Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin and it's characters are not, unfortunately, mine. They belong to Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shonen Jump and whoever else. I am making no financial gain from this fanfiction. Copyright infringement is not intended.
Notes:
1. My muse bit me on the leg and made me write this. Really. So to anyone waiting for the next instalment of Wind and the Snow, I'm sorry. It's coming, but this wouldn't leave me alone. So here it is; short, unedited dross set in my all-time favourite fictional universe. And yes, I should really be studying.
2. I'm not entirely sure about the accuracy of my depictions of the religious practices of the village. Errors are unintentional, but realistically I expect there are several. If I ever actually edit this thing, I'll attempt to do a bit of background reading and fix this. At the moment however, this is unlikely.
3. Certain liberties have been taken with a few chronological points in the Kenshin storyline. I don't intend to point them out, though ;P.
Rainmaker
By Nikoru-chan.
Shinta sat quietly, his head bowed as was proper. In front of him, his parents finished making their own devotions and meagre offerings at the small shrine. As they shuffled out of the way, the next family moved forwards.
It seems like everyone in the village is here! Shinta thought, surreptitiously glancing around. That was uncommon; it was not a festival day, nor any other of the notable religious times.
What it was, however, was desperate.
There was a hardness, an edginess, to everyone's features. Worsened by the pinched, hungry look most of the villagers wore, it was evident that this was a village in dire straits.
Everyone's praying for rain. Rain will make the dry, dying crops grow. Rain will let people live. It will make kachan, tochan, and everybody happy. Looking around at the hopeless misery on the faces of the poorer of the villagers, the thought continued, I wish I could be a rainmaker! I wish I could make it rain so everyone could live happily!
Thinking back as hard as he could, Shinta could just barely remember a time when it hadn't been dry. When he'd had enough to eat, and the village had been filled with smiles and laughter, and most of all, peace. Now the gnawing ache in people's bellies was seeping into their arms and words, making them argue and fight. Still, it hadn't been too bad, he'd played with the other children as normal, sought hugs from his parents like always, listened to the village Ba-chan's stories with every other child.
Until the whisperings had started.
At first the whisperings had been hopeful – that his fiery hair, the colour of red-gold coins (currency that none in the village knew of except in tales), and his violet eyes, like the very expensive dyes that rich ladies wore, were signs of prosperity. That, with a child like him in the village, surely everyone would prosper.
Surely the rains would come, and bless the crops.
But they hadn't.
For three seasons now the rains had came late and little, while the bandit groups had become larger and bolder.
People were starving. Starving, and frightened.
And the whisperings had changed.
Now they were saying Shinta's eyes and hair, the colours of the sunset on another bone-dry day, were the colours of the sunset of the village. The village was cursed, doomed to fall into endless night. And it was his fault.
I wish I could make it rain! I wish I could make it rain, and make it peaceful again.
Now the village shunned him, though they still welcomed his parents to the fields; the harshness of farming in the dry conditions made all extra labour welcome. Well, nearly all. No one wanted the curse-child in their field.
Nor would any of the other children play with him; those who weren't farming with their parents avoided him. Even the old Ba-chan wouldn't tell him stories any more.
But under his parent's watchful eye, protected by his father's eloquent tongue, nobody actually tried to harm him, at least physically.
But sometimes the whisperings hurt more.
Then the sickness came. The cholera ran rapidly through the village, sparing few, killing the very young and the very old. The old Ba-chan was the first to be taken. Shinta's parents were the last. When the cholera had finished it's inexorable scourge of the village, there was nobody who hadn't lost at least one loved one. Ravaged, hungry and fearful, the villagers searched for someone to blame.
Someone small and weak and finally unprotected.
They found Shinta.
The whispers turned to shouts, the shouts to blows. Recriminations rained down on him; why hadn't he died? This misfortune was his fault, he was the curse-child, begetting drought, sickness and with them death.
Killing his own parents with the disease he brought.
Frozen into shock, Shinta had simply lain there as they beat him after that.
He knew it wasn't his fault. His parents had told him that over and over while they were alive. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't.
Was it?
After his parents' death, Shinta's world spiralled into madness. My parents weren't the last to die, Shinta realised, during a particularly harsh cuffing at the hands of the somewhat inebriated village headman. Not really. I think it was actually sanity that was the last victim of the cholera.
By now the village was so short-handed that even a curse-child was needed in the fields, so Shinta worked, hauling water from the river. And worked. And worked. At the end of the day, he huddled in his parent's hut, eating what little he'd scavenged or foraged, keeping his flaming hair and damned eyes out of the sight of the villagers.
I wish I could be a rainmaker! I wish I could make it rain. If I could make it rain, that'd be enough for everyone to live their lives in peace!
But it didn't rain.
The arrival of the slavers was almost a relief.
The leader of the slaver-caravan had seen Shinta and decided straight away he wanted the boy. The child's fiery hair and jewel-like eyes, huge in his thin face, would bring a high price in the red-light district of Edo, where the exotic was desirable. The village headman had been only too happy to comply. The gold he got (which wasn't the same colour as the boy's hair, he discovered, lending yet more credence to the argument that the brat was a curse, not a blessing) would feed the village for a few weeks longer.
The caravan had departed the village with Shinta in tow, and he'd not looked back.
As he'd left, it had started to rain.
The water poured from the sky, drenching him and his assailant. Wrapped in chains, Kenshin's grip on his katana loosened. The other assassin, Oniwabanshuu, I'm sure of it! had leapt. . .
Grabbing the sword on the end of the chain, he'd swung it up and over. Slicing the man in half.
Blood sprayed around him, falling with a soft patter.
Falling onto a slight, female figure in front of him. A figure who didn't scream or cry.
She simply stood there, as did Kenshin. Staring at each other as the mist of blood continued to spatter down.
"You . . . really are the one who makes it rain. The rain of blood."
She fell, at the same time as the bloodied sword tumbled from his nerveless grasp.
Above him the sky opened up, as if gashed by his sword during the furious combat of moments earlier. The clouds bled their rain into the mired streets below. Rain - heaven's blood – mixed with the rapidly cooling human gore on the street below.
His childhood wish had been granted.
He was the rainmaker.
END.
Kachan – Mother, but casual, like Mom/Mum
Tochan – Father, but casual, like Dad