Hinata was going to need a sun hat. She wanted to spend more time looking at each of the little pots, but she knew if she spent too long out here, she would end up with another sunburn. She crouched to a freshly propagated bud. This one wasn't here yesterday. Gaara must have come in last night and did some work.
Maybe he could teach her.
Hinata had spent time in the Hyuga gardens and could identify and care for most of the medical plants that they kept, but she didn't even dare water his pots. She didn't know much about cacti, but she knew that you shouldn't overwater them, and she would be devastated if she killed one of his little pots.
She kept thinking of this place as a greenhouse, and many of the cacti were green, but despite the occasional smell of damp soil, there wasn't the humidity she associated with a greenhouse. It was just like outside the walls without the wind.
The lack of wind kept the heat on her skin and didn't give the relief of a breeze even though it too was warm, but it kept from getting sand in her face.
Shade came over her, giving her skin a brief relief that told her she should probably have gone inside already. Hinata looked up at Gaara, and his small wall of sand behind him was hovering over his head. Was this how he stayed so pale? "You spend a lot of time in here."
"Sorry." Hinata brushed off her hands as she stood up. "It reminds me of a tiny forest."
Gaara's non-eyebrows twitched together. "Is this what it looks like?"
"I guess not, but it's the closest thing I have." Hinata waved at the green in the pots.
"What does it look like?" Gaara wondered.
How did you describe a forest to someone who never saw a tree? Had he ever felt wet grass? There was dry yellow tuff in some of the most solid ground that somehow managed to survive throughout the desert, but not what she was used to.
"Uhm. I should get inside. Let me see if I can find something to draw it with." Hinata offered as she headed back into the back door with Gaara curiously trailing behind her.
Hinata sketched him the trees she was familiar with. Tall and leafy, fat and spine-y, some bearing fruit. "And in the spring, they have flowers like this." She drew a flower on the side of the page and then little versions all over the tree. "They're pink, and they are only there for a few days before they fall off, and the streets are covered in pink petals."
Gaara shifted to peer at her paper. He had never been outside the village when he was a child, and he hadn't left here since. He knew that there were trees but just had never seen one.
Gaara lifted his hand to call the sand to make him a flower that looked like the one in her drawing.
Hinata put her hand over it and pulled her fingers together. "Much smaller."
Gaara adjusted the size until she approved. "It's very small."
"They make cherries if the tree bears fruit." Hinata drew a cherry. "Some trees are just pretty, but others make these." Hinata showed him. "They are tart and have a big pit in the middle."
"They are also pink?" Gaara wondered.
"No, they are red." Hinata shaded in the image with the side of her pencil. "And they can stain everything."
"Can we get cherries?" Temari may be able to get them.
"Maybe preserved." Hinata looked at her sketch, and her face downturned.
Sand gathered as he tried to make a smaller version of her tree in front of them. The flowers in the image seemed to cover the tree even more than the leaves, so he covered it in her little flowers.
Hinata pulled her knees to her chest, trapping her sketchbooks as she looked at them. "Almost." The sand shifted against his will into another form. "That… actually what they look like."
'Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean I haven't.' Shukaku told him.
"Shukaku has seen them." Gaara relayed.
"Do you miss trees Shukaku-san?" Hinata wondered.
Shukaku fell silent, considering her. Gaara couldn't remember anyone ever talking to him directly before.
"It's probably been a long time since you have seen any if Gaara-san's never seen them." Hinata thought out loud, looking at the tree as it started losing peddles in a fake wind, each disintegrating before it got far.
Hinata snapped down the pan in place and took a deep breath. She really shouldn't slam things around when she was mad. She didn't want to alert Gaara to her mood. Knowing that he could feel everything was restricting because she didn't want to frighten him back into her room if he misunderstood her temper.
She wanted to chuck the stupid pot across the room.
But she didn't. She took a deep breath, emptied the contents, and tried again. The room was filled with an overwhelming spice smell that burned her eyes, telling her she added far too much. She hated the food here.
No. She didn't.
Hinata sighed. She was just frustrated. Calm down. It's not even that much wasted.
… She just… missed home.
Gaara flipped through the pages of drawings that Hinata made of her home. He never really thought there would be so many kinds of trees and flowers.
'Are you deliberately torturing her?' Shukaku asked.
"What do you mean?" Gaara stopped on his page.
'You are reminding her that she was somewhere else before she was trapped here with us.' Shukaku explained. 'You are just making her want to go home.'
Gaara looked at the forest scene she drew and frowned. "If we bring it here for her…"
Shukaku rolled his eyes in his head. 'You are just giving her a fake copy. She knows the difference.'
"She's not going to forget about it just because we don't talk about it. Isn't it worse to act like her home never existed?" Gaara asked. "She will miss it either way."
Shukaku didn't seem to have an answer for him.
Temari was happy to see Gaara's door open and see him not hidden away in his room. Hinata's face lit up to see them more than it had in the past. She didn't look so depressed this time. Maybe Temari wouldn't have to worry about them so much this time when she left.
She was a little concerned about the way Gaara watched Hinata as she unloaded the things she requested with Kankuro. Temari would have expected maybe jealousy because he was used to having his little friend to himself, but he looked ashamed when he tore his eyes away.
Temari couldn't be sure what was going on in his head. It was usually simple and incorrect, but it didn't always make sense to her how he made the assumptions he did. She hoped that was all that look was.
"Burn cream?" Kankuro wondered. "It's in the medical kit."
"I know. I just have had a few accidents." Hinata slid her hands over them. "And more than one sunburn."
"You go out without sun cover." Gaara pointed out.
Hinata opened her mouth, but she thought better of what she was going to say, snapping it shut as she looked at them. Temari didn't like that. What was she going to say that she felt the need to hide? "I would like a sun hat."
Gaara waited for his sister to come to his room after Hinata went to bed. Temari was wearing the face she did when she was concerned about something. Maybe Hinata told her what he had been seeing.
Temari didn't come straight for him. Her eyes fell on the sand table and Hinata drawings, but Gaara encapsulated them before she could get close enough to see them. He didn't want to share. She set her hands on her hips and came to sit with him. "You're in a mood."
"I don't know what you mean." Gaara lied.
Temari frowned at him. He turned his head away.
"Did she ask to leave?" Gaara wondered. "When you talked to her."
Temari stared at him for a moment. "No, has something happened?"
Maybe he shouldn't have asked. "Bring her plants from her home village and books on caring for them."
"Did her plant die? Is that what you're upset about?" Temari wondered.
Gaara would let her think that.
'Do you think bringing things she misses here will do anything but make her want more?' Shukaku hissed.
"I'll bring her the whole forest if she wants it," Gaara answered.
Temari laid her hand on his shoulder. She may have misunderstood who he was saying that too, but it didn't really matter. "I'll find her something hardier."
"And cherries," Gaara added.
Temari smiled. "Anything for you?"
"A book with trees in it," Gaara answered.