InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mayumi's Story ❯ Chapter 20 ( Chapter 20 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

 

 

Mayumi's Story, Chapter 20:

 

 

Life goes on. My hands smoothed over the silk as I drew a needle through bright cloth time after time, tightening the threads with each pull. Silk is damn hard to sew! But I was making my daughter's wedding kimono, and I concentrated on sewing love into every stitch. Hah.

 

I wasn't sure I approved of her upcoming marriage. I loved Hiroshi like a brother, but at the end of the day, he was human and Choko was not. Would she really be happy with him? He was so much older than she was to begin with, and soon he would show the inevitable signs of aging that all humans—except maybe my mother—shared. Mama, I know, would be shocked if she knew what I was thinking. I wondered if Kazuki would have been. He had experienced what it was to love—and to lose—a human. Was it worth it?

 

Then I look at my beautiful niece and nephew, Kazuki's kids, and I know I'm wrong to be having these doubts. They're worth every ounce of pain my brother felt on losing Sachi. They carry their dual heritage better than I ever had. Hopefully, if Hiroshi and Choko have children, it will be the same.

 

Sesshomaru seems to think so. He doesn't know that Masashi and Akiko or even Choko are related to him by blood, but he feels their power. There is a village of hanyou up in the hills to the west. Sesshomaru thought Kazuki's two might fit in better up there, but the slayer village, humans all of them, protested vehemently against that idea. Masashi and Akiko were theirs and belonged nowhere else. It should be better once Choko moves in with Hiroshi. Kazuki's two don't know their own strength as youkai. Already they inadvertently summoned lower-level youkai to the village when they did not know how to control their own youki. Choko can help them learn control.

 

Sometimes I worry that she's marrying Hiroshi for the wrong reasons—out of duty, or to help care for her cousins, who are also Hiroshi's niece and nephew. She doesn't see it that way, but I'm a child of the 21st century who believes you've got to be in love before you decide to get married.

 

Then Hiroshi will look at her, or Choko will sneak a glance at Hiroshi when they think no one else is looking. There is love there. It's funny what makes people fall in love. I know what I feel for my Daichi and for my children, and no one on earth can make me feel otherwise. Who am I to judge Choko or Hiroshi for choosing each other?

 

I pulled through another stitch, then held up the cloth to view my handiwork. These stitches would hold. I sighed. I couldn't help thinking, as I sewed her wedding kimono, that each of my stitches bound the fabric tighter together. You could say it's a reference to the bride and groom and their future lives as one, but that's not what was going through my mind as I sewed. I thought of it in terms of me and my family, as we wove back and forth through time. We were the stitches binding the cloth of time ever tighter, strengthening it and keeping us all together. I bit off the end of the thread and carefully put my needle away. Even Kazuki. He wove himself through time and left shining stitches of his son and daughter to connect back to him. Kazuki and Sachi, youkai and human, made us stronger. I thought of Dai with his sad eyes, far in the future. Someday I'd take that sadness away from him. I knotted the last thread. Enough sewing for today.

 

I kept watch for my strange youkai, but he seemed to be avoiding me. Even Papa, when we met, had not crossed paths with the elusive youkai on either side of time. I was grateful that Papa continued to come to this era, after Sango and Miroku were gone. He did it to protect me, and although I did not feel I needed his protection in particular (although I would never tell him that) I was so glad to have him in my life. Mama, too. She didn't hate me for leaving, and as time went by, we found we had a lot in common.

 

“I feel like I'm losing Choko,” I said to Mama on the eve of Choko's wedding.

 

“It's hard,” my mother agreed. It was even harder for her, who had had to stay away from all her grandchildren in the feudal era once they got old enough to remember her. I wondered if she had found them all again in her time, and if that helped ease the sting. It was one of the things I wouldn't ask, however. I was afraid to know too much about how things turned out on the other side.

 

She helped me finish up the wedding kimono. Sewing was so not my forte. I wanted it to be pretty, and to hold up, and thanks to Mama, it would be beautiful. We sat in my summer home that Daichi had built for me in our woods. It was a calculated risk. Ayame knew Mama, but none of my generation did. We were relatively safe here, away from the wolf youkai village. “Just remember she'll always be your daughter,” Mama said as she laid the finished kimono in its cloth wrapping.

 

I smiled back at Mama. I guess it was true.

 

Mama wore her miko clothes. It was her cover in case she was discovered here, and it also was what she was. She had set the barrier in front of my cave so that only members of my family could pass. These days, only she and Papa visited regularly. Koji could still cross time, but there was really no reason for him to come here. He may have been the only one of us born in the past, but his life was firmly anchored in the future. He had found a youkai woman to love in Papa's territory. The local youkai were thrilled to receive an infusion of Papa's powerful bloodline. For years, they had not been able to reproduce in the natural way. Koji had two children whom I'd never met, on the other side.

 

Wherever Mama was, Papa was never far away. While we sewed and talked, Papa stalked the forest all around us, probably scaring the harmless wildlife far more than any youkai that might have been lying in wait. Daichi and I had cleared the area of youkai long ago. I still hadn't told Papa about my suspicions when Sachi died, but I told Mama.

 

“It's probably nothing. Kazuki didn't think there was anything to it,” I said, after I had told her what I thought I'd heard.

 

“Your father needs to know,” Mama said firmly. She believed me. I saw it in her eyes. As much as I had wanted Kazuki to be right, for his sake, I was relieved that Mama took me seriously. That youkai could be anywhere, anyone.

 

Reluctantly, I agreed to call Papa in. He was so quick to fly off the handle. I didn't want him to think I couldn't take care of myself. But surprisingly, Papa remained calm, sort of. “You watch yourself,” he told me, as they prepared to leave. They would not attend the wedding, since Sesshomaru would be there, along with Rin and Kohaku. I had the little digital camera, though, and promised to take surreptitious pictures if I could. I'd leave them in the cave for the next time they returned.

 

“Quick!” I urged them. “Daichi's coming. You'd better go.”

 

Faster than I would have thought possible, faster than I remembered, Papa transformed, and Mama faded into invisibility within the center of his power before they streaked off in the general direction of the well house. My great great Grandpa Eiji, or my foster cousin Eiji, however you wanted to look at it, had rebuilt the well house according to my father's specifications which Miroku had given him. My parents still traveled back and forth via Tetsusaiga, and although they could technically leave from any place in the world, they always only arrived in this era at the well house. This time, they would be leaving from there, too, because rather than going home, they wanted to go back to Mama's family shrine to visit Kazuki. Even if Kazuki didn't believe me, Papa wasn't taking any chances. There was probably more to it than that. Papa was never good at expressing his feelings, and this gave him the perfect opportunity to check up on Kazuki without seeming to.

 

Daichi, lightning fast on two legs, came to collect me and the wedding kimono. He sniffed. “Was someone here?” he asked, clearly having picked up on the scents of my parents.

 

“A wandering miko,” I answered, pleased at not having to outright lie. “She helped me finish the dress.”

 

Daichi nodded. He had detected the human scent immediately. “Is that all?”

 

“She had a—“ How did I describe my father? “A guard,” I finally said.

 

“A youkai guard?”

 

I nodded. Granted, it was unusual for youkai and humans to travel together, but it was no longer unheard of these days.

 

“What was her name?”

 

“I didn't ask,” I replied. “Are we ready to go?” I could smell the other wolf youkai approaching, and I didn't want to have this same conversation in front of Kouga and Ayame.

 

Hiroshi and Choko married in the slayer village and lived in Hiroshi's little house. Masashi and Akiko stayed on in Kazuki's house, the house we had stayed in when we visited the slayer village with our parents all those years ago. It was literally almost a lifetime ago. Masashi and Akiko both eventually took human spouses, but when those spouses died, they both, at different times, took Sesshomaru up on his offer and moved to the hanyou village in the west.

 

Choko seemed content to live in a human village. She never hid what she was—she was my daughter after all—and her children were more obviously hanyou than even Masashi and Akiko. When Hiroshi died, Choko came back to the wolf village with her children.

 

I remember when she first told me she and Hiroshi were going to be parents. It was about a year after they had married. Of course, I was thrilled for her, but the words that came out of my mouth would have made even my father flinch. “I'm too young to be a Grandma!” I wailed.