(iii) No Strings Attached
"There's something beneath the sand," One of the diggers yelled, dabbing his wet brows with an even wetter cloth.
"Is it valuable? Is it alive?"
His companion skittered across the sand dune and peered into the gaping hole. They had been digging for two days straight and had found nothing. Yet.
"I don't know. Looks like a...person from here. Tomo, can you give me a hand." A few minutes of heaving and two broken nails later, they lifted the heavy, shrouded form into the sunlight and laid it upon the hard desert floor.
Holding a breath, the first digger - a thick set, hairy man - removed the shroud with a flourish.
"Why, its a young girl!" He gasped. The girl had soft pink hair and strange markings on her cheeks.
"Well, don't just sit there, Ido!" The man called Tomo quickly placed a finger on her forehead and gestured for Ido to prepare water. He felt chakra flow through the girl -a perfectly regular pattern - and frowned, "No, it's not a child... it's a puppet!"
He peered over the girl, "She's pretty."
"What's a puppet doing buried here in the middle of the desert?" Ido wondered, brushing dust of its face. Her features were soft. He realised she had been made in likeness of a real human being.
Suddenly, the puppet's eyes flung open. Ido jumped back.
"It's mouth... is moving. Tomo, it's trying to say something!" He dripped a bit of liquid onto the puppet's lips, loosening the joints around its mouth. They creaked open awkwardly and, from within, a light, feminine voice whispered:
"Mama...Sakura?"
"Tomo, it said Sakura!"
"So it did. Who is Sakura?" Ido asked, rhetorically. He exchanged a look with Tomo and poured more water onto its lips.
"Papa...Papa..."
The two of them held their breaths.
"Kan..Kankuro." The puppet's lids fell shut again and its mouth froze, leaving a little gap in the shape of a smile.
"Kankuro, the Legendary Puppeteer of Sunakagure," Tomo mouthed, "The Hidden Village that once stood here, legend says, a long, long time ago."
Ido stared at the girl, transfixed, "He must have made this...why bury it in the sand?"
Tomo shrugged, "He must have hid her when the enemies arrived but never returned to retrieve her." He folded the girl's arms and carefully picked her up, "Probably worth a fortune... we're in luck!"
They gazed back into the hole. Funny, he thought, absent-mindedly, Papa...Mama...