Beached

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Gaara has heard of whales sacrificing themselves to the sand, giant shadows that throw their souls on the mercy of the land. They go from the deeps to burn alive on the gold of his people; burying their flippers into the fine yellow silt carried to the shore over the years and die over time, committing suicide by drowning in sand and foam.

Gaara can see them; a whole pod of these nameless things beaching themselves, silhouettes of dead bodies lying close together with mouths wide open. They are gasping for water as the sand flows in stealthily, filling their lungs and choking them to death.

There were picture books about it in a nursery with a cracked wall and someone, at one point or another, had read stories to him; not that he remembers much of it anymore. To him, a childhood has already been slain to feed the sands that fill his gourd and he avenges each second of his loss. He vows it to the shadow of a kiss his mother may have left for him at one time.

Handprints of dried blood or red paint are all that adorn the walls of his old nursery and whale-like shapes have been sketched into the grime smothering the windows that look out into a constant blizzard of sand. Their childish shapes with open mouths and spouting blowholes search for water but are only covered over with the rain of sand that billows around his home.

Gaara knows a lot about life and death and whales.

Fin.

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Disclaimer: Naruto, and all it’s wonderfully quirky little elements, is not mine.

Author Note: Oh man, because what we really need in here is some Mind-Numbing Gaara Angst, right? RIGHT?! Which is to say, I’m a big fat dork and like to break my own brain and see how much of a tater I can be regarding the better part of turning Gaara of the Sand into a giant, crying, angsting mess with a fascination in aquatic mammals (not that, you know, he’s not already sans the aquatic mammal bit).