prompt: a sleepless night
Mother
I, who have never had a mother, suddenly understand the sheer worry a human mother goes through.
At first, I thought it would be easy. After all, Kurama was a well-behaved child and his human mother rarely had a reason to worry, not that she ever stopped worrying. I thought watching over Kurama until we could return to Makai would be simple.
That was until I found out exactly how much Kurama had retained from his demon life.
Shiori will never know, but Kurama was prone to nightmares. Vicious night terrors that would paralyze him and leave him screaming silently in my mind. The human mind was never meant to take the long, extended memory of a demon, and in those early years, Kurama had to force those memories away in a compartment – not forgetting, but not remembering either. Aware of them the same way one is aware of an exceptionally good story. It sticks with you, but it's not part of you.
Kurama is a good storyteller.
He would scream in my mind, begging me to make it stop, and I would stand over his bed and keep my hand on his shoulder. It was all I could do.
It was then that I realized that perhaps Shiori had every reason to worry.
I feared Kurama would destroy himself before he could adapt.
Sometimes I still have that fear, just for different nightmares.