Ginya
Ginya had to keep running. Even now, her belly burgeoning with life planted inside of her by some distant cousin, she had to run. Her life was built on the concept of fleeing. Fighting and fleeing.
Was that all there was?
And now, there would be a whelp to distract her. A miserable, mewling child.
Oh, she'd been stupid. Letting him touch her that way. But the cousin of hers was strong, powerful, sovereign of the lands to the west. Visiting his territory had been a mistake.
She would bear his heir, now, and he would continue to rule uninterrupted, bastard human-lover that he was.
Ginya stopped, sniffed the air. Another youkai was nearing the clearing where she stood. She tensed herself and sprang, catlike, into the air, landing silently in a tree.
This body was small, agile, but her balance was thrown off by the bulge at her waist. No matter. If Ginya needed to fight, she would, reverting to her birth-body, the one that so resembled that of her cousin.
For now, she merely hid, dark-water eyes gleaming out of a face white like snow. Ginya's moonlight hair hung about her shoulders, spilling down.
The youkai appeared, sniffed the air, trotted on past. It was slightly smaller than her canine form, a horse-demon with gigantic, glowing blue eyes, walking on its hind legs.
Human fucker. Ginya smelled it on him. Why a human would deign to copulate with something even uglier than itself was beyond her.
Of course, human-fuckers like the cousin who had impregnated her never showed their real bodies. They just screwed the human women who swooned over their otherworldly beauty and grace, told their human women "I love you" so they would not leave, and produce malformed little hanyou for their demon masters.
No matter.
Ginya dropped to the ground, continued her journey.
Two weeks later, she reached the sea.
It was quiet and peaceful, watching the waves from where she stood atop a gnarled pine, sunlight gleaming off of her silver locks. Ginya was pleased. Here, alone, no youkai, no humans to bother her, she would birth her child.
The cave was deep, but her claws were still needed to gouge out an opening large enough to fit her bulk through.
Ginya slaved away at the cave mouth. With her human hands, she slashed, let the acid fly from her claws, burning at the rock, making a terrible, sulfurous stench. She continued until the cave mouth was nothing but molten, spitting slag, and then she backed away, watched as it cooled off.
The dark kimono she wore melted into her fur as Ginya's canine body overtook her human one, mouth stretching out into muzzle, until she stood before the cave, towering over the treetops. A silver dog, long hair stained copper by sunset, noble form silhouetted against the evening sky.
Ginya ducked her head and slid into the cavern. It was an easy fit, and would continue to be, even as her stomach swelled.
Now that the cave was done, the nest was to be prepared. Ginya began plucking fur from her flanks, scattering the beautiful, long locks across the dirt floor of the cave.
Days upon days went by, and she emerged, half-hairless, to hunt.
Pregnancy made Ginya violent. She surfaced only to hunt, to find stray humans and rip their heads from their bodies, stripping the fatty, stinking flesh from their bones and lapping up their blood. Human youkai hunters would chase her, but she always made it back to the safety of her cave, having gained a few open wounds.
The time of what would likely be her only child's birth drew near. Ginya cloistered herself away in the fur-lined darkness, her womb sore, mucus matting the fur around her nether regions.
How long she lay in the darkness she did not know, but without warning she felt the whelp kicking, scrabbling, trying to break loose.
And then, contractions heaved at her, making her cry out in pain. She had not expected labor to be so painful. This only added to Ginya's misery, her agony, as the baby made its slow descent out of her.
Finally, when the head appeared, she grabbed it with her teeth and yanked, ripping the amniotic sac from its face.
Ginya bit the umbilical cord off, ripped the placenta from her body and swallowed it, then set about licking off the mewling, mucus and blood-covered puppy.
A boy. How she had wished for a girl...
When the blood looked as though it would stain his fur, she dragged him out to a nearby spring and dunked him in the water, shaking him vigorously by the neck. He squealed, and nipped at her face, which elicited not maternal love but reciprocation.
Ginya flung the puppy against the ground and stood over it, snarling.
It whimpered.
She took the puppy back to the cave and he huddled against her, nuzzling at her.
"Stop that," she growled.
He did. He dragged himself across the room and huddled against the wall, shivering.
Always, he would crawl back to her. He would try to play, to nip at her ears or tail, growling playfully, tugging, but Ginya wanted it stopped. One swipe of her paw and he would whimper and skulk away.
Her puppy was a handsome thing, but his eyes were the same blood-red as his father's. His hair was white like his father's. The only feature the puppy shared with Ginya was the small markings on his face, around his mouth and on his forehead.
Ginya hated that she saw so much of her cousin in her son. This child, for all the pain and misery it had caused her, was nothing but a disappointment. A pest.
However, Ginya knew that there was one thing that needed to be done. One thing to teach the little bother before she dragged him back to his disgusting father...
The day was warm and clear, and no clouds obscured the sun.
Wearing her human skin, Ginya sat beside the river. Men were fishing with their nets on the far shore, and she watched them intently with her dusky eyes.
The puppy sat in her lap. He was a year old, now, and could take a human body and speak to her.
His eyes were the color of his father's human eyes: clear yellow-amber. The hair that hung to his ears was pure white.
The moon and slashes which adorned his handsome canine face faded when her puppy took a human body, so she drew them there with cosmetics.
Gradually, as the fishermen noticed the beautiful, silver-haired noblewoman playing with her child on the far bank, they would pull their boats into the water.
Ginya heard their words from faraway as they paddled towards her.
"Heh, wonder if she's married."
"Bet not. Looks like a youkai. Be careful..."
"Feh. Everyone knows those damned things don't show their faces during the day."
"She's got a kid with her. She can't be all bad..."
One fisherman, a handsome middle-aged man with exotic dark red hair and gray eyes, approached her.
"The day is beautiful, is it not, my lady?" he called from his boat.
Ginya hid her face shyly behind the sleeve of her kimono.
"Where is your husband on this fine day?" the human inquired.
"Oh, kind Sir, my husband left to go fight in a war to the south, and never returned," Ginya told him, keeping her eyes averted demurely.
The puppy sat in her lap, staring blankly at the fisherman.
"What a shame that is, leaving such a beautiful lady with a child so young..."
"It is. My son and I are very lonely in our manor. We have no one to provide for us..."
Ginya fingered a lock of her exquisite silver hair, her stygian eyes staring into those of the fisherman. She noted a frown on the face of the one who had warned the fisherman of youkai.
"What a shame that is," the human repeated, looking at his companions with a grin on his face that he must have thought her too stupid to notice. "May I accompany you home, to ensure your safety through this evil forest?"
Ginya rewarded him with a smile. "I would be honored to have such a strong man escort me."
He came ashore and followed Ginya into the woods.
She led him through animal paths, through courses left untrod by human feet.
"Where... IS your home, my Lady?" the human inquired, nervousness tingeing his voice.
"Oh, we'll be coming up on it soon," she replied.
The puppy in Ginya's arms was silent. His face was blank, baring no emotion whatsoever. He no longer tried to play with her, and pushed away at any sign of affection.
Ginya was pleased.
"What...what is your son's name?" the fisherman asked, coughing, trying to break the silence of the forest.
"Sesshomaru," Ginya replied.
"That is...a strange name," he muttered.
A few seconds more led them into the clearing. Sunlight filtered dimly through the leaves, no birds chirped in the treetops. It was almost as dark as the night, in the deep, dark forest.
Ginya positioned herself between the human and the only path that led out of the densely walled clearing.
"Sesshomaru. Show our visitor your talent."
"Yes, mother."
Ginya placed Sesshomaru on the ground. He sank to his waist in the high grass, and it obscured his white clothing.
She could smell the fear radiating off of the fetid human, heard his heart pounding in his chest.
Sesshomaru's eyes took on a sheen of blood, and his body exploded, taking on the huge, demonic form of a true youkai.
The fisherman screamed.
He turned to flee but found Ginya in his way, poison dripping from her claws, off of her fangs, hissing and sputtering as it touched the grass.
In one snap of his monstrous jaws, her puppy ripped the human's head from his shoulders, leaving a blood-spurting, ragged lump. The body swayed, then fell, and Sesshomaru swallowed the head.
"Eat everything."
Sesshomaru complied. He ripped the wretched body apart, staining the fur around his mouth and on his paws black with human ichors, gorging himself on the offal.
"Good boy," Ginya told Sesshomaru softly.
He wagged his tail a bit.
Ginya kept her son at her side for a year more, teaching him all that he needed to learn. She was pleased that he hated humans just as much as she, and took pride in his superiority as a youkai. Sesshomaru's mannerisms were still aloof, his eyes always cold.
In this way she brought him back to her cousin's lands.
"Remember. Your father is a human-lover. His only worth is the power he'll grant you. Be a good child."
"Yes, Mother," Sesshomaru replied.
He turned, still a child, yet decades removed from the innocence and naiveté of youth, and trudged towards his father's palace.
Ginya was pleased.
She returned to the forest. The rest of her life was spent there, exhausted by fights with human youkai-hunters who took her right eye, with competing youkai who took her tail and an ear. Fifty, sixty, seventy years passed.
Ginya was no longer a beautiful demon. She felt her age, felt the weight of a lifetime on her shoulders.
Humans encroached upon her forest, and she cared little. Ginya was going deaf. Her good eye was good for little.
And then one day, she saw one of the humans.
A little girl, perhaps four or five years old, with thick brown hair and dark eyes much like Ginya's own, was playing in the clearing where the dog normally rested.
"Uh?" the little girl gasped, looking up at the youkai. "Dog!"
Ginya snarled.
The girl held up a tattered old doll made of scrap cloth and twigs. "Want to play?"
Her hackles eased down. Ginya stepped into the clearing, dropped down with a thud.
The child seemed no worse off than before the gargantuan dog had come into the clearing. She continued at her play, until an adult voice called from beyond the woods, "Rin! You worthless thing! Where are you?!"
"Bye, Dog," Rin said, gathering her dolls. She ran from the clearing, toddling along. Ginya heard the adult greet the child with a slap.
"You little...if you run off once more..."
But every day, Rin returned. She brought Ginya tiny offerings of fish and eggs, which the youkai ate out of politeness. When Rin went to pet her, though, Ginya drew the line, and growled.
So Rin would play with her toys, and babble this or that to Ginya, who would regard her with silence.
If Rin came to her with her small, thin body bruised or cut, however, Ginya would lick at the wounds and shelter the child in her arms while Rin cried.
One day, Rin wasn't there when Ginya appeared. Ginya wondered why...
Rin never returned to her.
Ginya waited patiently, her body aching and feeling its age. But the little girl and her dolls never came, never again.
Ginya was tired. The day was wonderful, the sun shone down warmly, the birds twittered in the trees.
It was a wonderful day to die.
And so the youkai closed her good eye, expelled the final breath from her lungs, and in the peaceful sunshine Ginya faded away into the long-awaited arms of death...
Ginya had to keep running. Even now, her belly burgeoning with life planted inside of her by some distant cousin, she had to run. Her life was built on the concept of fleeing. Fighting and fleeing.
Was that all there was?
And now, there would be a whelp to distract her. A miserable, mewling child.
Oh, she'd been stupid. Letting him touch her that way. But the cousin of hers was strong, powerful, sovereign of the lands to the west. Visiting his territory had been a mistake.
She would bear his heir, now, and he would continue to rule uninterrupted, bastard human-lover that he was.
Ginya stopped, sniffed the air. Another youkai was nearing the clearing where she stood. She tensed herself and sprang, catlike, into the air, landing silently in a tree.
This body was small, agile, but her balance was thrown off by the bulge at her waist. No matter. If Ginya needed to fight, she would, reverting to her birth-body, the one that so resembled that of her cousin.
For now, she merely hid, dark-water eyes gleaming out of a face white like snow. Ginya's moonlight hair hung about her shoulders, spilling down.
The youkai appeared, sniffed the air, trotted on past. It was slightly smaller than her canine form, a horse-demon with gigantic, glowing blue eyes, walking on its hind legs.
Human fucker. Ginya smelled it on him. Why a human would deign to copulate with something even uglier than itself was beyond her.
Of course, human-fuckers like the cousin who had impregnated her never showed their real bodies. They just screwed the human women who swooned over their otherworldly beauty and grace, told their human women "I love you" so they would not leave, and produce malformed little hanyou for their demon masters.
No matter.
Ginya dropped to the ground, continued her journey.
Two weeks later, she reached the sea.
It was quiet and peaceful, watching the waves from where she stood atop a gnarled pine, sunlight gleaming off of her silver locks. Ginya was pleased. Here, alone, no youkai, no humans to bother her, she would birth her child.
The cave was deep, but her claws were still needed to gouge out an opening large enough to fit her bulk through.
Ginya slaved away at the cave mouth. With her human hands, she slashed, let the acid fly from her claws, burning at the rock, making a terrible, sulfurous stench. She continued until the cave mouth was nothing but molten, spitting slag, and then she backed away, watched as it cooled off.
The dark kimono she wore melted into her fur as Ginya's canine body overtook her human one, mouth stretching out into muzzle, until she stood before the cave, towering over the treetops. A silver dog, long hair stained copper by sunset, noble form silhouetted against the evening sky.
Ginya ducked her head and slid into the cavern. It was an easy fit, and would continue to be, even as her stomach swelled.
Now that the cave was done, the nest was to be prepared. Ginya began plucking fur from her flanks, scattering the beautiful, long locks across the dirt floor of the cave.
Days upon days went by, and she emerged, half-hairless, to hunt.
Pregnancy made Ginya violent. She surfaced only to hunt, to find stray humans and rip their heads from their bodies, stripping the fatty, stinking flesh from their bones and lapping up their blood. Human youkai hunters would chase her, but she always made it back to the safety of her cave, having gained a few open wounds.
The time of what would likely be her only child's birth drew near. Ginya cloistered herself away in the fur-lined darkness, her womb sore, mucus matting the fur around her nether regions.
How long she lay in the darkness she did not know, but without warning she felt the whelp kicking, scrabbling, trying to break loose.
And then, contractions heaved at her, making her cry out in pain. She had not expected labor to be so painful. This only added to Ginya's misery, her agony, as the baby made its slow descent out of her.
Finally, when the head appeared, she grabbed it with her teeth and yanked, ripping the amniotic sac from its face.
Ginya bit the umbilical cord off, ripped the placenta from her body and swallowed it, then set about licking off the mewling, mucus and blood-covered puppy.
A boy. How she had wished for a girl...
When the blood looked as though it would stain his fur, she dragged him out to a nearby spring and dunked him in the water, shaking him vigorously by the neck. He squealed, and nipped at her face, which elicited not maternal love but reciprocation.
Ginya flung the puppy against the ground and stood over it, snarling.
It whimpered.
She took the puppy back to the cave and he huddled against her, nuzzling at her.
"Stop that," she growled.
He did. He dragged himself across the room and huddled against the wall, shivering.
Always, he would crawl back to her. He would try to play, to nip at her ears or tail, growling playfully, tugging, but Ginya wanted it stopped. One swipe of her paw and he would whimper and skulk away.
Her puppy was a handsome thing, but his eyes were the same blood-red as his father's. His hair was white like his father's. The only feature the puppy shared with Ginya was the small markings on his face, around his mouth and on his forehead.
Ginya hated that she saw so much of her cousin in her son. This child, for all the pain and misery it had caused her, was nothing but a disappointment. A pest.
However, Ginya knew that there was one thing that needed to be done. One thing to teach the little bother before she dragged him back to his disgusting father...
The day was warm and clear, and no clouds obscured the sun.
Wearing her human skin, Ginya sat beside the river. Men were fishing with their nets on the far shore, and she watched them intently with her dusky eyes.
The puppy sat in her lap. He was a year old, now, and could take a human body and speak to her.
His eyes were the color of his father's human eyes: clear yellow-amber. The hair that hung to his ears was pure white.
The moon and slashes which adorned his handsome canine face faded when her puppy took a human body, so she drew them there with cosmetics.
Gradually, as the fishermen noticed the beautiful, silver-haired noblewoman playing with her child on the far bank, they would pull their boats into the water.
Ginya heard their words from faraway as they paddled towards her.
"Heh, wonder if she's married."
"Bet not. Looks like a youkai. Be careful..."
"Feh. Everyone knows those damned things don't show their faces during the day."
"She's got a kid with her. She can't be all bad..."
One fisherman, a handsome middle-aged man with exotic dark red hair and gray eyes, approached her.
"The day is beautiful, is it not, my lady?" he called from his boat.
Ginya hid her face shyly behind the sleeve of her kimono.
"Where is your husband on this fine day?" the human inquired.
"Oh, kind Sir, my husband left to go fight in a war to the south, and never returned," Ginya told him, keeping her eyes averted demurely.
The puppy sat in her lap, staring blankly at the fisherman.
"What a shame that is, leaving such a beautiful lady with a child so young..."
"It is. My son and I are very lonely in our manor. We have no one to provide for us..."
Ginya fingered a lock of her exquisite silver hair, her stygian eyes staring into those of the fisherman. She noted a frown on the face of the one who had warned the fisherman of youkai.
"What a shame that is," the human repeated, looking at his companions with a grin on his face that he must have thought her too stupid to notice. "May I accompany you home, to ensure your safety through this evil forest?"
Ginya rewarded him with a smile. "I would be honored to have such a strong man escort me."
He came ashore and followed Ginya into the woods.
She led him through animal paths, through courses left untrod by human feet.
"Where... IS your home, my Lady?" the human inquired, nervousness tingeing his voice.
"Oh, we'll be coming up on it soon," she replied.
The puppy in Ginya's arms was silent. His face was blank, baring no emotion whatsoever. He no longer tried to play with her, and pushed away at any sign of affection.
Ginya was pleased.
"What...what is your son's name?" the fisherman asked, coughing, trying to break the silence of the forest.
"Sesshomaru," Ginya replied.
"That is...a strange name," he muttered.
A few seconds more led them into the clearing. Sunlight filtered dimly through the leaves, no birds chirped in the treetops. It was almost as dark as the night, in the deep, dark forest.
Ginya positioned herself between the human and the only path that led out of the densely walled clearing.
"Sesshomaru. Show our visitor your talent."
"Yes, mother."
Ginya placed Sesshomaru on the ground. He sank to his waist in the high grass, and it obscured his white clothing.
She could smell the fear radiating off of the fetid human, heard his heart pounding in his chest.
Sesshomaru's eyes took on a sheen of blood, and his body exploded, taking on the huge, demonic form of a true youkai.
The fisherman screamed.
He turned to flee but found Ginya in his way, poison dripping from her claws, off of her fangs, hissing and sputtering as it touched the grass.
In one snap of his monstrous jaws, her puppy ripped the human's head from his shoulders, leaving a blood-spurting, ragged lump. The body swayed, then fell, and Sesshomaru swallowed the head.
"Eat everything."
Sesshomaru complied. He ripped the wretched body apart, staining the fur around his mouth and on his paws black with human ichors, gorging himself on the offal.
"Good boy," Ginya told Sesshomaru softly.
He wagged his tail a bit.
Ginya kept her son at her side for a year more, teaching him all that he needed to learn. She was pleased that he hated humans just as much as she, and took pride in his superiority as a youkai. Sesshomaru's mannerisms were still aloof, his eyes always cold.
In this way she brought him back to her cousin's lands.
"Remember. Your father is a human-lover. His only worth is the power he'll grant you. Be a good child."
"Yes, Mother," Sesshomaru replied.
He turned, still a child, yet decades removed from the innocence and naiveté of youth, and trudged towards his father's palace.
Ginya was pleased.
She returned to the forest. The rest of her life was spent there, exhausted by fights with human youkai-hunters who took her right eye, with competing youkai who took her tail and an ear. Fifty, sixty, seventy years passed.
Ginya was no longer a beautiful demon. She felt her age, felt the weight of a lifetime on her shoulders.
Humans encroached upon her forest, and she cared little. Ginya was going deaf. Her good eye was good for little.
And then one day, she saw one of the humans.
A little girl, perhaps four or five years old, with thick brown hair and dark eyes much like Ginya's own, was playing in the clearing where the dog normally rested.
"Uh?" the little girl gasped, looking up at the youkai. "Dog!"
Ginya snarled.
The girl held up a tattered old doll made of scrap cloth and twigs. "Want to play?"
Her hackles eased down. Ginya stepped into the clearing, dropped down with a thud.
The child seemed no worse off than before the gargantuan dog had come into the clearing. She continued at her play, until an adult voice called from beyond the woods, "Rin! You worthless thing! Where are you?!"
"Bye, Dog," Rin said, gathering her dolls. She ran from the clearing, toddling along. Ginya heard the adult greet the child with a slap.
"You little...if you run off once more..."
But every day, Rin returned. She brought Ginya tiny offerings of fish and eggs, which the youkai ate out of politeness. When Rin went to pet her, though, Ginya drew the line, and growled.
So Rin would play with her toys, and babble this or that to Ginya, who would regard her with silence.
If Rin came to her with her small, thin body bruised or cut, however, Ginya would lick at the wounds and shelter the child in her arms while Rin cried.
One day, Rin wasn't there when Ginya appeared. Ginya wondered why...
Rin never returned to her.
Ginya waited patiently, her body aching and feeling its age. But the little girl and her dolls never came, never again.
Ginya was tired. The day was wonderful, the sun shone down warmly, the birds twittered in the trees.
It was a wonderful day to die.
And so the youkai closed her good eye, expelled the final breath from her lungs, and in the peaceful sunshine Ginya faded away into the long-awaited arms of death...