Well howdy there, it's yours truly with another few pages of my shameless mockery of literature! If you're one of the two people that read this pitiful attempt at 'deep' writing, you may have noticed that I changed the title and made a few small changes to the previous chapter. Nothing major changed, just a few sentences restructured here or there, so there's no need to waste any time going back to reread chapter one.
And now that I've wasted some of your life, I might as well get on with the actual story.
Disclaimer:
Me: I don't own Inuyasha, Kagome, or any other character from the series mentioned in the story. I do own Kikyo though, mwahahaha! Or at least, I own a little six-inch high figurine I bought on eBay of her. -
Kikyo: I hate those things, they never get the hair right.
Me: Er, the story's starting... Aren't you supposed to be all pensive and angsty?
Kikyo: Oh, right. –coldness–
Me: Better.
Kikyo: Can we get on with it? This is pointless.
Me: You're no fun.
-
The Persistence of Memory
Chapter Two: Lovers and Fools
"Unless we remember we cannot understand."
- Edward M. Forster
Once upon a time, a foolish priestess fell in love with a foolish hanyou. It is hard to imagine how a priestess could find love in a half-youkai, so to tell this story we shall return to the beginning.
When the hanyou and miko first faced off, he made his intentions clear: he wanted the powerful Shikon Jewel she was protecting. The hanyou underestimated the miko, however, and she quickly had him immobilized with an arrow at his heart. But the moment before she would have killed him, the miko did something unexplainable; she lowered her bow without releasing the arrow, and turned and walked away.
It was not the last time the hanyou confronted the miko; he returned again and again, attempting to take the cursed Jewel by force though he failed every time. Every time he faced death at the point of her purifying arrows, and every time she stayed her hand, for some reason unable to do what she had been trained to do all her life.
Never before had she hesitated to kill any youkai that attempted to bring harm to her village, or sought the Jewel she had been entrusted with. Never had she faltered, never had she wasted a single second in thought, before that one hanyou.
But while she had never balked at killing any youkai, she did not kill without remorse. Every time she took a life, she could feel a little bit of her own soul slipping away. In time she grew cold and distant, an icy countenance and an unfeeling demeanor hiding the turmoil of her heart, shielding from sight the agony of a soul slowly and silently being torn to pieces.
Perhaps something about that one hanyou cut through the miko's shield, something in his insolent eyes that stayed her arrow. What did she see there that caused her to hesitate? Did she see humanity in those golden orbs? Did she see in his gaze a soul like hers, isolated and alienated, alone in a world that could not or would not accept them as one of their own?
The white-haired hanyou was feared by the people of the miko's village, and even despised. He was half-human, half-youkai, unacceptable to either race. He was an abomination in the eyes of both sides, a revolting mongrel suitable only to be the object of hate.
The miko had seen a few hanyou previously in her young life, in the short years before she had taken up her sacred duty. It had seemed to her that humans feared and hated those half-bloods more than they did full-demons, even though a hanyou would logically have only half the destructive power of a youkai. But they did not fear the half-breeds' power so much as they feared the half of each 'abomination' that was so undeniably human; they hated the mongrels not because of the youkai blood in their veins, but because they were just too human.
The miko was not feared or hated, but she was just as isolated as the hanyou. She couldn't have a bad day like normal people, or cry in front of others, or have fun like other young women her age could. She couldn't gossip and giggle about boys with the friends she didn't have, or waste her time with makeup or lovely clothing. Her people needed her to remain apart from them, needed her to be a clear and pure symbol, an immobile pillar in a shifting world of chaos. She could never be a real woman.
Perhaps the hanyou saw this, saw a dying soul much like his, alienated and alone. Perhaps, more than that, he saw the only person who bothered to see beyond his half-blooded pedigree, who did not look at him with disgust. Whatever it was, her love did not go unreturned.
Hanyou and priestess, half-blood and human, sharing something that went beyond race or rank, custom or society. History has a tendency to turn in circles, and lovers turn with it –– their names have been Oberon and Titania, Romeo and Juliet, Napoleon and Josephine, Lancelot and Guinevere; this time around, their names were Inuyasha and Kikyo.
xXxXxXx
The sunrise bloomed on the horizon like some great flower of celestial proportions, scarlet petals unfolding and turning to gold, turning the black of night into purple, then lilac, then destroying it altogether. Inuyasha watched the sun's birth with vague interest; how many sunrises had he seen? A hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? Still, as many times as he watched the sun's ascent, each day he was drawn towards it, hungering to witness the fiery display.
By the time the dawn had gotten a good foothold in the lightening sky, Inuyasha had lost interest and was now surveying his sleeping companions like a shepard watches his flock. He was perched comfortably in a thinly-foliaged tree, the largest one in the circle of trees that surrounded the small grove where the groups had made camp the night before.
Kagome was sleeping soundly, in that odd cocoon-like fabric sack she always insisted on using when the warm summer evenings had yielded to the chill autumn nights. Shippou was curled up in a snug ball in the girl's arms, the small kitsune's breath matching hers in peaceful rhythm. Sango's breaths were more shallow and irregular; Inuyasha could tell that she would awake soon. And then there was Miroku, who was only feigning sleep. The hanyou noted that while Miroku had started out the night on the opposite side of the grove from Sango, he was now only a few feet from the slumbering taijiya, who was sleeping on her stomach.
He must have inched his way over during the night, Inuyasha thought to himself. And speaking of inching...yep, he's at it again.
The hanyou watched in mild amusement as the houshi's right hand inched slowly along the ground, creeping steadily towards Sango's backside. The taijiya mumbled in her sleep and shifted slightly, disturbing Kirara, who had been sleeping in a furry yellow ball on the back of the woman's neck. The cat demon yawned quietly and settled back into place. Miroku's hand, which had paused during Sango's movement, resumed its slow yet steady crawl across the ground. After a few minutes, the monk's palm finally found contact with the taijiya's rear.
Inuyasha had to hand it to Sango; she moved fast for someone half-asleep. Miroku had gotten maybe five seconds of grope-time in before Sango suddenly flipped over onto her back and sat up (swiftly dislodging poor Kirara entirely from her perch) and brought her own hand into contact with monk's face.
"Why Sango, my dear!" Miroku exclaimed in feigned shock, rubbing his stinging cheek with his left hand. "Whatever was that for?"
"You know very well, you pervert," growled the exterminator. "Pitiful excuse for a houshi you are, groping women in their sleep!"
"I assure you, my dear Sango, I would never have done such a thing!" cried Miroku, his voice horrified and his face sporting an excellent likeness of pure innocence.
"Oh really?" Sango drawled, giving the defensive monk a Look.
"Never, my dear, never!"
"I'm quite sure I distinctively felt a hand on my...backside."
"But why would you ever think it was me, my dear?"
"Because your hand is still there."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"An accident, I assure you."
"It's still there."
"It's still an accident."
Sango's next blow sent the perverted houshi back into dreamland, to visions of sake and women or whatever it was that he dreamed about. "Pervert," the taijiya muttered to herself, standing and stretching some of the night's stiffness out of her bones. Inuyasha couldn't help but notice, however, that there seemed to be a faint blush to the indignant exterminator's features, not exactly like the kind one experienced in embarrassment or anger.
Smiling knowingly to himself, the hanyou leapt almost soundlessly from his perch to the branch of an adjacent tree, landing neatly on the outstretched bough. He didn't remain there but continued leaping from tree to tree with practiced ease, heading to where he had mentally marked the presence of a well-used rabbit trail he had noted the previous evening. For some reason, Kagome didn't like to let him eat for breakfast those delicious dried noodles she kept in her backpack. Apparently, they weren't 'proper' breakfast fare, but in his opinion, neither was the usually vegetable-based stuff any of the others usually cooked up for breakfast.
A faint rustle below Inuyasha did not go unnoticed by his sensitive hearing. A predatory grin crept over the hanyou's weatherbeaten face as he crouched low on his chosen branch, watching the underbrush intently.
-
Ta-da! All done! Yeah, not much really happened. So sue me. What're you gonna go about it? Nyer nyer!
Kikyo: Uh, they could stop reading.
Me: Shhh! You'll give them dangerous ideas!
Kikyo: If they have any sanity left after reading these pitiful attempts at literature, they're already running in the opposite direction. They don't want their brains turned to mush by your empty musings and confusing rants.
Me: Must you be such a bitch about it?
Kikyo: It's what they pay me for.