InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Crescent Moon On The Brow Of The Sky ❯ The Demon and His Prey ( Chapter 13 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

SO SO SO SO SO SORRY! I have been so busy for the past few months, and I have recently started my second semester- so the crap's been piling up. This has been constantly at the back of my mind, however (making me feel like a monster). Thanks to all of you who have patiently waited for this new chapter! I LOVE YOU ALL! *cuddles* I had a wicked case of writer's block! But I hope what happens in this chapter makes up for it. I will begin replying again to reviews, but for ffnet reviewers only personally (leave email addresses, you guys!!!) So I don't get waist deep in crap from ffnet.

To a reviewer(sorry, too lazy to look up your name): Yes, there will be a happy ending! (and all you guys will love it)

Tell me what you think of this chapter!!!! (While you're at it, visit my website: w w w. x y e o t h i e m o o n. d e v i a n t a r t. c o m. Just remove the spaces)

The Demon and His Prey

He remembered.

Her tiny body, her soft cheek, the nearly infant smell of her. To him she was infinitely young, and would remain in his mind forever as that- a child, his child. A child that had died at the hands of a monster.

He could not help but wonder:

If it had been the right moment, the right need, would he have killed her himself?

He succumbed to silent, helpless longing, a corruption that did not show on his stony features. The longing, however, did not extend to his dead child, nor for the blood that he had gained in revenge.

It reached towards, it smothered, it loved the miko that was his; he would not let her forget him, though her mind was stale with its emptiness of him. He would haunt her footsteps, enrich her dreams, partake in her heart.

He would never give her rest, for only she could soothe the soreness of mourning, the rage not fully spent, the severed love for a child swallowed by mud.

He would taste her skin beneath his lips, he it her cheek or her mouth;he would taste her blood upon his tongue, again and again until she succumbed.

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There, in the brilliant monotone of the morning, she once again discovered a routine, one to distract her from the tumultuous rage and blankness of her mind. In the dawn, in the quiet of spring, in which all the peonies whisked their petals out, and the cherry blossoms whispered and glowed their life and death among the trees, she sat in silent contemplation, pausing in the task of the gathering of water from a well.

Above her, the birds did not cease in chaotic tumbling, nor in the haughty announcing of their presence. Beyond that sound was the quiet drip and ripple of the well, and beyond that lay the sweet, tender pain of remembering.

She almost wished to tip into the well, almost knew that the darkness of it would not eat her whole; she almost was certain that a pebble of light would glow at the end of it, like heaven, and a world would open over her head quite different than the world she knew.

It was a foolish game.

In the morning, he would come as well, though he did not come near to her; she could feel the soft, dangerous call of his presence, the beckoning that she would hard to ignore. Sometimes, in her moments of rest, she would catch the glimpse of a face in between the bamboo and the trees, and she would catch her startled breath, unable to tear her eyes away from his until he blended with shadow and pain bloomed in her head.

It was mysterious, her past; somehow she knew she was full of tender pain, a wound only newly closed; if she remembered, the wounds would open once again, and the anguish would shatter her.

She was afraid to remember; she did not want to remember.

In this realisation, she found herself smiling, a sweet smile that blessed her heart and her soft mouth. She carried herself through tasks and training with a careful, tentative happiness that dispelled her pain and sorrow and pondering, even though she could feel his presence at the edge of her mind, and his eyes tear holes in the flesh of her back.

She sometimes wondered if she was dreaming, and that this entire routine, this entire mundane life was something that was merely a passing fancy, a boat crossing the silver river of her mind. Perhaps she had died, merely bones and a tiny seed in the earth, and this was peace, this was heaven: this surety, this serenity that encompassed her like a mother's love. This was a paradise that she had found, one that she was willing to keep; this tiny village beyond the cusp of a stream, where bamboo descended, slender dancers in the blue wind, and reeds parted the water like paddles in the sand.

She smiled, seeing children approach her, faces bright like a train of stars, and stooped to their level beside the polished well.

“Onna-san,” they intoned softly, capturing her calloused hands with theirs, pulling her towards the heart of the village, her task abandoned, the field empty. She giggled, then laughed, her voice like a instrument made of cherry wood over the cold field. This voice rang in the empty woods long after she had gone, to be tasted by a demon whose eyes blazed in the green darkness sheltered between the bamboo.

Her scent still drifted upon the wind, human, female, his.

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She lay silent upon the futon, nestled securely and sweetly tired after her chores of the day; after her playing with the children, her making of flower wreathes and head-dresses, the colours of cherry and blood. One lay beside her head, soft and silent, its colours black in the dull dark, black like blood, black like pain...

...and she felt his claws rip through her, limpid, shining like demons all and of themselves. She felt her heart breaking, she felt its red flesh tear and go cold...

She cried out, clutching at her chest as though a wound had opened itself, finding that tears had journeyed, weary travellers, across the features of her face. A strangled sound erupted from her mouth, a barrier broken that had kept the tears from her for so long. Those tears were ancient, those tears were rotten, and she was jaded with them; they had wrung themselves dry, and she would no longer allow herself to feel them- today she had laughed...

The elderly miko must have heard her, for she found herself wrapped in her arms, rocked in them and crooned to as though she were a mere child, and Fukiko her mother.

“What did you remember child? Come, you must press it. You must remember- you must live it, know it, for it to finally die.”

Yet she could not stop the tears, could not stop the river that had opened and was unfurling itself from her soul- the weeping was so profound, so choking and drowning, so much that her flesh and head burned with the fever of it, and all she could hear was herself crying, around her, within her; the sorrow that made all that she had felt before, in the indistinct soil of her past, petty and foolish and vain.

“I remember... I remember- PAIN,” came the gurgled words from a mouth opened in soft anguish, the final word a shriek that shattered her and tore through her throat like fire.

It felt as though it would never end, it could never end; she felt certain that all the celestial could hear it and drew away from her in disgust, heaven denying her at last. She felt as though there was a shred of hatred in every Gods' heart for her, a grain of salt in the centres of immeasurable power and magnitude. They looked down upon the child they had gifted, and their hatred grew, mirroring the dark pool of hatred within herself. She was forsaken, unforgivable, filthy with selfishness and self-rue.

She was trapped in their collective glares, drowning in them, unable to raise her wicked arms and swim; she had no desire to, for there was comfort in this hatred of herself, a safe sanctuary of thorns and blood where she could always reside, secret inside herself.

The tears ended, leaving her hollow and empty and weak, yet fully aware; it was though she had woken from a long sleep into a wilderness where her past no longer mattered, and there was a settled peace to the turbulence, a sea after the turmoil of a storm.

The fire burned low until it was a mere husk, tiny coral crescents in the dark, glowing red into the soft watching almond of her opened eye. She observed the curling, dying smoke crawl to the centre of the flaxen roof, unwinding the cool tendrils of her hair from behind her ears.

Fukiko was now long asleep, an image in the pale light of the half-moon as though carved from stone, carved from death, her features as stoic and as calm as the wax of summer bees.

She was almost afraid that if she were to touch her, her skin would crumble away into dust and onto the butterfly's wing of the wind, leaves into the current, sand upon a beach.

Then his aura enveloped her, urging her, dreamlike, into a sense of flat halcyon, of a pure wistful emotion that lifted her and escorted her onto a path to him, her feet bare and cold against the hard floor, the crisp and fragrant night opening beyond the door hanging like a restful sleep. She left the earthly world of her cabin, of Fukiko sleeping, of sorrow and toil behind, stepping onto a plain of stars, of ebony, of broken, dreamy sighs. She caught sight of his hand, a corner of his sleeve; drifting and silver, blazing silver, like all of him, his soul showing its train through the leaves. She followed him, though in the amber of his eyes there was a starvation that no blood but hers could sate.

Her steps were heavy in the dead silence, in a world frozen, following his remote and lithe frame as he stepped, delicate and powerful, into a darkness beyond her vision. The path began to grow wilder, more uneven, beneath her bare feet, but she was caught in her dream and did not notice. A smile played about her lips as the village became dark and distant behind her, and she, the prey, stepped closer to the beast with no thought or whim of another action.

She was his, and he waited for her as though she was a meal that he could swallow into himself.

There was silence in the clearing as she entered, as though intruding; and he, there, as beautiful as the moon which rose high above him, him bathed in its light, as though he was its king, its god. He wore merely a white kimono, his hard armour hidden somewhere in the wood surrounding them.

He reached out to her with a hand that clawed against her, crushed her against him, as though he could press her into his heart, to be preserved forever, beyond age and death. She sighed, her head tilted, her eyes calm, through his caress burned against her bones, and her ribs heaved with her attempts to breathe.

His mouth hovered over her throat, his teeth brushing as soft as petals against the perfect white of her skin.

Longing.

The claws dug into the fragile skin of her back, against the bones which were as delicate as a bird's.

He could kill her now, fix her just as she was in his mind forever, open to him and lovely; yet he could never allow her to be swallowed, taken deep into the heart of the mud like his child had.

“You are mine,” the demon whispered lust into her hair, “Your love belongs to me...”

He fitted his mouth over hers, cold and distant, a burning fire erupting into splendour in his being, tasting her, savouring the distant smell of ancient tears, sour words, and felt her fingers, so tiny and fragile, twine themselves to the back of his neck, as cautious as though he was fire which she could smother. The sweetness nearly ached in him, burning and hungry for an infinite forever of her, of more. Their mouths parted, and he watched with blazing eyes as she fell asleep, whispering of love and dreams; and he lifted her, so perfect, into his single arm, and carried her slender frame back to the home, back to the life which did not deserve her.

What she deserved was all the richness of the wild: combs to adorn her with haughty beauty, kimono to cover her bare skin with patterns of birds, of moons, of waterfalls and rivers- he would give them to her, that which what was her right to take, if only she would succumb to him completely; all this finery mere gifts in exchange for the taste of her skin, for the taste of her blood.