Wolf
Part Three: "Great-Grandmother"
by Vega
Aislin Volpe is my great-granddaughter.
We worried about her father, initially, my grandson, well... because he was a grand SON. Never before had the firstborn of The Bloodline been a MALE. We wondered if the Shikon Shard by default had remained inside of Yuki, my daughter, but when we brought Kakera in to sense it out, no, the shard had indeed moved into Okami's body.
We wondered if that's where the line stopped - if Okami was destined to be the Traveller and if he was, how would they remove the shard with permanently crippling or even killing him? Was he destined to even survive the ordeal?
The years came and went and Okami remained with us.
And so did the Shard.
We began to think, to hope, that perhaps it was not he who was destined to travel backwards in time to deliver the Shikon Shard to the Miko Kagome.
When he met the American exchange student, Suza, we were unsure wether she should be allowed into the family. Yes, we were a bloodline of mixed peoples, of ningen, and youkai, and hanyou, and sometimes something in between. But never before had we had a Gaijin - an outsider.
She wouldn't know about anything, we realized. She'd know nothing of the glorious histories of our ancestors, of the legends of the family, of the living mythology that we were. She wouldn't even know hot to properly address Uncle Sesshoumaru and Papa Shippou, the Taiyoukai we were all descended from.
But Okami loved her, and in the end, that's all that mattered.
He convinced her that Japan, rather than the United States, is where their new family should start, and she readily agreed. She loved Japan and threw herself headlong into the culture, willing to eat everything, go anywhere, wear whatever.
Her family came over for the wedding, and I was pleased to meet such fascinating people. I had rarely met gaijin, and really only knew Dominic Volpe, my son-in-law, and his family. And he was Italian.
After the marriage celebrations had completed, Okami felt it time to tell his new wife of the rather 'special' circumstances of our family. He broke it to her easily, talking about how some people are different, and some have life-long missions, and things like that.
He explained that our family had a long and illustrious history involving no fewer than three Princes and several Great Lords. Suza was thrilled to be connected to such a wonderful heritage. Emboldened by her enthusiasm, he went on to explain that his own biological heritage wasn't exactly pure. She though he meant his Japanese-Italian ancestry.
That was when I was called in, with my wooden case of paintings and photographs. I had Suza and Okami stand beside one another and smile for my little marvel of a Polaroid camera, then opened the case and began to tell her about the history of the family she had married into.
About half way through my own life, she stoped, her face white with red splotches high on the cheeks, and said, "This is some sort of joke, right?"
With a silent signal from my grandson, I obligingly unwound my hair-buns to reveal my two pointed fox ears. I even swivelled and twitched them for her benefit, to prove that they were real.
She grew entirely white, her lips taking on a blueish tinge, and excused herself to the bathroom. I head the ugly retching sounds and assure Okami that it was just a lot for her to take in all at once. That she would understand.
That was my mistake, of course: assuming she would understand. A Japanese woman, brought up in a culture rich in mysticism and acceptance of the supernatural, would consider herself blessed to discover that most of her husband's kin are youkai.
This American, however, was entirely resistant to the idea.
Not that I am insinuating that all American are incapable of accepting differences - but Suza could not stand it. She called us 'freaks' and 'monsters', and bid us never visit her household again. Out of respect for the strife Okami was experiencing, we honoured her request.
There were fights in that house everyday from that day forward.
Suza filed for divorce within three months, and Okami would have gladly granted it to her. He was still very much in love with her and just wanted her to be happy. I think Suza still loved him as well, but she could not deal with the knowledge that we had shattered her safe little 'normal' reality, and it currently lay around her ankles.
However, we discovered, due to one visiting relative's (who was acting as Okami's lawyer) nose - Suza was pregnant. She had not been just queasy the day Okami told her what we were because she had been distraught. It had been morning sickness.
Uncle Sesshoumaru, the family Patriarch, declared that until the child was born, Suza would remain a member of our family. If the child did not posses the Shikon Shard, the paperwork would be pushed through double time and Suza would leave Japan - and probably without her baby. It would be of mixed race, after all, and none of us wanted the child in the hands of one who may abuse it.
Az, however, WAS born with the Shikon Shard, and Suza was not allowed to leave.
We did not hold her prisoner, by any means.
She and Okami moved to the United States and she pretended desperately that she was 'normal' and that her beloved child was 'not a freak' - she even went so far as to give Aislin violet-tinted sunglasses to wear every day of her life to dull the brightness of her eyes, as early as age two.
Eventually, the stress of the living situation ate away at my grandson, and Okami sprouted a bad stomach ulcer which opened the door for a painful stomach-lining cancer. He was gone within five months of the first diagnosis.
The funeral was hard on us all, as it was held in the United States, and not all of us could make it. I made a point of going, buying my great-granddaughter new shoes for the event and bringing along my wooden case of family portraits.
I had wanted to give the case to Aislin to keep, so she would forever remember her father's side of the family, but her mother wrenched it away from the little girl and tossed it back at me.
Immediately following the funeral Suza took Az and vanished.
Had our Aislin not been The Traveller, we probably would never have seen her, nor her offspring, ever again. Fortunately, those two ningen boys happened to be hiking right where Az re-appeared and saved her life. I thank Kami heartily for their intelligence to post her picture on the internet, and pray for them twice a day.
When my Az came back to us, she was a ruin.
Her right arm was nearly completely destroyed and even the doctors said it was a miracle that she could still move her fingers. She had several lacerations, scars across her torso that had sealed messily, and two cracked ribs that were healing wrong. One of her toes needed to be broken and reset, as did one of the ribs.
For a long time, Az lay in a drug induced stupor, and I'll admit I signed all the papers necessary to keep her that way. She had been through a great ordeal and was not ready to face the real world just yet. She had suffered some sort of loss while she was away, and although I did not know what it was, I could smell her melancholy, even through the haze of the morphine.
The doctors informed us, Uncle Sesshoumaru and I, that first night we got to see her, of a small problem.
He pulled us out of her room and into his own private office, which had me slightly worried and Sesshoumaru-sama less so.
"Listen," the doctor said, clutching the yellow manila folder with Aslin's charts in it, "I don't know how long your niece was missing, sir, but... she's been very battered around."
Sesshoumaru's golden eyes narrowed threateningly, warning the doctor not to step on eggshells. "How badly?"
"Several broken bones, mostly healed by now, a seriously sprained ankle and a wrenched knee - both about a month healed, although neither were set properly. We're taking care of that now. Multiple contusions on her torso and arms; a severely blackened eye at one point, resulting in the burst blood vessels you can see right now. Punctures in her upper right arm, possibly the result of a large dog - severe burning of her right arm that could only have been caused with an excellerant."
"Excellerant?" I interrupted.
"Someone probably dumped gas on her and deliberately set her on fire," the Doctor dead-paned, and I had to cover my mouth to keep in the gasp of horror. "There's also a mild concussion in her history, but I'd say three weeks ago at least. Her lips have been split several times, probably from being slapped, and her left earlobe has been torn. Lastly..." the doctor trailed off and stared down at his feet, suddenly uncomfortable, "Lastly she has been... uh... sexually assaulted."
Sesshoumaru growled and I placed a gentle hand on his arm to remind him that it was not this doctor's fault, and it would do no good to go on a tear here. The growl died out and the Doctor just stared at my uncle with wide eyes.
"How... badly...?" Sesshoumaru demanded, eyes like hardened amber.
"It was big, whatever it was," the doctor said softly, "roughly the width of a human arm - the tearing indicates that she began to heal from it, but most of them were re-opened, er..." he glanced quickly at the sheet on the inside cover of the folder, "as early as the night before she was brought to hospital. We've seen to most of her injuries, and done as must stitching as was needed for her sexual injuries, but ... there is something else the hospital would like you to know, sir."
Sesshoumaru was contemplating black deeds, and we could both see it. "What?"
"We... found... two things inside of her."
"Things?" I asked. No - it couldn't be. She had been gone for so long - she HAD to have given the shard to the Miko Kagome! It couldn't still be inside her!
"One was a... a piece of glass," the doctor said, and went over to his filing cabinet. He unlocked the top drawer and withdrew a small test tube, corked, and sure enough, there lay a sliver of the Shikon no Tama in it's rounded bottom.
Sesshoumaru wordlessly held his hand out for it and the doctor only reluctantly gave it over.
"And what was the second...?" the taiyoukai prompted.
"The second was... seamen."
Both our eyebrows raised.
"Your niece is not pregnant," he assured us hastily, "and we sent samples to a lab - the rapist has no previous DNA record that we could find, I'm sorry."
There was a thoughtful pause.
"I want that too," Sesshoumaru suddenly demanded, catching both the doctor and I off guard.
"What for?"
"I pay you enough to not ask questions," the taiyoukai snapped and the doctor immediately bowed and scuttled out of the room.
We waited in silence for him to return, neither of us saying a word. When he handed the vial filled with half-coagulated white liquid (it have been frozen, apparently, so was still in liquid form) Sesshoumaru immediately uncorked it and took a steady whiff of it's scent.
The doctor looked about ready to be ill, but I understood - he wanted to know whose it was, and if he recognized the scent, he may be able to track the youkai down and find out what had happened, and why he had slept with our precious Traveller.
After a moment he closed his eyes, smirked a little and shook his head.
I raised one eyebrow in question.
He turned to me and in the growling language of a canine youkai said, "It's that goddamned wolf."
~~~
When Az was finally well enough to start being conscious for short periods of time, I made sure never to leave her side. Others came and went, of course, the whole family saw her at least twice. But we did not call her mother - Suza had not called us, looking for her daughter, and as distressing as Az's disappearance may be for Suza, we knew that it had to be Az herself that called her mother to explain, because anything we said would be taken as a lie. As much influence as our family's name and money is in Japan, we doubt it would have much effect on American authorities.
Sesshoumaru sent one of my nephews out, a week to the day after our meeting with the doctor, to try to track down Kouga.
If his intentions had been honourable, the Wolf may escape a confrontation with Sesshoumaru with his balls still attached. If it had not been, the Last Prince of the Ookami Youkai would join his brethren.
~~~
I have been watching over Az for two weeks now, and still no word from my nephew on the wolf's whereabouts, or wether he is even living or dead.
Az has begun to mumble his name in her sleep - I take this as a good sign and hope that means that their encounter was consensual.
We have moved Az out of the general hospital and into a private rehabilitation centre that specializes in restorative cosmetic surgery and a comfortable family environment. I can smell the terminally ill dying from here and it reminds me tragically of Okami.
Humans are such fragile things.
Was it not for Az's youkai blood, I suspect she would be long dead.
I yearn for her to wake up fully so we can learn what has happened.
Perhaps Kouga will be able to fill us in.
It is a hope.
~~~
Az has begun to open her eyes - it's into the fourth week now.
Uncle Sesshoumaru has things to do of course, so is in and out of the little hospital room, but I remain by her side constantly, oft times accompanied by one or another of the Others. She has been mumbling more now, muttering of silver sights and sounds, of pain and sandalwood, and a man named Kagewaki.
My heart wrenches every time she flings up her hands and screams, "Please, no! Get off me!" because I cannot enter her dreams and help soothe away her nightmares.
All I can do is hold her hand.
~~~
It's going on week seven, and still no word about Kouga.
Today Az opened her eyes and looked at my face, then down at her hand in mine and said, "Great-grandmother..."
I nodded, dabbing at the tears in my eyes and said, "Yes Aisilin, that's who I am. You remember me, thank Kami..."
"I hated those shoes," she whispered and I had to laugh. She smiled weakly, her eyelids dropping already and whispered "...you're a hanyou..."
She nodded off and again and I stared in wonder.
She knew what I was.
~~~
Part Three: "Great-Grandmother"
by Vega
Aislin Volpe is my great-granddaughter.
We worried about her father, initially, my grandson, well... because he was a grand SON. Never before had the firstborn of The Bloodline been a MALE. We wondered if the Shikon Shard by default had remained inside of Yuki, my daughter, but when we brought Kakera in to sense it out, no, the shard had indeed moved into Okami's body.
We wondered if that's where the line stopped - if Okami was destined to be the Traveller and if he was, how would they remove the shard with permanently crippling or even killing him? Was he destined to even survive the ordeal?
The years came and went and Okami remained with us.
And so did the Shard.
We began to think, to hope, that perhaps it was not he who was destined to travel backwards in time to deliver the Shikon Shard to the Miko Kagome.
When he met the American exchange student, Suza, we were unsure wether she should be allowed into the family. Yes, we were a bloodline of mixed peoples, of ningen, and youkai, and hanyou, and sometimes something in between. But never before had we had a Gaijin - an outsider.
She wouldn't know about anything, we realized. She'd know nothing of the glorious histories of our ancestors, of the legends of the family, of the living mythology that we were. She wouldn't even know hot to properly address Uncle Sesshoumaru and Papa Shippou, the Taiyoukai we were all descended from.
But Okami loved her, and in the end, that's all that mattered.
He convinced her that Japan, rather than the United States, is where their new family should start, and she readily agreed. She loved Japan and threw herself headlong into the culture, willing to eat everything, go anywhere, wear whatever.
Her family came over for the wedding, and I was pleased to meet such fascinating people. I had rarely met gaijin, and really only knew Dominic Volpe, my son-in-law, and his family. And he was Italian.
After the marriage celebrations had completed, Okami felt it time to tell his new wife of the rather 'special' circumstances of our family. He broke it to her easily, talking about how some people are different, and some have life-long missions, and things like that.
He explained that our family had a long and illustrious history involving no fewer than three Princes and several Great Lords. Suza was thrilled to be connected to such a wonderful heritage. Emboldened by her enthusiasm, he went on to explain that his own biological heritage wasn't exactly pure. She though he meant his Japanese-Italian ancestry.
That was when I was called in, with my wooden case of paintings and photographs. I had Suza and Okami stand beside one another and smile for my little marvel of a Polaroid camera, then opened the case and began to tell her about the history of the family she had married into.
About half way through my own life, she stoped, her face white with red splotches high on the cheeks, and said, "This is some sort of joke, right?"
With a silent signal from my grandson, I obligingly unwound my hair-buns to reveal my two pointed fox ears. I even swivelled and twitched them for her benefit, to prove that they were real.
She grew entirely white, her lips taking on a blueish tinge, and excused herself to the bathroom. I head the ugly retching sounds and assure Okami that it was just a lot for her to take in all at once. That she would understand.
That was my mistake, of course: assuming she would understand. A Japanese woman, brought up in a culture rich in mysticism and acceptance of the supernatural, would consider herself blessed to discover that most of her husband's kin are youkai.
This American, however, was entirely resistant to the idea.
Not that I am insinuating that all American are incapable of accepting differences - but Suza could not stand it. She called us 'freaks' and 'monsters', and bid us never visit her household again. Out of respect for the strife Okami was experiencing, we honoured her request.
There were fights in that house everyday from that day forward.
Suza filed for divorce within three months, and Okami would have gladly granted it to her. He was still very much in love with her and just wanted her to be happy. I think Suza still loved him as well, but she could not deal with the knowledge that we had shattered her safe little 'normal' reality, and it currently lay around her ankles.
However, we discovered, due to one visiting relative's (who was acting as Okami's lawyer) nose - Suza was pregnant. She had not been just queasy the day Okami told her what we were because she had been distraught. It had been morning sickness.
Uncle Sesshoumaru, the family Patriarch, declared that until the child was born, Suza would remain a member of our family. If the child did not posses the Shikon Shard, the paperwork would be pushed through double time and Suza would leave Japan - and probably without her baby. It would be of mixed race, after all, and none of us wanted the child in the hands of one who may abuse it.
Az, however, WAS born with the Shikon Shard, and Suza was not allowed to leave.
We did not hold her prisoner, by any means.
She and Okami moved to the United States and she pretended desperately that she was 'normal' and that her beloved child was 'not a freak' - she even went so far as to give Aislin violet-tinted sunglasses to wear every day of her life to dull the brightness of her eyes, as early as age two.
Eventually, the stress of the living situation ate away at my grandson, and Okami sprouted a bad stomach ulcer which opened the door for a painful stomach-lining cancer. He was gone within five months of the first diagnosis.
The funeral was hard on us all, as it was held in the United States, and not all of us could make it. I made a point of going, buying my great-granddaughter new shoes for the event and bringing along my wooden case of family portraits.
I had wanted to give the case to Aislin to keep, so she would forever remember her father's side of the family, but her mother wrenched it away from the little girl and tossed it back at me.
Immediately following the funeral Suza took Az and vanished.
Had our Aislin not been The Traveller, we probably would never have seen her, nor her offspring, ever again. Fortunately, those two ningen boys happened to be hiking right where Az re-appeared and saved her life. I thank Kami heartily for their intelligence to post her picture on the internet, and pray for them twice a day.
When my Az came back to us, she was a ruin.
Her right arm was nearly completely destroyed and even the doctors said it was a miracle that she could still move her fingers. She had several lacerations, scars across her torso that had sealed messily, and two cracked ribs that were healing wrong. One of her toes needed to be broken and reset, as did one of the ribs.
For a long time, Az lay in a drug induced stupor, and I'll admit I signed all the papers necessary to keep her that way. She had been through a great ordeal and was not ready to face the real world just yet. She had suffered some sort of loss while she was away, and although I did not know what it was, I could smell her melancholy, even through the haze of the morphine.
The doctors informed us, Uncle Sesshoumaru and I, that first night we got to see her, of a small problem.
He pulled us out of her room and into his own private office, which had me slightly worried and Sesshoumaru-sama less so.
"Listen," the doctor said, clutching the yellow manila folder with Aslin's charts in it, "I don't know how long your niece was missing, sir, but... she's been very battered around."
Sesshoumaru's golden eyes narrowed threateningly, warning the doctor not to step on eggshells. "How badly?"
"Several broken bones, mostly healed by now, a seriously sprained ankle and a wrenched knee - both about a month healed, although neither were set properly. We're taking care of that now. Multiple contusions on her torso and arms; a severely blackened eye at one point, resulting in the burst blood vessels you can see right now. Punctures in her upper right arm, possibly the result of a large dog - severe burning of her right arm that could only have been caused with an excellerant."
"Excellerant?" I interrupted.
"Someone probably dumped gas on her and deliberately set her on fire," the Doctor dead-paned, and I had to cover my mouth to keep in the gasp of horror. "There's also a mild concussion in her history, but I'd say three weeks ago at least. Her lips have been split several times, probably from being slapped, and her left earlobe has been torn. Lastly..." the doctor trailed off and stared down at his feet, suddenly uncomfortable, "Lastly she has been... uh... sexually assaulted."
Sesshoumaru growled and I placed a gentle hand on his arm to remind him that it was not this doctor's fault, and it would do no good to go on a tear here. The growl died out and the Doctor just stared at my uncle with wide eyes.
"How... badly...?" Sesshoumaru demanded, eyes like hardened amber.
"It was big, whatever it was," the doctor said softly, "roughly the width of a human arm - the tearing indicates that she began to heal from it, but most of them were re-opened, er..." he glanced quickly at the sheet on the inside cover of the folder, "as early as the night before she was brought to hospital. We've seen to most of her injuries, and done as must stitching as was needed for her sexual injuries, but ... there is something else the hospital would like you to know, sir."
Sesshoumaru was contemplating black deeds, and we could both see it. "What?"
"We... found... two things inside of her."
"Things?" I asked. No - it couldn't be. She had been gone for so long - she HAD to have given the shard to the Miko Kagome! It couldn't still be inside her!
"One was a... a piece of glass," the doctor said, and went over to his filing cabinet. He unlocked the top drawer and withdrew a small test tube, corked, and sure enough, there lay a sliver of the Shikon no Tama in it's rounded bottom.
Sesshoumaru wordlessly held his hand out for it and the doctor only reluctantly gave it over.
"And what was the second...?" the taiyoukai prompted.
"The second was... seamen."
Both our eyebrows raised.
"Your niece is not pregnant," he assured us hastily, "and we sent samples to a lab - the rapist has no previous DNA record that we could find, I'm sorry."
There was a thoughtful pause.
"I want that too," Sesshoumaru suddenly demanded, catching both the doctor and I off guard.
"What for?"
"I pay you enough to not ask questions," the taiyoukai snapped and the doctor immediately bowed and scuttled out of the room.
We waited in silence for him to return, neither of us saying a word. When he handed the vial filled with half-coagulated white liquid (it have been frozen, apparently, so was still in liquid form) Sesshoumaru immediately uncorked it and took a steady whiff of it's scent.
The doctor looked about ready to be ill, but I understood - he wanted to know whose it was, and if he recognized the scent, he may be able to track the youkai down and find out what had happened, and why he had slept with our precious Traveller.
After a moment he closed his eyes, smirked a little and shook his head.
I raised one eyebrow in question.
He turned to me and in the growling language of a canine youkai said, "It's that goddamned wolf."
~~~
When Az was finally well enough to start being conscious for short periods of time, I made sure never to leave her side. Others came and went, of course, the whole family saw her at least twice. But we did not call her mother - Suza had not called us, looking for her daughter, and as distressing as Az's disappearance may be for Suza, we knew that it had to be Az herself that called her mother to explain, because anything we said would be taken as a lie. As much influence as our family's name and money is in Japan, we doubt it would have much effect on American authorities.
Sesshoumaru sent one of my nephews out, a week to the day after our meeting with the doctor, to try to track down Kouga.
If his intentions had been honourable, the Wolf may escape a confrontation with Sesshoumaru with his balls still attached. If it had not been, the Last Prince of the Ookami Youkai would join his brethren.
~~~
I have been watching over Az for two weeks now, and still no word from my nephew on the wolf's whereabouts, or wether he is even living or dead.
Az has begun to mumble his name in her sleep - I take this as a good sign and hope that means that their encounter was consensual.
We have moved Az out of the general hospital and into a private rehabilitation centre that specializes in restorative cosmetic surgery and a comfortable family environment. I can smell the terminally ill dying from here and it reminds me tragically of Okami.
Humans are such fragile things.
Was it not for Az's youkai blood, I suspect she would be long dead.
I yearn for her to wake up fully so we can learn what has happened.
Perhaps Kouga will be able to fill us in.
It is a hope.
~~~
Az has begun to open her eyes - it's into the fourth week now.
Uncle Sesshoumaru has things to do of course, so is in and out of the little hospital room, but I remain by her side constantly, oft times accompanied by one or another of the Others. She has been mumbling more now, muttering of silver sights and sounds, of pain and sandalwood, and a man named Kagewaki.
My heart wrenches every time she flings up her hands and screams, "Please, no! Get off me!" because I cannot enter her dreams and help soothe away her nightmares.
All I can do is hold her hand.
~~~
It's going on week seven, and still no word about Kouga.
Today Az opened her eyes and looked at my face, then down at her hand in mine and said, "Great-grandmother..."
I nodded, dabbing at the tears in my eyes and said, "Yes Aisilin, that's who I am. You remember me, thank Kami..."
"I hated those shoes," she whispered and I had to laugh. She smiled weakly, her eyelids dropping already and whispered "...you're a hanyou..."
She nodded off and again and I stared in wonder.
She knew what I was.
~~~