InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Heart of the blessed ❯ Of wells and giant crows ( Prologue )

Prologue: Of wells and Giant Crows

...

On a bright summer afternoon, when the air was filled with the scent of warm earth and the lull of birdsong, Sachiko Hayashi, twenty-three years of age, found herself peering down an old waterless well in the storage room of Higurashi shrine.

I…should probably not be here, she thought, turning back to look out the door, and seeing nobody, stared down the well again. There was something off about it, something that made her skin crawl and her hair stand on its end. Squinting into its murky depths, she gently ran a hand over the aged wood, wanting to step away, yet inexplicably captivated by its strange, uneasy energy.

The smell of dust and mold hung in the heavy, stagnant air of the well house. The floorboards creaked ominously as she shifted her weight, eerie scratching sounds of no perceptible origin made themselves heard from time to time. Probably the wind, she told herself, somewhat creeped out.

Is it, like, a wishing-well? She felt beads of sweat gather at her temples. Maybe I should put in a coin and see…?

A hundred-yen coin was promptly unearthed from the depths of her purse. Sachiko pensively ran her thumb over it, giving the coin an unnecessary polish. She had been under the impression that she had outgrown the phase where one believed in nonsense such as magic, and the whole trope of wishes-coming-true, but embarrassing as it was, it seemed she hadn't. However, though she had many things she coveted - like that new model of laptop, or the affections of a certain Soichiro Honda, standing in that musty old well house where time seemed to stand still, all her concerns somehow seemed…trivial.

"What am I even saying, Honda-san likes Yoshino." She smiled sadly,letting the pain of loss- which wasn't even really a loss, to make things worse- wash over her.

Whoa, hold up! She caught herself quickly. Wasn't the whole point of this little excursion not to wallow in self- pity?

Sachiko sighed. Again. She was truly tired of all the sighing and the crying and the lying awake in the bed for hours at an end wondering why it was that no one ever really seemed to want to love her...She grit her teeth and resolutely pulled herself away from thoughts of misfortune and tried to think of happier, simpler times. She remembered, so many years ago, coming to this shrine with her grandmother, her tiny hand curling around her grandmother's warm, long fingers. You are going to do great things, Sachiko, she used to say adoringly, gently running a loving hand through her hair.

I'm going to do great things, she told herself, just like grandma said, so I don't have time to cry over men who don't want to have anything to do with me. It felt nice telling that to herself, and although she didn't really believe it, she hoped that one day she would do something worthwhile, just to make sense of all that she had to do without in life.

Cheering up a little, she took a deep breath, holding the coin over the mouth of the well, closed her eyes and wished-

And then the coin was slipping away from her hand, falling into the darkness of the gaping mouth of the well before she could trap it with her fingers, before she had a chance to make her intentions known to any deity that may have been listening...

The coin made a 'thud' sound as it hit the bottom of the well. The ensuing silence seemed to mock her incompetence.

Sachiko clicked her tongue against her teeth, feeling a little more annoyed with the world than she usually was. What a waste. She leaned over the well and glared into the darkness at the coin she couldn't see.

Maybe that's my punishment for skipping class.

The walls of the well-house suddenly seemed to close in. The wind whistled sharply through the cracks in the timbers. A mild yet unnerving feeling of claustrophobia settled in the pit of her stomach, making her skin crawl and her hair stand on its end.

The 'ping' of her cellphone startled her more than it should have. She fished it out from her purse, cringing when she saw the message.

'How are you feeling?'

Ah right, she thought, I'm supposed to be sick.

'Hi', she typed back, 'm bettr nw. Thnks.'

A ping marked the next message, 'That's good to hear. By the way, being sick is not an excuse for omitting vowels.' And' Stop butchering the language, if you don't mind.'

I forgot who I was talking to, she rolled her eyes, smiling, 'Right, sorry', she typed, adding a sweat-drop emoji for emphasis, leaning against the well.

'Apology accepted. I hope you are not crying over that douchebag Soichiro.'

'No I'm not. It's been like, a month!'

'Goodbye Sachiko. Rest well. '

'Bye Rhi'

'I prefer Rhiannon'

'Bye Rhiannon'

"Man, everything is so formal with her", she smiled and turned to leave.

Only, she couldn't.

.....

(Approximately 500 years ago)

On the Summit of the snowbound peaks of Mount Tengu, a demon lord clad in white delicately flicked bits of entrails from his claws. His fair hair whipped around his face in the icy mountain wind, snowflakes danced around his tall, ethereal form.

The corpse of the oversized crow demon lay on the snowy ground, a hole in its chest, eyes frozen in its final expression of surprise. Dark, coppery blood trailed from where the body was sliced, staining the snow a deep crimson. Strewn across the snowbound expanse were corpses of smaller crows that had come at him from everywhere, obscuring his vision in a haze of black feathers as their leader prepared for ambush.

He started at the pale blue crystal that was stained with the crow's blood. It seemed to have a masked the tengu's demonic energy, making him unable to sense, or even smell it- not that it gave the tengu any sort of advantage in battling him.

Sesshomaru let his bloodstained claws fall to his side, dispassionately surveying the carnage.

Waste of time, he glared accusingly at the corpse and strode towards the mountain stream he had spotted on his way.

Ever since Naraku had been defeated- the hanyou's flesh crumbling away at his sword strike- and his thirst for revenge satiated, Sesshomaru had been traveling across the country, picking up where he had left off – namely, finding a worthy opponent he could have a grand time crossing swords with. And subsequently introducing to death, if they weren't suitably deferential.

However, after Naraku, none of the demons he had encountered were worthy of his claws, much less of Bakusaiga that rested tranquilly in its scabbard beside Tenseiga.

Sesshomaru dipped his hands in the cold waters of the stream, watching the crystalline rivulets turn a murky red.

Three years had passed since Naraku ceased to exist, and the world had retained its languid, slow moving peace, broken only occasionally by petty human and youkai skirmishes. The tedium of his days weighed heavily upon him, and he was someone who loathed being weighed down. Beneath his cold façade, the demon lord longed for chaos so deeply that it fell just short of affliction.

He straightened up, gazing towards the east. Nestled between the green of the forest and the gold of the rice fields ready for harvest was a quiet little village, deceptively ordinary in appearance, as if nothing of interest had ever transpired there. With a sharp leap, Sesshomaru took to the skies, the gelid fingers of the mountain air caressing his silver locks. Today he would be visiting his brother's village.

He had a kimono to deliver.

....

(The present)

Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.

Sachiko would have screamed if she could, but unfortunately, her vocal cords, or for that matter, none of the other muscles, seemed to want to obey her, so she had to settle for standing rooted on the ground looking like a particularly frightened statue.

Am I having a stroke? Locked-in-syndrome? Paralysis? Coma? Her mind raced, spewing out diagnosis after unlikely diagnosis she had scribbled half-asleep on her notepad during medicine lectures. Unfortunately, none of them could shed light on her current predicament. And they flew out the window altogether when her body began to lose contact with the ground and began to rise slowly in the air, hovering like a ghost over the gaping mouth of the dark, scary well.

Sachiko had a very, very bad feeling as she stared into it.

Oh...crap.

A drop of sweat descended slowly, slowly, from her temple, curving down the side of her cheek, pausing for a moment at her jaw.

And then she was falling headfirst into the well, hair streaming behind her, screams dying in her throat, tossed into the tempestuous currents of time.

....

(Time unknown, Place unknown)

A man with long aurelian hair leisurely lounged in a bed fashioned with roots and shrubbery, flicking a coin in the air and catching it before it fell to the ground. Fireflies winked phosphorescent green around his person.

The coin spun a little above his palm, defying gravity. In his strange domain, the sun was only beginning to rise, its first rays slowly illuminating the slumbering forest. The man's lips curved into a smile.

"I've been waiting, Sachiko."