Chapter 2: Name it claim it!

Ino jolted awake as a scream rent the nighttime air. Her heart rate somehow managed to increase from its already frantic pace when she realized she was not in her bed at home. It was too dark to see where she was, but she could tell she was on the ground. Footsteps pounded down a hallway nearby. 

Dang it! Shoot! Ugh. 

Ino felt like the vocabulary that her parents and life had thus far equipped her with was not adequate to describe her impending doom and resulting terror. If she didn’t die in the next five minutes, she resolved to make cousin Inoyama teach her some “potty-mouth” words, as her mother like to call them whenever she scolded Ino’s cousins. Ino looked around frantically for a place to hide or a weapon to use and started to crawl towards a desk in the corner. 

Have to be a brave ninja like the rest of my clan. Brave. I am brave. Have to be sneaky like my cousins who never ever get in trouble like I do even when we all do the same things. 

The door flew open and she couldn’t help but let out an, “EEP!” at the sudden combination of sound, light, and surely evil people. 

Not mom. Not dad. Maybe I should scream too. Or was it me that screamed in the first place? 

Just as she was preparing to let out her best scream one of the evil people spoke in that urgent but trying-not-to-be-scary adult voice, “Sakura sweetie are you ok? Another nightmare honey?” 

“I’m not Sakura, I’m Ino!” Ino heard her voice respond, even though she hadn’t really meant to say anything. One of the evil people gave her a nice smile and said she knew who she was, while moving over to sit on the bed that Ino only now realized had been behind her.  

“I’m ok mom.” Came a rough voice from the bed, sounding very much not ok. Finally, the logical part of Ino’s brain broke through the fight-or-flight walls and informed her desperately: 

Sleepover. 

Sakura’s house. 

Mebuki-Sakura-mom-not-evil. 

Looking over she saw Sakura crying softly into Mebuki’s shoulder. Mebuki gestured to Ino and, still reeling from the last 10 seconds of life, Ino eventually processed the motion and got up on the bed and hugged Sakura too. 

“It was just a nightmare sweetheart, shh, shh, it’s ok.” Mebuki’s quiet cooing did wonders for Ino’s stress level. Some part of her brain started analyzing why, recalling conversations with her dad about calming stressed people with low, slow, and calm tones. Her dad was a therapist after all. 

“Sorry for scaring you Ino-chan.” She faintly heard Sakura apologize into Mebuki’s armpit. 

“What? Oh. Me? No, I wasn’t scared, it’s ok.” Ino sort-of lied quickly. She definitely had been scared, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. Sakura had woken her up with nightmares before and usually she wasn’t in an immediate panic. Why had she been so scared this time? Just because they were at the Haruno house instead of hers? No… That had happened before too. 

“It seemed like an especially bad one tonight dear, do you want to talk about it?” Came Mebuki’s soothing tone again. Sakura switched from nodding during the first half of the sentence to rigorous shaking at the end. “Ok, that’s ok. You know you can always talk to your father and me, isn’t that right dear?” 

“I’m not her dad! I’m Ino!” Ino responded, more indignantly than last time. To be fair that was quite the mistake Mebuki had just made. Ino wondered if she was ok.  

A chuckle came from not-evil person number two, who Ino had forgotten was still at the doorway. “That’s true Ino, I’m Sakura’s dad! But I think that you’re probably more courageous than me so maybe Sakura should tell you anyways, I might not be able to handle it!” 

That was Kizashi, Ino’s brain dully informed her, as if having to follow around a very annoying friend and apologize for them after every interaction. Ino turned bright red but nodded, saying, “You can talk to me Sakura-chan, I’m very kor-adge-us.” She was pretty sure it was a good thing. 

Mebuki was glaring at Kizashi for some reason, and he shoved off the wall and walked over to the bed and began rubbing Sakura’s back. “Just kidding Hananoke, you can always come to me and I’ll be brave just like Ino.” Hananoke was supposed to mean flower-hair Ino was pretty sure; it was Kizashi’s nickname for his daughter. Ino felt it was a bit redundant. 

After a few more minutes of calming words, Ino returned to her cushions and blanket on the floor. Sakura and Ino used to sleep in the same bed together but then Sakura had started getting nightmares and tended to thrash around a bit, so Ino had started to sleep on the floor. Finally, as Ino was able to think about the last few minutes she realized why she’d been so scared. The scream Sakura (assumedly) had let out had been unlike any Ino had heard in her life. Some instinctual part of Ino had recognized that scream and known something terrible was happening. 

The adults kept saying that it was just normal nightmares, just like any kid, but Ino wasn’t so sure. Ino decided the main problem was that Sakura’s nightmares were pretty short. A few weeks ago Ino had tried to convince Kizashi, but when Sakura recounted one of the dreams there wasn’t much to say. 

“There was a really scary man with red eyes, and he was looking at me really mean and there were some people who were really hurt around him. I think he might have hurt them.” 

“What happened next?” Sakura’s father had asked, but Sakura just shook her head. 

“Then I woke up.” 

“Well honey, you’re probably talking about one of the Uchiha.” Kizashi said knowingly. “They’re the people who protect our village when bad people try to do bad things, and they have to be very tough and brave to make sure that the bad people know they won’t get away with anything. Sometimes their eyes even go red when they are really serious. You must be remembering from when those two men tried to steal from Mrs. Tamara at the market the other day. One of the Uchiha policemen stopped them, remember?” 

Ino had nightmares. She would be at pre-school and Kiba would point and laugh at her for showing up in her underwear. Or she would be at the market and realize she didn’t know where her parents were, and scary people were watching her. Those were normal nightmares she was almost positive, not these violent people-getting-hurt nightmares. 

“Well our Sakura does have quite the imagination.” Kizashi had responded. “Maybe I shouldn’t have read her my old Sage of the Six Paths superhero books. You said one of your dreams had the Sage right Sakura?” 

“Well…” Sakura began timidly. She was always timid. That was going to change someday, Ino would make sure of it. Ino knew Sakura didn’t like causing trouble and felt like her nightmares caused everyone a lot of trouble even though Ino had told her that was dumb. “He had kinda similar clothes, but his face was different?” Sakura said hopefully. 

“I think that must be the issue then! I’ll go get some nicer books for story time, how about that?” Kizashi said in the tone adults used when they were confident they had solved an issue and wanted to hear an obedient yes. 

Ino wrestled her blanket around as if it had been trying to run away from her. She couldn’t wait until she was older and people took her seriously. It was so easy to see through adults’ tone of voice and body language. Adults never really took kids seriously. Even when they were pretending to be serious Ino could tell. Except for her mom and dad… They were very careful with body language and tone of voice, even around kids. Ino’s mom had told her that it had to do with being therapists and understanding human nature and had been very proud of Ino for catching on to such things at such a young age.  

“Ino?” Sakura’s voice floated through the darkness, startling Ino out of her frustrated internal monologue.  

“Yes?”

“Have you ever had a dream about someone uhmmm… uh, actually never mind.” She finished lamely. 

“Sakura! Tell me!” Ino demanded. Ino demanded things often, or so she had been told. 

You are reading story Princess of the Night at novel35.com

“No, it was really nothing it’s ok.” Sakura tried. “I was just going to ask you about, umm, your weekend.” 

“Sakura, you already asked me about my weekend. Twice! Also, I’m your best friend and I can tell when you’re lying. C’mon just tell me.”

“No! You’re going to think I’m weird just like Ami and stop being my friend!” Sakura blurted out, voice starting to tremble slightly. 

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you will! Just like Mariko did and now she’s friends with Ami and makes fun of me too.” The first few tears started to roll. 

Ino took a deep breath before saying, “You know Sakura, my dad told me that sometimes the nicest thing you can do for someone is to let them help you. It feels like they’re being the nice ones, but actually it is a lot harder to let someone help you and it makes them feel good. So do you think you could be nice to me by telling me?” 

“Uhmm…” Sakura’s voice was very small. “Ok I guess. Well… do you remember how I keep having dreams about the scary red-eyed guy?” 

“Yeah, we decided he was probably one of the policemen, right?” Ino asked cautiously. 

“M-maybe… Well… In my dream he uhh, uhm, he hurt someone.” Sakura was pretty terrible at lying. Ino was thankful to get to witness it first-hand because it showed her how obvious some of her “tells”, as her cousins called them, were. In this case the tell was that she had finished her sentence too quickly, as if trying to make up time after pausing earlier in the sentence. 

“Sakura.” Ino said patiently. She waited until Sakura had turned to look at her. “Tonight you screamed really loud.” Sakura began pulling the covers over her head, so Ino quickly said, “And it’s ok, don’t worry! Stop it. Stop, Sakura it’s ok.” Sakura didn’t appear to be interested in coming out of hiding. “Look I just, I’m guessing it was worse tonight because you’ve had worse dreams than that and tonight you looked really scared, and my dad says that sometimes the only way to be less scared in the future is to talk about it.” 

“What do you mean ‘in the future’?” Came the muffled response. 

“Well my dad says that sometimes people get scared and they try to pretend like they aren’t scared when really they are and if they pretend for too long then the bad feelings start to come out on their own, and that the only way to get better is to let the bad feelings out instead of pretending there aren’t any.” Ino used her I-know-lots-of-things voice. 

“He has this one thingy called ‘Name it to claim it’. He says you write down what the thing is so that it’s more taniba-tangyba uhh it’s a word that means you can touch it.”

“What?” At least Sakura’s voice had moved on from timid to confused. 

“Like when there’s a scary monster under the bed or in the closet, the reason it’s scary is because it’s hidden and unknown and stuff, but if it was under a bright light and all tied up and you could touch it wouldn’t be as scary.” Ino said knowingly. 

“We can’t capture my nightmares and tie them up Ino… Unless…” Sakura’s voice quickly moved from despair to awe to horror, “Do your clan’s powers let you turn nightmares into real things?!”  

“No!” Ino tried to cut her off. “No, ugh I wish my dad was here to explain it. But basically, if we write down the dreams then maybe you will feel more comfier with them and it won’t be as scary.” 

Sakura, who now had half her face out from under the covers looked confused still but said, “Ok we can try I guess. Wait… Ino have you already learned characters? Are you able to write?” 

“Uhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”

Sakura facepalmed. “Well maybe you could draw some pictures?” 

“Perfect!” Ino smiled. “Do you have any stuff around?” Sakura pointed to her desk in the corner. Ino jumped up and grabbed some crayons and a scroll before getting set up. This was exciting! She was helping a friend just like her dad! Ino couldn’t wait to tell him. 

“Uhmm Ino?” Sakura always sounded so unsure of herself. “If we do this can you not tell anyone about it please? I don’t want people to worry about me or think I’m crazy.” 

“Sakura!” Ino immediately jumped into lecture mode again. But something about the way that Sakura winced and dropped her eyes made Ino pause. Was she scared? Ino had seen that same face when she had caught some girls trying to bully Sakura about her forehead. Like she had given up trying to fight. And now Sakura was making that face in response to her? Maybe this was what her mom was talking about when she scolded Ino for not thinking about other people enough. 

“Sakura…” Ino said eventually, “I don’t think that anyone would think that, but–“ 

“Ami would.” Sakura mumbled.

“Ami is dumb,” Ino growled protectively, “and so she is going to think dumb mean stuff no matter what because she is jealous of how much smarter and prettier you are than her!” For the first time that night a small smile bloomed onto Sakura’s face. 

Sighing, she continued, “I don’t think anyone that matters would think that but if you want I won’t say anything to anyone.” There. She had listened to someone else and respected their opinion! Mom would be very pleased if she were here. The look of surprise and admiration on Sakura’s face made Ino feel wonderful, but it also made her wonder if she hadn’t ever listened to what Sakura wanted before, and that was probably very bad wasn’t it?

“Thanks, Ino.” Sakura said, smiling again. Ino smiled back and nodded to her. 

“Are you ready to name it and claim it?” Ino asked, trying to continue the slightly more upbeat mood. 

“Mhm!” Sakura hummed. “So like I said it was the scary guy again, and there was this other guy who looked kinda familiar but I don’t know if I’ve had a dream about him before. And they were fighting each other. And then the new guy said something about betraying Konoha. And then the scary guy-“ Her voice faltered, but as Ino made eye contact with her, smiling confidently, Sakura swallowed and a look of determination came across her face. “And then the scary guy’s hand got sparkly and he punched through the blonde guy’s chest.” 

Ino’s jaw hit the floor. “He what?!” 

“His hand got this weird sparkly stuff on it and he punched the other guy in the chest, but his hand uhm, like, went through the guy’s chest and out the back.” Ino realized that Sakura was watching her and starting to become worried again. 

Say something, anything, don’t just leave her sitting there! 

“O-ok! Yep! Ok I’m writing it down! Well… I’m drawing it anyways. Blonde guy… sparkly… chest-punchey-hole… Ok! Anything else?” Ino was attempting to keep her upbeat and confident tone but more than ever she was convinced these were not normal dreams. If only she hadn’t just promised Sakura to keep quiet about them, she thought glumly. 

“Nope! I think that’s it!” Sakura said cheerfully. “Ino you were right! I feel way better! I didn’t get what you meant but now that it’s all written out on a scroll it just seems like a story, not some mystery thing that is haunting me.” 

Well, at least there’s that, Ino thought. Ino, for her part, did not feel better about Sakura’s dreams. “Good! From now on I will help you name and claim your dreams and I bet pretty soon they won’t be so scary anymore!” She flashed Sakura the brilliant smile she’d been practicing after seeing a purple-haired ninja do it the other day. Yes, this was good. She was going to learn to help other people just like her dad and the rest of the Yamanaka clan. 

You can find story with these keywords: Princess of the Night, Read Princess of the Night, Princess of the Night novel, Princess of the Night book, Princess of the Night story, Princess of the Night full, Princess of the Night Latest Chapter