InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ What Are You? ❯ Chapter Twenty-Four: Time and Death ( Chapter 24 )

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

Chapter Twenty-Four

I heard little footsteps approaching, and a tentative hand touch the screen. I looked up from the scroll I had been reading to glance at the door. I could see Rin's dark silhouette through the screen. She hesitated, then opened it, just enough to peek inside. Seeing that I was awake, she came in and slid the door shut behind her.

“I can't sleep,” she confessed. It didn't surprise me. I had been expecting this, after all. A girl like her, so used to sleeping out-of-doors, could probably never become used to sleeping in the lavish room provided for her, no matter how long I chose to stay here. As soon as the child was born, though, I would find a wet nurse and return to my wanderings, coming back only to check on it. I could claim the mother died in childbirth. It was a common enough death, even for demons. Birth was dangerous.

I stood up. I had been reading over a few scrolls. A breeze blew in from the open screen, combing its chilly fingers through my silver locks and making the single lit candle in the room flicker. “Neither can I.” I moved to look out the screen. There was no moon tonight, but the stars were shining brightly over the world, enwrapping it in a diamond canopy.

Rin stood beside me. “Sesshomaru-sama, are you really a girl?” she asked me, looking up at me with her big, innocent eyes. Her young eyes had seen too much, I realized. Her family's deaths, her own death… Her life seemed riddled with death around every corner. Her biggest fear must be… my death. She should never worry about that, though.

I remained staring out at the stars, looking at the way the land curved like the elegant sweeps of a paintbrush of a skilled painter, the way the growth covered the world like a cloak. There was movement in the night. Night animals were going about their routine lives—bats, owls, fireflies, and other manner of creatures. Somewhere far away, I could see the faint aura of weak demons. I could make out the sounds of a river rushing, and the sound of the night wind murmuring through the complaining branches. The fireflies danced amidst the forest like sprites, disappearing and reappearing amidst the trees. Distantly, I heard an owl's latest victim utter its last despairing cry. Wolves were howling, singing a requiem to the sun.

“Sesshomaru-sama…” the girl prodded, bringing me back to reality. A reality where I very much existed, and there was more to life than the simplicity and poetry of the forest.

“Yes,” I answered finally, my eyes locked on the orange tiger that was silently stalking its prey. It was too dark for Rin to see it from this distance, but I could. Its form faded in and out of the dark trees, then moved away from the palace as it followed its intended prey.

Lord Sesshomaru being female didn't seem to bother her at all, like I knew it wouldn't. She had not been afraid of my true form. Learning that I was female compared to learning that I was really a gigantic dog was nothing in comparison, and that hadn't bothered her either. “And we came here because you're going to have a baby?”

The tiger had caught its prey. I listened to the struggle as the tiger sought and won the advantage and ended a life to prolong its own. One must kill in order to survive. It was the law of nature. The tiger kills to keep itself from dying of starvation, but the chosen victim doesn't want to die; it wants to live. One of them must die, though. It was like that for humans and demons too. There was no place in the world for both of them. Demons eat humans, and humans, in turn, despise and kill demons to try to preserve themselves. The demons were like that tiger—the humans the prey. But the humans were slowly reversing that role, as they retaliated and killed oppressing demons—or tried to and died trying, making more humans see those humans as being valiant and encouraging them to kill demons. It was an endless cycle thus far. “Yes, Rin.”

She smiled. “So, I'm going to have a baby brother or sister?”

One day, this child was going to die, and I was going to have to watch her die. She would grow old, withered, and bedridden. I wouldn't change. In her short lifespan, I would remain the same. It would be as though not even a day has passed before she dies. If I stopped paying attention, the passage of time would whisk by me. I could but blink, and Rin would be gone. Humans rode the river of time, flowing with it. Time was their fate, and they were forever bound to it. Demons were not. We are rooted in place like stones, unmoving, only aging with wear. The humans, so like the creatures whisked away in rapids, only passed us by fleetingly. Their time was so short. How did they even know what it means to live? Perhaps, though, that was why they treasured life. “Yes, Rin.”

She yawned, rubbing her eyes. “Rin is sleepy.”

I had known that already. “Then sleep.”

She looked up at me hopefully. “Can I sleep in here tonight? Just tonight?”

I looked down at her. “If you wish.” I looked back outside. I heard her moving to the large futon, covering herself in the blankets. I listened to her fragile heart slow with the rhythm of sleep. Death clings to humans. It knows they do not have very long until their souls return to hell. Reincarnation was almost pointless. Death waits for humans. I could smell it on some of them, regardless of their age. But perhaps, for mortals, death and time were one of the same.

The wolves had found their prey.