For Nobara

Chapter 11: Half Asleep

Oftentimes, her dreams were nightmares, terrifying visions and violent reenactments that force her to relive the darkest of what she can remember. She only rarely has anything else, something less forbidding. But when it isn't a nightmare, she dreams of sadness instead and a woman in a long pale dress.

Nobara doesn't know why. The woman looks like she could have belonged in Koori. But unlike its people, her eyes are always lonely. She is always standing there in the snow, amidst the midnight trees that one might think she is foolish... foolish to be alone at such a dark hour.

And she would always hum a lonely tune, a quiet lullaby, a familiar melody Nobara cannot be placed. The woman always hums it softly, as if she were whispering to the wind like they will carry a message that they can only deliver.

And her sadness—it would be most obvious when she would rest her tender hands on her stomach. As she closes her eyes then, her eyes that would remind anyone of the moon, indeed one might think she is foolish...

Who are you waiting for?

In that dream, there is always a masked spectator who watches her for the longest of hours. But in the end, just like all the dreams that replay the same thing over and over again, he still walks away to disappear into the trees and shadows.

He leaves her too, like he doesn't know her in the first place.

For the longest of times, that's always how it plays out. And even as the dream would fade and Nobara would wake back to reality, the longing of waiting for something inside her never really goes away fully.

It has already latched itself inside of her, that simmering feeling beneath her skin that sometimes, when she feels too much, she would grow feverish with loneliness that it would turn into anger she cannot simply control.

That is why she fears it, how it can so easily consume her—and she fears it even more when it lies dormant like this, when it would sometimes whisper quietly inside her head.

Snickering.

Echoing inside her until she goes mad.

So the unknown makes her feel uneasy—the unfamiliar voices, the white room and the bright light coming from the overhanging fluorescent lamp.

And more so the strangers.

"She's awake."

At the bedside, there is a man who wears a turban-like hitai-ate and a girl who looks at her curiously at the opposite side. She looks no older than Deidara. Her hair, though, reminds Nobara of sand like she's born and raised there.

Their staring... makes her feel uneasy.

They all make her feel uneasy.

"Call the doctor, Temari," the man says and the girl wordlessly disappears behind the door before shortly coming back with a brown-haired man in white garb.

As the new stranger approaches, the child flinches away from him but is too weak to deny his hands.

"She's a little disoriented right now but she's out of danger," he says after checking up on her. His brown eyes look worried and it baffles her. "Baki-san, can I have a word outside?"