Possession
The sun glared on the multi-colored feathers of the parrot that perched on Gaara's shoulder. It flicked its head to the side, and began to clean a few bugs out of its wing. A feather brushed past Gaara's cheek and he turned his stolid view on the bird.
"Are you doing that because of birdly needs, or are you just playing around?"
"So cold," the parrot whistled in its high-pitched voice. "Anh! Just cleaning myself. Wohhoo!"
Gaara cocked an eyebrow and then went back to his surveying of the villagers. A few would stare at him curiously, wondering what a tropical bird was doing in the desert, and on their Kage's shoulder, nonetheless. "I still can't see anyway of you getting your body back," the red-head sighed. "I mean, its on the moon, for sand's sake!"
"Anh! That's why we're looking for a replacement body for me!" the bird retorted.
"Are you really going to do that? Kick someone else out of their own body, just so you can be human again. The bird was already dead, but the living?"
"Can't knock a living person out of own body! Anh! Not powerful enough! Find one close to death. Then it ok anyway."
"Heph!" Gaara snorted as his aqua eyes scanned the city. As far as he knew, there were no sick, let alone mortally ailed people in his village, but then again, he didn't really get out much.
They had reached the outskirts of the village where the suburbia lay, when he stopped suddenly, confusing the feathered creature. It's quiet here, he thought. Usually there are children playing. Gaara put two fingers to a closed eye and held his palm up while sand gathered above his skin, forming an eyeball that floated around. The eyeball floated through an open window of an adobe house to their far right. After a while, the eyeball came floating back to Gaara and dissolved. He put his hand down and opened his eye. "There's been a spread of influenza around here. One household has a very bad case. Their daughter won't survive the night."
The parrot almost seemed to smile. "I couldn't be happier for them."
"So, you're gonna wait till she's dead, then?"
"No! I save her!"
Gaara was surprised by this reply. The parrot flew off his shoulder and into the house. Gaara followed, taking care to be as quiet and invisible, so as not to intrude upon the sickened family. He lay in wait, in the shadows of the house, watching the astonished faces of the family in their beds, as a parrot flew into their house and landed on the lap of a young woman, only a little older than Sarafu. She had crystaline blue eyes, like a clear stream of spring water, and murky brown hair the cascaded down her shoulders in crinkled waves. Besides the stunningness of her surprisingly bright eyes, the girl wasn't a spectacularly beautiful person. In fact, her sickness only seemed to make her look uglier, but her eyes never dulled.
"Bird?" she finally managed to breathe out.
The parrot did not answer. It merely lay down and closed its eyes, never to open them again.