Niwa
by Natalie
PROLOGUE
It's midnight.I silently laugh as i sneak out of the Youko Village." Will he come??? It's been at least a hundred years since I saw him." I shuddered. The cold night air was blowing from the south east. " Was that good?" I struggled to remember what he was like. I couldn't. He left me. i had lost another friend. Another blast of frigid air left me shaking. It has been over an hour now." He will not come" I mutter to myself as i head back to the familiar lights of the village. I take one last look and he appears. He died. I can tell. He looked faint as a ghost. " Did he care, or was I just something he owed to my mother???.....mother" I meet his golden gaze, still the same after all these years. " Niwa?" he calls out to me." Thank you .. Kurama" I answer. i look at him, expecting an explanation or at least something that showed he still cared. Nothing came. Slowly,I turn around to wlak back. " it is now my turn to walk away" I tell him. he looks pained. I smile bitterly.
I am Niwa...This is my life.
CHAPTER ONE: Burning Village
I could still remember that very day. I was young then, about 50 years old or so. ( Half the age of Kurama ) My name is Niwa. Kurama called me by this and I assumed that it was my name. There are may things in my past that I cannot remember. I guess that's why he named me Garden.A garden of what? I do not know. I'm a black youko but also a white one. Similar to Kurama except that I wasn't silver. My hair was ebony black but it had a shock of white. I was considered an outcast. It is not something that I would be proud of. This was the same thing that started the trouble years ago.
Yes....It was me who started it all.....
I can still hear the unearthly screams in my mind. It was the kind of sound that you would never forget. The village was burning. why hadn't I been there at that time? My mother whose face even I can't remember sent me to the river. I was done filling the jugs of water and just to spite her, I used my ki to make them float and dance as I approached my home. The shock of white covered my eyes. It was really irritating.
The wind had blown my hair in virtually every direction and mama would scold me for not putting on the dye to cover the white. I didn't see what the big deal about having that streak was. That didn't matter to me. I had to show her my new trick.
it was then that I noticed the burning village. I thought it was a big bonfire for a festival of some sort. It wasn't. The acrid smoke filled my nostrils and stung my eyes. Then I heard the screams. Mama told me not to read people's minds. Now, I didn't need to. The screaming was soo loud that it hurt my ears. I cried frantically for my mother as I blundered among the charred remains of what used to be people. Suddenly a villager came crashing down on me. " Help!!!!" I screamed. His face level with mine was filled with shock and recognition. " It was YOU! YOU! YOUR FAULT!!" His eyes were filled with madness. I squirmed out of his grasp and ran wildly into the flames. I bumped into another figure and hoped very hard that it was not the villager. Luckily it was my mother. I was surprised to see that she too had a shock of white hair. I stared. " daughter!" she shook me. " I want you to go as far away from here as you can! NO MATTER WHAT!" I was scared now and I began to sob. Tears were streaming down her face too. She turned and looked behind her. I followed her gaze and saw 5 figures. I stood rooted on the spot. I think she knew that I would not leave her because she flung me into the jungle using her ki then I saw no more.
CHAPTER TWO: My savior or my executioner?
I woke up to hear the eerie stillness of the woods. There were no animals, not even birds. I dug myself deeper into the bushes waiting for signs that I was not alone. I was not.
"Do you think we got the last of them?" Came a voice. It sounded gruff and mean. I cringed as I imagined how the youkai would look like.
"No... There were two of them" the other said. For some reason, the voice chilled me to the bone. It was not gruff, in fact it seemed to be sinister. I did not want to be caught by this man. I couldn't even read his mind. I heard three other voices each of them different. One of them however, sounded calm and devoid of any emotion. Although it scared me, I got curious. I crept along the edge of the bushes.
Their footsteps came nearer and nearer. I knew that if I did not get a hold of myself, I would scream. The sisnister one's voice came again insisting that there was one more. An arguement soon began. "There was only one Kronue." Came the cold one's voice. It sounded so definite that the rest of the men quieted down. The other however, refused to back down. So..The sinister one is named Kronue...
"How are you so sure? Are you associating with these outcasts? Has your cold heart finnally melted youko?! Do not forget that this PARTNERSHIP is TEMPORARY! And if anyone betrays us, it would be you TRAITOR!" With that, he walked deeper into the forest with his men.
Reasured by the retreating footsteps, I burst out of my hiding place feeling relief washing over me. Too late I realized that I only heard four different people. Where was the fifth?! The answer came when I saw two blazing amber pinpoints that were eyes.