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The miniscule pair of doll shoes had been sitting way too long in their small bedroom. They lived in a tiny hut, a meter from where sea, sky and shore met and mated in Samar, a tiny fishing island in Visayas The salt was thick in the air, but Sakura never minded it.
On one of the rare times her husband, her beloved Sasuke was home, when he was not wrestling with the waves, she saw him eye the pair of tiny shoes suspiciously. Then a few hours later, when they had rumpled the bedsheets, he’d look at them again.
Wrap an arm around her waist. Play with her hair. All the while looking at the shoes.
“Are you going to sell those shoes, Sakura?” he asked, lips on her bare shoulder. She’d shudder, and rest her head on his bare chest. He smelled like the wind and sea.
They were for our child.
Almost every night when her Sasuke was there, there were countless efforts. She’d wanted it: the joy of having a small child in her arms. Sasuke wanted it, too.
“Maybe,” said she.
*
It was storming.
Sakura checked the hut, and she was not surprised when it was raining cats and dogs outside. The wind howled, and she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders tight, the other free hand clinging to her old red umbrella.
She found her: the lone shape, a young woman with hair the color of flax, her forehead marked by a blue diamond. She was not a local.
An outsider.
Just she herself had been.
“Do you need a place to stay?” Sakura asked the stranger.
The stranger pursed her lip. Looked her up and down.
“Yes.”
“Please stay at our home.” Sakura glanced at the sea. Her husband was out there, fighting this storm. He’d be home eventually. Yet that had not allayed years of worrying for him and his safety.
“Do you live alone?” The older woman blinked.
“With my husband. He is at sea. He will not mind.”
*
He arrived at dinner, as Sakura put garlic rice and salted fish on their guest’s plate. They ate with their hands here, not like the city where Sakura had been from.
“We eat with our hands here,” Sakura explained.
Their visitor nodded in silence.
“So what is your name?” Sasuke asked, his eyes dark and weary. He did not sound tired. All the years of fishing had taken their toll on him.
“Tsunade.”
Sasuke took the seat beside Sakura.
“So what are you here in this sleepy fishing town for?” Sakura asked her.
“I travel.”
*
The sun shone in the morning. Sakura watched as Tsunade took a sip of coffee, her tinted lips pursed. Beside Sakura, Sasuke sat, drinking his coffee and eating his tuyo in silence.
“I want to thank you,” she began, as she saw Sakura.
“There’s nothing to thank,” Sakura replied. It was only basic to be kind, after all.
“Hn.”
“You and your husband.” Tsunade’s brown eyes danced in amusement. She was grateful, Sakura realized.
“For your kindness.” She surveyed the room - the frogs outside, the wood carving of the moon that hung at the door (a present from Sasuke before they had married). Wind and waved vied for noise outside. And lastly: the small doll shoes that Sasuke-kun and she had saved up for.
They had never been used.
Tsunade glanced at her and Sasuke again.
“As a reward, you two will get what you two have been wishing for.”
*
“What do you think she meant?” Sasuke’s voice was lower than usual. They lay together in bed, intertwined in sweat and the smell of the sunset.
Sakura thought again of the doll shoes.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted.
*
There were many things that Sakura knew, for the wife of a man who wrestled with the sea and fish.
She knew it, when the weeks had passed and the cravings came. When she told her Sasuke, he’d been happy, she knew.
The baby shoes would one day have an owner.
*
The waves blew and crashed against the shell-filled sand.
On the sand, were the bare footprints of a child.
“Sarada!”
She came running when called, a bright child of six, with wide black eyes, a child of the night like her Sasuke.
“Yes, Mama?”
“Your father’s here.”