Tipping the Scale
It would be so easy.
The boy stood on the edge of the woods behind his house, gazing pensively into the emerald wilderness that seemed to stretch onward and forever. He was lost in his own thoughts, dancing on the edges of excitement and a mentality that was uncommon to him: hesitation.
It would be so easy to simply leave, to stand and abandon the short life he found himself living. He could see himself running, not as a silly, clumsy human boy, but as a fox, wild and free, through the forests of the land where his very spirit was conceived. This was the part of him that was driven by the raw rush of life. The part that upheld the greatness of what he had been. If he just released it, abandoned the humanity he had retreated into in order to ensure his soul's survival, he could taste true freedom again. He would be as he had been: powerful. Untouchable.
Not vulnerable to doubt in the least.
And yet, as tempting as the flavor of freedom was, something held the onetime fox back.
Presently he glanced over his shoulder at the tidy little house a mere twenty yards from his standing point. He cocked an eyebrow. Standing in a window that looked out into the yard from the kitchen was a woman, her ebony hair pulled into a towel turban and clad in a terry cloth robe. And she—the woman who considered herself his mother—was looking back at him.
The ten-year-old sighed, so softly that it was barely evident that he had done so. He should have predicted something like this. Prepared for this hesitation, or blocked it out beforehand. It would certainly be easier than blocking out the expression his "mother" wore now, a gaze that held an anxious fear that she was obviously unafraid to display. In a normal battle, expression of emotion could be a fighter's downfall. It was ironic enough that Shiori Minamino's concern was her weapon.
It was the woman's love for him, the redhead realized, that held him back. The very same love, when coupled with maternal instinct, that had alerted her to the window. The very same love that had caused her to pierce her pale arms protecting him from the one thing he might not have been able to conquer: shards of a broken vase in the path of his clumsy fall.
The very same love that would tip the scale of his decision.
Kurama neither smiled nor frowned as he knelt to the earth, drawing a tiny seed from his pocket. With gentle skillfulness he pushed it intoa bare patch of dirt. It was a promise. When the flower bloomed, he would rethink his temporary desicion.
Could Shiori have hadany idea of the exact battlethat hadwaged in her son's mind? No, perhaps not. All she saw was Shuichi, her baby boy, staring with longing incomprehensible to her into the woods behind her house. But then he turned, eyes cast downwards, and walked with slow steps back to her.
To accept her loving embrace for the first real time.
Pai927 2005