Demons are beings born of loss. Their combined existence is the epitome of loss. How they are like reeks of loss.
And loss reeks.
Especially during that final moment of metamorphosis when the tattered remnants finally, irrevocably drain from the human body.
Until the body is human no more and registers no longer the passage of time.
Until it understands no longer the concept of aging.
Until it remembers no longer, even though aging had been all she had done for a good seventeen years of her mortal years before her demonization.
She remembered painfully little of it.
How it had happened. Whoever had made it happen… Wherever and whenever it had happened…
Beyond a beautifully, eerily moonlit night and cold agony, she remembered nothing else.
Not even the reason why.
She had simply woken in the same forest clearing where she had gone to sleep in, alone in the excruciating aftermath with a terrible hunger foreign to her until the sight and scent of passing humans had her salivating.
Before her newly-awoken demonic instincts could spark a bloodthirsty rampage, the first of daylight streaming in through the canopy of treetops above had driven her into a hasty retreat far into the cavernous depths of forest, far away from the closest human village she knew she would have terrorized in thinning sanity.
Sitting, with her legs curled up and her chin pressed to bent knees, in the welcome sanctuary of dark, dank cave, she realized that she had unknowingly been referring to the place as 'human village', as though she wasn't human herself.
But… she wasn't human.
Weighed down by sadness, her arms seemed too heavy even to lift. With eyes that opened wide to glimmer regret, Saki stared wordlessly along her outstretched limbs where they poked out of her kimono, one after another. Then, she pressed her palms to the sides of her face.
The skin was dry.
Funny.
She'd clearly pictured herself crying.
Because, no matter how and why she had turned into a demon in the first place, she was sure it had not been her will.
Had it been so, she would not be behaving the way she was now, rejecting both her newly-inhuman form as well as the distasteful yet undeniable pull of human flesh.
Accompanied only by the battle of identities storming on inside her, she remained in the cave until the grogginess of sleep numbed the near unbearable hunger and clouded the last of diminishing consciousness to finally sink her into slumber so deep she hoped it never ended.
And just like that, she never ate a human.
Not once in her decades of immortal existence did she ever touch one, much less consume one.
And she was ridiculed as an anomaly amongst other demons for that.
The night she had gone to the rescue of a human went on to mark her out as one.
It had been a moonlit night as well, a full moon. Beautifully. Coldly.
As opposed to being eerily shrouded in gossamery cloud, tonight, it lent itself to blatant observation by the watching, appreciative eye.
Hers included.
This was one of the rare few occasions when she did not lament her demonization.
Her vision, enhanced beyond human mediocrity to inhuman flawlessness along with the rest of her senses, allowed her to enjoy scenery she imagined her originally human self managing so only in dreams.
It also allowed her a clear view of the face of the woman traveller as she entered the forest from the south.
Alone. Defenceless. Pregnant.
Essentially food for the many, many predators that she could smell waiting in eager ambush throughout the inky vastness.
Wild animals. Greedy men. Bloodthirsty demons.
Did she know that?
Leaning forward, with her chin on an upturned palm, almost in boredom, she watched her amble along with the obvious gait of a noblewoman.
…She was beautiful, with a full head of ebony black hair that fell thickly in a neat braid over her left shoulder and eyes like rubies.
…She was soon to give birth, with a belly as round as a young melon beneath a thick padding of haori-covered kimono and obi.
…She was clueless, having absolutely no idea that she was currently being closely tailed by a demon as she walked along.
However, glimpsing the tell-tale protrusion of a dagger hilt by the side of her swollen belly, Saki let a rare smile curve her lips in even rarer approval.
Perhaps, this woman was not as foolhardy and vulnerable as portrayed here, before carefully-watching eyes.
But unfortunate, clearly, with the arrival of a third being.
Humanoid. Demon. Unwelcome.
"Heh! Fancy that! A double meal for single ol' me! Lucky for me, not so for you!" A demonic presence, an unsavoury shade of green and one of the ugliest she had ever seen, emerged from the surrounding darkness. Leering at Rengoku Ruka beneath its protrusion of horns, the demon cackled mockingly when she unsheathed her dagger from her obi in open defence. "And what do you think you can do with that puny little thing there? Poke me to death?"
"-Looking at the sorry likes of you, why not?"
Heads snapping in the direction of the female voice drawling aloud, both demon and human stared up into the canopy of rippling treetops directly over them, where Saki perched on a thick bough with long, blindingly fair legs dangling casually off from under the fluttering hem of her kimono.
"You- Lay off! Don't you come here interfering with my meal when you can't get any of your own, on your own!"
Far from being offended, the fair-headed one of the three continued smiling benignly down at them, directing her next words to the monstrosity as it edged closer still to the retreating pregnant woman. "And don't go around talking about things you don't understand."
"What would the pathetic likes of you know about hunting and killing anyway, not having devoured a single human for the past fifty years! Anyway, I can't be bothered with you! Not right now when I have some-" Scoffing and turning away from Saki, said monstrosity advanced menacingly on Ruka, undeterred by her brandishing her weapon in an admirable but futile display of bravado.
Preoccupied with one another, neither saw Saki move.
Plucking a random leaf off its twig, she let it briefly rest in the middle of her unfurled palm before drawing close and blowing it clean off into the air.
In the split second it hovered before inevitable drop, one turned into many. Then, many turned into a flurry.
Engulfed in a blinding volley of leaves in the instance it leapt furiously towards their midst, Ruka shielded her horrified face from possible backlash, uncovering it a short moment later to the green monstrosity dead in the dirt, beheaded and spewing ash at her feet.
Swiveling around, she sought out her now missing rescuer but found herself struggling for balance after a sudden bout of dizziness had her tottering on visibly shaky legs.
It immediately brought a worrying Saki out of decided hiding to her.
"Are you unwell? Do you need help? Water, perhaps-" She quieted down from the older woman leaning into her, heavy in movement but really weighing no more than a handful of feathers to her superhuman strength.
"You…" Ruka murmured tiredly in between weakened breathing. "…are a demon."
"And you," Saki bit out at her comment, finding it every bit as laughable as her lacking physicality as she helped her to a nearby tree. "Need your weapon. Here-"
"-No!" Ruka lunged forward from where she had been seated to lean against the tree trunk, slapping it out of the girl's hands just as she had begun to wrap outstretched fingers around the hilt. "Don't! It's covered in wisteria poison. It's potent. It'll kill you."
Slowly, but surely, Saki withdrew her hand but helped Ruka retrieve the dagger herself, propping her up against her body to lean the short distance to it as she did so. Watching her carefully wrap every last inch of toxin-soaked iron in a square of silk handkerchief, she remarked, "You shouldn't have stopped me from touching it."
"Should I?"
"Shouldn't you?"
"Why should I?"
"Because I'm a demon. You said so yourself."
"So, I did," Ruka smiled, easing herself back onto the ground with relative difficulty even with Saki's assistance, given the progress of her pregnancy. "In the exact same way I acknowledge you as my rescuer."
Saki joined her at the foot of the tree. "Couldn't I have rescued you so that I might devour you myself?"
"You wouldn't."
"Just because that dead fool said so back there?"
"Because you don't have the face of someone who craves human flesh."
The older woman's speech, however eloquent, strangely came to set her off in a way never before experienced in the entirety of her unfairly-extended existence and in swift, subsequent confrontation, she let herself get the better of her emotions.
Saki turned a demon's snarling face to Ruka's.
"Fool! Trusting fool!" She howled, facial features grotesquely distorted against skin turned deathly pale in the brief, fury-induced activation of her demonic nature. "Weak, trusting fool! Never look to others to come to your time of need. Never look to evil to dispel evil! You call me a demon, you know me to be one yet expect me to act the complete opposite of one! Who told you that you could expect that of me? Who told you that you could trust me?"
In the face of such aggression, and possible threat, Ruka wavered not. Instead, she raised a hand. Not to strike the demon but to lay it, palm-first on the swell of belly protruding from her body.
"…This child did."
Caught visibly off guard by her answer and stance, Saki blinked surprised eyes that were no longer diabolically dilated in her initial aggression. "What?"
Again, Ruka smiled, in a way that made Saki miss her birth mother from her very core to see it spread across her softly-speaking face. "This child. My boy. He told me that I could trust you." Reaching over with her free hand, she grasped Saki's closest one. "Let's greet each other." Unfazed by the unnaturally sharp nails grazing flesh through her clothing, she held on with surprising tenacity and strength despite the demon yanking and jerking at it in repeated attempts to pull free. "Do you hear him? He's asking for your name." She smiled at her quivering face. "Will you tell him?"
Staring bemusedly back and forth between Ruka's kindly face and her unborn child inside her belly, Saki finally let her gaze fixate on the part where she pictured the child's face to be.
"…Saki." She began hesitantly, then repeated confidently through her widening smile. "Saki. Shirahara Saki."
Ruka laid both hands over Saki's, beaming. "He says, 'Hello, Big Sister Saki. Thank you for saving Mother.'"
Leaning in closer than she ever allowed herself with a human, Saki put her now grinning face to the swell of Ruka's belly. "What is your name, little one?"
Hearing her ask, with innocence starkly unlike her previously-portrayed nature, Ruka could not help but chuckle, "He doesn't have one yet, he says. But you can have mine first." Meeting Saki's questioning gaze, she gave it.
Unnaturally green eyes widened horribly, dilating in the onset of fear. "Rengoku? Flame Hashira Rengoku?" Jerking her hands away from Ruka's, she jumped to her feet with urgency. "Who are you? Who exactly are you, to him, to share his surname?"
Undisturbed still by the demon's abrupt shift in behaviour, Ruka simply answered, "I am Rengoku Ruka, the wife of Rengoku Shinjurō, the current Flame Hashira." Facing a visibly still fearful Saki, she continued, just as calmly, "And I mean you no harm."
"Can you say the same of your husband, a demon-slayer?" Saki grimaced, far from reassured despite reassurance. "He's with the Demon Slayer Corps. He slays demons. He's slain many of my-" Finding herself suddenly struggling for words, she stuttered. "…M-my…"
"They are not your kind, Saki."
"Yes, they are." She replied dully. "They are demons. I am a demon. We are the same kind, them and I. We are the same."
"You are only as similar as the things people say you do." Ruka explained firmly. "You saved my son and I. You stroked my belly and asked for our names. You are no demon." Laying a comforting palm on the side of Saki's face turned to hers, she smiled softly, sadly. "You are a blessing. An accidental one, unexpected surely, but blessing no doubt. And I… no, we…" She watched Saki put a hand to her belly again, in wistful wonder, and felt the tears well up in unblinking eyes. "We are honoured."
Hearing her words, Saki felt her eye sockets burn with unshed tears of her own when-
"Oh!"
"Wha-" She gasped. "What was that?"
"He kicked!" Ruka exclaimed.
"The nerve of you to hurt your honourable mother, you little brat-"
"-No, no, no!" Initial attempts at explanation fell flat amidst tears gathering along the lashes of laughing, ruby red eyes. "That was my son, moving inside my belly." Wordless disbelief in Saki's hilariously expressive face said it all. "Babies kick when they are inside their mothers' bellies to communicate with the outside world. He was probably trying to talk to you, Saki. I wonder what it was that he could have possibly said?"
"Something along the lines of 'Please take my poor, helpless mother and I out of the deep, dark forest before more scary demons come along'?"
Severity of situation abated with careless chuckling.
Agreeing with Saki's comment and finding her sense of humour very much agreeable as well, Ruka nodded. "I should go. Will you help me up?"
Stretching eager hands, she clutched proffered arms. Pulling herself back onto sore feet, she readied to leave but found Saki obstructing the path ahead. Staring into the older woman's politely-confused face, she said, just as earnestly, "I'll carry you."
"…Saki."
"Yes?"
"…Shirahara… Saki?"
"Yes?"
"That would be your birth name?"
"…Yes." Her affirmation rang clear over the doldrum of footsteps. How long had it been since she last walked? How long had it been since she last found need for such human… chore when demonization had removed every last trace of use for it?
Look at her walking now.
She could do more, a lot more, of course. Run. Jump. Fly. She could take to the quivering treetops, soar through the thick foliage so fast and nimbly, it would make barely a dent in it, much less a rustle. Humanely impossible, and Ruka would not have taken kindly to keeping up.
And so, she walked. Slowly, steadily. Like she had not done so for… decades upon decades of thrashing time at its own game.
"It's a beautiful name." Ruka complimented. "I am glad it stayed."
She was sincere, warm. The goodness of her heart, aglow in her smiling face, shamed even the most beautiful of moonlit nights.
Away from it, Saki stared, eyes pointed obstinately ahead. "I don't know why, and how, when demons usually discard their human pasts upon dehumanization."
Ruka disliked the term, disliked what it had her thinking about. More so, she disliked to consider what it had cost Saki.
"Perhaps… you never wanted it. Perhaps, what you had had was beautiful, and had been unfairly ripped away from you."
"…I remember too little to neither disagree nor agree to that." Eager for a change of topic after the last appeared to sour, she turned to the older woman keeping up with her quickening pace next to her. "How are the vines working out for you? Are you comfortable on them?"
"Oh, yes! Very much so! Why, it reminds me so dearly of my childhood days on the neighbourhood swings!" Looking over a shoulder's distance at her comfortably perched atop the unlikeliest of swings, Saki could easily picture Ruka's younger self astride a more innocent version.
Iron and leather, compared to what it was that carried her through the span of forest from up in the treetops, an impressive albeit unnatural extension of tangled vine and bendy branch scarcely affected by ensuing movement.
Smiling warmly up at Saki where the latter maintained a leisurely pace next to her, Ruka patted her belly. "I think my boy likes it too. Is it part of your powers from before, when you had used them to dispatch that demon?"
"I control nature." She reached out, but not too far, welcoming a seeking tendril of mottled green vine onto her outstretched palm. "To certain degree, I manipulate it, grow it and… kill using it whenever and whoever necessary." With a gentle yet commanding wave of extended hand, she sent the same vine curling Ruka's way. "It… has been a while since I had last had to do that though, which would explain the unnecessary amount of mess created from it."
Ruka regarded the demon curiously. "You would kill demons? Not humans? Whichever one for survival?"
"Both are for survival." Saki corrected her. "I kill demons to establish authority and incite fear. I refrain from killing and devouring humans because I wish to survive the demon slayers." Something faraway surfaced in green eyes Ruka had found to be unnatural before but now thought beautiful. "I wish to live. I do not wish to simply exist. I will live for as long as I can survive the demon slayers. If I am to live as a demon, I will do so on my own terms until my end." She inhaled deeply. "Maybe, your husband would be the one to finish me off one day."
"No." Ruka determined. "No, he won't. He's a kind and reasonable man. He won't harm someone who has saved the lives of his wife and first child."
"I think I will beat him up a bit though, for letting you walk through the forest alone during night-time when demons freely roam and hunt."
"…That," Ruka deliberated, mentally searching for the appropriate words with which to translate private knowledge. The Rengokus' and by association, hers. "That is a rite of passage, specifically of the Rengoku family clan, for the first wives of their blood." With a loving hand, she stroked her pregnant belly, imagining her unborn child responding to her soft caresses. "At eight months' pregnancy, the soon-to-be mothers walk through the Forest of the Undying."
"To certain doom?"
The demon's scepticism drew wry smiling in response. "To emerge, largely unscathed, where we are currently headed. Prior to marriage, those who will become Rengoku clanswomen were raised and trained to be warriors in our own right, my dear."
…You were nearly scalped alive by that ugly, green fool just now…
"Exactly what purpose does that sort of foolhardiness fulfil?"
"Generations before liken it to a vow, a forewarning of sorts… to demonkind, of their…" Discretion was unnecessary, as was her tact when she eyed the other while finishing, "Future vanquishers."
Silence roared past, fleetingly and faster than blowing wind, then Saki spoke up, unperturbed and clearly far from threatened despite having heard what was essentially a decades-old murder threat. "Is he going to uphold that vow too?" She cast a meaningful look towards Ruka but really meant it for the swell straining against her layers of clothing.
"…He is expected to."
Scoffing, she readied her reply to the absurdity she just heard. "Expectation…" The very mention of the word had her wrinkling her nose as delicately as one might in outright distaste. "The first thing all humans are born into, the first thing they learn to grow up with and finally, the first thing they leave behind to fill a cold grave. Any greater tragedy than that would have to be the realization that those so-called expectations were always others to begin with." Undeterred by the severity clouding Ruka's once benevolent face, she carried on, just as agonizingly. "Between being killed as a bloodthirsty demon and killing as an esteemed demon-slayer, choice can make all the difference in the world, and none at all were it never given in the first place." Casually flicking a hand at the wrist to bring about the sudden manifestation of numerous flower buds all over the vine swing on which Ruka sat, to its human occupant's awe, the ruefulness dulling Saki's crumpled face stood out in blunt contrast. "…I certainly had none when my favourite flower turned in nature to become a weapon to be utilized in my extermination."
Unblinking eyes, cold and hard as the precious stone she likened them to, narrowed under furrowing brows. "Saki, were you…" Turned against your will?
However closely she had come to asking it, she could not muster the courage to have it answered.
The words tipped back down her throat when Saki stopped in her tracks, the abruptness of stilling unlike the gentleness with which her vine swing slowed to a gradual but complete stop slightly ahead. Swaying from briefly renewed movement as it lowered, vines previously pulled taut loosened to deposit Ruka on solid ground following a night of effortless gliding through flower-scented air.
"…I cannot go any farther," without risking death at the hands of surrounding demon-slayers. "But you can go," back to your husband, who stands amongst those anxiously waiting.
"Saki…" When Ruka stalled, she pressed her, a façade of forced impatience. "Well, go on! This area is clean. I've since scouted it. You'll be safe, even on your own."
At Saki's insistence, she stepped away. Still, she kept her head turned towards the girl, who was now blatantly refusing to acknowledge her presence. "What about you?"
"…I already said that I cannot go any farther."
Still, Ruka dithered.
"Can we see each other again?"
Saki's continuing effort at keeping her eyes stubbornly averted from Ruka's beseeching face when she could have shut them or simply disappeared from their midst and be done with it, spoke volumes about her continuing refusal.
"No."
Rustling told her that Ruka had moved. She hoped it was away, far away from her.
"…I'd like to see you again."
"Why?"
Lowering her face to her tightly-clenched fists, she read Ruka's reply in the form of generously-opened hands, unsurprisingly delicate yet unexpectedly callused, reaching decidedly out to grasp hers in them.
"…Don't you remember?" The gentleness of tone prompted the first of hot moisture to spring to widening green eyes. "My boy hasn't been given his name yet. He wants you, his saviour and big sister, to be around to hear it when he receives it."
Against the palm she placed on her swollen belly, Ruka once more felt her baby kicking, roughly this time, as if alerting her to something else happening right now besides impending motherhood. Her head swung up and around, braid flying.
However, it was too late.
"Go back to your family. Do not attempt to seek me out any further." She heard Saki's suddenly distant voice echo soundly throughout the inky depths of untamed forest, vanishing in the direction that stretched directly opposite of the light, which burnt ahead.
From it, emerged the recognizable figure of her beloved husband.
"…Ruka!"
Rengoku Shinjurō was a picture of great worry, uncharacteristic of his typically indomitable demeanour, upon seeing her emerge from the mouth of the Forest of the Undying. Rushing forward, he enveloped his pregnant wife in an embrace as tight as her inflated belly allowed, with her circling loving arms around his torso in return. Burying his relieved face into the top of her head, he inhaled deeply and detected, through her signature perfume of white jasmine, the faintest whiff of metallic residue.
Blood, recognizably so.
He sprang from her.
A swift but thorough inspection revealed her to be physically unscathed, much to his and the surrounding others' utmost relief. Still, it did not explain the blood he smelt on her as well as the lingering traces of demon presence.
"My wife…" Ruka smiled up at his concerned face. "Do you have your dagger on you?" She nodded. "Show it to me."
Nodding once more, she obliged his sudden request, withdrawing it from her obi to place it into his outstretched hand. The blade, refined to its peak efficacy, still gleamed poison when he unsheathed the weapon to turn it over and back in visual study. Colourless as it was, it wafted the instantly recognizable scent of wisteria flowers, almost as generously as when she had first received it prior to entering the forest, possible only if clean of blood.
…It was clean of blood.
"This is unused." Shinjurō observed. "But how, when you were… clearly set upon by a demon? I can still smell its stench on you."
Returning the weapon to its original state, he handed it over to the awaiting kakushi before turning to walk his patiently-awaiting wife out of forest vicinity to home safety.
"Shinjurō, I did encounter a demon." At her husband tensing up, Ruka entwined her arm with his in reassurance. "I was saved."
"How was that possible?" Realizing how dismissive it made him sound and appear, he was quick to attend to his initial lack of tact. "No one else, slayer or civilian, was allowed into the Forest of the Undying on this night of ritual. Had a demon preyed on you, Ruka, no one would have been able to come to your defence." Withdrawing his free hand from inside its haori sleeve, he flattened its deeply-callused palm on her belly. "And our son's." Despite his gruff tone, apprehension clearly seeped through at the mere thought of his wife and firstborn languishing in danger he had not been around to prevent.
Instead of joining his hand, Ruka's hand caressed her husband's cheek where overnight stubble was felt to have grown out the slightest.
"But we were saved, my love," She insisted. "by a demon."
"That," Shinjurō stressed. "is impossible."
Over the calming monotony of their footsteps, soft laughter rippled.
Ruka's.
"I apologize." She chuckled. "What I really meant was 'a fairy'." Dropping from Shinjurō's now disbelieving face, her hand joined his over her belly. "I met one. I was saved by one. And our son too, has met her."
"What?"
"I think he likes her. I think he wants her as his big sister."
"A demon? A fairy? What?" Poor Shinjurō. His confusion was palpable. As was Ruka's amusement. "What are you talking about, Ruka? Exactly what happened back in that forest?"
"Oh! Our boy's kicking! Just like the way he was with-"
"-The nerve of you to hurt your honourable mother, you little brat!"