Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha nor do I make any profit from the publication of this story.
Rebirth
Before her mistress's stone grave
She weeps alone, but cannot stay
She stands up and she walks away
Leaving footsteps through time.
Alone, she stumbles through the world,
A mere broken-hearted girl;
The shadow of her former self
Leaves footsteps through time.
She follows her mistress deep into the heart of the cave, bearing the oppressive shouki.
The youkai attack, their sheer numbers were enough to strike fear in the heart of anyone.
They advance relentlessly through wave after wave of dark, slimy, writhing monsters intent on ripping them apart.
Her mistress fights tooth and nail, and together they slay countless demons; but, their powers are waning, and the monsters kept coming; the dark youkai reaches out and wraps slimy claws around her mistress.
She is forced to watch on, knowing that she would be dead before she would be able to save her.
She tears at the other monsters attacking her, ripping through them, being sprayed with their dark blood, but she cannot overcome them, and she knows it.
She fighst harder, pushing herself, hoping against hope she might make it even as her common sense tells her she will not.
An odd sound reaches her ears and she turns her head to the source; everything happened in slow motion, in a gruesome scene that would haunt her dreams for centuries to come: her mistress pulled upon her spiritual powers, using them to glue the dark demon to her, sealing their battling souls in a small jewel and expunging it painfully from her body.
The jewel fell ominously to the floor, clinking and rolling away.
Silence spread painfully on the now frozen-in-time youkai.
A macabre sight: bleeding carcasses strewn here and there, shouki misting the air, a mountain of raging demons frozen dead mid-blow; and there, at the very top of the make-shift peak, with head lulling to one-side, hair spilling across her shoulder, seemingly in deep sleep, her beautiful mistress Midoriko.
She didn't know for how long she stared unseeingly at the grotesque view, all she knew was she was exhausted.
Every ounce of her body hurt, her wounds were raw and bleeding but most of all it was the ache in her heart that made it hard to move.
As a youkai she had never been prone to great displays of emotion, and neither had her mistress, so her temperament suited them both.
Now, before the broken body of a most respected partner she cannot stop the tears that make their unfamiliar way down her face and plop pitifully on the ground.
Her already broken body is further battered by sobs that come from deep within recesses of her heart – places she had not even been aware existed in her.
When at last the tears cease, she is tired.
There is a gaping whole in her heart that bleeds despite her healing abilities, and she knows she cannot return to what she was. She cannot abhor her form any longer – it is a reminder of her failure and her loss.
She stands up slowly, with the weight of her decision still tugging at her, but she will not go back.
She feels the changes overtaking her, the disappearing soft weight of her tail, the ears shrinking and lowering on her head, the flattening of her snout into a pretty little pout and a slightly-upturned nose.
It is surreal; she has not used this form in centuries, and she feels almost as if it is her first time.
She must go.
Carefully she looks at the frozen youkai, taking in their fearsome snarls, then goes up to the closest one and rips part of his haori.
It is not enough, so she moves on to the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.
She ties them up in a make-shift set of clothes, and bandages.
Her first steps as a human are awkward and clumsy, but she knows they will take her where she is meant to go.
She kneels and looks for the pearl with her mistress's soul. There! Her fingers take in the smooth. surface, feeling the thrumming just below.
She closes her palm around it and tucks it safely into her obi.
With one last look to Midoriko's sleeping form she begins walking away from the cave and into the cold sunlight that whips her newly exposed skin.
Sayoonara!
