So there. ^_~
Omoide no Mori
Forest of Memories
chapter twelve:
*A Taijiya's Worries, and the Trouble With Gravity*
"Sango-chan...you're pacing again."
Sango froze in her steps.
"No, I'm not."
Kagome sighed.
"And just where are you standing?"
The taijiya glanced down at her feet, then met Kagome's eye, scowled, and turned to the window, finding that she had, indeed, been pacing the floor like a caged animal.
"You've looked out the window every five minutes since Miroku-sama left," Kagome chided gently.
Sango felt her face grow hot, and quickly spun away from the window in question. She furrowed her brow, and clenched her shoulders tight until they ached, though she didn't quite see how that would change the fact that she had been caught...
Not that she had been worried, though.
Definitely not.
She huffed to herself.
Au contraire...Miroku was quite capable of taking care of himself...so why should she be concerned for his safety? After all...he'd faced far greater odds than just a boring old neko youkai before, and come out on top each time...
Of course...Sango had been a little worried those times, too.
Wait, what was she thinking? Of course she hadn't been worried about...about him...
Yada!
No way!
She had just been a little...concerned about...
...about...
She folded her arms over her chest and sighed.
Okay...fine...so maybe she had been a little worried...
And maybe she was a little worried this time, too...but...
"Sango-chan?"
The taijiya glanced at Kagome, who regarded her with a sympathetic frown.
Sango avoided the girl's eyes and glanced back at the window.
"I've got a really bad feeling," she said honestly.
Kagome had guessed as much.
Sango rarely let her agitation show so... Not when it came to Miroku, anyway.
The taijiya often wore her emotions on her sleeve, and had never been one to hold back her tears for the sake of vanity...but, for some reason, she seemed reluctant to admit how she felt about the houshi.
Kagome had seen it right away...but no one else had really picked up on it...
~ * ~
"Say, Inuyasha...here's what I think..."
The hanyou glanced at Kagome with inquisitive eyes.
"Hn?" he asked, trying to appear uninterested as Kagome pressed her hands together like an excited child.
"Sango-chan...is in love with Miroku-sama...isn't she?"
"Ehh?"
Inuyasha facefaulted.
"Whaddya mean?" he cried, and Kagome gave him an incredulous look. He recoiled slightly, unnerved by the look in her eyes.
"You mean to tell me you didn't notice?" she demanded, as though there was nothing more obvious.
"Uhm..."
~ * ~
Kagome sighed inwardly at the memory.
Why was Inuyasha so imperceptive about such things?
She glanced at Sango again, and frowned when she saw that the taijiya's eyes had strayed to the window again, as if in hope of spying Miroku returning to the hut over the nearby hilltops.
With a sigh, Kagome rose to her feet.
She was worried herself. She knew, perhaps better than any of them, how foolish Inuyasha could be. When it came to proving he was strong, he totally lost his head. He would have done anything to make it clear that, even though he was a hanyou, he didn't need demon power to be strong in battle. He'd do anything to get a hold of a shard.
But something was seriously gnawing away at her this time. It seemed that the very air around them carried an essence of forewarning... From the moment she had been jerked awake that morning, Kagome had felt as though something would go awry.
It seemed it was a rather mutual feeling...everyone had been a little on edge that day...even Kaede, who usually managed to keep a cool head about things, had gone so far as to leave her hut to Kagome and Sango to visit a home on the far side of the village, where a young girl had fallen mysteriously ill a few days ago. The old miko had feared for the child's life, though the illness itself had not been fatal.
'Sometimes it is not an illness of the body that causes loss of life,' she had explained cryptically to Kagome as she departed, 'but, rather, an illness of the spirit'.
She had eyed the two young women pointedly with her cycloptic stare.
'Take care, you two,' she had warned, 'for something rides upon the wind currents this way. Something strong...something dangerous...and I know not what it is...not yet...'--her eye had narrowed--'but it lusts for the blood of the soul.'
Kagome really hadn't had any idea what on earth Kaede meant by that...but it sure sounded creepy.
"Nee, shinpai shinaide, Sango-chan," she said reassuringly, waving one hand, feeling like a total and complete hypocrite. "Stop worrying so much, I'm sure everything is just fine."
"Yeah," Shippou chirped from his seat in Kagome's lap, "it's not like that onineko is a beautiful hime. Miroku doesn't lose his head in a tough spot, unless there's a pretty girl involved."
"I'm not worried about him," Sango said hotly, but the blush across her face suggested otherwise. "What...what makes you think that that's what I'm concerned about...?" She stared at her hands.
Kagome lifted one eyebrow.
"Are you denying it?" she asked.
Sango nodded quickly.
"Then look me in the eye."
Sango didn't turn her head toward her, merely stooped down to lift Kirara into her arms, then stood back up as Kirara jumped onto her shoulder. She sighed as she rested her hands upon the windowsill, staring off toward the quickly darkening forest.
The sun had set.
Inuyasha was probably human by now...
She scowled.
Men are such idiots, she thought angrily. I dunno who is dumber, Inuyasha for going to fight a youkai when he's human...Houshi-sama for following to help him...
She furrowed her brow.
...or me...for being so worried about the both of them...
She sighed audibly, and Kagome stood up to walk to the windowsill as Sango dropped her forehead down onto her hands, which were folded together on the sill.
Why? the taijiya asked herself silently. Why can't I relax?
Inuyasha was strong...anybody who came across him knew that... Even though his father's daiyoukai blood had been diluted by the human blood of Inuyasha's mother, there was undeniable power behind everything the hanyou did, and there was indisputable strength within him. He was more resilient than a lot of the complete youkai Sango herself had fought...not to mention far more stubborn.
She had grown to see the half-breed as a brother, of sorts...
Granted, a very standoffish and grumpy one at times, but there was a very fraternal sentiment between the two of them. While they were often bathed in silence, the few times in which the hanyou and the taijiya had been the only ones awake...or the occasional situation where the two of them wound up separated from the others had always been moments of confidence.
He might never have admitted it, but, deep down, Inuyasha admired Sango's strength...and she his.
Miroku, however, was a completely different story.
While Inuyasha had a tendency to come off as abrasive and gruff to just about everyone, Miroku was suave and debonair... He was cool and confident; as dashing and smooth as he was devilishly handsome...
And then he went in for the kill.
Or the grope, as the case usually was.
Ooooh, he really got under her skin sometimes...was that really all he could think about?
He was attractive enough, she had thought to herself once or twice...with those big dark blue eyes and that fantastic infinitely black hair of his... If he would just stop being such a pervert all the time, someone probably would bear him a child.
Idiot.
But something still had her a little troubled...and that was that she was so worried about him in particular.
She knew quite well that Miroku was plenty self-sufficient...he'd been traveling alone for most of his life. He'd never had help from anyone before, why would he need it now? He was no fool.
She snorted.
Okay, so maybe that last part wasn't entirely true...
But still...he knew enough to be able to handle himself alone in a difficult situation, so why was she so concerned?
He'd never needed anybody's guidance before, why should he need it now?
He could take care of himself...so why did Sango have this sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that made her want to cringe?
This wasn't the first time he'd fought alone...so why did she feel as though he had told her goodbye for the last time...?
She clenched her jaw.
She was never going to be able to calm down here...
"Kirara."
She whirled for the door as the little cat demon leapt down from her shoulder to run outside.
Kirara, so it seemed, had been thinking the same thing.
Kagome extended one hand as Sango walked away from the window.
"Ch-Chotto, Sango-chan," she called. "Where are you going?"
Sango paused in the doorway, an anxious look in her eyes.
"I can't just sit here any longer," she said. "Something...something won't let me. I know you feel it, too, Kagome-chan, so don't try to act like you don't."
Kagome blinked rapidly at her, and the taijiya flapped her arms helplessly at her sides.
"Something's happened... I'm sure of it... I have to find him...I have to see with my own eyes that everything is okay...I just won't be able to sit still unless I do..."
"Demo, Sango, it's only been an hour and a half since they left," Shippou reminded. "Do you really think something would have happened so quickly?"
"Can I take that chance?" she asked in retort.
She contemplated changing into her armor, but that would have taken too long. So she just adjusted the green sarong around her hips and reached for the bamboo curtain.
"If I went after those two morons and it turned out nothing was wrong, then I'd feel foolish," she said, and her eyes hardened. "But if something did happen to them, and I had remained here...I'd never forgive myself."
Shippou gave her a look, and she paused a moment, then threw her shoulders back in defiance.
"Nobody said you guys had to come," she snapped, and brusquely shoved the curtain aside.
Kirara had already run outside, and was transformed, seated on her haunches, awaiting Sango's signal. The fire cat demon snapped to attention as Sango exited the hut, and the girl clambered up onto Kirara's back, and turned her head back over her shoulder when she heard a shout from behind her. She frowned when she saw Kagome run outside after her, shouldering her backpack, Shippou clinging to her shoulder.
"Atashi mou iku," she insisted. "Wait for me, I'm coming too!"
"And me!" Shippou shouted.
Kagome paused.
"Shippou?" Sango asked. "But it might be dangerous..."
Shippou didn't appear to like the sound of that.
"Maybe you should wait here, Shippou-chan," Kagome suggested with a grin as Shippou paled, "in case the guys come back, we don't want them to wonder where everyone went."
Shippou nodded quickly in agreement, and ran back to the doorstep.
"I'll wait here till you come back," he said, and waved his tiny hands. "Be safe!"
Sango gave Kagome a grateful smile as the girl leapt up onto Kirara's back, pulling off her backpack and patting the top of it as she dropped it into her lap.
"Who knows what those boys might have gotten themselves into," Kagome said with a grin. "I'm glad Mama suggested I take the first aid kit with me..."
Sango smiled broadly.
"Then, let's get going!" she called, and Kirara sprang forward.
As Kirara bounded deeper into the blackening forest, Sango clung to the fur between the cat's shoulderblades as if for dear life. The sinking feeling in her gut was only worsening, and she didn't like it at all.
Inuyasha...
Houshi-sama...
Please...
Please be all right...
It was odd, come to think of it...
The first time she met Inuyasha, she had tried to kill him. True, she had been under Naraku's deception at the time, but she still found it ironic that a man she had been so intent upon killing at one time she was now worried to death for.
It all seemed so...backwards.
Sometimes the whole world struck her as terribly backwards.
Her little piece of it in particular.
After all...she was a taijiya...a demon exterminator...
A huntress all her life, and here Sango found herself traveling in the company of two of the very creatures who were meant to be her prey. She was quite sure that their motley little clan must have looked downright absurd to anyone looking on... Granted, a houshi might have traveled alongside a taijiya, but a kitsune, a hanyou, and a girl from the future as well?
After their initial meeting, Sango and Inuyasha's relationship had been rocky, at best. She was resentful, he was curt and gruff... She didn't want anything to do with him and that was just fine with the both of them.
But one day Inuyasha had suddenly looked very different in her eyes...the day he had saved her brother.
The day he had saved her from killing her brother...
It had been the hanyou himself who had slapped the wakizashi from Sango's hand as she drove it toward her brother's heart, believing that the only way to free the boy from Naraku's grasp was to free him from this world... It had been Inuyasha who had saved her from making the worst mistake of her life... To this day, Sango was not sure how she could ever thank him enough for that...
So she certainly wasn't going to sit back and let him get himself killed before she had the chance to really try.
And then...there was Miroku.
She never knew quite what to think of him.
He was lewd, he was sarcastic, and he surely needed to keep his hands on a leash...but beyond all that he was one of the most loyal and dedicated people she knew. For all the times Inuyasha had insulted him and his integrity...for all the times she herself had slapped his wrists or smacked him upside the head, he had never once let them down...
...and she'd be damned before she failed to return the favor.
Guys...just hang on...
Wherever Miroku and Inuyasha had gone...she hoped they got to them before it was too late...
*
There was cold air, and the sound of the wind whipping past at an incredible speed, howling in his ears like he was standing inside an icy tornado.
But...no...not standing...
Surely not standing...for what was this giddy freefall sensation?
It was like the tickling feeling one got in the pit of the stomach when descending too quickly from a great height.
Miroku's indigo eyes opened slowly, torpidly, as if his eyelids were made of lead, and he tried to blink away the haze that seemed to rest like a film across his line of vision, but seemed to not have the strength to do so. He blinked again, trying to will away the fog before him.
What was happening?
Where was he?
Was he...was he dead?
Ah...yes...that must be it, he found himself thinking rather calmly.
He remembered now... He remembered how he had been hit by a powerful wave of dizziness, as though he had been spun in tight, endless circles with his eyes closed, and how he had pitched over the ledge, the world growing dark as he plunged toward the earth from several hundred feet up.
Yes...he must have died then...yes, that had to be it...
However, he had never envisioned death to be quite like this...
He closed his eyes again.
Rats...he really wasn't ready to die yet...but he just didn't seem to have the gumption to get upset about this right now. He suddenly felt as though he hadn't slept in a month...his eyes were so heavy...everything seemed to be running at half-speed...
He'd make a fuss about things later, perhaps when he had more energy...
After all, he had all of eternity now...right?
He tried to open his eyes again, curious as to what exactly was going on around him.
Was he passing through some sort of plane between earth and the Afterlife? Was this like Purgatory?
Wait...should he have been paying attention? Crap, what if there was some sort of test before one was permitted to enter Nirvana!?
He would have gasped if he'd had the energy to do so.
And then something caught his eye, and he tried to open his eyes a little wider to get a better look.
He blinked slowly.
What was that?
In the purplish light that seemed to filter all around him, there were a hundred shadows that obscured his vision in a dusty lavender fog. A myriad of darkened shapes danced before his eyes in this peculiar haze of semiconsciousness...but there was one thing that seemed to draw his attention to it...
He could see something, something not too far away from him, above him, as though suspended by invisible twine in this strange purple mist. It was reaching for him.
Was it trying to show him to where he needed to go?
In that case, he decided he'd best follow it...
He supposed the Afterlife was not the kind of place one wanted to get lost in...
He twitched his fingers and tried to lift his left arm to touch whatever it was that seemed to be reaching for him...but hecouldn't seem to get his limbs to obey...
He was just so tired...
He blinked again, and his eyes seemed to focus a little...
Well...that was awfully peculiar...he hadn't expected the Hand of Fate to really be...a hand...
But that was, indeed, what was poised above his form...a hand. A single hand, with fingers splayed out, clawing at the air rather desperately. He squinted. He believed it was the left hand...but he was rather delirious at the moment, and couldn't be sure. He found himself rather unable to recall exactly which direction was which.
Miroku hoped that wouldn't be on the test...
He stared oddly at the hand for a moment, watching as it scrabbled through the air. Was it really so desperately reaching for him?
But...why?
Who was it?
He squinted again, and a figure came into focus, attached to the hand, but only as a darkened silhouette. The lavender mists had darkened to a deep indigo curtain that seemed to swallow up any light that might have helped him to identify whoever this specter may have been...
The roar of the wind in his ears grew louder as he concentrated as hard as he could, and managed to get his left arm to move. He raised his arm to extend his left hand toward the silhouette.
And as his fingers brushed those of the ghostly hand above him, something flashed in the back of the houshi's mind, and his eyes snapped open.
Chigau!
This was all wrong!
He wasn't dead--not at all! he realized. He wasn't passing through Purgatory, he was plummeting toward the ground!
He wasn't swimming through the airy seas of the Afterlife...
...but he probably would be after he hit the ground.
Dammit...
He didn't have the energy to panic...
He just didn't have the energy...
His brain screamed at him to move...to do something, to do anything...but his body wouldn't obey him. He felt like his appendages were not even connected to him any longer, it was as if his whole body had gone numb.
Was this how it felt to die?
Desperate, he attempted again to reach for the hand grasping blindly at the air above him, though he wasn't sure how that would help things... If he was plunging through the air, headed for the unforgiving ground below, then whoever was reaching for him was falling, also...
He hoped it was no one he knew...
He lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes, trying to see who it was. He didn't want to die with absolute fear being the last thing on his mind... Perhaps if this hand belonged to a woman with a beautiful face...
He suddenly wanted to slap himself again.
What the hell am I thinking??
He forced his eyes to open fully, but they felt ready to roll back in his head. Not that he would have been able to see anything, anyway. Everything was obscured, either by the violet vespers of the night, or because of whatever the hell it was that had completely incapacitated him.
He saw the dark silhouette draw a little bit closer to him, and barely felt as the fingers grasped at the purple fabric of his robe, clutching him close as a mother would cradle her child to protect it from the world. He heard a peculiar sound, like that of a huge flag being unfurled, and then the wind around him seemed to slow. He was curious now...what was happening?
He wished he could have seen straight...
Miroku wanted to scream as he felt his grip on reality slipping away.
He found it painfully ironic how one could have had a grip on reality in the first place...as truth and other such intangible things had a terribly annoying way of slipping right through the fingers...scurrying away into oblivion before ever being caught in enough light to truly be seen.
Alas, he mused sourly, such was the fate of humanity...to die without ever really glimpsing the secrets of life...to have vitality stripped away too soon to have learned all that one could. It seemed so very unfair that the human race was doomed to live such a short life, and such a fragile one, at that.
Struggling to maintain a shred of consciousness, he grit his teeth against the enveloping shadows around him, but, alas, he found that the darkness of night was creeping its way back into his mind, pulling him farther and farther into the eternal black nothingness...
No!
Miroku wanted to bite his tongue until it bled, believing that, if nothing else, the pain might be able to snap him from this stupor.
But...but wait! I don't want to--!
The darkness didn't care.
The last thing he saw as the night enveloped him was a single silvery feather drifting past his face as though floating on a current of water....serene and liquid in its movements.
That was most unexpected...
He watched it as it floated near his hands, and he managed to barely catch it between two fingers of his left hand, and closed it into his palm, clenching it tightly, as though it alone might have been enough to keep him alive...as though attempting to keep a hold on one tangible thing, one final tactile object to tether him to this realm...
And then he found himself slipping into a threatening eternity of black unconsciousness.
Sorry...he thought rather miserably. Minna...suman ne...I'm sorry I crapped out before we finished our quest... Sorry I couldn't stay...
Inuyasha...I'm sorry I couldn't help you... Don't die, it'll break Kagome-sama's heart...
Sango...suman...I'm sorry I never told you how I...
He never finished his thought.
And the wind howled all around him as he felt himself slip away, like the haunting sound of a solitary wolf baying mournfully into a moonless night sky...
* * *
Kono mama zutto yuku no ne uso o tsumikasanete mo,
Kono michi o nido to modoru koto wa dekinai.
Ano toki fumihazushita kyoukaisen no mukou ni,
Kimi wa donna yume egaite ochite itta
You always keep going like this, and even if you pile on the lies,
You can never again return by this road.
What kind of dream were you weaving and slipping into,
That time when you lost your footing on the other side of the boundary?
~Kajiura Yuki
* * *
Author Notes:
Here it is...just as promised...chapter 12. ^_^ And no, there is not chapter 11...that was on purpose. Chpater 11 is the level of bankruptcy United had to file...and thus laid me off...so I refuse to have achapter 11 in my fic. Call me superstitious or whatever...but...yeah... ;p
*Glossary of Terms*
I am assuming we all know the Inuyasha basics, like youkai, hanyou, Shikon no Tama, etcetera, so those will not be translated here. Also, I'm only gonna put translations once, so as the story goes on, the glossary will dwindle. I'm hoping your memories will serve you, because otherwise the glossary will be absolutely enormous! Some chapters probably won't even need one, so I hope you guys can keep track of words already translated. Let me know if it gets too tough.
shinpai shinaide : "Don't worry."
hime: Did i do this one yet? i don't think i did... a hime is a princess. We all know Miroku has a weakness for those... ^_~
"Atashi mou iku!": "I'm going, too!" So wait up! ^_^
chigau: I apologize if I have already done this one... I forget... >_< Chigau means different, more or less... So when used as an interjection, as Miroku did, it's sorta like saying, "That's not right!" or "You're wrong!"
minna: Everyone... Usually translated as "guys" (as in "you guys"), especially in a familiar scenario.
Not too many this time. Minna, dou? Whaddya think? Any guesses? ^_^
~~hikari