InuYasha Fan Fiction / Red River Fan Fiction ❯ Ereshkigal ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter One

 

The high noon sun burned white above her head, drenching the land below it in a heat so hot that it made Kagome feel as if she were going to shrivel underneath it. Stretching for miles --as far as her eyes could see-- was nothing but sand, rocks, and more sand. Everything blurred around her, making it literally possible for her to see the heat in the air. The cursed jewel was still clasped tightly in her hand. To her, it felt the same; the same roundness, the same smoothness, the same in every physical way. But, she somehow knew it was different. The life within it, the life that made it both good and evil, was gone. It was like it had never been the jewel Kagome knew it was, the jewel so many creatures fought and died for.

 

Was it the reason why she was in this forsaken desert?

 

She didn't doubt it. How could she when the proof of it burned her eyes and made her skin sweat? Already she could see the reddened rashes forming on her arms and new that soon blisters would form if she didn't find adequate shelter. Sighing heavily, she figured she better start walking in some direction if she were to have even the slightest chance of getting out of this hell. Why the jewel planted her here of all places and not some place more...civilized…she'd never know. So she started walking, fallowing the sun's slow and painful descent in the sky.

 

-.-

 

It seemed like hours since she started her journey to nowhere, but, when she looked up, the sun had barely moved. Her jeans constantly chafed her thighs, and she knew that they, too, would be red in irritation. Perhaps going off randomly in search of shelter was a bad thing to do, especially when she had no idea of where she was. Though, she supposed, staying rooted to one spot would have undoubtedly led to her death as well. How long would it take for her to fall dead in the sand? She prayed that before that happened the gods would be merciful and grant her a reprieve.

 

Squinting her eyes to see if she could see anything new --a tree, maybe--, Kagome's eyelids felt as if sandpaper had gone over them. It was difficult to move them without causing discomfort. It seemed that years of fighting for survival had not prepared her for the hash conditions that were so different from her home. She wanted to laugh at it all. She wanted to laugh and cry at the injustice and the wretchedness of it all.

 

Why put her here? Why make her fight again?

 

Kagome, for a split second, allowed self-pity to consume her thoughts. She hated this! She hated feeling so damn tired all the time; hated feeling so miserable. But most of all,

Kagome hated feeling weak. And in the sun's brutal rays, she felt weak. Her hands clenched, and she was once again reminded that the jewel still lay silently in her one hand. She wanted to throw the stupid marble as far as it could go, to forget about it and find her own way home. Who would miss something that had no power or no promise? Who would know it was even there, buried deeply within the course sand? No one, that's who. No creature on the earth could possibly miss something they had no clue even existed.

 

But when she opened her hand and she saw the jewel glisten in the daylight, she knew she couldn't. For as much as she wanted to forget it, to toss it away from her physically and mentally, she also wanted to keep it with her. After all that it had been through, after all she had been through, throwing it away was something she just couldn't do. It held too many memories of a past that know one but she would fully remember. The jewel was proof that the life she led for the past three years was not a lie. Throwing it away, to her, would be like throwing away everything that occurred in those last years.

 

So she pocketed the item that had somehow come to represent her life and self in so many more ways than she ever imagined. She continued walking.

 

-.-

 

It had been earlier that evening, the time when the sun had just fallen from the sky and the moon rose to its place within the constellation of stars, when him and his family found her, curled up on the ground and half alive. It was his second wife who saw it her duty to help the poor, strange woman who, by all means, looked to be from a different world. So they unpacked their belongings and set up camp, taking her into their care.

 

When the young woman finally woke, she was startled by their presence and had asked them a question that left them all unable to answer. But as she began to settle down and accept the little water and food they offered, they saw the gratefulness in her unusual sky-colored eyes. Their good ways weren't wasted. When she fell back to sleep under the watchful eye of the head of the family, and when her terrors leaked out into the living world, the old man wondered not for the first time who this woman was. And though he knew for a fact that she meant no harm, a feeling of unease crept up to his mind. Never in all of his travels did he hear the tongue she spoke.

 

“Forgive me. Please, I didn't mean to. I…”, the faint whispers broke free from sunburned, cracked, and bleeding lips. They parted again, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry”.

 

The utter amount of raw pain was not unfelt by the aging man who otherwise sat in still silence next to the woman who slept close to the fire on the wool blanket gifted to her. Movement to the side of him made him turn his head to look at his youngest wife, the one who cared for the girl. She sat next to him and gave him a small smile in greeting. To him, she was the perfect wife. She devoted herself to him and was a kind and strict mother to his children no matter if they came from her womb or not.

 

“What keeps you from sleep, husband?”

 

He sighed and looked away from her so that his gaze once more landed on the strange woman. “It is… difficult for me to understand the struggles of my heart and mind.” The old man saw his wife's eyes widen, but he ignored it for now. It wasn't everyday that he let himself speak so freely. “She is different; too different for this world. She speaks a language I have never heard before and wears clothing unfit for a woman to wear.”

 

There was a long pause as both husband and wife listened as the young woman's night terrors flowed from her lips. It really was as if she was from a different world.

 

At last, the aging man spoke again. “I think she was sent here by the gods.”

 

 

X-x-X

 

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