The wind goddess

Rescue

Gaara, Kankuro, and Shikamaru searched in the library for some information about the sand people and their domicile, but they found less then they had expected. "Ahrgh! That doesn't help us!", Kankuro shouted frustrated and threw a book about the history of the desert on the ground. "Kankuro, stay calm! It doesn't help us if you disturb our concentration!", Gaara said a bit irritable and went on reading a large scroll with old stories about the sand people. Shikamaru never saw the two brothers arguing. "They must be very worried about their sister.", he thought and looked back to the map from the desert. "There has to be some information about the sand people. Maybe they are only not so obvious.", Shikamaru thought and got a pencil and paper. "We have to list all the hints about the sand people. Kankuro what did you found out?", the Konoha Shinobi asked the puppeteer. "Nothing usefully. Only that their village has to be in the middle of the desert. But no one ever found it. And then something silly. A sand migrant believes that he saw a man in the desert, and suddenly he disappeared in the next moment. Maybe he had a sunstroke.", Kankuro said. "Hmm, that is weird. A lot of those tales describe a likewise situation. They tell of the "sand-man". He wanders through the desert, looking for his wife the wind spirit. Sometimes you can see him, but suddenly he is gone in the next moment.", Gaara covered. "And then this wind spirit is in every tale, too. Sometimes it's a spirit or a goddess. She is the familiar spirit of the sand people." The three boys looked at each other. "All this stuff makes no sense. We should ask Ebizou-sama if he knows something about the sand people.", Kankuro proposed. Gaara and Shikamaru agreed and so they made their way to the presbyter of the village.

"Oh, hello Gaara. What are you doing here?", Ebizou asked in surprise when he saw the three ninjas in front of him. "Hello, Ebizou-sama. We have a question for you.", Gaara explained and told him about the current situation. "Hm, that sounds really unusual for the Sand people. I will tell you all that I know about them.", Ebizou offered and tolled them to have a seat. He closed his eyes and begun to speak:

"There exists the theory, that the sand people were the first Ninjas in the desert. In the beginning, they were nomads but as time goes by they become settled and build their village in the middle of the desert. Only an inhabitant of this village can find it and so the village stays concealed. For ages, the people lived in peace and undiscovered and one day a powerful Kunoichi became the leader of the village. She was able to use the sand and the wind and combined them to make huge sandstorms. This ability should never get lost and with the help of a forbidden jutsu, the Kunoichi was able to become immortal in the form of reincarnation. But this happened only all a hundred years and so the tales of the mighty Kunoichi turned with the time into tales of the goddess of the sand village.

There also exists another story. It's the legend about the first Suna ninjas. One mighty sand Kunoichi was the true wind spirit of the sand people. But because she was a holy spirit, she wasn't allowed to fall in love and has to stay a virgin, if not she could lose her powers. But fortune had other plans for her and so she fell in love with an unknown man. They capt their relationship as a secret but then the Kunoichi was pregnant. When the other sand people discovered their secret, they took her after birth away from her baby and exiled her lover and her child. Of suffering and pain, the woman died but her proscribed man and child survived in the desert and became the first Suna ninjas.

And after this, I have one last tale for you. It says that the wind spirit needs a human sacrifice because the spirit can't exist without a body. And so every century the sand people are looking for a perfect sacrifice for their spirit.
But I think this is the craziest tale of all."

After the boys listened to every tale, they thanked Ebizou-sama that he spends his time with them and went back to the library.
In the library, Shikamaru returned back to the research for information on the sand people. "How can you do this, Nara? I'm tired and I lost totally my concentration!", Kankuro asked him and watched him how the Konoha Ninja read one book to another. "I have the feeling I saw some important information. But before Ebizou-sama told us all the stories, I didn't pay attention to this one text.", he answered and browsed through another book. Suddenly he stopped and read the paper in his hands again and again. It was about a citizen of Sunagakure who was interested in astronomy. One night he was in the middle of the desert and made some research and wrote down his exact position with the help of the star constellation. While he was making his notes, he mentioned something strange. He saw two persons not far away from him. And in the next moment, there were vanished. He thought that he was exhausted and was seeing some hallucinations now. But because he was a kind of a scientist, he wrote everything down in his notes.