Note: This is set about thirty years after the eventual end of the Inuyasha anime/ manga. If you're not familiar with the character Hakudoushi, who appears in the more recent manga volumes, the flashbacks will make little sense to you. Everything in the flashbacks is pure speculation, so don't worry about spoilers!
Constructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated. :)
The Human Heart
The man was huge and dark, and to Shiranami he looked like a demon. One of the youkai which sometimes came out of the forest, perhaps, one of the devils who snatched children or disemboweled horses.
Shiranami screamed when the man came towards his mother, beat at the attacker with his tiny fists. The man chortled and flung the little boy aside with enough force to fracture his left arm in three separate places.
The last thing Shiranami heard before fading into unconsciousness was his mother's screaming.
When he awoke, his mother and the attacker alike were gone. Outside the window a beautiful day awaited the little boy, warm and breezy and without a cloud in the sky.
Gripping the broken arm to his side, Shiranami hobbled out of his childhood home and onto a battlefield.
The marauders hadn't burned the houses down. Instead, they had slaughtered the village men and the elderly, leaving them in a stinking heap on the beach. The stench was overwhelming, and Shiranami vomited as a sudden breeze brought the full force of it to his nostrils.
He stood, wiping off his mouth. The broken arm still hurt, still sent waves of pain raging through his body. The pounding in his head was amplified by the screech of carrion crows circling overhead, pecking at the heaped-up bodies.
Shiranami's foot landed in something cool and sticky. He looked down and saw that he had stepped in a pool of blood and rainwater. It must have rained the night before, when the attackers came, for the whole beach was red as clay.
The boy was not sure how long he'd walked before it grew dark that evening. Maybe a mile, maybe ten miles, maybe a hundred miles. The world was spinning all around Shiranami's head, the sky and trees and ocean all flooded with red like blood, blood which ran down into the sand on which he trod. The stench of death lay stagnant in his nostrils like a heavy fog, and it clouded the little boy's brain.
There were slugs. Slugs everywhere. A white-haired little boy stood atop one, laughing.
There was a dark room in a castle. A pale child stood upon a pile of entrails, entrails pulsing and shifting as though with life but slick and cold as the bowels of a corpse. A thing with red eyes moved there, in the darkness.
There was a crackling red light- light like that which comes striking down out of heaven- all around the boy. A demon, a white-haired youkai, was hurling itself against the light, clawing at it. When the youkai's claws touched the light they made a terrible noise and shocked the demon back.
There was a sword. There was the sound of sharp-honed steel sinking into flesh. It was a terrible sound. Almost as terrible as the pain, the pain, the pain...
There was nothing.
Shiranami woke to yet another beautiful day. The world around him was so alive and bright, birds sang in the trees and a wild pig rooted around in the underbrush nearby.
Waves lapped at the little boy's ankles. The tide was coming in, so he dragged himself a few feet up the beach on his good arm. Shiranami was so tired…so drugged by the pulsing pain in his arm, in his legs, his head…
But he couldn't fall back asleep, no. Shiranami had the feeling that terrible things were waiting beyond the tenuous boundary of consciousness.
Terrible things that someone else had done, Shiranami knew, but that he was to pay for.
Once more the bile rose in his throat. Shiranami vomited again, though this time all that had been in his stomach was acid and water and thin, pale streaks of blood.
It was all he could do to turn his head away from the stench before passing out.
There was a heart. It lay in a ceramic pot on a windowsill.
The heart pulsed. It was alive, beating, though nothing attached it to a body.
A woman, a woman with fierce eyes and dark hair dragged herself up to the windowsill. She raised her arm, lifted her fist above her head…
Something shot out of the darkness. A missile of bone. It stabbed through the woman's chest, stuck there covered in black, viscous blood.
The heart pulsed. The woman closed her demonic eyes and smashed her hand into the pot before falling to the floor.
The pot, and the heart within, shattered like blown glass.
When Shiranami woke, it was raining. He rolled onto his back and opened his mouth, catching as much rain as he could in it. He swallowed as best he could, though there was grit in his mouth and it scratched his throat going down.
"Mama," cried the little boy over the surf pounding against the shore. "Mama, what did I do?"
Spots swam in front of Shiranami's eyes. The rain splashed against his face, the wind buffeted his small body.
The heart again. Shiranami heard it beating, heard it pulsing, heard it pounding far, far away…
There was a baby. A baby with pale hair. A baby sleeping in white blankets.
A little boy with a freckled face stood over the baby.
He raised his fist. A hook glinted, there in the dimness.
The sound of a heart pulsing, blood racing through veins.
The hook dropped.
The pain was immense.
The sky was growing black overhead as storm clouds boiled up from the west. The rain was heavier now, and when it hit Shiranami's exposed flesh it stung far worse than the dulled aching in his arm.
Lightning sliced through the sky. The percussive bursts of thunder exploded all around, agitating the atmosphere.
There was a little girl. She had brown hair. She was eating a melon.
There was a little boy. He had white hair. He was watching the girl eat the melon.
"Do you like Kohaku?" asked the little white boy. When the little girl responded that yes, she did indeed, the little boy replied, "You do know…that he's dead…don't you? That he is only alive because Naraku is using him to spy on his enemies?"
The little girl cried.
The white boy bent down. His smile was very sharp, very wicked.
He raised the little girl's mouth to his own and kissed it.
It tasted of melons.
Shiranami's tears joined the rainwater running in rivulets down his cheeks. Some ran into his mouth, pooling with the spittle that had accumulated there.
"What did I do?" the little boy begged of the storm. Begged of the kami that surrounded him, the spirits which voiced their displeasure in the booming of thunder and flashing of lightning.
"I'm good…I'll be good…Mama…"
Awake yet dreaming, eyes open but seeing nothing but the phantoms that danced across his hindbrain, Shiranami wept.
Shiranami screamed, "Mama!"
A form, moving in the darkness. A woman, a woman with dark hair and kind eyes. A woman's face, lined with age and hard work, but soft and gentle as that of a mother's.
She bent to scoop a pale child from where he lay on the beach, broken and bloody and soaked to his bones.
"Mama?" whimpered Shiranami, unable to differentiate between what was real and what was imagined in his chaotic world. "Mama, was I bad?"
"Shhhh," said the woman, whose arms were solid and strong as they held Shiranami. "Everything will be all right, Child."
Shiranami lay in her arms, dazed, as they walked up the beach into the forest. There, in the shelter of the ancient and stalwart trees the winds were dulled, the thunder softened, the rain falling in a comforting pattering on the leaves high above.
The woman took him to a cave set into a hillside where a fire burned merrily. She bound Shiranami's arm in rags stripped from an old yukata, and gave him tea of bitter herbs to quell the pain.
Shiranami slept as the woman watched over him, head cradled in her lap.
When he woke, the woman was gone, the fire burning low. There were mushrooms and a badly charred fish lying on a leaf beside the fire-pit.
"Is she a demon?" Shiranami wondered aloud. "A youkai?"
From the cave mouth, someone chuckled.
"No, child, just an old woman who came to visit an old friend and found you on the beach instead. Show me your arm."
Shiranami did. The woman pressed a bundle of wet leaves onto it, then wrapped it back up in the sling.
The little boy ate while the woman sat at a respectful distance away, silent.
"What is your name, little boy?"
"Shiranami."
The woman nodded. "Shiranami-chan, will you accompany me on my journey to visit my friend?"
Knowing that there was no where else for him to go, knowing that he had lost his mother and father and everyone else that he'd loved, Shiranami agreed.
The woman took him to a mountain, at the base of which was a little shrine. She knelt at the shrine and burnt incense there, lay her offerings of flowers and wild mushrooms and beautiful forms made of folded paper there.
The old, faded painting that adorned the back of the shrine was of a man with cold face and colder eyes. His hair and skin were painted whiter than chalk, offset by the yellow brilliance of his eyes. The man wore fine clothing, tailored and rich as that of any daimyo.
"Who is he?" asked the little boy when the woman was finished praying.
"A friend," said the woman enigmatically. "A friend whose debts I can never hope to repay in full."
Shiranami went with the kind woman to her home, three day's travel away.
Her husband was a hanyou, likewise old and graying but also kind and gentle. Though the hanyou was enormous, and his scarred, work-worn hands were large enough to crush Shiranami without a thought, Shiranami did not fear him.
"We have three children," said the woman as she sliced melons for the evening meal. "But they all grew up and moved away from us. Would you stay with us, Shiranami, and help us in the fields?"
"Yes," replied the little boy. "I like to pick bugs off of plants."
The hanyou chuckled. "A child with excellent taste in housework," he remarked to Shiranami.
"I think he will do well here, Husband," said the woman with a smile.
Though his heart and body still ached from the losses accrued over the past week, Shiranami returned her smile.
That night, when the husband was asleep, the aging woman took Shiranami to the forest beyond the herb fields.
There, nestled against a hillside and fenced off by a small creek, was a small house with smoke curling cozily out of the chimney.
"This is the house of another friend," said Shiranami's companion.
The door-flap was pushed aside, spilling a thin line of firelight out into the darkness.
"Rin-san?" inquired a woman's voice.
"Hello, Kougetsuko-chan. I've brought a visitor."
Kougetsuko-chan was tall and sleek and her hair and skin were pale as the moon. Her eyes were dark, dark and kind as those of Shiranami's new caretaker.
Her ears were covered in long silky fur which made them seem part of her hair. Kougetsuko-chan's feet were canine, and she had an elegant, sleek-furred tail.
On her brow was a faint birthmark, pale blue and shaped like a waning crescent moon.
Rin-san laughed with the young, pale woman and talked with her about things that Shiranami could not comprehend. Words of demons and journeys and love and loss were exchanged between them as Shiranami listened, silently.
That night Shiranami curled up beneath a heavy blanket beside Rin-san and slept.
There was a demon, a terrible demon with red eyes. The demon smelt of blood, of death, and its very presence made the air burn like acid.
There was a demon, cold and pale as the face of the moon.
The moon-pale demon raised a sword, a sword which pulsed with inner light.
The sword fell against flesh decayed with anger, flesh warped and twisted with darkness, flesh fouled by all-consuming hate and greed.
The sword pulsed as it rent blackened flesh.
Somewhere, a heart pulsed in unison.
It was silent, then.
Shiranami dreamt no more.