Letters To Temari
Summary: A letter ends up on Ino's doorstep three days before Temari's arrival. What's it mean?
Disclaimer: The end is nigh! I don't own NARUTO! NOOOOO!
Chapter Eight
To: Ino From: X
The shadows of the silent village began to grow as the sun finished its descent below the horizon. A few people milled around outside, but it was safer to be indoors when the night came. A few girls were standing on a corner, laughing and talking, eating ice cream.
One of them had long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, large blue eyes hidden by one long part in front of her face. The other three girls around her were eating their own ice cream as she told them a story of her last mission. The three watched, laughing at the right times and continuing on their quest to finish their ice cream. Of the three, one large pair of white pupiless eyes seemed to stick out as she saw something suddenly move and they all turned and looked. Green eyes and brown followed the blue and white, as something moved in the bushes behind them.
The girls stood their ground, no longer laughing. Ice cream forgotten, they reached for their weapons, ready to strike whatever dared enter their village. But to their surprise it was only a fellow ninja, searching for something.
He stood and nodded his head, eyes hidden behind thick dark glasses, hands in pockets. The girls relaxed, laughed and went on with their eating, asking the newcomer to join them but he said nothing and left. The four waited until he was long gone before discussing his odd wandering around.
Finally the girls concluded that he must have lost something and was just looking for it… So finally they bided each other goodnight and the blonde with blue eyes leapt across roofs toward her own house, not making a sound. She stopped at her window and opened it, looking at her calendar on her door before she started to head down the stairs of her cozy home. Three days.
She walked down the stairs with the grace of a dove and reached the bottom, her mother cooking in the kitchen, her father MIA. When she was about to ask where he was, the front door open and he entered, looking at something in his hand. He looked up and looked at his daughter.
He ushered the scroll toward her and she hesitated a second, thinking she might have to go on another mission already, but it was not as she feared. The scroll simple had her name, no last, just first. Ino. She slowly opened it and read the first line before closing it again and her parents looked at her expectantly.
She simply laughed and said it was a love letter her friends had sent as a joke and the parents only nodded, glad to know it was not another sudden mission. The young girl excused herself and ran up the stairs, quickly locking the door behind her before she took off out of her window and leaping quickly across the roofs of her village, jumping onto the highest building and then running sideways up the Hokage mountain, landing at the highest point in the village.
She waited for the moon to peek back from around the few clouds that dared interrupt her light. Finally the moon greeted her frown and waited for her to slowly open the scroll, getting a little brighter as if it wanted to read the scroll with her.
Ino Yamanaka
Don't mettle in things that aren't yours to mettle in.
X
She read the words almost three thousand times before closing the scroll and running toward the bridge where the river ran. She landed soundlessly on the wood bridge, looking down at the water below. She could not respond to the message. How did this person know she had been sending letters to the green eyed blonde? How could he possibly know?
She dropped the scroll in the rushing water, seeing the ink bleed from it, ruining the message. This was getting stranger and stranger by the moment. She turned from the water and vanished in a puff of smoke.
She had landed on the rooftop she desired and slowly crept down the side and looked into a small window. The person she had been searching for was lost in the pages of her book.
With swan-like movements the blue eyed one slipped into the open window and stood before her friend, the friend looking up.
Large green and short pink met large blue and long blonde.
There was a pause as the friend slowly put the book down, finished with it for the evening. The blonde sat down on the opposite end of the bed from her friend. They waited a moment before she spoke.
The letter was all she repeated. The green eyed one didn't try to desire more. She was silent as the blonde finished. She then put up a small finger and walked over to the desk in the corner, pulling out her own scroll and pen. She wrote a few characters on it and then rolled it back up.
The blonde didn't question it. She took the offering from the green eyed one and bowed a little, slipping back out of the window, leaving her friend in absolute silence.
The blonde reached her own doorstep and left the scroll on it. Entering the house as her mother called for dinner.
The family ate their meals and went to sleep, and as the moon dipped into the never ending horizon, the figure standing at the door grabbed the scroll and read the contents of it.
Do not test my integrity. I will not give in. I'm Ino Yamanaka.
Ino Yamanaka
He didn't answer the letter with anything more than pulling out a small pen and printing a large "X" in red ink after Ino's own name. He closed the scroll and left it there, disappearing with the night.
February 16, 2006
Dear Readers,
Thank you everyone who reviewed. I forgot to address this a while back. But when Temari says that her father she kind of was referring to Baki, she just forgets that he's not her father, I kind of thought that he seemed like a father to the three of them, so forgive that little blip way back in chapter whatever it was.
Again, I am really glad that you guys like this and are looking forward to the end. It's coming, soon I'm not for sure, but there will be an end. Oh and did you find this chapter confusing? I'm actually challenging myself to see if I can write a piece of fiction without words. That's why I talk mostly through letters.
So thanks for sticking with me. You'll know soon enough who this "X" is. I promise!
Invader Hog
PS: 24 out of 10 scientists say that reviewing makes writers die happier. Thank you!