To Zoey(doggie)
darling, dearest, dead


If you are intersted in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other fanfic. In this fanfic, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Sabaku youngsters. Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you but that is how it goes.

Their misfortune began one day at the beach. The Sabaku children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of Sunagakure, and occasionally their parents would allow them to take the rickety path-the word "rickety", you probably know, here means "unsteady" or "likely to collaspe"- alone to the seashore, where they would spend their day as a sort of vacation until dinner was ready. The beach was crowded with sand nins cooling out as usual and it was extremely hard to find a place to lay one's blanket. One a gray cloudy day the Sabaku's had time to themselves to do wahtever they wanted.

Sabaku no Temari, the eldest Sabaku like to skip rocks. Like most fourteen-year olds she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther than when she used her left hand. As she did this, she was staring at the horizon imagining what she could invent. Anyone who knew Temari well knew that she quit her pony tail look and wore her hair down. When thinking of an invention, she would put her hair up with a ribbon to keep her hair out of her eyes. Her brain was so often filled with ideas for levers, pulleys, images of machines, that she never let her hair bother her. This morning she was thinking of inventing a chakra powered machine that could retrieve the rocks that you skipped.

Sabaku no Kankuro, the middle child, liked to examine strange and intersting things that he came across. Kankuro wa a little bit older than thirteen and was extremely intelligent. The Sabaku parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room filled with thousands of books. Being only thirteen, Kankuro of course had not read all the books in the Sabaku library, but he had read a great deal of them already, and had reatained all the information. He knew all about the tailed beasts, the Kages from all the villages, numerous types on ninjutsu and genjutsu and a large amount of vocabulary.

Sabaku no Gaara the youngest liked to bite things. He was an infant and very small for his age, barely larger than a boot. What he lacked in size however, made up for the sharp and pointy teeth that he had. Gaara was at the age where one only speaks in a series of unintelligental shreiks. Except for those words like "bite", or sometimes "mommy" or "food". For instance, this morning he was saying "Gack!" which probably meant, "Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!"

Sure enough, on the nearly deserted shores, there could be seen a rather tall figure striding towards the Sabaku's. Kankuro, who was studying a spiny crab looked up and touched Temari on her shoulder bringing her out of her inventive thoughts.

"Who do you think it is?" he asked, "It's getting closer."

Temari put a hand on her extremely large fan and tightened her grip on it. "We were the only one's here. There's no one else it could be moving towards." She had a sudden thought to do a quick summoning, but decided not to, considering she didn't know how strong the person was.
"It only seems odd," Kankuro said as if reading his sister's thoughts. "It's just the mist making it look like that though."
This was true. As the figure neared a sigh of relief was heard. It was not someone frightening at all, but someone they knew. Morino Ibiki. Ibiki was a family friend who was incharge of businness affairs and the children's personal bodyguard. They had met him before numerous times at parties and such.

Ibiki bowed slightly and looked at the children.
"Hello."
"Hi." replied Temari.
"Hiya!" replied Kankuro.
"Owy doy!!" shrieked Gaara.

"I'm fine, thank you." Despite what he said, he had a grvae look on his face. For a few seconds, no one said anything and the children wondered why he was here.

"It's a nice day." Temari said suddenly trying to break the silence.

"Yes. Such a nice day." He frowned looking out at he sea. "Children, I'm so sorry, but I have such bad news."

The children looked at Ibiki suspiciously. Violet, somewhat embarassed looked at her feet, becasue she was afraid of what might have happened if she used a summonig against Ibiki.

"Your parents," Ibiki said, "have perished in a terrible fire."

Silence.

"They perished in a fire that destroyed the entire house. I'm very. very. very sorry."

Temari looked at the ocean then back to Ibiki. She understood the words he was saying but thought he must be joking, playing a terrible joke on her and her two brothers.

"The fire department arrived of course but they were too late. The house was already engulfed in flames."

Kankuro pictured all those books that he never got to read. Now he would never be able to read all of them.

"Come with me," he extended a hand for them to follow him.

That was the day the Sabaku kids- Sabaku orphans, were led away from their previous lives, never to return to the good days ever again.