I do not own naruto
The first few chapters will be a little boring if you're not interest in reading her grow up. Sorry, can't just jump straight in or else character will be really bland and I can't work development with out starting at the beginning. I'm going to assume that it's not just the idea of canon exploring AU in a new way that catches your attention, if you all have read the description. Major warning if you haven't figured it, this is an SI/OC. Expect a few other oc's too.
expect slow updates. I'm very bad at time management. Not edited, I might go back and fix some things after initial posting.
Chapter 1
The first thing she becomes familiarly intimate with is a pair of ridiculously large shades.
It's not even sunny. They almost never even leave the shadows of the cover above their heads. Why is she wearing these again?
The next is the small caravan that she currently resides in, tucked tightly into skinny arms and a small chest.
She hasn't been anywhere, she can't see anything (probably because of her stupid shades), and she doesn't remember much, but she knows that she has lived her whole life in this caravan.
She knows this in the familiar creaks and groans the wood makes as it moves, the way it shakes and corners jump as it's wheels roll along a bumpy path, the sounds of hoof beats and neighs and crunches of foliage and shrubbery being crushed and swept off the path. There is a constant harmony of jingles and whistles, wind chimes of wood and mental singing and hitting each other dully in the cool and sometimes warm wind that is always blowing, that she can feel blow over her gently as the person - the child that is holding her sits on the edge of the open back.
There is singing, from somewhere above, and there is chatter, loud laughs and whispered giggles from her side and her front and her back. It's everywhere, the strong aroma of bitter and spicy herbs and the sweet salivating scent of sweet, ripe fruits, the clashing and strumming of instruments playing tunes on and off, accompanied by multiple 'swhipsh' sounds of a lid being removed and hot steam billowing everywhere.
The air is always simmering with heat, crickets chirping off to the side while she can distinctly hear the humming constant buzz of what had always connected to frogs. It's summer and she is practically made of sweat and sticky clothing, there is no time for showers and baths if there is some. They are constantly on the move, and while the people around her are happy and talkative and lively, there is an undercurrent of worry. They are in a hurry to get where they want to be, but they disguise it nicely underneath a constant festival.
It's a nice caravan, she muses.
But it's just so wrong, and yet it couldn't be anything but right.
This caravan, for everyone older than her knows how many week or months it's been, has been her life. It's all she's ever known and that's... that's a little impossible. Because she swears there was more. If there wasn't how would she be able to even keep up this line of thought? How would she be able to determine and name these little simple joys that surround her? Heck, she even knows she's a baby, a newborn or at least somewhat recently born one.
There wasn't just this, there had to be something more... but then, what is it? Because despite the persistent feeling that told her something was wrong, she couldn't imagine anything but this.
Nothing but her life in a caravan and the arms that embrace her.
She's never listened much to the voice of the one that holds her, only because the words that she does understand are so far and few inbetween and spoken so softly that she just doesn't honestly hear them. But weeks it must be, after when she can finally see - through her shades and just the world in all it's intimidatingly sized glory - that she hears the voice of the one holding her.
A she, she thinks. Her voice is high and light, her words spoken like she can't decide whether she wants to speak, sing, or hum, and most of the time their meant for her. She doesn't most if not all words, but she understands the questioning tilt to the end and the rhetoric feel, like the voice doesn't really expect her to speak back.
The tone of a voice can be just as telling as the words spoken. For now, at least.
They're questions, repeated and recycled at different times of the day. She's pretty sure they're just asking for the state of her stomach and whether it requires sustenance. Or whether she needs to go to the toilet or something.
It's constant, the questions, and she's become quite attached to the thought of communicating with this person doesn't really bother her. In however long she's been alive she's come to connect to them as family. She's not entirely sure that it's true, for all she knows this child that holds her could just be watching over her every time she is conscious for it. But she's sure she isn't.
Whatever it is, she feels safe and has no ill feelings against this being.
So after she's heard this voice and has familiarised herself to it, she realises that the term 'Hide' that is said always endearingly and promising, almost every time the soothing voice whispers against her ears, is her name.
Hide, she thinks.
Sleep, sleep, sleep, eat, eat, eat, listen, listen, listen.
How much longer will this last? Hide isn't complaining, but she is starting to wonder when they will reach their destination. It can't be too far now. She has heard the murmurs of anticipation, spoken quietly but heard loudly in the deep sleep of the night. It shouldn't be too long now before they reach the village that the adults speak of in a language she is just starting to understand.
Hide is quite content to wait it out, but she is however, a little... disheartened when they are set back. Mainly because of how they are set back.
She isn't quite sure of what she expected of this world but for some reason Hide is greatly surprised of ninja's.
It happened sometime after noon. She had just recently 'eaten' lunch and had been playing with some rattle toy someone had crafted. As usual, the merchants, the traders, the gypsies and normal people that forms this tightknit community traveling together had been singing and talking away, as the day had been expected to be normal. There was steam and heat in the air, an unfortunately warm breeze, and the natural sound of wildlife.
Hide had been resting lazily against her skinny armed carrier, staring into empty air as she felt for the faint presences she had always known at the edge of her senses. It had been jarring at first, to be able to just feel the people around her without actually touching them. And it wasn't like feeling them with a hand, but more like the world felt heavier where they stood, and she could connect to them. It had made her feel unbalanced and frustrated at first, because despite having nothing but her few recent months of life, Hide knew that she shouldn't have been able to feel them.
But she could and had accepted that she would always feel them, so imagine her shock when those presences at the very edge of her field, ones that she had intimately known was there from the beginning of this weird mess, disappeared. One moment it was like they were a part of her body, an extension of her spine, her organs and her limbs, little tiny coils and clenches in her body, and the next they were just... gone.
She distinctly remembers feeling empty for a second, confused and breathless, when they came back almost as fast as they left, moving in a pattern that she couldn't distinguish between the sudden sheer panic she can feel radiate around her. The music had stopped, the chatter had stopped, the skipping and peaceful walking had stopped, and was replaced by stifled screams and a mad dash to the safety within the caravan.
The child holding her scrambled further into the caravan, arms tightening around Hide as others tried to fit inside too, bringing swinging doors to a close.
Hide could hear the gasps and desperate breaths, each other emanating worry and fear as they tried to calm down. Outside of the caravan, Hide sensed unknown presences, ones that she knew didn't belong, disappear. They'd be moving fast, up and down and to the side, even underground and back up when suddenly they fell, not moving and slowly dissipating from her field.
The ones that she did know moved to help each other cut down the rest.
Hide had the uneasy feeling that she knew what they were doing.
Once they were done and she no longer felt the unknown figures, the caravan opened and slowly the adults she travelled with climbed out, shaking but singing praises and thank you's.
She only gets the idea of ninja's when the constant familiar voice she knows whispers about stories of them and how she wants to be one too, and that's about it.
After that incident Hide honestly doesn't think much of ninja's. She's quite content to ignore how those unknown presences had stopped moving and quietly disappeared from her sense.
Instead she thinks on how much longer they have until they get to this 'Hidden Village'. It sounds like a place of stability and Hide doesn't have a lot of faith in growing up on the road.
That, and why the hell the randomly placed mirrors inside the caravan show her hair to be a bright fucking, sea blue.