InuYasha Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Breathless ❯ Double personality ( Chapter 27 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or Inuyasha, but I do own the plot of this story, the characters of Aku and Tsumi… and I also think I might own the specific translations that I made of some fragments of the Inuyasha comic, given I made them myself from a publication in Spanish of the aforementioned manga, into the English language (but I'm not that sure about those, hehe, so never mind)…

 

 

Anyhow, this is not for profit, and I'm not that good a translator anyway.

 

 

Chapter Twenty Six.

 

 

`Double personality'

 

 

It was early in the morning when the priestess Kaede-sama had awakened to begin with her daily chores.

 

 

It was a beautiful day, with warm sunshine and a delicate breeze delicately sweeping across the village. Children were out playing in the grounds happily, their laughing voices filling the morning air with their joy as the adults worked in the rice paddy fields of flooded parcels and the hatake land for other types of crops, with the helpful assistance of horses, cows and farm implements made of iron.

 

 

It was a really calm day.

 

 

If only Kikyo were there with her to enjoy such a peaceful day… but the wizened priestess had already been made known it was not to be with a mystical certainty.

 

 

A lone tear dropped from a wrinkled eye.

 

 

“Onee-san…”

 

 

“Wow, look! Sunset's a red, brilliant color! Isn't it beautiful, Kaede-sama?”

 

 

“Yes… However, it's also foreshadowing… almost like the color of blood…”

 

 

She could still remember the feeling of heavy consternation she had felt at the sinister premonition that something bad had once again happened to her dear older sister, Kikyo… only to see the lights in the sky later that day, which had helped her confirm it:

 

 

Her beloved sister was dead… and this time it was forever. Kaede would no longer have her unannounced visits to look forward to, to be able to temporarily reunite with her and talk about old times… not that her sister had been much of a talker in her latest, trance-like form.

 

 

Still, it'd been painful, either way… Kaede had felt as if she'd been turned back to an eight-year-old all over again, watching as her sister died, helplessly… that heart-wrenching, gut-twisting sensation of impotence swarming in, filling her chest and threatening to drown her.

 

 

It'd been an experience she hoped she wouldn't have to repeat yet another, third time ― Even when Shinto taught their people to be usually life accepting, Kaede seriously thought that if anyone dared to resurrect her sister for their selfish needs one more time, restarting all of their suffering yet one more time; even as old, tired and growingly deteriorated as she currently was, she would probably end murdering them with her very own bare hands... for even the most accepting, pious of people had their limits.

 

 

For now, though, she had more important matters to see to… like the necessity of having her community cease and modify their rituals, prayers and other services honoring her sister, to better respond to her deceased soul's now transmogrified circumstances; then studying the case of the newest apprentice and future candidate for priesthood, the fair haired recent newcomer who she'd left alone to initiate her morning rounds and pray for abundant harvests in the summer. That person was most probably still lying on the floor of Kaede's hut, unperturbed and continuing with her unabated snoring… No one in the entire village was ever capable of waking her up when she overslept, for she dozed off like a rock when she wanted to.

 

 

…Usagi.

 

 

Usagi; that girl with the uncommon name surely was proving to be an unresolved enigma… `More so than even Kagome' the priestess thought warily.

 

 

It wasn't that she distrusted the girl herself, exactly… at least, not yet: although she was a unmistakably clumsy and lazy, inherently naïve and impressionable; loud and outspoken too, like Kagome; she was also very sweet and lovable, not unlike Kagome, and her very being seemed to shine like a beacon of light for all those that had their spiritual senses alert and developed enough to see it; henceforth, her suitability for the role she wanted to pursue was more than testified for. No… it wasn't the true nature of her intentions what the old priestess was willing to put under question… it was just that, somehow, some parts of the story which the blank-memory-suffering child had said she'd been told to introduce herself with sounded a bit off.

 

 

What kind of noble people had the time, in these times of great conflict, constant war and peril, to make friendship with a humble priest enough to rescue his daughter in a moment of imperious need, dress her up with one of their extremely elegant kimonos, a furisode, and send her off with a military escort, to ensure her safety till she got to a village far away while carrying with her a pouch swelling in silver coins?

 

 

Although not impossible, the description of the affair sounded highly unlikely. Kaede reckoned she was not a suspicious person by nature; however, a life of priesthood learned through hardships, disappointments and being on the receiving end of others' many attempts at deception, had taught her to listen to her intuitions and not to immediately take things at face value.

 

 

What had made her all the more skeptic was the furisode; a dark, delicately sewn plain blue, black and purple kimono (blue, black and purple of all colors), the only distinguishing design of which was an unknown kanon heraldic symbol in the middle of the back that she couldn't recognize, and which consisted of complex characters in very ancient language that she could roughly translate as `Consort of the Land of the Star of Crescent Shadow'.

 

 

Needless to say… which and where was the Land of the Star of Crescent Shadow… and what was more confounding, what did it entail to be its consort? Had the young, inexpert girl borrowed it from some ill-tasted, noble Lord's daughter or Lady…? …For the phrase certainly sounded like a kind of esoteric, complicated title adopted by someone wanting to either be original or increase the general fear and respect for their status ―the priestess thought with some unappeasable disdain.

 

 

Feeling pity over the pretty young woman in those hideous clothes, she had instantly told her to change into the better-combined ones that a subordinate miko had provided; the white and red garments of a miko-in-training. She had also wanted to tell the child to cut her hair and tie it down in the usual fashion of the mikos, but she'd in the end decided that this could wait until later, when she'd already become a proper miko by right.

 

 

On the other hand, the youth's occasional eerie accents, her manner of speech, the big bluish-pigmented irises…her long light mane and the quite apparent Chinese hairstyle it was in ―tight twin buns at each side of the top of her head, with two streams of tresses dropping to a little downer than her knees― all the more pointed to a foreign ancestry of some sort. There was no way this girl could have been just Japanese… for those traits to be so stand-off-ish, there had to be some other variant mixed into her bloodline.

 

 

She knew it surely wasn't youkai, though: Kaede would have been able to sense it if this girl's blood had presented even the smallest of traces of youki; so the question remained…

 

 

…Was it foreign human blood, or somewhat… other? Kaede didn't want to act so unwise as to rush into conclusion and believe that her devote, humble village had been chosen for the great honors of receiving the visit of an elder Kami, or some other celestial being, in disguise… but still; the child just had that rather subtle, so very mysterious and alluring quality about her, like nobody else the aged priestess had ever seen…

 

 

From the moment she had arrived a few days prior, many of the people in their village had acted as if they'd not only been intrigued, but also as if they'd been attracted to her with just one single glance: some of them had reacted by warming up to her rather quickly, welcoming her rather trustingly to the community with open arms, whereas others had been a tad apprehensive and attempted to stay as far away as possible… but none of them had quite been what one would describe as indifferent.

 

 

Had all that merely been because she was a newcomer, pretty much a stranger to their often secluded society, and an odd looking one at that? Kaede didn't know why this explanation, though being the most logical, never quite managed to satisfy her completely… as if something else was nagging at the edge of her awareness, with persistent insistence that it be considered too.

 

 

What that something truly was, it was something she was unable to tell as well.

 

 

`If only Onee-san were still here to offer the aid of her superior wisdom to me' the old woman thought with a dejected sigh `it might have been more helpful than anything'

 

 

Because if the girl wasn't a Kami, the only other possible cause for her being so blindingly pure as she appeared sometimes, was that she'd come from the very same kind of piteous creatures as that one individual once described by Kikyo; the mercenary with the case of double contrasting personalities known as `Suikotsu', for they believed that nothing of light could ever exist with absolute no traces of darkness… This was the possibility which had lately become Kaede's greatest source of concern. What in the world would she and the villagers do if the young girl happened to out of the blue turn into a bloodthirsty murderess when something set her off? ―Not to mention that the transition from viewing her as a Kami, to a potential cold-blooded killer, was as drastic as they ever came, at best―

 

 

However, given the chance that this last theory was actual fact, it was all the more reason for Kaede to train her. A more substantial knowledge of the spiritual forces outside herself and within would most certainly help the child learn to better refrain and control her impulses., leveling her two diachronic modes of behavior into a single, more balanced one, that'd give her the stability necessary to carry a preferable normal life.

 

 

That way, they'd be suppressing the possibility of her ever becoming a menace…

 

 

For all that they knew, perhaps that'd even been the real reason she'd been sent there, to them, in the first place.

 

 

 

 

Very far away from there and high in the mountains, the aristocratic silver haired youkai was receiving an expected visit.

 

 

“Why have you called me here, Lady of the West?” was the visitor's inquiry.

 

 

“I have called for you because something in relation to the Moon Kingdom has finally happened. I thought you needed to be made aware of that” the poised woman responded from her throne, unblinking.

 

 

“As surprising as that is, milady… what is it that you want me to do?” the visitor asked, trying not to sound too disrespectful.

 

 

“Well, as I said, I merely thought that you were of the one of the ones that needed to know” she said with what sounded like indifference “I had thought that, once you did, you would surely know what to do instead of be standing here, asking me stupid questions” she turned her head to the side and flipped her hair in dismissal.

 

 

“Of course” the figure smiled lightly in the shadows “how rude of me, please excuse my manners… it was just a tad bit unexpected…” he bowed.

 

 

“Whatever, you may go now…” the Lady said, looking terribly bored with the entire situation “I don't want you in my Palace for a second longer than necessary” she added, her eyes still to the side and her nose wrinkling.

 

 

“Will be done at once; thank you for the information… milady” the figure said before they turned back and disappeared.

 

 

The Lady sighed.

 

 

She hoped she'd done the right thing. It'd been most unavoidable, though, if she ever wanted to learn the truth about the prophecy…

 

 

The one that'd been said at the time of Sesshoumaru's birth.

 

 

She closed her eyes as she remembered the words, reciting them in her head like a long learned melody.

 

 

“When the last child of Hecate meets with the last child of Selene, a millenniums-old conflict will finally be resolved…butcrimson blood willtoobe spilledin abundance…”

 

 

Whose blood would it be… was the only question in her mind.

 

 

To Be Continued.

 

 

GLOSSARY

 

 

`Onee-san' means, formally, `Big Sister'.

 

 

`Hatake' is the farmland not used to grow rice, but other, whereas paddy fields to grow rice are known as `Ta'.

 

 

A/N: Now Kaede thinks Usagi is some sort of bipolar schizophrenic… (roars with laughter) no offence to those, though. Do you think there's even a slim chance she might be right? (amused grin) To Kaede-baba: Of course her eyes would look bigger and in a different color, since she comes from another show! …Sorry I couldn't post this as a Valentine's sort of present (chuckle) but the info required for this particular chapter took a longer time to find. Anyway… who do you think `the visitor' was? Guess away, I wanna hear your thoughts!