Title: Spider, Part Three: "Kagewaki"
Author: Vega
Fandom: Inu Yasha
Pairing: None Yet
Rating: PG
Archive: ff.net, History's Mirror
Feedback: arkaidy@hotmail.com
Status: Incomplete
Sequel/Series: None
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and concepts are property of Rumiko Takahashi and no infringement is intended. All intellectual material that does not fall under this category belongs to me.
Websites: http://www.angelfire.com/realm/arkaidy
Warnings: Smut ahead, possibly, and lots of angst.
Notes: None yet. As this is Inu Yasha I'll try to explain as much as I can for those not familiar with the series.
~~~
"Yusuriokosu!" I heard a voice hiss, and I wish to god I knew what it meant.
This was the third time I had awoken, and the second hearing people muttering in strange languages. Oddly enough, it was the first time I didn't smell the incense.
Blinking several times I again tried to raise my right arm to rub my eyes and was again painfully reminded that it hurt like the blazes. I heard more yelling as I moved, more calls of "wagakimi" and "samasu", and using my left arm, pushed myself up into a sitting position.
I felt heavy cloth crumple into my lap and upon a quick inspection realized that the heavy blue fabric was an untied robe of some sort. Twisting my neck painfully, hearing it snap and crack from disuse, the muscles unknotting, I saw that I was in a small room.
The floors were indeed hardwood, as were the ceilings. The room I would have guessed measured at roughly thirty by thirty feet, and to my right appeared to open onto some sort of wooden walkway or porch. The walls at my head and feet were made of wood panellign as well, that warm honey coloured wood of the tropics, but the walls blocking the porch to my right and the hallway to my left seemed to be made of a this, almost opaque substance.
Glass?
No, too thin.
Paper?
I blinked, rubbed my eyes with my left hand, and looked again. Yes. It looked like the walls were made out of fragile white paper held in tiny wooden frames.
Then I looked down at my right arm.
It was bandaged from shoulder to knuckles in cloth strips, which were spotted with blood.
Holy Shit, what had happened to me?
Experimentally I flexed my fist and heard the thick crackling of dried skin separating. Fresh blood spots welled up on the bandages. It hurt like a bitch, so I stopped. I carefully pried back one of the bandages and was immediately assaulted with the sickening scent of fried flesh.
I had been burned!
I quickly tamped the bandage back down, noting as some sort of sticky white substance (I was hoping an ointment and not pus or anything else gross) leaked out the side to soak the bandage's edges.
I looked away and prayed that it wasn't as bad as it seemed to be.
Why did I hurt all over? They felt like... old bruises.
And where the hell was I?
All the people had vanished, if there had been people around at all, and not my fuzzy head making things up. The "bed" I now sat on was nothing more than a thin stuffed mattress, laid out on the floor, the "pillow" a padded wooden block. And my "blankets", as I've noted, were an unfolded robe of some sort.
Beside this bed were small pots of substances I couldn't identify but hoped were medicines, a bowl of what appeared to be water, and a cloth. Also, in the far lefthand corner was a brazier of some sort - that is where the heady sandalwood smell must have originated.
The light was natural, as far as I could tell, for I saw no lamps or candles. Only the daylight through the paper walls - which seemed to be telling me it was around mid-afternoon.
The silence had just begun to get uncomfortable when I hear the tamp tamp of socked feet on wooden floors. I looked to my left to watch as a silhouette moved from the hallway, along the paper wall, and to the door.
From what I could tell, it was a man in ballooning pants with long wavy hair.
He stoped in front of the door, several other men with shorter hair and top-knots kneeling behind him, and bent his head.
"Onna?" he called, and the sound of his voice sent a small thrill through me. It was one of those deep, strong, yet strangely lyrical ones... mellifluous, yes, that was the word. "Onna?" he repeated, and I took a stab in the dark and guessed that he was trying to talk to me.
"Er... yes?" I called back and there was a small murmur of conversation from the other side of the paper wall.
"Onna?" the man said again.
"Yes," I repeated. "I... don't understand you."
Again conversation, and I clearly caught the words "Ningen, gaijen, onna". What the Hell were they saying about me? And where WAS I? More important, how on Earth did I get here?
I cast my mind back but... no... I remember falling asleep. Where? In my bed. At home. And then waking up here - in pain.
Apparently not satisfied with my answer, the man with the mellifluous voice slowly slid back the door, took a step in, then closed it again behind him. The other men remained kneeling on the floor.
I gasped slightly at the sight of him. His hair was indeed long and wavy, reaching almost to the backs of his knees, the top half of which was tied up in a bun a the back of his head. His clothing was stiff and formal looking, dyed a deep indigo, with long trailing sleeves.
His skin was a caramel colour, smooth and almost pore-less. But his eyes - they seemed to be brown but when they flicked over me, assessing me as I was him, I caught a flash of red under the blue-shaded lids.
I looked down at myself, wondering what it was that he saw, and realized that the rest of my body was not bandaged but indeed bruised... and half-nude. With another little gasp I snatched up the robe that covered me with my good hand and dragged it up to cover my torso.
The man smiled slightly and politely turned his head away as I struggled my good arm into the sleeve. I was about to start on the bandaged one when he came over and gently helped me slip into that one as well. I smiled at him, hoping that conveyed my thanks enough.
He knelt beside me, carefully arranging the folds of his strange attire. When this was done he reached across the pallet and tied a yellow sash around the pale blue robe I wore, closing it snugly. Then he produced a similar sash of yellow from the inside of his over-shirt and used it as a make-shift sling for my aching arm.
"Onna-dono," he finally said, "Daijabu?"
I shook my head slowly, trying to communicate to him that I did not understand.
He sighed and tried again. "Dai-ja-bou?" he said slowly, and this time pantomimed an injured arm. Then he pointed at my arm, then cradled his again. Then he lifted it and moved it around as if it didn't hurt. "Daijabou?"
It took me a moment, but I realized that he was asking about my arm, and wether it still was painful.
"It hurts," I said slowly, "it aches."
His eyebrows came together in an obviously puzzled expression.
"Pain?" I tired. Nothing. "Um... Ouch! Ow!" I contorted my face to convey agony and clenched my good fist.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, and his face lit up, "Itai!"
He said "itai" with the same expression and emphasis as I'd said "ouch", so there was one clear word, at least. He then pointed to the red spotting the bandages. "Chi."
"Blood," I answered. Yes, I was bleeding slightly. It made me wonder how bad the burns were.
He nodded again and called out to someone in the hall. An older man, slightly stooped, entered with a cloth sack of things and knelt on the other side of me. He bowed to the younger man, forehead touching the floor and said. "Hai, waka-sama?"
I looked to the young man, who only nodded and gestured to my arm. I figured that he must, for some reason, command a lot of respect in this household. The old man undid his bundle of things to reveal some more jars of potent smelling ointments and fresh bandages and the like.
"Ah!" I said, and pointed to him. "Doctor!"
The old man was slightly startled, and I quickly said "sorry" and didn't interrupt him. I closed my eyes and looked away as he began to peel away the bandages. The smell of the burnt flesh and the prick of the cold air on the wounds was enough to let me know that I was very badly hurt.
The young man took my good hand in his and I looked up into his face - he was looking at me with an expression of sympathy. He gestured with his head for me to look at my other arm, and slowly, fearfully, I did.
It was disgusting.
It was charred black in a semi-circular pattern just above the elbow, and from the looks of the puncture wounds, I had been bitten. I had to fight back a retch. The rest of the arm was an angry red and blistering slightly, less burnt the further from the punctures it got. There, near my wrists and shoulders, I could feel the skin, but further in I felt nothing.
Had my nerve endings been destroyed?
My god, it looked like whatever had bitten me had just BREATHED and I'd been burned because of it.
I started to quake and the young man noticed. He took my chin in his hands and turned my face away from my arm and to his, so our eyes met. Mine must have been sparkling with tears.
The doctor quickly and efficiently spread a gooey substance that cooled and soothed over my wounds and re-bound the burns with fresh linen. When he was finally gone and young man gently placed my arm back in the sling, despite how much it hurt, and returned to kneeling artfully by my side.
"Daijabou?" he said again, and I nodded slowly, brushing the tears off of my cheeks.
"Watashi wa Kagewaki," he said, and pointed at his chest. I frowned. "Kagewaki," he said again, pointing again.
"Kagewaki?" I repeated, unsure.
"Kagewaki." This time he pointed at his head. Oh! This was his name!
"Kagewaki! That's your name!" I said and he nodded, not understanding my words but my tone of discovery. I pointed to my own chest. "I'm ..." I paused, trailing off. What WAS my name?
Now that was strange.
"I'm..." I tried again and again stopped. I shook my head. My name had to be in there somewhere. "I'm... Aislin." I finally said. Something told me that this was A name, but not necessarily mine. It was good enough until I got my wits back enough to remember.
"Aishrinu?" he repeated, his accent massacring the last syllable. I nodded. 'Ashrinu' was good enough. It wasn't my real name, anyway. I knew it meant something important, I just couldn't remember what.
I think he was about to say more when another man entered the room and knelt and bowed by the door. "Wagakimi-sama," he said succinctly.
"Hai?'
He jerked his head towards the porch on the far side of the room. "Taiyjia no Youkai."
"Ah," Kagewaki said softly and climbed to his feet. He said a lot of other things in rapid succession, things I didn't catch, but I got the impression that he was giving orders.
"Hai, domou arigatou," the man said and left.
The words twinged something in my brain, but I didn't know what it was. There was something familiar about the last phrase that the other man had uttered.
Kagewaki leaned down to look at me and with a clear gesture indicating eating said, "Gohan?"
I nodded, "Yes, please."
I was very hungry.
He nodded and walked out of the room with the same soft tamp tamp tamp of his socked feet on the hardwood floors. I watched his shadow go, wondering where he was off to.
A few minutes later a very large bowl of rice with a strange broth-like soup was brought in for me and a plain-looking young woman with her black hair tucked up under a kerchief helped me eat without meeting my eyes.
I took this time to study and synthesise all I saw around me - black hair and eyes, caramel skin, robes for clothing, rice and seafood-tasting soups, and a strange language that was not a Latin-derivative.
Wondering how I had been so out of it from the pain and disorientation to not get it right away, I realized....
... somehow, I had ended up in Japan.
~~~
Translations:
-sama: honourific used in addressing a person of a higher class, or a polite way of addressing strangers.
Ningen: "Human"
Gaijen: "Outsider/ Foreigner"
Itai: "Ouch"
Chi: "Blood"
Hai: "Yes"
Waka: "Young Lord"
Watashi: "I"
Watahi wa Kagewaki: "My name is Kagewaki"
Taiyjia no Youkai: "Exterminators of Demons"
domou arigatou: "Thank you very much"
Gohan: "Meal", (Lit. Rice dish)
Author: Vega
Fandom: Inu Yasha
Pairing: None Yet
Rating: PG
Archive: ff.net, History's Mirror
Feedback: arkaidy@hotmail.com
Status: Incomplete
Sequel/Series: None
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and concepts are property of Rumiko Takahashi and no infringement is intended. All intellectual material that does not fall under this category belongs to me.
Websites: http://www.angelfire.com/realm/arkaidy
Warnings: Smut ahead, possibly, and lots of angst.
Notes: None yet. As this is Inu Yasha I'll try to explain as much as I can for those not familiar with the series.
~~~
"Yusuriokosu!" I heard a voice hiss, and I wish to god I knew what it meant.
This was the third time I had awoken, and the second hearing people muttering in strange languages. Oddly enough, it was the first time I didn't smell the incense.
Blinking several times I again tried to raise my right arm to rub my eyes and was again painfully reminded that it hurt like the blazes. I heard more yelling as I moved, more calls of "wagakimi" and "samasu", and using my left arm, pushed myself up into a sitting position.
I felt heavy cloth crumple into my lap and upon a quick inspection realized that the heavy blue fabric was an untied robe of some sort. Twisting my neck painfully, hearing it snap and crack from disuse, the muscles unknotting, I saw that I was in a small room.
The floors were indeed hardwood, as were the ceilings. The room I would have guessed measured at roughly thirty by thirty feet, and to my right appeared to open onto some sort of wooden walkway or porch. The walls at my head and feet were made of wood panellign as well, that warm honey coloured wood of the tropics, but the walls blocking the porch to my right and the hallway to my left seemed to be made of a this, almost opaque substance.
Glass?
No, too thin.
Paper?
I blinked, rubbed my eyes with my left hand, and looked again. Yes. It looked like the walls were made out of fragile white paper held in tiny wooden frames.
Then I looked down at my right arm.
It was bandaged from shoulder to knuckles in cloth strips, which were spotted with blood.
Holy Shit, what had happened to me?
Experimentally I flexed my fist and heard the thick crackling of dried skin separating. Fresh blood spots welled up on the bandages. It hurt like a bitch, so I stopped. I carefully pried back one of the bandages and was immediately assaulted with the sickening scent of fried flesh.
I had been burned!
I quickly tamped the bandage back down, noting as some sort of sticky white substance (I was hoping an ointment and not pus or anything else gross) leaked out the side to soak the bandage's edges.
I looked away and prayed that it wasn't as bad as it seemed to be.
Why did I hurt all over? They felt like... old bruises.
And where the hell was I?
All the people had vanished, if there had been people around at all, and not my fuzzy head making things up. The "bed" I now sat on was nothing more than a thin stuffed mattress, laid out on the floor, the "pillow" a padded wooden block. And my "blankets", as I've noted, were an unfolded robe of some sort.
Beside this bed were small pots of substances I couldn't identify but hoped were medicines, a bowl of what appeared to be water, and a cloth. Also, in the far lefthand corner was a brazier of some sort - that is where the heady sandalwood smell must have originated.
The light was natural, as far as I could tell, for I saw no lamps or candles. Only the daylight through the paper walls - which seemed to be telling me it was around mid-afternoon.
The silence had just begun to get uncomfortable when I hear the tamp tamp of socked feet on wooden floors. I looked to my left to watch as a silhouette moved from the hallway, along the paper wall, and to the door.
From what I could tell, it was a man in ballooning pants with long wavy hair.
He stoped in front of the door, several other men with shorter hair and top-knots kneeling behind him, and bent his head.
"Onna?" he called, and the sound of his voice sent a small thrill through me. It was one of those deep, strong, yet strangely lyrical ones... mellifluous, yes, that was the word. "Onna?" he repeated, and I took a stab in the dark and guessed that he was trying to talk to me.
"Er... yes?" I called back and there was a small murmur of conversation from the other side of the paper wall.
"Onna?" the man said again.
"Yes," I repeated. "I... don't understand you."
Again conversation, and I clearly caught the words "Ningen, gaijen, onna". What the Hell were they saying about me? And where WAS I? More important, how on Earth did I get here?
I cast my mind back but... no... I remember falling asleep. Where? In my bed. At home. And then waking up here - in pain.
Apparently not satisfied with my answer, the man with the mellifluous voice slowly slid back the door, took a step in, then closed it again behind him. The other men remained kneeling on the floor.
I gasped slightly at the sight of him. His hair was indeed long and wavy, reaching almost to the backs of his knees, the top half of which was tied up in a bun a the back of his head. His clothing was stiff and formal looking, dyed a deep indigo, with long trailing sleeves.
His skin was a caramel colour, smooth and almost pore-less. But his eyes - they seemed to be brown but when they flicked over me, assessing me as I was him, I caught a flash of red under the blue-shaded lids.
I looked down at myself, wondering what it was that he saw, and realized that the rest of my body was not bandaged but indeed bruised... and half-nude. With another little gasp I snatched up the robe that covered me with my good hand and dragged it up to cover my torso.
The man smiled slightly and politely turned his head away as I struggled my good arm into the sleeve. I was about to start on the bandaged one when he came over and gently helped me slip into that one as well. I smiled at him, hoping that conveyed my thanks enough.
He knelt beside me, carefully arranging the folds of his strange attire. When this was done he reached across the pallet and tied a yellow sash around the pale blue robe I wore, closing it snugly. Then he produced a similar sash of yellow from the inside of his over-shirt and used it as a make-shift sling for my aching arm.
"Onna-dono," he finally said, "Daijabu?"
I shook my head slowly, trying to communicate to him that I did not understand.
He sighed and tried again. "Dai-ja-bou?" he said slowly, and this time pantomimed an injured arm. Then he pointed at my arm, then cradled his again. Then he lifted it and moved it around as if it didn't hurt. "Daijabou?"
It took me a moment, but I realized that he was asking about my arm, and wether it still was painful.
"It hurts," I said slowly, "it aches."
His eyebrows came together in an obviously puzzled expression.
"Pain?" I tired. Nothing. "Um... Ouch! Ow!" I contorted my face to convey agony and clenched my good fist.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, and his face lit up, "Itai!"
He said "itai" with the same expression and emphasis as I'd said "ouch", so there was one clear word, at least. He then pointed to the red spotting the bandages. "Chi."
"Blood," I answered. Yes, I was bleeding slightly. It made me wonder how bad the burns were.
He nodded again and called out to someone in the hall. An older man, slightly stooped, entered with a cloth sack of things and knelt on the other side of me. He bowed to the younger man, forehead touching the floor and said. "Hai, waka-sama?"
I looked to the young man, who only nodded and gestured to my arm. I figured that he must, for some reason, command a lot of respect in this household. The old man undid his bundle of things to reveal some more jars of potent smelling ointments and fresh bandages and the like.
"Ah!" I said, and pointed to him. "Doctor!"
The old man was slightly startled, and I quickly said "sorry" and didn't interrupt him. I closed my eyes and looked away as he began to peel away the bandages. The smell of the burnt flesh and the prick of the cold air on the wounds was enough to let me know that I was very badly hurt.
The young man took my good hand in his and I looked up into his face - he was looking at me with an expression of sympathy. He gestured with his head for me to look at my other arm, and slowly, fearfully, I did.
It was disgusting.
It was charred black in a semi-circular pattern just above the elbow, and from the looks of the puncture wounds, I had been bitten. I had to fight back a retch. The rest of the arm was an angry red and blistering slightly, less burnt the further from the punctures it got. There, near my wrists and shoulders, I could feel the skin, but further in I felt nothing.
Had my nerve endings been destroyed?
My god, it looked like whatever had bitten me had just BREATHED and I'd been burned because of it.
I started to quake and the young man noticed. He took my chin in his hands and turned my face away from my arm and to his, so our eyes met. Mine must have been sparkling with tears.
The doctor quickly and efficiently spread a gooey substance that cooled and soothed over my wounds and re-bound the burns with fresh linen. When he was finally gone and young man gently placed my arm back in the sling, despite how much it hurt, and returned to kneeling artfully by my side.
"Daijabou?" he said again, and I nodded slowly, brushing the tears off of my cheeks.
"Watashi wa Kagewaki," he said, and pointed at his chest. I frowned. "Kagewaki," he said again, pointing again.
"Kagewaki?" I repeated, unsure.
"Kagewaki." This time he pointed at his head. Oh! This was his name!
"Kagewaki! That's your name!" I said and he nodded, not understanding my words but my tone of discovery. I pointed to my own chest. "I'm ..." I paused, trailing off. What WAS my name?
Now that was strange.
"I'm..." I tried again and again stopped. I shook my head. My name had to be in there somewhere. "I'm... Aislin." I finally said. Something told me that this was A name, but not necessarily mine. It was good enough until I got my wits back enough to remember.
"Aishrinu?" he repeated, his accent massacring the last syllable. I nodded. 'Ashrinu' was good enough. It wasn't my real name, anyway. I knew it meant something important, I just couldn't remember what.
I think he was about to say more when another man entered the room and knelt and bowed by the door. "Wagakimi-sama," he said succinctly.
"Hai?'
He jerked his head towards the porch on the far side of the room. "Taiyjia no Youkai."
"Ah," Kagewaki said softly and climbed to his feet. He said a lot of other things in rapid succession, things I didn't catch, but I got the impression that he was giving orders.
"Hai, domou arigatou," the man said and left.
The words twinged something in my brain, but I didn't know what it was. There was something familiar about the last phrase that the other man had uttered.
Kagewaki leaned down to look at me and with a clear gesture indicating eating said, "Gohan?"
I nodded, "Yes, please."
I was very hungry.
He nodded and walked out of the room with the same soft tamp tamp tamp of his socked feet on the hardwood floors. I watched his shadow go, wondering where he was off to.
A few minutes later a very large bowl of rice with a strange broth-like soup was brought in for me and a plain-looking young woman with her black hair tucked up under a kerchief helped me eat without meeting my eyes.
I took this time to study and synthesise all I saw around me - black hair and eyes, caramel skin, robes for clothing, rice and seafood-tasting soups, and a strange language that was not a Latin-derivative.
Wondering how I had been so out of it from the pain and disorientation to not get it right away, I realized....
... somehow, I had ended up in Japan.
~~~
Translations:
-sama: honourific used in addressing a person of a higher class, or a polite way of addressing strangers.
Ningen: "Human"
Gaijen: "Outsider/ Foreigner"
Itai: "Ouch"
Chi: "Blood"
Hai: "Yes"
Waka: "Young Lord"
Watashi: "I"
Watahi wa Kagewaki: "My name is Kagewaki"
Taiyjia no Youkai: "Exterminators of Demons"
domou arigatou: "Thank you very much"
Gohan: "Meal", (Lit. Rice dish)