History Repeats Itself
"What do you mean you're going for a holiday! You can't do that!"
"See if I can! You and your beloved shrine can go for a hike- because that's exactly what I'm going to do!"
He slammed the front door of the shrine house, and made his fuming way across the shrine, simmering in his righteous anger.
It was Saturday, damn it. He had the right to go out with a couple of friends. Really, it wasn't like he asked much- just one night a week, he didn't want to have to clean, sweep, take care of and kami-knows-what this cruddy forsaken hole of a shrine. Maybe go out with friends, have a hamburger and watch a movie. Maybe go to a birthday party of the person who happened to be his best friend.
He grumbled even more when he passed the stupid well house that had caused all the mayhame. He was supposed to be cleaning that rat hut for the rest of the night when his best friend was waiting for him to pass his birthday night.
"Sure I will, watch me do it, dad" he said defiantly, to no one in particular. He made his determined way to the small abused hut, threw the door open, feeling slightly satisfied when the sliding door banged against the side. The wood creaked beneath his feet as he walked down the stairs and went strait to well at the bottom.
"I'm not going to spend my night cleaning your sorry dry ass, you get me, you stupid dry well!" he yelled, more to take it out of his system than for anything else. Feeling both stupid and at once slightly elated, he gripped the rim and bent forward as far as he would go.
"You hear me!" he yelled into the open, echoing well "I'm not going to do anything for you ever, stupid old wood bag!"
He would have kept his word too, if he hadn't slipped.
His feet flew from under him, and he gave a hoarse expletive as gravity pulled him into the well he had just been yelling his guts out at. He hit the bottom with a thud, sat up still cursing from between his teeth, rubbing his head where he had hit it.
The hissing from above him silenced his own. When he looked up, all he could see was black. He looked for the rungs, but found an ivy he wasn't sure hadn't been there before. In any case, he climbed up using that- only to find himself outside in an open clearing. In the middle of a wood.
"Where in kami's sake am I?" he muttered, trying to make something out of his surroundings. The moon was thin, and the clouds of late February cloaked the little light it gave off.
"Hello?" he called, hoping to attract some needed attention, and with it, possibly, some very needed help. He'd probably hit his head hard.
"When dad finds out about this, he'll be on about how the kami were punishing me for weeks. I'm never going to hear the end of it" he went on grumbling to himself. He looked around, and decided that sitting on the rim of the rotted well wasn't going to get him anywhere. Maybe if he walked around enough, he'd manage to make it to the shrine house. Or else he'd fall down the shrine steps, beat his head again, and then come to his senses and go to his friend's party.
He walked for a couple of minutes, falling over this thing and that, calling out for help occasionally. Then, from between the trees (or that's what they looked like, at least. It was pitch black, darn it), he saw what looked like a light.
"Hello!" he said urgently, trying to make it there as fast as he could while dodging trees that seemed to coming out of nowhere. "Hello, can you hear me? I'm-..."
He stopped short when he actually reached the light. Sitting there, with a little boy in her lap, was a young girl who looked a few years younger than him. She was warming the little boy's hands against the fire, which was the light he had seen, and was apparently trying to stop shivering in her thin, worn out kimono. A scene that looked like it came out of a theme movie set, seeing that there was a guy, with an arrow sticking out of his chest, stuck to the tree behind them. That looked suspiciously like the Goshinboku.
"...lost" he finished weakly.
"You're lost?" she asked him, tucking the little boy to herself, as if to protect the little boy, or protect herself with the little boy. "It's not a good thing to be, at night in Inuyasha's forest"
"Huh? Who's forest?" he replied blankly. The girl waved her hand to the tree.
"Inuyasha" she said as if it explained everything. Then she looked at him shrewdly "You're not from here. Are you?"
"Nope. Or yeah ... I don't know anymore" he said, beginning to get dizzy. Where the hell was he? "What about you? If it's not safe to be out here at night, then why are you here?"
"Because the village cast us out" she sniffed, pouting in defiance "Our parents died with the kami pestilence's last visit, and the villagers didn't want us to stay there when we couldn't feed ourselves. Humph, it's only because I refused to marry that fat old man"
He looked at her as she hugged the little boy to her.
"Who's that?" he asked, pointing at the sleeping boy she was holding
"My brother" she said "But who are you? What are you doing here?"
"Name's Shison" he said, pointing to himself "I kind of . . . landed here, by mistake. I thought I could get home, but I'm beginning to think that idea wasn't one of my brightest . . say, since you're from around here, you wouldn't be able to take me back to rotten old well would you?"
"The bone eater's well?" asked the girl arching an eyebrow "Why do you want to go there?"
"I fell in it . . or I think it was it . . and I found myself here. I think I'll have to try it and see if I can use it the other way too"
The girl looked at him oddly.
"You came from the bone eater's well? You're dressed oddly enough . . . you're a youkai aren't you?" she said tiredly, seeming resigned to the idea "Just go ahead and eat me here. What do you want to get me away from the light for?"
He stared at her for a few seconds before he cleared his throat.
"Erm look, whatever kind of joke my dad put you up to, ha ha, it's funny ok? Now can you take me up to the well? As for eating you ..." he looked at her oddly again "You're not exactly on my menu"
"On your. . . oh, it's a youkai word. Whatever. I'll take you to the well, if you change your mind, just make it quick and painless, ok?"
He sighed, resigned to her strange talk, watching her take the little boy into her arms securely, and take a light branch into the other. He made space for her as she passed, waving her torch periodically to check for a path she obviously knew well. Within minutes, they were actually standing beside the well.
Or at least, he thought it was the well. It looked- newer? Well, the wood looked a little less rickety and eaten at. But the ivy running up the top gave it a weather beaten and natural aspect that it didn't have before. Not to mention that grass growing around it, instead of a grass pit, was a lot more interesting a setting.
He gently took the torch from the girl's hands raising it over the well. It looked all the same from the inside.
"So you're going to just . . . jump in?" she said, breaking him out of his thoughts. He turned to look at her doubtful face, firelight shifting around to what he'd rightly guessed to be a clearing.
"Yeah, this is the way I came, I should at least try . . I think" he said, looking back down at the well belly.
"I can't tell you to come to the village" she said sadly "They didn't even want us. With the kami of pestilence still riding out, it's probably safer to stay away, and the famine . ."
He looked down at the well, and at her. This was probably some weird sort of dream he was having because he had hit his head. Tomorrow morning, he was going to wake up with his mum fussing over him, his dad berating him and telling him that's what he got when he disobeyed a parent, and Toshio not talking to him because he hadn't shown up at his party, because he'd fallen in the stupid well and hit his head.
So it wouldn't hurt to play hero, would it? It wasn't like this would be a life changing decision, no?
"Come with me" he told her, making up his mind.
"W-what? Jump in there? Leave the village, to come to your youkai world? But- but-.."
"Look, you looked ready to die when you thought I was going to eat you a few minutes ago" he said, and then, at her panicked look, continued quickly "which does not mean I'm going to eat. Just that I want you to come with me. It's safe there. No youkai" he told her, trying not to sound condescending. Really, if this wasn't a dream, but was dad's idea, he could try to be a little more original than that. He was raving about youkai all day . .
The girl looked at him at the well, and then glanced back over her shoulders for a few moments, in the direction he was guessing her village was.
"So" he said, holding a hand out to her "you coming?"
She jumped, looked at him, over her shoulder again, and then down at the sleeping boy.
"We've got nothing to lose, I guess" she said.
"Great, now, what's your name?"
"Kyoko" she said, smiling at him hesitantly.
He helped her to the rim of the well, then they both jumped in.
...........
000000000000088880000000000000
...........
"Mamma!"
She was pulled out of her thoughts by her son, who was pulling at her skirt excitedly.
"Yes dear?" she told him, smiling down at him
"Inu-no-nii-chan is here!" he squeaked, proceeding to dash out the kitchen door.
She sighed, smiling at the door, and went back to working on her dinner. Well, now she'd have to make space for Inuyasha too, didn't she? She smiled all the more widely to herself as she remembered the boy from her past, who her mother had frightened her with, and who now instead turned out to be a kind boy who was taken with her own daughter.
"Life is strange" she sighed out loud.
"Hmmm" said Jii-chan from behind her, sipping at his tea "Yes, it is. When are you going to tell your daughter the truth, Kyoko" he went on to ask her, probably guessing what she was thinking by her expression.
"Sometime, I guess. As of now, she already has so much on her mind. And perhaps . . well, Shison took me out of the Sengoku, and now maybe the Sengoku wants someone else instead of me."
"Or else the your daughter will take that boy out of the youkai infested lands, like my son took you" said Jii-chan, sipping some more tea. "Although, he being a youkai . . ."
"He's harmless Jii-chan, you know that" she laughed, even as he son, daughter, and the hanyou they had been talking about walked in.
She turned back to her dinner with a smile, after inviting the blushing boy to a meal. She had to phone her brother in Kyoto, she thought. It had been centuries since she'd heard from him last.
End