakura had to lash herself to the trunk above where the celing would be and fit the parts of the ceiling in, nearly falling a few times.
When she was done, Sakura stood in her rickety- but new- treehouse, satisfied. It wasn't as good as she had imagined it to be, but it was fine for the first treehouse she had built. That night, she slept comfortably under a roof on a thin pile of leaves and underbrush.
-o-
The morning sun seeped through the cracks in the wall and hit Sakura straight on the eyelids. She woke up slowly, rubbing her eyes and yawning hugely, forgetting where she was momentarily. When she remembered, she climbed out of her bed of leaves and underbrush, plucking random pieces of pine needles from her hair and clothes. Before she clambered down, she strapped her bow and quiver of arrows securely to her back.
After she gathered and ate nuts and tiny berries from nearby bushes, she splashed water onto her face from the river and washed out her mouth. Just as she did, a growl and rustling resounded off of the trees and reached her ears. A strange scraping followed. Wiping the back of her arm against her face, Sakura turned around and froze.
A wild boar, black and sleek, pawed threateningly at the dirt floor. Its ivory tusks, worn at the tips from use, glinted from the morning sun as its black beady eyes fixed themselves on Sakura.
With emerald eyes wide, Sakura backed away slowly from the boar until she was ankle-deep in ice-cold, rushing river water. The boar mimcked her footsteps going forward, snorting and tossing its head, keeping its eyes on her. When Sakura took another step back- her final step away from the boar- she turned a ninety-degree angle and sprinted in the water downstream.
The boar jumped into the water and followed her closely, roaring and snorting, squealing and braying.
In a flash of panic, Sakura slipped and fell into the icy water. The freezing cold river clashed against her skin, paralyzing her for a moment. Then, even with the water around and in her ears, she heard the boar splashing towards her. In blind fear, Sakura struggled to get up. She raced across to the other side of the river, but not fast enough. As she turned around to calculate the distance between her and the boar, the black blur of speed raced right into her stomach. Its tusk imbedded itself deep into the side of her stomach, and Sakura fell back, the pain mixing with the icy coldness of the river water.
Forgetting herself, Sakura screamed- a loud, piercing scream, full of agonizing pain and terror. Even the boar slowed its thrashing for a moment.
Panic gripped Sakura's heart, blocking out the pain. She raised her knees and kicked the boar off of her body and into a tree, wrenching its tusk out of her flesh but feeling nothing. Standing up again, she remembered the weapons on her back and nocked an arrow into her bow as the boar stood up, shaking its head. Raising the arrow at level with the boar's head, she released the arrow without a moment's hesitation. The arrow hit the boar's side, and it let loose a roar of pain, equally piercing as Sakura's scream had been.
The pain finally set in, along with a fleeting sense of victory. Sakura fell to her knees, hunched over her wound, teeth grinding and a sweat breaking out on her skin. The pain coursed through her, piercing her like sharp knives. It crashed outwards from the wound, reaching from the tips of her pink hair to the whites of her toenails. She gripped her bow with one hand and her wound with the other, the knuckles of both hands turning white, as tears forced themselves from her eyes.
The boar recognized its chance, and righted itself. Sakura saw it getting ready, and reached her bloodied hand back to grasp an arrow. Nocking it into position, raising it to level, and pulling it back seemed to take up all of her energy, and her arms shook with the effort. Nevertheless, she kept her eyes on the target.
Then, as if on cue, Sakura began to see six of everything. All of her senses- except her sense of pain- dulled, and everything became blurry. Even though the only sound she could hear was the boar snorting, a white, rushing noise filled her head and blocked out her concentration. She no longer felt her limbs- the only thing that seemed real was her own arm stretched out before her, the beady eyes glowing with triumph, the throbbing pain of her fresh wound.
Just as she was about to collapse, something silver flashed down right onto the boar. Its snorting automatically ceased, and its head rolled off of its collapsing body. Confused, Sakura dropped her arms and looked around, squinting.
The owner of the silver flash, which had been a sword, stood in the pool of the boar's blood, staring with emotionless pearl eyes at Sakura. His- it was a he, right?- pale skin stretched perfectly over his cheekbones, and his parched lips were set in a cold, straight line. His long chestnut hair tumbled down from the top of his forehead to the middle of his back, blowing lightly in the breeze.
Sakura took in all of his body, praising the sight of her unexpected savior, until her eyes locked on the corner of his cape, where the symbol of Suna was imprinted clearly, like blood on stone.
With a gasp, Sakura raised her weapons again, whipping into a standing position. Her knees shook, and her arms ached, but she kept her emerald eyes fixed on the stranger before her. It didn't matter who he was- he was from Suna, whose soldiers had brutally entered and tore apart her life. That was something Sakura would never forgive.
The flash of rage died, and with it came numbness. The anger in her mind stayed alive and flickering mightily, but her body gave away. Her vision blurred until all of the colors blended together. Her fingers released the wood of her bow and arrow, and her knees buckled. She barely felt the ground hit her cheek as she fell.
A pair of fancy brown leather boots stopped at her nose. The dark cape that the stranger wore fluttered before her eyes, and the symbol of Suna burned itself into her mind. The last thing she felt was warm, rustling cloth that revealed the tiniest hint of a muscular body underneath gently hoisting her up into an embrace. She jerked away once, weakly, before she blacked out.
Hyuuga Neji held the strange pink-haired girl uncertainly in his arms, her blood soaking his royal riding garb. He had been riding on his dark brown horse for its daily exercise in the thin, long strip of woods that occupied the border of his country when he heard the uncanny splashing and snorting. He had watched her run and fall in the river, pick herself up, and keep running. He had seen the boar drive its tusk into her stomach, and he watched as she fell. He heard her scream as she kicked the boar away, and watched as she sent the arrow into its side. He knew from the way she moved so fluidly in the woods and water, and from her choice of weapons, that she was from Konoha, the country that his father was leading an entire army against.
And yet, he found himself by the boar, saw his sword arm drop down, sending the blade through the boar's neck. He found himself holding the foreign girl close against his chest, staring intently into her tortured face, as if expecting her to wake up and start kicking and screaming. He felt the urgent yearning to just stand there and press her soft body against his own, not taking heed of the foreign blood soaking his finery.
She had looked so hard, so cold, as she bravely fought the wild black boar that now lay beheaded. But now, as she lay unconscious in his arms, she felt weak and vulnerable, as if she would break into tiny pieces if he squeezed her too hard.
Just then, the girl turned her head, her eyeballs moving rapidly behind her eyelids. Her lips parted slightly, and a groan of pure pain escaped her mouth, snapping Neji out of his reverie. He turned around and walked quickly to his horse, who shied away from the scent of blood. Neji ignored its skittish behavior and mounted the horse, seating the girl sideways before himself so that her legs hung off of one side of the horse and her head was nestled securely on his shoulder. With one arm around her shoulders, he took the reins with the other hand and nudged the horse into a fast pace, steering it in the direction of his home.
A/N: Hmm... the ending was shaky, but the rest was ok (I think).
And I have no idea why I made Neji the person from Suna instead of Sakura this time. But whatever. If I made them from the same country, this story would be pretty boring, right? XD
Review plz!!
--Sanded Silk--