MY SON...-SDA
CHELSEA WELSH
Summary: "You Killed My Son!" Those Words Seemed To Echo In My Mind. Even To This Very Day, I Can't Forget...
It glimmers so calmly in my palm, this blue gem. The purity that hangs upon a too-thick band that hangs quietly from my neck. This small piece of sadness that holds too much within it's depth.
...She cried for me...
She was the only one who had ever done so; she was the first and the last. I wonder if anyone realizes that I DO remember everything about her. I remember the lullabyes she would hum to myself and Yukina. I remember the way she would rub her swelling stomach, murmering words of comfort, pretending to speak to us when I knew she feared for her life. She was afraid of what those women would do to her.
...I remember her screams; how much pain she went through to bring Yukina and myself, the Forbidden One, into that hellish world. Hina held me in her arms, and whispered exhausted words. "I love you my darling," she said; she'd been crying that day.
'I believe you.' I smiled at her...but she didn't see. They'd snatched me away too quickly.
I couldn't move beneath the bandages as I was in the arms of a woman. She radiated sadness from every inch of her. Her bottom lip trembled and her hair was dissheveled. Her hands shook. 'Don't you dare drop me' I thought. It was a shame my voice was dead. Yukina shrieked behind their loathsome group.
The voices of those women...I hated them from the very beginning. They were too high pitched, too shrill for my taste. Had I the energy, I would have killed them.
"My baby!" the woman cried out, agony laced in her every word, "I beg of you, give him back to me!" She'd begged; she'd gone down on her knees, even promising to leave the safety of that world if only to spare my life. The old woman, that cold-hearted witch, turned away from her. She left my mother on the stone ground, screaming and crying out uselessly.
They believed I would be violent and cruel; they believed I would kill my mother...
"Rui!" That old woman again...I had already hated her voice. "I know that you and Hina are close friends and that this is difficult for you. But you must do this for her own good and yours and ours. This Imiko, this boy of fire will slaughter us all! Do not pity the beast..." Rui whispered an apology to me.
We were high up; the winds were like knives, even through the bandages. Rui [that was her name... was feeling too much. Her entire body was full of those tremors now. She looked into my eyes and I gazed right back at her. A small jewel glittered between her slender fingers; she tucked it neatly between the bandages that protected me from the iced wind. "If you should survive, please return," she whispered, "Return to this place and seek the revenge you so rightly deserve. And, when you do," she barely hesitated, "I want you to kill me first."
I smiled.
...And, in a mere moment, I felt myself falling. I barely heard my mother's agonized gasp, her shriek that must have hurt those women holding her back. I hope it did. "You killed my son!!"
To this very day, those words echo within my mind.
To this day, I can still see her clearly; I remember those lullabyes and the way she cried for me.
In a sick way I was glad for her screams; I was glad to know that she cared that much for this demon...this thing that was called 'Imiko'.
I smile now, tucking the stone beneath my shirt; it's cold against my chest. It always has been cold...
I lean back against the tree and let my eyes closed.
...In my mind, I can still hear it. That distant lullabye and those words that never cease to calm me.
'I will always love you, my son...'
THE END
