Yukina's screams reached her ears before she even had time to register what was happening. She was lucky enough to palm her communicator even as she saw her trusty oar, splintered into multiple pieces, fall out of reach.
The wind whipped wildly by the ferry girl as she spiraled into a free fall. Her singed obi had come undone, leaving her ruined pink kimono open to the world. Out of habit rather than need, Botan held it shut with her free hand. She got a glimpse of her badly burned forearms as she tried to piece together what had happened to her merely moments before. Conjuring a brand new oar was proving to be a herculean task as her spirit energy reserves were near empty, her thoughts scattered.
What had happened? She had just passed through the portal into the human realm from spirit world - ah, yes, she had been en route to see Genkai and Yukina at the temple! She and Yukina had been eagerly discussing what they were going to do with Botan's time off - the life of a ferry girl is a busy one, after all. Talking...how had they been talking? Oh, right! She had "accidentally" (hehe) left one of her official spirit world communicators with Yukina so they could talk whenever they saw fit. Ferrying souls could be so dull so it never hurt to have someone to talk to.
She had been jabbering away about Keiko's upcoming bachelorette party when she had been blown from her oar.
As Botan's realization of her current situation started setting in, so did the panic, fear, and pain. All of which she had experienced before, but never like this. She tried to cry out, but the unintelligible sounds were lost to the unforgiving wind.
Her oar...she didn't have any energy left to summon her oar! What had happened to her?
She screamed, flailed, cried, desperately clawed at the air, losing herself in her terror. All she could see was the milky blue sky above her, obscured now by her tears. She couldn't look down, wouldn't look down.
I don't want to die! I don't want to die!
She must have passed out for a moment or two. The brief reprieve silenced the screaming in her head as when she regained consciousness, the fear was gone and she found herself calmly contemplating her own passing.
As a ferry girl, Botan had been taught to follow the orders given to her by Prince Koenma and his father without complaint or question. She ferried confused souls to their place in the afterlife, and she had been perfectly content with that. She had never faltered, never questioned her place in the world - in anyof them, really - as she never knew she had the freedom to. It wasn't until she had met Yusuke and the others that she truly learned friendship, it wasn't until she met him that she truly learned love.
Having the chance to take on a human form was simultaneously greatest and most agonizing gift that Botan had ever been given. While she couldn't be happier with the friends she had made, she didn't have a mother, father, or siblings; a family was not important to a ferry girl who had been created for servitude. But upon seeing the lengths Kurama would go through for his mother, the banter between Kuwabara and Shizuru, and Hiei's quiet devotion to his clueless sister, Botan finally understood what she had been missing out on.
And now she had to wonder... could she die? And if she did, did she even have a soul for some other spirit world servant to ferry? She felt human emotions, she enjoyed the things that humans did. But that didn't necessarily make her one of them. In addition to expanding her horizons beyond anything she had ever dreamed, the veneer of humanity had also simply been a cruel tease.
Her muddled thoughts shifted as she became more fully aware of the pain. Whatever had sent her falling from the sky had hurt her pretty badly - her arms were burned, skin torn open. Her wounds were hemorrhaging, blood further damaging her already ruined clothing. She couldn't help but wonder if she would bleed to "death" before she would hit the ground.
Realizing that her time was growing short, Botan forced herself to push all thoughts - happy and sad - to the far reaches of her mind. There was something she wanted to do before she hit the ground.
She brought the communicator clenched tightly in her fist up to face her. Carefully cradling it in both hands, she flipped it open. The display was only static for a moment, and she worried that it was broken.
When Yukina's tear-stained face appeared on the circular screen, Botan couldn't help but smile. Yukina tended to have that effect on her, no matter what the circumstance. The ice apparition was yelling things, confused and panicked things, her pretty pink lips mouthing words that the ferry girl could not make out.
Botan decided to reply anyway, even though she could barely hear herself speak over the screaming wind.
"Oh Yukina dear, don't cry! I'm sure I'm looking worse for the wear right now, but it's really okay. My oar is gone and I can't summon another one, but I mean, who knows if I'll die or not... funny how I never really thought about my own mortality before, seeing as it's kinda sorta my line of work." She paused, forcing a grin on her face. "Don't go outside, okay? There's something out here, something dangerous. Send Yusuke, Kurama, Kuwabara and Hiei if you can get a hold of them, see if they can't figure out what all this ruckus is about."
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught her obi fluttering away, having finally freed itself. She gave one last ditch effort to save herself and found that creating a new oar was still impossible in her current state.
"Just in case I don't make it back, Yukina, tell everyone that they meant all the worlds to me. And again...just in case...tell him that I love him, so, so much. I only wish I would have worked up the confidence to say the words myself."
With that, she closed the communicator, cutting off whatever it was that Yukina had desperately been trying to say. The ferry girl closed her eyes and waited for whatever it was to come.
Author's Note: Though this is posted as a one-shot for now, there are many places I would like to take this story if enough interest is generated. Please review, whether you like or not - I like to hear all opinions, good or bad!