Meant To Be
By Onira
Chapter One : "Let Playtime Begin!"
The Goddess Erisa sat before her table, chin on one hand looking through papers that hovered in the air before her, vanishing and appearing in time to the flicking of her index finger.
"No. . . No, no. . . Definitely not!" Erisa discarded yet another paper with a soft poof as it disappeared.
Now, Erisa was not exactly a goddess. But she was nothing like a nymph or a demi-goddess. She was one of those little oopses that occurred during the creation of the universe. Since she is perpetually youthful, physically and mentally no older than eight years, she gets bored very easily. The gods gave her earth to play with to keep her occupied. At one point she had a bunch of lizards running around on the earth, but then she got tired of them and threw a big rock at them. For a while she was content with furry things. Then she wanted to see how they would last against the cold. Then she went and created a strange race that survived not by strength or defense, but by intelligence. She even went so far as to give them predators, a lot like humans, but much stronger.
But, alas, she grew bored of that little scenario and decided to make herself the Grand High Match Maker of Japan.
"Grrr. How the heck am I ever going to find a match for this guy!" The goddess threw up her hands in exasperation, falling back into her little cloud-chair.
"No matter how many times I look I can't find a single one!" She swung her hand in frustration and knocked over the pile of papers that she had yet to look through.
"Gah! This is just not my day!" Erisa began to pick up the papers then her eyes fell upon a certain one. Her eyes lit up like a cat's as she dropped all the other papers to read the one in her hand. Her eyes skimmed over the paper and her grin grew. Then she saw one tiny bit of information. Her face transformed completely from happiness to vexation.
"What! Not born for another three hundred years! Come on. Give me a break!" The goddess sat back again and thought for a few moments.
"Wait a second. Why should when she's born matter?" Erisa said, grinning mischievously. She swept all the papers off the table and ran her hand over the glassy marble surface. The patterns in the marble began to change and form themselves into a map of Feudal Japan.
"Now, here's the village. here's the fortress. . . Here's the western lands." Said Erisa, pointing to different places on the map as she named each place.
"Now which legend do I want to use? Umm. . . Nothing comes to mind. Why not create one? There'll be rumors of a great tree and within lays a power source even greater than the Shikon No Tama. Anyone who manages to get inside will be gifted with its powers. But no one has ever made it into this tree."
"Now how am I gonna get this all to work. . . I'll put the tree here. and I'll add this little gem to attract them. . . It's just close enough to there to get him to come. now if I can tie him into all of this. . . I know!" As she spoke she pointed about the map.
"Now, am I forgetting anything? Don't think so. Excellent!" Erisa opened a little drawer in the edge of the table and pulled out two little figurines about the size of chess pieces. One shaped like a tree, and the other in a human-like form.
Erisa gently touched the top of the tree shaped piece and it opened. Erisa placed the human shaped piece inside and put the piece down on the table as other pieces appeared on the marble surface.
Erisa looked satisfactorily over the paper in her hands one last time. It was a description of a girl. The picture on the paper changed as a small number in the text changed. The image went to that of a bit of text, to a baby, to a child, to a sixteen-year-old demon girl. Erisa put the bit of parchment into a drawer in the table and grinned to herself.
"Let playtime begin!"
oOo
The youkai lord looked irritably across his lands. Not that he could see them. The entire area was covered in a thick layer of fog, so thick that you could not see your own hand two feet away.
Sesshoumaru allowed a slight scowl to fly briefly across his face before retreating from the balcony. The taiyoukai walked restlessly about his study. He needed to see to things to the east, but this fog was preventing him traveling. For it was so thick it even blocked his sense of smell.
"Sesshoumaru-SAMA!" The voice of the toad youkai pierced through the dampened air, soon followed by the panicked source of the noise. Jaken ran screaming into the room with a paintbrush wielding Rin hot on his heels.
"Lookit Jaken go Sesshoumaru-sama!" laughed Rin as she chased the terrified toad youkai about the room. Jaken cowered behind Sesshoumaru's hakama and Rin skidded to a halt before the demon lord. The little girl blinked cutely at him and Sesshoumaru allowed the shadow of a smile to cross his face as he stepped aside.
"AHH!" screamed Jaken. "Milord Sesshoumaru-sama! How could you do this to me! Your poor servant who has served you loyally for countless years!" shrieked Jaken as he ran from Rin, who had already started towards the old toad youkai. But he might as well not have uttered a sound, as his words were lost under the volume of Rin's laughter.
Finally Rin pounced on Jaken just as he ran in front of Sesshoumaru and painted the old youkai's face a vibrant bright pink. 'Where did she get that ink? Certainly not in this fortress.' Thought Sesshoumaru as he watched the little girl proceed to paint on Jaken's clothes.
Slowly a faint presence entered Sesshoumaru's senses. The inu youkai turned and looked out at his fog-covered lands, patiently waiting as the presence grew stronger and stronger until it reached that of a youkai with strength equal and somewhat greater than his own. Then, power flared with the presence then dimmed to a steady glow in Sesshoumaru's senses.
The taiyoukai turned to face the still open sliding door to the gardens. He could see a strange shape in the horizon. Sesshoumaru let a hint of a frown adorn his features. He shouldn't be able to see anything. Natural fog didn't clear up during the evening, only in the morning when the sun dries it up.
Sesshoumaru watched as the fog faded at an unnaturally fast rate. Soon revealing the strange shape on the horizon to be a very large tree. Now, it seemed that that was the place from which the presence was emanating. Rin had stopped painting Jaken and stood beside the taiyoukai.
"What is Sesshoumaru-sama looking at?" Asked Rin as she pulled on Sesshoumaru's hakama. The inu youkai looked out at his lands. "Sesshoumaru-sama?"
"Nothing." Sesshoumaru made a quick decision then turned to Rin. "Rin. Go play with Jaken. Aisumi!" The last was spoken to a potted plant in the corner. The large leafed plant melted into a young nymph with pale-green tinted skin, long, thin leaves for hair, and short heart shaped ones in place of her ears. She appeared to be dressed in a tight fitting emerald green dress that flowed down to her ankles. But in truth the "dress" was many tiny scale-like leaves that were simply an extension of her body. Aisumii walked over to Sesshoumaru and knelt.
"Yes master, what would you have this unworthy one do?" she stressed "unworthy" with annoyance and distaste. But Sesshoumaru either took no notice, or ignored it. But it was more likely the latter as he was, after all, quite the demon indeed and less than prone to missing things like that.
"Show Rin where more inks can be found and entertain her until I come back." Sesshoumaru turned to the bright pink toad youkai who cowered under a table. "Jaken, you are to stay here." Jaken's eyes bulged to the size of saucers as he clutched the table leg with greater conviction.
Sesshoumaru left the fortress and set out in the direction of the great tree.
oOo
The taiyoukai followed the presence as it grew steadily stronger. The image of the tree became clearer and clearer as the fog continued to lift. When Sesshoumaru came within about a hundred feet of the tree, it became clear to him that the presence was, in fact, from the very center of the tree. He slowed to a graceful stop atop the humongous tree. It was about the same size as a redwood tree, but its bark was smooth and the branches arranged in almost a sphere-like shape. Overall, the tree didn't seem very different than a child's drawing bought to life.
Sesshoumaru could tell easily that this was no ordinary tree. He stood on the very apex of the branches, but his feet did not sink beneath the leaves. He knelt and laid a hand through the greenery. His fingers brushed against smooth bark. As soon as his hand came in contact with the tree, the presence flared and a certain foreboding emanated from the tree, not unlike the feeling you get before making a decision that will change your life. Sesshoumaru gracefully moved from the tree to the other, more natural ones around it. Standing on a branch of a large evergreen tree, he decided something that he probably would regret later.
He didn't want that tree in his lands.
Sesshoumaru leapt from his current/previous perch towards the great tree, extending his claws and loading them with venom all in one motion. The swift and blurred movement was abruptly halted as his claws impacted with and dug into the barrier just behind the leaves.
The acid hissed and boiled away at the bark as he removed his hand from the tree. Sesshoumaru leapt back to his previous standing point and watched the results of his work. Soon the venom faded, leaving seemingly untouched bark behind.
oOo
"Oh! Oops! I forgot. That legend is that it's impossible to get into the tree! Oh no! What now!" The young goddess fretted as the portal before her closed, shrinking into nothing with a small pop.
She twirled a lock of her whitish pink hair around a finger as she frantically thought of what to do.
"Oh I know!" She piped, raising her hands in a gesture of triumph. Immediately after she was clutching a spot on her scalp, ow-ing under her breath, as her hand had still been holding her hair when she had moved it.
oOo
A small drop of venom dripped from the area where it was applied, landing squarely on a small flower. The bloom hissed as it withered and disintegrated. Sesshoumaru's ear twitched slightly, tuning to the soft sound. His gaze soon followed, eyes traveling from the ashes that were once the flower, to a small knothole in the bark of the tree.
Eyes narrowing, he left the treetops and landed expertly at the base of the huge tree. Reaching out to the knothole, he raised a hand to rest it on the knothole, moving slowly downward. About halfway, his claw slipped into the center of the myriad swirl of wood as though there was a hole, sinking in up to his fingertip.
A sound, not unlike a very large lock opening, emitted from the trunk of the tree. Sesshoumaru tried to move, but some unseen force held him fast as a light blue glow crept up from the tip of the taiyoukai's claw to engulf his entire body. In a flash of brilliance, the youkai lord had disappeared from the forest floor
Sesshoumaru reappeared, standing on a smooth, almost slippery vine of wood about three feet wide, but was wider than tall. The branch extended from the inner wall to the very center of the chamber, coming to a point where it and several other branches converged in the middle of the spherical room. The air inside was damp and smelled of foliage and rain. In the very heart of the chamber rested a glowing sphere, which seemed to be the source of the earthy, yet uncanny, green light that illuminated the room. It sized at about eight feet in diameter. Though glowing brightly, the edges of the sphere were sharply defined.
Sesshoumaru slowly approached the object, walking along one of the vine like branches. As he grew closer to the sphere, its boundaries became translucent, revealing an undefined form within it. He reached out with a clawed hand and swung lightly at the boundary, stopping the motion when his hand was halfway in the sphere. He had stopped mostly out of surprise, but also to see what caused his youki to decrease.
The part of his hand that was in the sphere had changed considerably. His claws had vanished, reduced to human nails. The residue of his venom had been "scraped" away by the boundary to fizz briefly just around his wrist before vanishing. Sesshoumaru retracted his hand to find it no different than before he had put it into the sphere.
Finding no lasting harm in the touching the sphere, Sesshoumaru stepped into the orb.
The air inside was nearly opaque, but strangely no different than the air outside. The same scent of trees, foliage, and an undertone of mist and rain lingered in the air, but was stronger than outside.
The taiyoukai made his way through the chamber, following the presence in the center. He soon came to a patch of thinner air, through which he could see. The new ability enabled Sesshoumaru to see a floating form of a young girl in the very center of the orb.
Her ebony hair flowed about her, completely disregarding gravity, as did the rest of her given that she was floating. Her skin was a pale cream color, contrasting intriguingly with her dark locks. Her long slender legs were curled loosely to her front, held slackly in place by her arms, her clawed hands resting gently on her shins. Though her face was partly covered, Sesshoumaru could see the night blue markings that ran from just above her ears, across the top of her cheekbones, and down her face to join at the end of her jaw. As well as two lines of either cheek that started just above her long, elf-like ears and curved in a horizontal arch and turned sharply before reaching her nose and retreating back to her hair just below her earlobe.
Sesshoumaru approached the girl, who was evidently a youkai. He contemplated taking her from her resting place. There was no reason for him to think that it wasn't her that was keeping the tree in existence. He circled her once. . . twice, then stopped to stand at her side. He extended his hand to hover just away from the girl. He hesitated a moment then mentally reprimanded himself for his indecision. As soon as she was securely in his arm, her weight seemingly came back to her, her body pressing gently against his arms. But despite that she was surprisingly light, she only seemed to weigh about as much as a medium sized dog or lynx.
Not long after her weight appeared, the greenish light vanished, as did the tree. Leaving Sesshoumaru standing in the middle of a small clearing with a youkai girl in his arms. The only remainder of the tree was the lingering scent of foliage and mist that made up the youkai girl's scent.