InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Transient Winds ❯ Unnoticed Forewarning ( Chapter 11 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The city was busy that day.  People had been all about in the streets, whispering of the wedding that had lavished and stunned the richest of nobles.  The word had spread from far and wide.  Yamato had taken a beautiful bride.


A young girl, who smiled like the sun and moved with the grace of the empress.  And nothing intrigued Tenrai more.  When word passed through the eastern temple, it had only taken him moments to free himself from the constant meditations of the day.


He had left Mushin behind.  As much of a brother he was, so was he a father and Tenrai needed no restrictions.  For with weddings came the service of women and the sake of kings.  People were to celebrate until the morning and besides the city had been calling his name for days.  


He straightened his newly acquired black robe and ran his hands over his kesa.  He wanted to look crisp when he entered the city.  From his experience, he’d learned that women loved nothing more than a clean gentleman amongst them.


With precision, he straighten his ponytail, longer than it had been and more annoying to Mushin, but Tenrai refused to cut it.  He wasn’t sure if it was just amusement or if he had become accustom to the strains on his head, either way he found it comical when Mushin frowned at his hair in the mornings before it was combed.


The gates around the city had been draped in rainbows of ribbons commemorating the union.  And it was beautiful, Tenrai had to admit himself, but it was much to much for his taste.  But what more for a royal, such as Yamato.  


The gates were open for the public all who looked the part and with his clean appearance, Tenrai was a significant looking figure in the public’s eye.  His new staff carved by his own hand showed status amongst the people.  Up top the long pole, brass rings tapped against each other like bells ringing out in the streets.


With each cling of brass, heads turned and people politely bowed out of his way.  For in their eyes he was nothing, but an honorable monk.


In the streets he was disappointed.  Nothing of interest seemed to be taking place, not even the eyes of a beautiful woman seemed to be present.  Only couples and men that had snuck out of the house for a taste of sake.


Conversely, Tenrai was ever optimistic.  For the smell of perfume greeted him in the eastern part of the city and the smell of bathing oils tempted him in the west.


“Such a lovely day when the two come together,” he whispered to no one in particular.  Overlooking the people that eyed him with curiosity, Tenrai stood his staff in the dirt, the brass rings reflecting the coming moonlight.  He measured it, making sure there was no flaw in its making and released it, allowing it to fall amidst a dirt cloud at his feet.


The chiseling brass ringing in his ears, he stared down at the pointed tip.


“To the east,” he announced.  His heart welled at the thought as he eyed the staff.  Sweet perfume adrift the east filling his head with desires that only a man of his caliber could muster.


He shuffled his feet over the dirt not wanting to appear anxious, but his heart pounded.  With a slow lingering grip, he lifted the staff from the dirt and took in a deep humbling breath.


A man must do what a man must do, he thought rising to his feet.


Under the noonday sun, he made his way through the city following the scent underneath his nose.   Until there in front of his eyes…


She sat with memories in her head and they caused pain.  The way he looked at her and said her name.  He whispered words in her ear that she couldn’t stop, couldn’t hear, and she hated it.


When she sat the small cup of sake on the wooden table, a tiny drop splashed on her hand and it tickled her pink.  Others had turn to watch the young woman, with jewels around her neck and gold barrettes in her head.  They all wondered what such a lavishly dress young woman was doing in such a run down nothing bar as this.  The floors were not polished, and the bar had not been wiped down since it had been built leaving small water stains on the bamboo surface.  Even the rice doors has small rips in them.


Itsuka didn’t care.  She only signaled the bar tender to ask for another.  She wanted nothing more than to wash down the memories of her love as he stood there with another woman’s name on his lips.  Yet the feeling sat in the middle of her belly, churning her muscles.  


How could he be so cruel as that?  Did he not know that she was the one he was suppose to be with?


What a child he had married?  Did he not understand that she was the real thing?  What a good- for…


“Excuse me, miss.”  His voice was so bold and stern, that she couldn’t help, but to turn and stare.  He sounded like the kind of man she adored.


Once her eyes focused in front of her, she decided that she hated him.  He reminded her of something that the sake couldn’t quite help her place a finger on.  Involuntarily, her eyes rolled and she turned away from him.


Tenrai smiled to himself watching the silk of her kimono sway with her body.  In his imagination, she was exquisite.  A rare beauty indeed.  It was the little things about her that he noticed, like the powder about her neck, the small twitch in her brow, and the corners of her lips that curved and twisted as if to smile, but no luck.


Itsuka lowered her head closer to the sake cup, wishing to dissolve in it.


“What troubles you, young miss?”  Tenrai started.  “You-”


“Why do you pry so monk?”  she interrupted him with a drunken sense of pride.  Her voice loud enough to stir the man nearby.  “Is there nothing for you to do?”


Tenrai stared at her a moment gathering himself.  Her words had put him off, yet the peeking skin of her cream white legs beckon him back.  Calculating a much stronger defense, and a better strategy, he turned on his heels in the opposite direction.


Itsuka frowned at her glass when she heard the click of the monks rod on the ground as he slowly took his leave.  


Damn another man walk away from me, she fumed between the woozy spells of sake on her brain.  Yamato had walked away from her.  No, he had passed her by.


How could she expect any man to measure up to the man that Yamato was.  When she first laid eyes on him, she knew that he was everything she could hope for.  He was, in her eyes handsome.  The fear that he instilled in other people was enchanting and made her wonder of a man like the one that was Yamato.


However, this night, he laid with another woman.  Her lady.  Her enemy.  Her rival in love.  So, he dare lay with another, then so should she.


“How dare you?” she whispered closer to a grunt that Tenrai heard.  She liked this imaginary game that she played with her imaginary lover.


He stopped in his tracks, wondering if his ears had been poisoned.  Her voice sounded as though she was angry with him.  Had they meet before?  He didn’t remember.  He hoped for the life of him that he had not.  Bad memories from times before clouded his mind as he slowly turned to find the woman right beneath his nose.  The smell of sake ripe on her breath.


A near by table turned to watch the spectacle of the two.  One of the men began to slowly rise from his place.  “You there,” he demanded of Itsuka.  After all, she was a woman and he was a monk, of status no less.  How dare she push herself so close to him?


Tenrai lifted his hand to hush the man and stared down at Itsuka waiting for an answer to why she stared at him so intently.  Her eyes marbleized. Her kimono skirt split up to the mid thigh, while jeweled combs had begun to hang by two or three strands of lose hair on her head.


What was it that she was so intent on doing in front of all these people?  Even though he was exceedingly glad he had gotten a response from her, Tenrai was not sure if it was going to be the one he wanted.


Focusing was getting a little harder and if she had known better, she would have doubted getting in the monks face.  At this point in time she didn’t feel that she was wrong in any sorts.  She liked this game.  “You approach me,” her words bubbled out like hot water, yet in her mind she danced drunken circles around the monk.  “Yet you have the nerve to leave.”


She made no sense and Tenrai did not want a drunk.  So once again, he turned and began to walk away.  With a shake of his head, he whispered, “should have went the other way.”


Itsuka was perplexed.  He kept leaving her.  


Did he not like this game?  Or was he turning his back on her like the others, but she had swayed them and she could sway him too.


After all, she wanted to smile at curves of her own shadow.  She was Itsuka.


Hence, she hurdled herself towards him colliding with his back.  “Don’t go!!” she shouted loud enough that the big burly man that had been pouring her a drink began to circle the small bar coming to free the monk of his burden.


Tenrai falling over his own feet, wanted to laugh.  She was like a child with candy.  Once he had gained his footing he turned to the distorted woman and was surprised to find small streams coming from her eyes.  Was it that she was so warp in the head that she thought of him as a lover before he presented himself as one?


“It is okay,” he spoke with the tone of a hero, a savor and she, his little wench.  Wench, he laughed inside, dare not show it on his face.   Bundles of fabric bunched in his hands as he wrapped her in his arms.


The gasp of nearby people did not go unheard.  They were questioning his display of affection for the woman.  To this Tenrai responded, “do we turn our backs on the miserable one and ignore their problem.  Buddha would want us to help.”


With the sense of a wise man, he squeezed her to him and guided wobbly steps from the bar and into the emptying streets.  Night was coming.


Tenrai frowned to himself guiding the woman down the walkways into an small dark alley, just enough to get her head together.  “Here,” with gentle hands he released her allowing her to lean on a wall of bamboo.


Itsuka hiccupped and let out a small laugh.  “You were brilliant.”  Her head starting to clear in the fresh air.


Taken a back by the woman, again only intrigued Tenrai’s character.  He smiled back at her and with a study left hand, he fondled the ofuda papers in his right sleeve.  If she was a demon, she would not catch him unprepared.  

Itsuka lifted herself balancing on her own two feet rather than the cool wall, that was much to hard for her skin.  Jerking the combs from her head, she stared the monk in the face, hair falling to cradle her round face.


A handsome man he was.  And a master at game play and she liked that more than the glint in his eye when he looked at her anticipating.


She smiled, mischievously and clapped her hands before her, her manicured nails catching his attention.  “Brilliant,” her smile turning into a luring laugh.  “You were brilliant.”  Her eyes following the length of him, noticing his left arm huddled in his right sleeve.  She knew enough to understand what he played with in his sleeve.


Tightening his grip on the thin strips of paper, he watched the very movement of the brow, the twitch in her smile, and the skin of her collar bone.


“Calm yourself, monk,” she continued to laugh, throwing her head back in a mirth of laugher.


He signed, secretly hoping that she would not find anything else that he had done that funny.  Her laugh made his skin crawl.  She wasn’t a demon, neither was she as drunk as the woman in the bar that he had so guided into the streets.


“I am no demon.”  Grabbing the trim of her kimono that laid so neatly on her shoulder, she tenderly reposition the fabric lower on her shoulder.  After all the monk was handsome and he spoke with such certainty, something Itsuka was losing.   “And I’m not as drunk as you think.”


She wanted him to touch her, just like the others.  He needed to make her feel wanted, loved if only for a moment.  He would do for tonight.  A man of status.  A man of integrity that would have nothing more than the top picking of women and she was one of those women.  He was tall, dark and stared at her with eyes that knew what they were doing.


Tenrai looked intently.  In his mind, his grin stretched from one ear to the other and nothing could stop the moment.  The streets were quite, near desolate.  He could take her here and never see her again.  She was that type of woman.  She was something of a harlot and tonight that was what the city was about.


He watched her manicured nails slip into the collar of her kimono loosing it allowing it to fall from her shoulders.  Her breast gazed at him, perked and round.


She could be beautiful, but she was not.  As she striped herself in front of him, the beauty that sat in the bar dissipated.  Even though her skin flowed like white milk from her chest to her stomach to her hips and so on.  


Something was wrong with the look in her eyes, the way she pushed herself on him.  However welcomed, it was unbecoming.


She was enchanting, no less and he found her ripe that night.  So, he took her and in his hands she melted like no other woman and then she was gone.


Miyabi stared at the calligraphy brush in her hand.  It took everything in her being to draw the straight lines that would make the characters that the man in front of her wanted.   For her hand shook like the candle flame in the corner.  The light cast foreboding shadows on his face and gave him a gilt in his eye that she had become familiar with.


She cringed inside.  It was the same gilt in his eye that stared at her in the dark when she laid underneath him.  She took a deep breath and slowly began tracing lengthy lines down rice paper.  Each stroke with the tip of the brush made a scratching sound and it interrupted the silence that had been passing through the room for quite a long time even though there were servant all about.  With one lift of his wrist, Yamato hushed them all.


Gekido stared from her lady’s right side.  Her breath in her throat.  Infront of her, her finger intertwined like the threads of her servant yukata.  Miyabi’s calligraphy had been perfect and, yet before this man, this killer of all things, it faltered and he knew it.


Yamato smiled at his wife.  The young flesh covered with soft powders and scented oils.  She was beautiful.  Her hair glisten black, brushing the nape of her neck and it was tantalizing.  Delicate fingers wavered on the thin handle of light wood as it outlined small characters that only took him, but seconds to draw.  Though, it should annoy a man of Yamato’s temperament, he found it funny.  She amused him beyond words.  He shifted his weight on the bamboo mat.  His armor clanging against itself and he saw her jump.


He signed loudly and he heard her servant’s breath hesitate.   He shifted his sights to her though she paid him no attention.  Her eyes were so enthralled in the lady that he doubted that she knew he was in the room.


Gekido, he recalled her name.  Such a lovely young woman.  If it had not been so publicly, he would have ran his brutish hands through the everlasting lengths of hair on the woman’s head.  Her eyes shined like that of a child and the light scent of lilac came from her.  He watched her silent movements through the palace and she was elegant, more so than Miyabi, more so than any other woman that he had met.


Had it been different circumstances, would he have chosen her over the childish Miyabi.  At the time, he was not sure, but he knew that the faint light gracing her cheeks teased him.


He could only imagine the beauty of her tears and the lovely screams from her painted lips.


Casting his eyes back to his wife, he noticed the thinness of her stroke.  It was not sufficient for a woman of his court, but he silenced himself and waited for her to complete the scroll.


His eyes wandered back to the woman that stared so admirably at the lady.


“Gekido,” he spoke her name for the first time since she had come to his palace, a year and a half ago.


She, unlike the others, did not jump at the sound of his voice and he found her appealing.  She only lifted her eyes to him with a steady glare.  “Yes, my lord,” she spoke with a quite calmness.


Was it anger?  He smiled.  He liked her.


“Get your lady a cup of tea,” he beckoned her.  Leaning over, placing his elbow on the floor, engulfing Miyabi in a small enclosure of his body.


Miyabi was terrified.


Gekido nodded.  “Yes, my lord.”  With study steps and a bowed demeanor, she exited the room never turning her back to the man who ordered her.


Elegant, he gazed after her.  Then back to the woman before him.


He was a wise man, regardless of how he chose to treat the next man and he could read her nervousness.  “You shake like a tree, Miyabi,” he noted so close to a whisper, she struggled to hear him.


Miyabi lowered her eyes away from the paper.  “Forgive me, my lord,” she forced from a close throat and grasped the brush tighter.  She much preferred the tall stalk of a woman that had been her teacher before they were wed.  Though, she left her many time with her hands blue and bruised, she did not have the same effect that the beast in front of her did.  Now he was so close to her that she could feel his body heat as it emanated from his armor.


Would he take her here?  Before of all these people?  She swallowed a hard lump and began to pray that he wouldn’t.


She couldn’t look him in the eyes.  She was to afraid to.  He was to powerful of a man for her and she knew that, now more than she knew anything else.  She had noticed his wondering eye.  She never questioned it.  Just like she never questioned the small foot steps that waited outside her door until the weight of her husband lifted from her and she could move again.


It was painstaking when she thought of the women that he considered concubines when she was his wife.  Was it her immaturity that had her thinking this way?  He was a lord, but did he love her at all.  Would he ever love her the way she wanted him to?


How could he ever love a woman that shook every time he drew near her.  This was signs of a child afraid of her father.  No, Miyabi coached herself.  He is your husband.


She could have cried, there in front of him.  Gaining what resolve she had she slowly lifted her eyes from the fickle paper and looked into her husbands face.


Yamato drew back, even as she did it.  It was not something that he was use to.  For a moment, he drew a blank and discovered why he had chosen such a woman.  There was something in her that he wanted and it was something that he had yet to obtain.  He smiled at her and she only stared back at him with slightly parted lips that at that moment looked absolutely alluring.


The woman that had his mind early had been forgotten as he looked into the face of his young bride.  He could so easily read her fear, yet she stared back at him, questioning his next move.


This young woman, young wife.


“Continue, Miyabi,” he spoke with the same calmness that he had just before battle.


Itsuka watched from the corner of the room.  She didn’t like what was transpiring between the two lovers in the middle of the room.  If she had stood beside the lady maybe it would have been her that he would have so gazed at .


The bubbling in her stomach was almost to much to take.  She turned from them and continued her work in silence.  The great room that they shared was in much need of cleaning and that was all that she could do.


That was all that she was worth to any of them.  She could feel herself getting riled at the thought.  She was worth more than that.


Miyabi was nothing.  Nothing.  The room was too quiet.


And she would also be NOTHING.  To intimate.


She could learn NOTHING!  The candlelight, to romantic.


She was a child.  NOTHING!!  To perfect.


The shattering of glass awake her from her madness.  She didn’t know if she had slammed the tray or if it had merely slipped from her fingers, but glass was all about her feet.  Lovely china pieces threatened to cut her if she moved.


The silence in the room was broken.

And that was all she wanted.  


She gasped at her mistake.  Her first instinct caused her to gazed across the room to the lord and his lady.


Yes, they both stared at her with curious looks, each asking a different question.


Miyabi wondered if she was okay in her work.  The concern in her eye was understandable.  It had been unbelievably loud in the echoing hall.


Yamato’s right brow lifted, in question.


Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen the dishes high in the air before she had thrown them to the ground.   It had been an act of rage.  And he stared at her, until she turned her head in shame and still he continued to glare.  


Peculiar girl.


“Was there some reason for that?”  he questioned rising to his feet.  In her rage, she had decided to destroy what was his.  Inexcusable.


His footsteps were slow and study coming towards her.


Itsuka had quickly dropped to her knees, shards digging into her legs.


No, this was not how it was suppose to be.  She couldn’t be this way.  Miyabi was the one, the childish one.


Her breath was panicked and she thought that she would die right there.  The heaviness in her chest only increased when she felt his hands gripped the thick fabric of her sleeves pulling her to her feet to stand in front of him.  Servants had started to stop their doings to watch.


“Do you not hear me girl!” his voice was booming and echoing in her head as she felt hot streams erupt down the round curves of her cheeks.  He pulled her closer to him noticing the extra weight about her chest.


Was she Miyabi and Miyabi her?  Was she really there?


She felt her body cringe in his hands, felt the ache in her heart.  The room was spinning, like her ‘bout with sake a few days ago.  She watched the foul twist of her imaginary lover’s lips, the anger that shown in his eyes.  Her mouth was wide open and she couldn’t utter a word.  Not even sorry.


She saw his right hand rear back to give her a heavy blow to the face and all she could do was stare at him in pure fear.  He was suppose to be her lover and he…


“My lord!!!!”


It was Miyabi’s voice that brought her back to reality and also seem to bring Yamato back.  Or was it her hands that had wrapped around his right arm that pull back to deliver a discipline blow that had awaken him.  Either way, both stood staring at Miyabi.


Her royal garments entangled in his.  She stood a foot underneath him and yet she held his hand back with all her might.  The little woman held her own against him.


“My lord please,” she begged.  Her eye staring at his stunned face.  Her voice no longer the tiny thing that whispered.


Yamato stared down at her .  His wife.  She was surprising.  He liked that.


Even the servants in the quarters, had stop to stare in awe at the young woman.  Never had this happened before.  This meager nothing stopped a lord.


“I’ll take the punishment,” she implored, pulling at the discipline arm.


It riled him that she stood before him and requested such a thing.  Miyabi. The little Miyabi-chan.  Did she think that she could stop a warrior like Yamato?


With prestige, he straightened himself dropping his hands from Itsuka, and she fell to her knees no longer feeling the stink of glass.


Miyabi gazed up at her husband.  He looked reasonable in that moment, but so had he in the woods by her father’s home, while a storm erupted in his head.


“Fine, Miyabi,” he bowed his head to an honorable opponent that had for one minute defeated him.  He turned in his steps his back facing the woman.


Miyabi prevailed for only a moment before she collide with an ironclad backhand.  She couldn’t feel the wood as it slid beneath her.  Her back met the wall with a force that released the air from her lungs.  The impact of her head against the wood made the room dance and the candlelight played games before her eyes.  It took hours before she felt the pain in her face that Yamato’s armor had left behind.


He had spun around so fast that the average human eye was to slow to follow.  A demon they had called him.  They knew nothing, he thought, taking a glimpse of his wife.


Not a sound escaped the throat of a single servant in that room, not even Gekido who stood in the door of the great room, a tea cup in her hands.


Miyabi couldn’t see Yamato as he walked with calm steps to her, for the room spun like the small spinning tops her mother gave her as a child.  He stopped at her feet and looked as a tower in front of the small woman.


“You are my wife,” he spoke with an even tone.  His words were like a dream.  “As the servants do, learn your place woman.”


She wasn’t sure when he left the room.  Nor was she aware of when she had been laid in her bed to rest.

Itsuka waited by Miyabi’s bedside.  She had been asleep for a while now.


“You are childish,” she had whispered.  “As the servants do, learn your place.”  For the fifth time she repeated his words.   She delighted in them so much.


Her feet danced over the elegantly placed bamboo flooring.  She ran her hand over jeweled furniture, touched gold barrettes and stared in clean mirrors.  The small patter of her feet echoed and she smiled.


Though, she was grateful for the stand that Miyabi had taken for her, it would have never been if Miyabi had knew her place in the beginning.


Itsuka felt as though she had shown herself to the naïve Miyabi time and again, and, yet this ignorant woman still toyed around with this notion of friendship.  There was no friendship to be had with Itsuka, and she was well aware of that.  So close she was to her goal and Miyabi was in the way.  She could not stand the thought of Miyabi becoming adequate in a world that she was not wanted.


Lines of perfume decorated the golden chest in the corner and Itsuka fell to her knees in front of it.  She stared at the pretty little bottles decorated with jewels and lines of gold.  She grabbed the smallest one in the farthest corner and stuck it in her sleeve.  


It would never be missed amongst the mess that had been given to her.


She turned slowly back to Miyabi, rising to her feet.


She stared at her pretty little face bruised about the left cheek by the touch of iron and felt nothing.


This world was to become Itsuka’s and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop her.


It’s my turn, Miyabi, she thought pushing the small bottle further up her ornamented sleeve.  “It’s my turn.”