Yuzurenai Negai
Ahknee/Kitteen
(Disclaimer: No, really! I'm not getting paid for this. I think that if I was, I'd be going off to Disneyland or something like that for the time when summer vacation starts, but noooo, I'm stuck at home.)
Wow. Chapter two. Did I ever mention I've begun the revision process on Fire's Heart? Well, now you know. All old chapters are being redone and will be posted, along with a new chapter, all at the same time. Scream for joy, man.
The reason(s) I didn't update are at my author's notes on the bottom. smacks head on desk repeatedly
Anywho, the last chapter was screwy. I didn't check over it, really. I just added in a few author's notes in the end.
Ehh. I think we'll just mosey on over to the actual content of the story, now.
Kagome yawned slightly as she sat up from the hardwood floors of Kaede's small cabin for a house. She had been curled up comfortably in a small bundle of blankets with a small pillow. Shippou lay next to her, curled up into a tiny ball of brown fluff. Squashing the urge to cuddle the small fox child to death, she silently stood up, stretching and allowng the blankets to pool at her feet.
Running a hand through her hair, she walked over to her stuffed yellow backpack, which she carried everywhere with her, and lifted the top off, sifting through everything until she found a tiny pink hairbrush. Quickly tugging the item through her tangled mess of dark strands, she sighed, realizing how badly she needed to take a nice, hot shower. Better yet, a bath. Soaking in that nice, warm, steaming water would be good for her aching body.
Shoving the brush into her bag and latching the item closed, she silently padded over to the door where she slipped on her shoes before stepping outside to enjoy the early morning silence.
The sun was just barely above the horizon, casting a loving, warm glow upon the lands. Some of the birds were up, twittering merrily like little old ladies. The birds hopped and bounced from tree to tree, continuing to twitter to each other in thier mindless blather.
Kagome smiled what her mother had dubbed the 'thousand-watt smile'. It was going to be a perfect day, she could sense it in her blood.
Stepping away from the house, Kagome decided a quick walk around the village would be the perfect thing to help her wake up a bit more. Usually she was never awake this early on her own, but since she was supposed to leave around noon today, she had gone to sleep earlier the night before. Needless to say the priestess-in-training was feeling quite refreshed and alive.
A few of the villagers were already awake and all of them waved and smiled warm smiles as Kagome passed. This village was so small. Everyone who lived here could place a name to every face in just a few seconds. It was easy to identify a stranger from a person who lived in town for a long while. Kagome herself could also place a name to each and every face in the village.
Glancing towards the edge of the village, Kagome shuddered lightly. For a second, she could have sworn she had felt some strange energy coming from over there.
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"Grandmama, are you sure you're okay?" the woman asked softly, helping an old woman stand upright.
"Fine," the old woman replied, swatting away the worried hands.
"Are you sure?" Violet eyes shone with true concern and worry for the elderly woman.
"I'll be fine!" Grandmama snapped. The violet eyed girl sighed, rubbing her temples lightly.
'Grandmama can be so stubborn sometimes,' she thought, sighing.
The woman was, to say the least, probably one of the most beautiful in all Japan. She had long, flowing raven hair that glistened a deep crimson when the sun hit the dark locks just right. She had light violet eyes that conveyed anything and everything she could feel, though often her eyes were shrouded by a deep mist of thought. She wasn't as tall as most people would hope. In fact, she was just a bit shorter than most women her age, but she didn't mind.
This girl was someone who would come to be known as Rei Hino. But here, she is called just plain old Rei.
As a child, she had been born healthy and quite normally. Sadly, her mother had died shortly after her birth and her father had gone away on a long journey of self discovery. Rei had never gotten to know her true parents. She was considered bad luck due to being born before her mother's death, but the village she was born in had been kind enough to place her in the hands of an old woman who had raised her through the years, up until now.
"Go now, child!" Grandmama commanded, pointing to the door. "Go and help the world rid itself of its demons."
"What if the village is attacked while I'm gone?? What will everyone do then?" Rei demanded, eyes flaring in defense.
"There are villages out there that are more needy of your services than this tiny old place. Help those who really need it." Grandmama said, her voice more kind.
Rei's eyes softened slightly, and she sighed in defeat. "Fine. But please, do send a messenger as soon as you can, if anything happens. If this village is destroyed while I am gone, I am going to feel guilty for the rest of my life!"
"Go now, little one."
Rei sighed once more, walking over to the door, all of her nessecities wrapped up in a special sash that was strapped across her back. She spared one last glance behind her.
"Go now, and never look back," Grandmama commanded, her voice stern. Rei obeyed, opening the flap that made the door.
"Goodbye, Grandmama."
With that, the young woman walked out of the house and out of her village for heaven-knows how long, her raven hair glistening in the setting sun, not looking back ever again.
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Rei sighed as she tapped her weary feet against the ground. Her traditional oufit, that all priestesses of the sacred religion wore, was feeling heavier than usual, and her hair kept on blowing in her face in a very annoying fashion. Sighing once more, she walked over to a nearby tree and slipped her sash off of her back, untying the strings that held it together only to pull out a long, white cloth. Pulling her hair behind her, she loosely tied her hair up before wrapping the sash once more and sliding it upon her back.
Her feet were killing her, and she mused that she'd be better off walking barefoot. The small pebbles upon the ground were no match against her wooden sandals! Sliding her sandals off, she held them in her hand before continuing on her way, ignoring the jabs from the small rocks beneath her feet.
She glanced around, noticing it was just beginning to become light out. She hadn't traveled the whole night, for that was a very foolish and dangerous mistake. Traveling through the night could make one weary and cloud one's senses, making them slower. She had stopped and rested by a small stream for about six hours last night to rest, but that was all before she had packed up and moved on, wandering down the dirt path.
The trees wre rustling due to the playful wind that had begun to pick up, blowing Rei's raven strands around her, cooling off her heated skin. She loved the feeling of the wind and desperately wanted to know what it was like to feel that free and happy. Sadly, she was doomed to keep herself in silence, never letting herself show how sad she was.
She recalled the first time she had shown the signs of having elemental powers. She had accidentally set a small patch of grass on fire when she was naught but twelve seasons old [1]. The village had to shut her up in a house with a holy priest who worked at the temple. He had spent several days trying to bless her and banish the demon within her, yet it had failed as, right when she had been released, the house behind her had caught on fire. Soon after she had shown signs that only a priestess could have. The village had dubbed her the 'holy demon child' after that.
Rei frowned, kicking at a pebble and not really feeling the pain of it. Nowadays she had perfect control over all of her abilities, so she never really worried about accidentaily setting something on fire or anything like that. No, no ... unless something truly threatened her, she never lost control.
Shaking her head to clear the thoughts, she figured it was best to simply wander straight along the path until she hit a town, where she would stay for a few days and nights before heading off once more, always making sure to avoid the western lands. There were dangerous demons in that particular territory and the lord of the lands was said to have mighty power and no mercy upon humans who wandered within his lands.
Rei had always checked the stars to make sure she was headed in the right direction.
Glancing up from her feet and the dirt path below her, she spotted a village coming into view just over a hill. It seemed like a quaint, quiet little place. It would be perfect to rest at for a while.
Picking up the pace, Rei's hope flared brightly at the thought of having a nice, comfortable bed that wasn't on the bumpy, rocky earth.
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Shippou glanced up at his adoptive mother with slight worry in his eyes. Kagome had been glancing out of the village for most of the day, and the small fox child had no real idea why. He doubted it was a jewel shard because not many demons wandered over to this quiet little place unless they were desperatly trying to gain some sort of a reputation (or to challenge the resident dog demon).
"Kagome?" the fox cub asked, tugging on the girl's sleeve.
Kagome continued to look out of the village before turning her head back to focus on the small fox in front of her
"Yes, Shippou?" she asked, blinking her large, blue eyes as if to clear them of some emotion that had quickly run through the blue orbs.
"What were you staring at?"
"Nothing," Kagome lied. In truth, she had continued to sense that strange prescence heading towards the village all day and she was slightly worried on what it could be. Plus, her cousin was supposed to come over in a few weeks. She was trying to come up with an excuse so Inuyasha wouldn't come barging in and scaring her cousin half to death.
"Are you sure?" Shippou asked, concern shining in her eyes.
"Very sure!" Kagome replied with a huge, happy grin. The cub was satisfied with this answer, apparently, because he lept up into the arms of his foster mother, tackling her in a big hug. Kagome laughed her melodious laugh, happy.
"Let's head back to the village. I'm sure everyone else is worrying!" Kagome said, standing up with Shippou still in her arms.
-------
Word was spreading quickly. Rei could hear the whispers of the villages going around, more than likely whispering about her. She didn't really care, though. She wasn't going to be staying here too long. She just wanted two nights worth of sleep, nothing more. She probably needed to restock on some supplies, too. Good thing she brought so many things to trade in!
Brushing her bangs away from her eyes, she looked around to see if anyone would allow her to set up at their house. Or, maybe, they even had a place for weary travelers to stay. It wasn't too common, but it could happen every once in a while between villages.
Stifling a yawn, Kagomes noticed a nice little hut with an old lady standing in front sweeping at the dirt. One eye was covered in an eyepatch.
'Reminds me, slightly, of Grandmama,' Rei thought, shaking her head slightly as she decided that she didn't want to burden the old woman. Brushing past the woman, Rei continued on, a light breeze sweeping by.
Kaede, on the other hand, was shocked when two feet wearing only the traditional white footwear brushed by. Glancing up, her good eye focused on the retreating from. From her position, the woman who brushed by looked almost like ...
"Kikyo?" Kaede murmured, shaking her head and figuing it impossible.
Rei continued on, not bothering with much else as she pondered where to go next. She couldn't just keep wandering from village to village in hopes of finding a place that needed some help. That was like trying to find a strand of hair in a stack of hay! It was the luck of the draw, and Rei didn't like to chance her happenings. People had a lmited amount of luck, some more than others, and your luck always had to run out.
Rei sighed, continuing to stare down at the ground. She hadn't really realized where she was going and that she wasn't looking where she was going before she ran, quite forcefully, into someone. A light, soft 'oof!' escaped from her mouth and the mouth of the other person. Rei knew it was a girl by the sound of her voice.
Rei was the first to stand up again. She quickly brushed off her robes before looking at the person she had bumped into. It was a girl who was just a couple of years younger than her. And though Rei had never seen an image of herself except in the blurred pools of water she washed her face in, Rei knew immediantly that this girl she had run into bore a striking resemblance to herself.
Violet met ocean blue, staring at eachother as a silent wind blew by.
Kagome pondered whether or not a tumbleweed would blow by, like in one of those American movies with those cowboy people. It seemed it would fit as her own blue eyes met with a shade of violet. Could eyes even be that color if the owner wasn't demon? Kagome sure didn't sense any demon prescence off of this woman.
"My pardons. miss," the woman says, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts away. She held out her hand, the white sleeves of the robes falling over her slightly pale skin. Kagome stared dumbly at the hand for a few seconds before reaching out and accepting the hand with her own. The other woman easily pulled Kagome to her feet in one swift motion.
"Oh, um ... it's more my fault!" Kagome apologized.
The woman shakes her head. "No, 'twas mine. I was not paying much attention to the road ahead of me. I could have avoided colliding with you if I had been looking where I was going."
"Oh, it's really my fault!" Kagome insists.
Rei's eyes continued to sparkle good-naturedly, but she was silently rampaging on the inside. Would this girl give it up already?! Just let Rei take the blame and this can be over with!
The girl didn't do so, though, and continued to insist it was her fault.
Shippou stared up at the two woman. The one Kagome had bumped into bore a striking resemblance to her mother, but her deep violet eyes said otherwise. Her hair was also a bit longer and it had a red tint to it, not the blue hue Shippou always saw when he looked at Kagome's hair.
This woman ... Shippou shuddered. She seemed too much like Kikyo!
Rei, fed up by now with this endless fight over who was the most polite, sighed, massaging her temples with her hands to rid herself of her oncoming headache.
"We shall say it was both of our faults," she compromised. The girl seemed to accept this and nodded her head.
"Yo, wench!"
The girl suddenly cringed as if she had just been slapped. Rei cocked an eyebrow in slight confusion before turning to the soure of the man's voice, her senses tingling at the prescence of a fairly formidable demon. The little cub that was hiding behind the girl was too weak for Rei to have considered a threat.
Kagome winced when she her her nickname, courtesy of her first aquaintance in this time, was called out by the person who had given it to her. She gritted her teeth, refraining from using the 's' word.
The woman had turned around now. Oh, no. Now she was going to see Inuyasha and go running and screaming far away.
Quite the contrary happened, though, when the woman spotted the silver- haired, amber-eyed man who had two dog ears (that actually bore more of a resemblance to cat ears) sitting atop his head, a fluff of white har blocking the view of where exactly the ears protrouded.
"A .. dog demon?" Rei asked, glancing at the demon standing just a bit away from her. The girl behind her seemed to know him because she was shaking her head. It looked as if she were trying to restrain herself from doing something ...
"You know him?" Rei suddenly asked, glancing behind her to look at the girl.
"Yes," the girl replied with a helpless shrug.
Rei would have laughed at the scene if this was a normal day for her. Sadly, it apparently wasn't a normal day for her.
"Friends, I take it?" Rei asks another question.
"Y-yes ... ," the girl stammered slightly at that. Rei's other eyesbrow rose up to join the first. Interesting ...
"Hey, I can hear you talking about me over there!" Inuyasha shouted from his spot, wanting some acknowledgement to his ever-so charming prescence.
Kagome sighed, wanting desperately to say 'the word' to Inuyasha but restraining herself from doing so.
"Inuyasha ... ," she began, her voice projecting very well throughout the clearing as if she were used to speaking from such a long distance away from people. Her voice sounded slightly strained as it took on a sickeningly sweet tone. Inuyasha sweatdropped from his end of the field, knowing what this meant. He was in for a few 'sits' when he got back to Kaede's hut ...
Rei, on the other hand, was actually quite enjoying this little display. The girl was clenching and unclenching her fists to control some rage built up within her while the cub hid even further behind her legs.
Finally, when the girl did speak, it sounded strained as it took on a sugary-sweet tone. Rei could almost see the uneasiness radiating off of the dog demon, who was conviniently named Inuyasha, from her spot on the path.
'Oh, how very interesting this day is becoming ...'
Anyone manage to catch the referance to Fire's Heart in here? Ehe! Couldn't really help it.
Anywho, did everyone enjoy this chapter? Eh ... the storyline really didn't get geared up until the end. ;; Eh, ah well. It's not too bad ... a slow moving story can help to build up the plot!
Anywho, I was just bored today, feeling very tired since I only got about ... four hours of sleep last night. oO; Eep. I need a nap ... .: yawns :.
Aah, yes, review responses:
Shikai-sama - There, I updated. Satisfied? :P Oh, please, I'm no good at one-shots (and if I did try a one-shot, I think it'd end up being a good thirty pages long or something o.o;).
Nina - Yay, I have a good plot!
mystlady - 'Nice storyline thought'. .: ponders the meaning :. Eh ... probably a typo. ;; .: coughs :. Well, thanks! This pairing should be quite interesting.
Rei fanatic - ... So, you're going to die if I don't get this fic into gear, eh? .:blinks:. Wow, someone's life rests in my hands. .: weighs the life that sits in her hands :. O.o; You have a heavy life. .: pokes life :. XD Yes, yes, wouldn't want to keep people hanging.
daffyduck1 - You really think so? Great! Well, I hope you'll enjoy this to the bitter end! ( .: ponders whether it will be a bitter end or not :. )
Firenze - It's nice? Spiftastic! (Spiftastic? Since when did I start saying that word? o.o ) Erm ... Ah! Yes, well, I hope I can even finish this dear piece of writing off. I tend to ... er, procrastinate. ¬¬;; Ehe! Ah well. Hope you stick with me 'till the end!
Now, I didn't update for so long because: 1) I got this really bad cough. Our vent system was letting too much bad air into the house, polluting the air. Bleah. I still have the danged cough! (- needs to convince everyone that opening windows would help) 2) School. I think that's enough of an explaination right there. 3) My family. Well, mostly my dad, but I won't focus among explaining anything about that. I'll just phrase it as 'my family is falling apart in front of my eyes because my dad is being a total arse. And not the donkey kind'.
The QuickEdit feature irks me to no end. .: proceeds to pound the QuickEdit into a bloody pulp of digital data :. =D
If you happen to catch any misspellings, point'em out to me. I'd love to use that spellcheck feature on QuickEdit, but since daddy-dearest .: snorts :. doesn 't want anyone to use IE since we got this lovely SBC Yahoo! browser with such a nifty pop-up blocker, I can't. (-note the sarcasm in the italicized words) Stupid Yahoo! browser doesn't even have a nice Full-Screen look. How can I function right on this computer?! I need to write some angsty poems soon.
Well, I shall be going for now. See all of you next chapter!