For iyfic contest on LJ. The theme was "minion(s)" I took some liberties with it, I admit.
Title: The Girl Who Had Been Trod Upon
Word Count: 220
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst, general, drama.
Summary: A life lived in servitude—she always did as she was told, believing it would work out in the end.
＊.X.＊
When she was a child, she said, "You can't make me," and stomped her little feet, working her miniature determination into a frenzy. "Why can't I just get married when I grow up, like a normal girl?" But the elders saw great power in this one, and a miko she became.
When she was a miko, bound and dutiful and appropriately sorrowful, she said, "It's too much for me, I'll be overcome." But cast the jewel into the sea, and greater monsters will only emerge, bury it beneath the earth, and the earth will roil and consume all who walk it. There was no other way, so jewel-guardian she became.
When she was a jewel-guardian, she said, "I think I am in love." But love was not permitted to one such as herself, and she died full of hate.
When she was dead, and full of hate, Urasue raised her, and she said, "Enough." She knelt before the hag like the minion she was expected to be, and placed her hands on the witch's shoulders. She, in her life and death, had been used, tricked, betrayed, and denied the simplest pleasures, but she was no youkai's minion.
The girl who had been trod upon walked where she willed for the first time in life or death, and it was bittersweet.