InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Invitations to Trouble ❯ To Flee Or To Fight! ( Chapter 26 )

Kenami was terrified. Azure eyes nearly lost to the whites surrounding them from fear darted from one side to the other as she raced ahead through the all too precious final moments of dusk still lighting the forest pathway in an attempt to place a greater distance between her and capture.

 

She fled without heed to little around her save her heart's desperate and unyielding cry to turn home and seek its other half and the safety that represented. But just as intensely it yearned for the light of a sun that shone only for her eyes in the north. A sun that rose behind two eyes of piercing cerulean and filled a lazy smile. A dawn that she felt sure she would never get to see again lest she escape the far too revealing glare of the heavenly orb overhead.

 

A soft sob would have been choked off if she had not seen and done too much in the last 15 years to make her incapable of such soft emotions. Such simple beginnings had altered her peaceful morn.

 

~~

 

After having consumed a simple yet filling fare breakfast, Kenami had laughingly let her little Rin lead her to the location of the 'tree-man' which the girl had been piping on and on about throughout the meal. Weaving and ducking beneath the dew laden branches of the undergrowth, Kenami had marveled at the potency of her companion's vivid imagination. A marveling which had bordered on awe as Rin had expounded with great detail concerning the hair, clothing and features of the 'pretty man'.

 

Some details had begun a mild twinge of fear which was easily enough to dismiss. After all, it could just be a statue or carving made into the tree by a bored artisan. A scroll left against it as practice? It helped greatly that the dour emotion was so easily brush aside by the excited chatter from the bright eyed Rin

 

With only half an ear focused on the endearing voices beside her, Kenami followed the persistent tug of the tiny hand until they both had emerged from the verdant maze. Both had arrived breathless and flushed at the edges of a small clearing.

 

A clearing that had not existed before that day. Kenami was sure of it since she had ridden through the area just the previous afternoon. The far-reaching trail of broken and decimated foliage had pointed with accusatory branches towards the still smoking ruins of an ancient tree, of which only a huge and ravaged stump remained to attest to its majestic girth.

 

Eyes of crystal blue and innocent brown had stared dumb-struck at the magnitude of the devastation which had occurred so close to them in the night while they'd slumbered. IT had been that lack of cacophony which had made the fine hairs along Kenami's entire body rise, forcing the young woman's breath to quicken. That and the fact she could still sense the tingle in the air about them. An acrid tinge that had made her stomach tense and jump mightily despite the food that weighed it down like chilled lead.

 

In the aftermath of such chaos, even the surrounding forest had fallen silent, but such a preternatural calm could not remain eternally unchallenged. The stillness had been broken by only one voice which held the power to rock it utterly that morning and it had expressed its owner's genuine confusion aloud with touches of innocent wonder.

 

"Oneesan...what could have pushed the tree down like this? Was it a giant oni? I think so. He must have taken the pretty man who was in the tree."

 

Despite the vestigial warmth of the late morning sun, Kenami had felt the skeletal chill of recognition dance across her flesh, growing in intensity with every confirmed trace of the truth she took in with her pale eyes as they had darted over the clearing. She'd effortlessly picked up the telling signs buried in the rubble strewn about them.

 

The wood fragments that were charred in places but not soot streaked as if from a fire.

 

The splinters which had been deeply impaled into the ground and surrounding tree trunks like deadly missiles must have stricken their targets with incredible power behind them.

 

All of the damage had gone out in unnaturally straight line before ending in that precise spot. An explosive ending to be sure as the surrounding area had confirmed.

 

There had been no evidence of either what or who had been thrown, simply a telling emptiness at an odd indention nestled in the ruins of the felled tree.

 

An indention shaped roughly like something human.

 

A Youkai.

 

By then her scant breaths had ceased altogether, making her vision swim and waver dangerously. Trembling so badly she'd been amazed she could stumble forward at all, her hands had shaken like leaves as she'd plucked at something which had been wedged tightly between some twisted branches.

 

A large tuft of pale fur, somewhat discolored and dirtied from exposure to what had been there before in the wreckage, but not something found on a natural animal at all.

 

It was all she'd needed as confirmation of a previous suspicion. A youkai had been nearby while they'd slept. Perhaps even as recently as their meal mere moments ago. She'd been unsure since there had been traces of activity around the devastation that had been very fresh.

 

She'd almost wept.

 

It had taken the continued repetition of a question to break Kenami's reverie but she'd quickly shushed her young charge, catching herself just short of smothering the child's face with a hand. It was instinctive, a need to be as quiet as possible in case honed ears were tracking the two of them even at that very moment. Distractedly she'd gathered Rin in her arms, dashing back to the encampment as quickly as her slender legs had been capable of.

 

Quickly, she'd raced, but her past captivity had taught her time and time again with painful clarity that all of her innate speed was useless against Spider and Kagura.

 

With every step, Kenami had been certain she'd felt the fetid breath of a ghostly attacker closing in. That every stray breeze had been just the prelude to the traitorous gale which would whisk her upwards into the bowels of a hell in the sky. That the protruding roots which had caused her to stumble in her haste would at any moment ensnare her ankles and limbs, to bear her aloft to that loathed castle between worlds which had been her waking nightmare for the last 25 years.

 

Her chest had burned, not only from the spurious exertion but also frustration and hopeless anguish.

 

It had only been a day!!

 

Surely she should have had more time?!

 

Bursting through the brush recklessly, stealth abandoned for speed by that time, she'd set the girl down and rattled off directions in a querulous voice to have Rin aid in packing up the camp. Utensils had been thrown into the saddlebags unwashed, the cookery had soon followed. Blankets which had served as both bedding and cover the night before had been jammed into the case un-dusted by trembling hands.

 

Her time, she'd felt, had been running out before it had even begun. By the gods she'd been tempted at that moment. Tempted to go against all that had been instilled in her throughout her life to commit the forbidden as she shoved the wrapped length through a make-shift holder on the saddle and turned to beckon Rin to her side. Thankfully the girl had hurried over without hesitation.

 

Tempted, but unsure if the consequences would have been worth the consequences. After all, she'd been warned against doing so but never told what would befall if she'd ever succumbed even once. She only remembered the look of fear of the one who had warned her and that had been enough. It had been that same dogged fear which had kept her obedient enough to resist so small a desire, so great a want, even at the worst of times with Spider and Kagura.

 

Having sensed a change in his mistress, the dual-headed mount had obediently waited without moving as the bags had been thrown astride his back and the saddle had been cinched and tied with a haste borne of palpable fear.

 

Rin had watched as well while she followed the sometimes conflicting instructions but doing what her young eyes saw needed to be done in order to leave that place as fast as possible. The large brown eyes had simply followed the other girl in between the tasks of packing with Rin saying nothing. Not when Kenami had muttered distractedly and tried to put a rock in her satchel. She said nothing at all. Even when the arms of her new friend had drawn her small frame onto the back of the creature she'd affectionately named Ahn and Uhn with less gentleness than perhaps had been warranted.

 

Rin had said absolutely nothing.

 

~~~~~

 

Even now, an hour's distance from that place, she still did not resume her idle chatter for a number of reasons which in a perfect world should never find purchase in the heart of one so young.

 

Especially when the greatest reason among them was what kept her tongue thickened and clued to the roof of her tiny mouth. Every swallow fought its way past the hardened lump which made breathing an arduous task as well. Were it not for the faint flush dusting her cheeks and the life flickering behind her eyes, there was little to differentiate Rin from a cleverly made doll.

 

For even in the midst of her fear, the child's frail limbs were too numb to even tremble.

 

This clammy and joy-stealing chill was because of the look she'd seen on her oneesan's face moments before the hurried flight. Glancing upwards, her tiny heart quailed to see that it still remained there, so she let her eyes fall again to watch unseeing as the world whirled past them with a speed that at any other point in her short life could have frightened her.

 

But she'd seen too much, far more perhaps than the village elder Ukimo-sama. Taxed by the unnamed fears which clung to Oneesan like a stagnant cloud, she leaned back in Kenami's lap and fell into a fitful slumber.

It was an uneasy rest and not a true one at all for her. Even with the comforting embrace of the arm enfolded around her, Tin was jostled often as they raced through the ill used back roads and leapt small ravines. Those all too short reveries were shaken off as much by the rough gait of the mount as the lurid visions which were too harsh to bear the kinder mantle of nightmares.

 

For the slumbering child was haunted by a past reborn that day to cast its darkened shadows upon her present.

 

In the pale blue eyes darting frantically to and fro while scanning the road ahead, was the same wild and hunted look her mother had worn the day the wolves had come.