A/N okay, normally I have everything planned out when I start a story; how it starts, how the moddle of it will go
and how it will end, but writing about Princesse Mononoke is harder than I had antisipated, and I hope that my story
is half as good as I had hoped it would be when I started.

Chapter three


That night Ashitaka had a dream.


"Ashitaka!"
"Kaiya, what are you doing here? You know it's forbidden!"
"Do you think I care about that? I came to give you this," Kaiya hands a necklace with a crystal-like dagger
hanging off it, "so you won't forget your little sister..."
"Your crystal dagger! Kaiya, I can't take this."
"Please keep it with you brother to protect you."
Ashitaka moves to give it back,
"You must take it with you, please, I want you to have it so you won't... forget."
Ashitaka momentarily pushes down his mask.
"Kaiya, you know I could never forget you."
Ashitaka rides off into the distance on Yakkul and Kaiya watches him go until she can see him no more.

Suddenly Kaiya rushes to the hut of the Wise Woman and before she could object Kaiya says,

"I'm leaving to find Ashitaka. I can't just sit back and relax when I could have saved him!" Kaiya said
urgently right off.

The old lady who was still crouched behind her mat and stones from which she fortold to Ashitaka that he
would most likely die from the curse sat up straight and looked at her with something in her eyes that made Kaiya
not want to disobey her.

"No Kaiya! Don't be foolish and go and watch him die. You are much better off with your people-"

"Ashitaka IS my people! I need to go to him!" Kaiya seemed to be finished but added, "You cannot stop me
from leaving," and she abruptly left.

"Go where your heart tells you, child, but be careful. I will miss you."

Kaiya left the hut and went to the stables where the elk (where Yakkul had been previously kept) stayed and
saddled up one named Fiishma.

"Now don't worry, I'll be right back." Kaiya left the stables for supplies she may need on her journey.

The village was empty still, and the silence crept up Kaiya's spine as she walked back to Fiishma.

Fishma woofed, and Kaiya quietly soothed her by rubbing the large elk's nose and talking to her quietly.

"It's okay girl," Kaiya said as she rubbed Fishma's nose, "you're going to be alright."

Again, Fishma woofed in response, and Kaiya, after tying her things to the saddle, putting her bow and
quiver of arrows on her back, and her sword that was similar to Ashitaka's in its sheath at her belt, she mounted
Fishma and rode out of the village in the direction that Ashitaka had went.

A searing pain went up Ashitaka's right arm where the scar had once been.

Kaiya was riding, but slightly north of where he was headed.

There were robbers-muggers-all around Kaiya. She picked up her sword and atracked them, and Ashitaka, in his
sleep, tried to move to help her, but as hard as he ran, the pain in his arm grew more and more and he got more
and more tired of running and not getting any closer.

He tried to take an arrow off his back.

There were no arrows.

He tried to pick up his sword to hurl at them.

He had no sword in his empty sheath.

He took off the sheath to throw it at them,

but they weren't there.

Kaiya was racing away on Fishma,he din't know where she was she had a bloody gash near her ankle and she
looked droopy, as if she were about to faint, but in his dream her voice was amplified;

"Brother-Ashitaka, wherever you are, you saved me, help me find you..."
-------
And at the exact same time, San, on the other side of the mountain, through the forest, San was having a dream
herself.


San saw her mother and brothers, advancing on two human mates, a small baby in the woman's arms. They
looked so frightned-and so familiar, that she partially pitied them.

"What are you doing in my forest?!" Moro's booming voice echoed throughout the forest,

Rather than speak, the terrified couple cowered below the large, white wolf god and set their baby on the
ground in front of them, and the man spoke quietly.

"In reverence for the forest, we offer you our child."

With that the terrified two ran off, and only after they were out of sight, Moro sniffed the bundle with the
sleeping girl in it.

Her two pups stood beside her, watching her.

At that time there was a shortage of food, but instead of eating the baby, Moro pitied her, and saw beyond her human body.

"I will not eat it," Moro said finally, "When I see this little thing, so helpless and pathetic, I don't know. I just can't..."

One of Moro's pups walked up to the bundle and sniffed it, wondering why this human was so small.

In her sleep, San urged her mother to kill the child, although it wasn't what she really wanted inside.

Moro looked up at the sky and seemed to speak to San's heart as she watched her,

'Maybe by letting you live I am doing you a favor,' Moro thought toward the sky, 'The little changeling who will save the forest one day...'

Aloud Moro announced to her pups, "San... The human who is not. The wolf who is not, but will be brought up as."

With that, Moro picked up the bundle in her teeth and walked away, the pups trailing closely behind, until
they got to the small cave at the top of the cliff overhanging the forest.

Suddenly, as San watched all of this, she began to be confused. Moro had said 'the human who is not,' but she had also said 'the wolf who is not.'

So what was that supposed to mean? 'To be brought up as?'

Now Moro was lying half in the Sacred Pool, San's two wolf brothers on each side of her, and Okkotonushi as
a daemon walking towards her, San's feet flailing out of the red worm-like creatures that had ensnared him.

He walked up to Moro and screamed in her face, who said, "Look at you. You can't even speak."

Moro bit at the worms and said, "Give me back my daughter! Daemon!"

Soon Sashi Gimi, stepped out on the lake, and Eboshi aimed.

Many things happened at once. First, Okkotonushi, as soon as he saw Sashi Gimi, his daemon worms turned into a black slime, Moro moved slighly away from him and said, "Ashitaka, can you save the girl you love?" which awakens him and brings him to the surface, just as Eboshi fires and hits Sashi Gimi across the face.

The Forest god's feet begin to sink and Ashitaka hollers, "Eboshi! Your enemy is not the Forest Spirit!" and he ran to free San from the black goo in Moro's jaws.

"San! Don't die!" Ashitaka said urgently as he pulled her into the Sacred Pool.

Sashi Gimi walked calmly toward Okkotonushi and, after touching his nose, the boar god died, and only moments after, Moro fell into a heap to.

The protector of Sashi Gimi, Moro, had died, and peace had finally come to her.

Sashi Gimi looked up to the moon and began to change into the nightwalker, and Ashitaka with a now concious San, popped though the surface of the lake, and seeing Eboshi now aiming at the transfiguring Forest God, Ashitaka, still holding San in his arms, goes nearer to Eboshi.

"Eboshi!" He said as he pulled his sword out of its hilt and threw it at Lady Eboshi's gun, hitting it right through the side, but she just smiled and preceeded in trying to shoot the god again, who turned around and plants began to grow on her gun.

She proceeded in trying to hack them off with her free hand. "You will die!"

A gunfire shot echoed through the forest. She had gotten enough of the plant off for the fire to reach the pellet and there. The Forest Spirit, Sashi Gimi, was dead.

------

Both San and Ashitaka awoke at the exact same time, breathing heavily.

------

"What is it San?" one of her brothers asked, who had awoken by her gasps.

She was silent for a moment, trying to recollect her memory.

"Does my name mean anything?" San asked, looking persistantly at her brother.

He looked at her oddly, "Why do you ask me?"

"You were there. Weren't you?" San anxiously said to him, "The day mother found those plunderers in the forest."

He looked out at the forest, and said, "Yes San. I was."

San wasn't going to let him try to avoid the question, "So what does my name mean? Why am I called San?"

"San means, the child of the forest. Her exact words as I remember were, 'the human who is not. The wolf who is not-'

"'-but will be brought up as.'" San sat back and ignored his peculiar look, "thank you."

------

And Ashitaka and San fell asleep again at the same time, on other sides of the forest and the mountain, and when they awoke, San had no recollection of her talk with her brother and neither of them remembered their dream....