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Thoughts of time since passed lingered in the mind of the child who lay limply on the floor. She gazed into the dancing reds and ambers of the meager fire that sat contained within the dirt floor dip in the midst of the room. The light of flames ignited the wooden walls that formed the child's room within The Western Castle with illuminate hues. Her wounds wrapped tight, body embraced in the silken cloth of a blanket, no pain could trace its fingers along her flesh; but blackened thoughts did crawl inside the shadows of the room. Refracted in optics hued as the sea, the flames that begged for fodder before her did not take their proper reflection, but did change. One lick a man, one spark a sword, a battle replayed upon her consciousness.
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Atsuko was her name. Wisps of smooth and ashen white hair streamed to just below the shoulders, adorned were the ends with paths of crimson. This mane did well disguise that she had no ears of the human kind, but laying downward faced and propped an inch back from the temples were the twin ears of a cat. Her mother had been the heir to the seat of power in the tribe of the eastern neko-youkai clan; her father an human warlord who had slain his way into the heart of a demon woman.
The little hanyou, the result of their forbidden union, had never questioned why she appeared different in the eyes of the pure-breeds of her clan. The blood that her mother had given to her upon birth deemed her worthy, did it not? A young child of so few experiences could not contemplate the contrast between the loving looks gifted upon her by her mother and the eyes of her clan that held contempt. It was soon that the tribe would come to see that bastard child and traitor mother had to die.
They had come, the had defiled, and they had dragged her mother to the streets by the strands of her hair. Swords were drawn. Blood wept from the soon mother's battered body, each drop drunken in by the thirsty soil. The child kept herself hidden in the faces of the crowd. The lady's lips called out tales of comfort meant to sooth the child; blood swirled with saliva made her tongue incompetent. The young one melted with the longing invoked by the sound of her mothers voice, and she believed they would be saved.
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In the darkness of the present, Atsuko slit threw the flesh of her lower lip with demonic fangs. It was nowhere near the punishment she deserved as to have listened to these whispered words. Her mother had been a body abused and beaten, surronded by the feral calls of comrades who clasped eagerly awaiting steel. And yet she had believed.
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Taken upon the last gurgled will of her mother, she had raced madly from the open streets of their village unto the shelter of the surrounding forest. Some men had relayed after her, leaving slashes in her kimono clothe that soon were filled with blood. The obsidian darkness that the sun and trees in conjunction cast at the forest's edge lent her sanctuary from he pursuers. Through the gaps in the dense woodland in which she hid, she could scarcely make out the silhouette of her mother; knees dug into the dirt, back hunched, head hung low, crippled into surrender. A potent blade was held above her head. Atsuko wrenched her eyes away, the tears that had gathered were release of their bonds of courage's control, spilling down pallid cheeks as the stroke of the sword ruptured a mother's flesh and bone.
Atsuko treked for days through the seemingly never ending woodland, not daring to look back upon the trail of blood that led to her mothers death bed. As she traveled, the horror repeated before her eyes until her world was hazed and tear wells left dry.
Her journey was concluded on the morning tide of the third day. Her body trembled with fatigue, causing the knees to give up their carriage beneath her. Her mind to bend as her head met with the tendrils of grass that waved in the wind. Upward her eyes dared to drift, but her vision of the splintered golden light pouring through the canopy was barricaded. There, a face carrying twin amber eyes.
"Mother!" A young boys voice hailed from the figure, his earsplitting cry for help carried across the glade. He was answered by the downy whisper of cloth, striding ever closer. Beside the child appeared an angelic looking human woman, draped in numerous layers of a kimono of the finest silk. "What is it, Inuyasha?"
"I...I found this girl..."
Adrift, an ebony hair tinged Atsuko's cheek when the Izayoi-Naishinno kneeled beside her. Eyes the shade of an ancient oak passed from the blood that trailed the corner of the girl child's lips to the wound just under the ribcage on the right side. Though the wound was powdered with clotting blood, a cough from the girl caused the abdomen to gush scarlet liquid abundantly to the ground.
"My god...what has happened to her?"
"Is she going to be alright?" The small boy inquired innocently, tugging at his mother's sleeve,
"Not if we leave her alone." The woman bent down, grasping Atsuko tightly, and pulling her close. The little neko instinctively drove incisive claws deeply into the layers of silken kimono the woman wore. At the noblewoman's stride and the young boy's following, the three were once again cast from the lighted clearing into the benighted forest. A whimper of anguish escaped Atsuko when the woman's hand grazed her mangled side "Shhh...it will be alright." She hummed. Atsuko was incapable of retaining her clawed grip upon the woman's attire; she lay herself to resignation and allowed the embrace to support her weight. Now incapable of retaining consciousness, Atsuko's eyes wished themselves to darkness. Her world evanesced into consoling night.
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Written by Kiirii Inspired by Kachi, Hotaru and Dessykins