A/N: I've had the basic idea for this story for years, not long after I began posting "The Wrong Turns & Detours of Love" online. Only now have I really been able to actually write it without quickly lagging after the attempt's beginning. This is good, though; I have more knowledge that could be useful for its composition now than I did then. Hell, I only finally settled on the very title a few months ago.
Considering what is given of Kurama's background in the series, I've set this story in Japan's Heian period. I'm going to try and do my best to retain at least some authenticity regarding things such as the customs (for instance, as in this chapter, that married women blackened their teeth) and folklore, though I may err. But at least you may be assured that I'm not pulling the entire thing out of my ass, ha-ha.
While the sun gives life to the earth, the moon is not without its influences. It commands a pull that holds sway over the tides, moisture, plants, humans and animals, and perhaps even the body and frame of mind. The full moon especially has been associated with an increase in activity such as fertility/virility, mental disorder (hence the term "lunacy"), and violence. This alleged correlation is sometimes known as lunar effect.
Lunar Effect
Chapter I
January 15, 2008
A not-quite-full moon cast its light over a grove of lonely laurels, the leaves of which shimmered silver intermittently as the breeze caused them to sway in one direction and then the next. Save for the resulting murmur in the canopy and to a lesser degree the grasses below, the grove was quiet. At least, until an unsteady shadow low in the sky fumbled, and the breaking of branches accompanied by cries of pain laced with obscenities announced that the grove's peace was for the present finished.
From one of the trees came a light shower of leaves and snapped branches, which preceded the laurel's accomplishment of giving birth. Its baby landed at its roots, swearing and writhing in agony. The baby was by no means an infant. Rather, he—for it was a male—was a young vagrant, lean (malnourished) and winged (demon), currently suffering an uncomfortable condition of dishevelment. No doubt this was caused primarily by the arrows residing in the flesh between his shoulder blades and subsequently his wings, thus his current situation at the base of the tree.
Ironically, and much to the sufferer's humiliation, he had attained these injuries not from a fight with one of his own, but from members of that species that most breeds of demon deemed in one aspect of another inferior: humans. And his assailants had not after a tiring and bloody standoff drove him off from an escapade of destruction, theft, and sampling of flesh. Unhappily, he was a hungry demon, and had simply been caught trying to scrounge a handful of noodles from one of these creature's larders. His modest would-be meal had been crushed to dust in the flight and injury that followed. Now he lay on his side, hurt, still hungry, and pledging as he twisted and tugged at the arrows that he could not well see but most definitely could feel, that the next acquaintance that he encountered that tried dismissing the human as a harmless meal possibility should have its liar's tongue cut out and throttled until its head popped off.
"Mother-FUCKER!" He tossed against the laurel trunk, seeing brilliant spots of white against a dark background while marveling how hard he could clench his jaw without his teeth shattering each other. When the last and deepest arrow was removed he sprawled on his stomach in the grass, somehow thinking that a mumbled chant of nothing but strange swearword combinations might be curative in this scenario. How the hell had he come into his present complaints thanks to a few garden variety humans?
With respect to his ego, Kuronue would blame it on the almost full moon.
The serving girl asked if she might pour him some wine. He sent her away, unconcerned about potential jests over his tolerance. His present ailment being what it was, he had better sense than to hinder himself further with liquor. Sporting a faint flush, his face would cause any glancing passersby to think that he was already drunk. Kurama was perfectly fine with such a misconception. Really, he'd much rather not have been here at all, and would not have been, but for the circumstances.
Yomi, he reflected sourly, was the true culprit of this predicament. Had his friend—late friend, he corrected himself—not been so impulsive, he might not have been so inclined to employ means of disposal. And had he not been made so inclined, he might have presently forgiven those impulses which were a chronic liability to him, and made good use of those which were an asset. The dead demon's image came forth in his fevered mind. Reckless, headstrong, with a smug smirk beneath that cocky gaze beneath those horns. Horns; horn; horny—.
He found his breath grown slightly heavier, a little besides himself thanks to his inconvenient imagination. Damnable, he cursed his dead second, his mood grown sourer.
It must have been that time of the night, when suddenly out of the smoky haze the air weeps painted and perfumed women. Kurama regarded two of the nearer ones coolly. Blackened mouth—bad hygiene, or someone's wife? The other might have been her mother, in that the decay was worse. Well, this was after all a small, rural tavern; selection was naturally limited. Still, he wanted as much as possible to decrease the probability of his coming out of this heat pissing a different sort of heat. For a moment he considered his fellow patrons, not all of whom were so appalling, but quickly nixed the idea. Whores were in a position were they did not ask so many questions. Potential diseases aside, they were safer.
His stomach growled still. The Kitsune made to order another bowl, but grew distracted as his shift in position allowed him a new view.
Younger- and cleaner-looking than mot of her present cohorts, she looked as though she were trying to hide among the shadows of the far wall. Pearly skin betrayed her, though, as it shone out against the shadows, against jet hair and dress of deep blue patterned with plum branches. From the feathery appendages sprouting above her eyebrows, he surmised, with a touch of wariness, that she was a Ga, a Moth. Still, she was the least diseased-looking candidate, and at this point he'd already compromised the full reign of his usual discriminate tastes.
Resigning himself to the situation, he closed the space between them to swiftly that she widened her eyes and took a step back. He grasped her sleeve and pulled her closer. "How much?" he asked somewhat abruptly, his voice low. She stammered an answer even lower, that he found agreeable. Right now he was anyway a Fox in no place to argue.
She would be in the third room on the second floor. By now a whisper: "My name is Tsukiko."
Though he didn't consider the latter information to be at all necessary, he found it difficult to suppress a smirk. Tsukiko—"moon child." Had her parents foreseen this irony, of was it a positional name? He would see her in a half-hour, he told her without offering his name.
Finished making his arrangements with her, he left just as swiftly, still needing to quench other appetites. He brushed off a few half-interested looks. Nobody cared so much in this sort of place, and if for whatever reason his conduct was found excessive even for his ilk, the judge could for all he cared give it up to the moon.
