The Way Into Mist Village (Naruto)

9: Setting Sail

[OP: "Wishing Well"--The Oh Hellos]

The night along the shore passed peacefully for most of them, but Sasuke's nightmares woke him up again. They seemed to be getting more intense.

The wind drowned it out so that no one heard, but he sat up a long time, staring at the sky and shoreline.

He wasn't the only one this time, though. Karin woke up also after a bad dream.

She just shivered.

Day 4:

Temari had everyone up at dawn again, to Shikamaru's continued annoyance.

"At least we should get to Mist Village today." Momo tried to be cheerful.

"I miss coffee," Shine said. "I hope they drink that in Mist Village."

Hinata brushed sand out of her hair and thought she'd like to have a bath.

Walking along the shoreline was nicer in some ways. The view was great, and it was easy to see if anyone was following them, but the sand was hard to walk on, so they shifted more to the rockier parts of it.

Gaara could just glide over it.

The rain Temari had predicted hit while they were still on their way to the harbor, and Gaara tried to just make a roof over a lot of them.

Sai drew a large paint umbrella, and Momo made herself one and handed some to a few of the others.

Some of them just walked in the rain like they didn't care, Sasuke included.

Suigetsu loved it--he was like a duck.

Shine tried to cheer them up by teaching them songs about rain.

"Rain, rain, on my face. Hasn't stopped raining for days. My world is a flood. Slowly I've become one with the mud."

["Flood"--Jars of Clay]

She explained that this song was about sin and being dragged down in it and needing help from God to lift you out of it for good. That was the flood, which, incidentally, tied to the biblical story of the flood which was punishment for the world's sin.

That story greatly interested the Sand siblings, since the idea of a worldwide flood was something hard for them to picture.

The story sounded kind of scary to Karin, the idea of a god drowning most of the world.

Shine said that all of them were wicked in their thoughts but for 8 people who found favor.

This story began to make some of the ninja who were still just starting to learn about this think that this God saw the wrong things that they called "sin" in a very differently light than shinobi saw them.

Sai asked Shine what sin was.

"Whatever is not of faith is sin," Shine quoted to him. "But really, we all know already what sin is. Sin isn't defined anywhere in the Bible that I know of very clearly because it's the blanket term for whatever is wrong--what is done without God's approval, even if that approval is indirect. All of us know deep down what sin is, though sometimes we don't see all the applications of it."

"I don't know if I know," Sai said.

"Of course you know," Shine said. "When you think the way someone is doing something is not right, you think they're sinning."