Secrets

By Banana Rum: Kalliel

An Inuyasha One-shot

Kikyou's POV

--

He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him

How could that be—I thought the dead were souls.

He broke me trance. Don't that make you suspicious

That there's something the dead are keeping back?

Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back."

-Robert Frost, "Two Witches"

She moved with a silent grace all her own, sinking and rising with the froth and ebb of the tides.

She conversed with the women, gave the men what they desired.

Played with her children while she taught them the jigsaw memories of working ways.

She traveled where the oceans did take her, off far away where Buddhists preached of the Pure Land and the sixteen contemplations required to enter.

But that was too much for her. Never, wherever, however.

She came across shrines devoted to God. God and devils and saints and angels. How, in that world, heaven and hell were so different than the ones she knew.

And still she wandered.

Weaving an identity, a complete past and present to build her future upon. Lies come easily to her glib tongue, her oils and wine to lubricate the wheels she turned.

There were towers and turrets and high-walled castles, figments of something their masters believed in.

But she was not one who believed.

Pyramids and runes set in stone. Forever to lie there until their meanings were forgotten and only logical hypotheses for knowledge to stem from.

But the world is illogical. So much so, that a statement based on complex facts and figures draws no closer to the mark than an arrow shot across a vale of disheartening mists and crow-calls.

And she wandered further still.

To lands where spirits in the earth resided, deep-dreaming in dormancy, called to the surface by nothing but war cried and blood sacrificed.

There were secrets in the snow. Frigid manuscripts that cracked and peppered away at the touch or breath of warm flesh.

But not for her.

She dove into a millennia of whispers and silent screams, of bull-shadows and aurora.

Learning flecked with tears and ashes as she remembered.

Some of these secrets, of course, were hers.

All things hide a piece of their true selves. Facts the public were better off not knowing, but things that happened all the same.

Tears. Lies. Remedies. Betrayals. Cures. Happiness. Laughter. Love. Death. Deceit. Growing. Change.

Why do they hide, she wonders. Ponders, guesses. And yet, she too has a secret.

Her physical wanderings come to a stand-still.

Her homeland. Her death knoll.

Secrets reside there most of all. Things that can break her, things she will break on her own.

Yet, it is all part of a far greater power. That's what the Buddha says to her. That's what God and Allah and Odin and Huizilopochtil and Windy say.

She doesn't believe them. She can be her own god. Her personal comdemner, punisher, salvation. She can tell confessions to herself and only her.

She holds all the secrets in the world. Progressive power.

She has only one downfall.

One weakness.

That man. The bastard she fell in love with.

The bastard who wouldn't kill her.

The dead have secrets they're keeping back.

She knows.

--

And this is from the after-lash of attempting and failing to write Chapter 6 of Ascension and trying to read a God-forsaken book known as the 'Chocolate Wars'.

Note: I have nothing against those with the religions whose gods I spoke of.

Jaa

Kalliel