InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Seven Feudal Fairy Tales ❯ Proof ( Chapter 48 )

Disclaimer: These characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi and other associated companies.

 

 

Chapter Forty-Eight: Proof

 

 

Gentle splashes of parting surf lapped at the elegant curves of the wooden koi that glided over the deepening ocean. Sprays of the cool water bathed its sleek, carved body as the occasional wave sought to disagree with the path the ship determinedly forged. With massive, crimson fins bloated and taut overhead, it proved inexorable in its direction and watched the horizon with unseeing eyes as it coursed along the invisible way.

 

Seated at the bow, the tai youkai's gaze kept that of the vessel's with his amber eyes lingering on the hazy line of gray that separated the sea from the sky. The burden of his unremitting weariness still weighed on him, binding him to where he sat with knots of doubt. A once solid and deeply anchored foundation, his principles felt uprooted and intangible to where the sparing wisps of cloud high above felt more real than his purpose in life. Sesshoumaru sighed quietly, his clawed fingers curled elegantly as he rested his chin on the back of his hand. What did it truly mean to live with pride?

 

Similarly to the youkai lord at the fore of the ship, another's sight loitered on what lay before her. Kagome had found her spot at the stern and away from the possibility of distraction or discovery. However, unlike him, her sepia eyes did not hold the distant horizon in their reflection; but instead, they firmly watched the white, red and black of the demon ahead. Truth was the intent of her stare, but even as she poured over his person from the fluttering ribbons of silver adrift in the air to the ivory pelt pooled at his boots, she couldn't see what ailed him.

 

Her knees bent in front of her, the school girl's bottom sat comfortably on the smooth deck with her back relaxed against the solid, mahogany railing. Then finally and in begrudging defeat, her scrutinizing sight left him to ponder instead on the guiding words the old monk had left her with.

 

`Think back on what I've become and I'll know why,' she recalled the culmination of what was said silently, knowing that even the faintest whispers were not beyond the hearing of the relatively close youkai lord. In all honesty, the possibility of him listening in on thoughts didn't seem too far-fetched and her vision flitted back to the unaware demon so that she could eye him warily while she contemplated. `What have I become?'

 

To understate it, her life until now had been a complicated one and showed no signs of ever changing. Kagome didn't lament the unfettered existence she held before her trip through the well, except perhaps when a difficult calculus exam arose in her own time, which by its very definition, could only be difficult. Furrowing her brow in puzzlement, she wondered when the last time her studies had plagued her mind with their insidious, mathematical functions and derivatives. When was the last time she thought about her journey with her friends to collect the shards of the Shikon no Tama? When did everything beyond the ink prison around her fade away from importance?

 

Without the expected cycles of day and night, the immeasurable time seemed to split instead into a scattered collection of moments within the painted world of the scroll. A finger rising to tap her lip pensively, the school girl thought on her early exploits within the fairy tales, on these inescapable adventures that she shared with the taciturn demon lord sitting solemnly a ways before her. After all, to know who she had become, she had to recall who she was before she became.

 

An unbidden memory, the sunken and weary sight of an afflicted mother along with her son and a gifted thimble of rice rose to mind when the school girl considered her first ventures in the scroll. The Tale of Issunboshi felt like ages ago and the heat of a faint, pink blush of embarrassment warmed her cheeks in remembrance. The wretched plight of the disregarded farmers had weighed heavily on her strong, moral sense of justice during her time in that story. This pure, but naive idealism demanded to be heeded by those with the power and the duty to absolve the unfortunate of their struggles. Yet, in her resolute mission to save the farmers; Kagome had neglected her own responsibility to safeguard the welfare of the princess she was charged to protect. But for the grace and sword of Sesshoumaru, the school girl had been given the chance to right the recklessness of her compassion and save the hime from certain and grave danger.

 

Accepting the sobering lesson had proven more difficult than Kagome imagined when she found herself alone in a quaint hovel and before a rotted chest filled with gold in the following fairy tale. Then only a simple, white dog, Shiro had been reluctantly granted to the cruel neighbor and guided toward his ill-fated meeting with the cold, unforgiving steel of the man's shovel. Meaning to use the treasure to barter for his life, the school girl gathered what she could into her hands. However, it was the realization of his unwavering pride in the noble sacrifice he would make that stayed her from action. Shiro did not want her to save him and it was not her place to do so, no matter how miserable she felt. The metallic ringing still sounded in her ears from when the gilded disks of money fell back to their place within the overflowing box.

 

“My reckless compassion,” Kagome spoke softly under her breath, her gentle gaze rising to the broad, crimson sails overhead. “My learning to not involve myself in problems that don't concern me. Is that how I've grown? How I've changed?” The whipping reply of wind bracing against the fabric answered her inquiring stare, but it was the blood-toned color that dyed its panels that answered her question. It was a brilliant hue that matched the piercing and haunting glare of a man who chilled her deep to the bone. The Dragon King.

 

The last remnant of a terrible creature of who even the untouchable gods feared, the immortal Dragon King had come to the school girl for the part of the lord, and she in her well-intended audacity had expected to save him from more than the Centipede. The thin, scabbed-over line drawn by his claw still graced her cheek, reminding her of her selfish altruism and misplaced belief in his innocence.

 

`I think only then did I understand what it means to be compassionate,' she realized silently, absently rubbing warmth into her forearms with the delicate touch of her fingers. `To give not only what you are capable of giving, but to give it only to those who want it. Still, how can that be it? How can that be what makes him sick? There must be more to it. Something I don't remember. Or can't.' Then it struck her, the mystifying place that decided it all. The place from where the rustles of palm fronds still whispered in the back of her mind and where the crushing sound of waves meeting the shore still soothed her heart. With verdant peaks and surrounded by aquamarine waters, the lonely island that embraced her long forgotten memories within the ivory sands of its beaches and in the tangled growth of its jungles.

 

The cold emptiness of solitude burrowed deep into Kagome's chest at the thought of the last tale, its sharp barbs keener with the monk's generously bestowed knowledge of her marooning. The idea of entreating Mon-Ki and Fe-San to keep her company tempted her tongue, but with gritted teeth, she remained quiet and determined to wrestle with her mysterious past without a comforting security of feathers or fur.

 

Gulping down her misgivings, the school girl let her fears subside and her mind drifted over what she could remember from the beach. As she hesitantly recalled, a low shack appeared in her thoughts, crafted from the fallen trunks of saplings and walled with palm fronds. Embers of a neglected fire burned in a shallow hearth carved into the volcanic stone before the hut and stacks of split logs waited not far away. Sheltering the delicate dwelling and fire pit from the persisting wind, a great wall of rock shadowed the small camp. There her vivid recollections loitered as a clue to her past lay etched sharply on its weathered surface.

 

`Sesshoumaru-sama's teachings?' she wondered noiselessly, remembering the vertical lines of prose that scarred the smooth plane of black stone. `Why did I write them and what did they mean to me?' Under a brilliant hail of molten rock and through black, burning plumes of ash, those sagely words had guided her through perhaps the most terrifying battle of responsibility that she had ever faced. However, even as she cherished them in that dark moment, the school girl could do no less than wonder at what those simple lines had meant to her stranded self, so hopelessly alone in the wilds of the untamed island.

 

Glossing her eyes with a fresh wetness, Kagome imagined her silhouetted figure wandering anxiously and aimlessly along the lengthy, sandy shores with her searching gaze pouring over the empty, rolling waves of surf. How lost she must have been without friends to help her, to support her and to love her. On her own, the sheltered school girl had learned to build shelter and maintain a fire. On her own, she had learned to forage for food and to store fresh water. She had learned to live for herself and without the benevolent crutch of civilization or the indulgent one of those around her who had long been suited to the elements.

 

`With those words for encouragement, I did it,' she concluded silently, but firmly. `I took care of myself and I survived, because I knew one day he would come back. He swore to me that he would return and someone like him would never break a promise, never go back on his word.' Her sight found the tai youkai once more and her mind fogged with worry and perplexity. To return as he pledged was in his honorable nature, but to gift her his years, that singular act seemed so foreign that had she not known the fairy tale then she would have adamantly contested the monk's account of her missing time.

 

Kagome bit at her lip as a myriad of whys fluttered through her mind, many of which dissolved into nothingness with the slightest application of reason. Some lingered longer than others and the thorns of one nearly brought steady streams of tears to her eyes. Had she failed? Had she become so old and pathetic that she was nothing more than a disgraceful burden? Had the generous sacrifice of a few years by youkai lord standards been out of pity for her condition? Had he felt sorry for her or yet worse, had he been disgusted by her?

 

“No,” the school girl muttered obstinately, her gravelly voice broken by the hated, dark emotions that ripped through her with razor claws of self-doubt. “He would never do that.” After the frightening debacle she had blindly invited upon herself when she pitied the Dragon King, Kagome knew that Sesshoumaru would never grant anyone his aid out of undue charity. Even if she had pleaded with him on that beach, he would have given her no quarter without her deserving it first. It was with that acknowledgment, the school girl undeniably knew that she had succeeded on the island. That for her triumph, the demon decided to present her with the ultimate gift of respect by returning her stolen youth and robbing her of the devastating memories that surely must have scarred her deeper than any cut.

 

A deep, quaking sigh of relief shuddering her body, Kagome realized how tense and weary this line of thinking had made her. With her ebony-crowned head lolling back to find the smooth comfort of the wood railing, the school girl's reddened stare remained settled on the motionless figure of the tai youkai as she relaxed. Through all of her contemplating and worry on who she had been and on who she had become, his ailment was still a mystery.

 

`I just don't understand. If he's not injured, because of Oto-hime's gift, then what else could it be?' she thought irritably with a frown bending her lips into a frustrated pout, before her sepia eyes widened in profound realization at the meaning of her meandering and unspoken words. `Oto-hime's gift. A gift.' Curiosity piqued, her inattentive gaze focused on Sesshoumaru, the silver silk of his hair and the burgundy stripes of his turned-away cheek reminding her of another youkai and a lesson that had not been hers to learn. `Shiro-sama.'

 

Not alone in having her beliefs upheaved by the embedded threads of morality that sewed the fairy tale world together, Kagome remembered the quiet toil the usually intractable youkai lord had endured in the story of his great-grandsire. While perilous battles of might and duty had been hers to face, his were indelibly cocooned in the unsuspecting silk of subtlety. After all, the innocuous natures of lending a dog or carving a mortar were mundane beside the acts of slaying giants and felling unbelievable monsters whose lengths could coil around mountains.

 

“Still I don't think I could have done it,” she admitted in a hushed voice, recalling the affectionate, white dog who had plied her for soothing scratches with his long, pink tongue. “Even now, I couldn't.” Understanding the sacrifice better than she, Sesshoumaru had let the malicious neighbor take Shiro to his unforgiving fate. Then and under begrudgingly received direction, the younger demon lord had also crafted the mortar to be bestowed on the same cruel man.

 

The elitist disdain for others that had dyed the school girl's opinion of him since she had first met him crumbled away when she learned of the curse and the inescapable shame that shrouded the noble clan of dog youkai. And while she had not been present to witness it, Kagome knew that under Shiro's guidance, the tai youkai found the honor in his great-grandsire's gifts.

 

`I guess I'm lucky for it,' she thought with a gentle smile playing on her lips, `He gave me the greatest gift I've ever received and I will cherish it forever. I will never waste it or give it away. No matter what, Sesshoumaru-sama can be assured that he'll never have to worry about being ashamed of giving my years back to me.'

 

Like the summer sun finally breaking through a thick bank of morning fog, Kagome understood at last what ailed the weakened demon. Swiftly, the sturdy, wood bars of her geta sandals found purchase beneath her and the school girl rose hurriedly to her feet. It was so plain and understandable, but with his usually confident and immensely powerful nature engraved deeply in her mind, she had been thoroughly blinded to it. How could anyone be expected to change so fundamentally and so profoundly without lingering in uncertainty, without being shackled by doubt? This wasn't a simple mortar that he had gifted, but a piece of himself that he can never regain.

 

Clapping across the polished deck and brimming with determination, Kagome walked purposefully toward the unmoving youkai lord. He deserved to know what his gift meant to her and that there was no reason to worry over what she would do with it. She would absolve him of guilt and shame with her words and he would have no reason to hesitate and no cause to doubt.

 

Steps slowing gradually to a stop, the school girl gasped quietly with a guarding hand finding her open mouth. Fringed in the golden light of sunset, the menacing image of long, red, spiky hair and aquamarine armor replaced the cool tones of the tai youkai. In a fluttering blink, the illusion of the Dragon King vanished and Sesshoumaru remained as he was. Biting her lip to keep her words, Kagome knew now that she could never tell the demon that she would not waste his gift, because he would never ask it of her. If he desired her aid, her assurances, then he would have professed and demanded it. In the end, his chopsticks had always been his to hold and that, she knew would never change.

 

A frustrated scream aching in her throat, the school girl found the railing and gripped it tightly to release the rising edge of impotence that mounted in her. That damn youkai lord and his stupid pride. Or is it shame? She couldn't tell. Oblivious to her surroundings as she was plagued by her powerlessness in Sesshoumaru's situation, Kagome gave no notice to the animal company that joined her upon the rail.

 

“Momotaro-sama?” the pheasant squawked hesitantly before her unintelligible grumblings.

 

“Oh, I'm sorry Fe-San.,” she soothingly explained. “I'm just angry and frustrated right now.”

 

“Oh,” he replied, his round, downy body squatting down to sit comfortably on the glossy wood. “Is it about, Do-Gu?”

 

“Why do you think it's about Do-Gu?”

 

“Because, it's always about Do-Gu, wa-ah,” Mon-Ki answered as he found a spot on the other side of her leaning figure. “Every time.”

 

“Really?” the school girl asked absently, musing about all of the Momotaros past whose problems all seemed to dwell on the same dog and perhaps for similar reasons.

 

“Yep,” the bird assured cheerfully, “But, soon you won't have to worry about it.”

 

“How's that?”

 

“Well, big, angry ogres are very persuasive, wa-ah,” the monkey confided.

 

“I imagine they are.”

 

“So, don't worry about Do-Gu. We'll protect him together. We've done it before and we'll do it again.”

 

“Protect him?”

 

“Yep, wa-ah. After all, taking care of each other is proof of our bonds, isn't it?”

 

“That's it! That's how I'll do it.”

 

“Do what, wa-ah?”

 

“I'll prove it to him, don't you see? I'll prove that it'll never be a waste what he's done for me, all of the lessons and all of the sacrifices. That's how I'll help him. That's how he'll know that he doesn't need to doubt.”

 

“Eh?”

 

“I'll prove it today.”