What can I say? Inspiration has been striking. I like this story. It is very much fun to work on. Enjoy this updating spree while it lasts children; because I assure you...heh heh...it won't.
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi, everything that has to do with Dune belongs to Frank Herbert...or...whoever owns it now that he has...passed on.
***
Flower Blooming
Chapter 4-"Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself-a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred."
***
Kagome was drifting...swaying...moving. Her eyes had gone first, that was the easy part. The hard part was all of the other senses, of which she had hundreds. She let herself die slowly. She had never learned just how far one could go to the point where they actually did die and could not return.
She let her consciousness go bit by bit until she was blind, then she was deaf, then her mouth went dry and she felt pain for a moment. Next, she lost the ability to smell, and then...then touch went. Touch was very difficult, almost as difficult as eliminating all of her spiritual senses and psychic senses. As you abandoned touch, you felt everything drop out from beneath you. It is frightening at first, then confusing. After that she could move on through her powers, dropping them one after another. Kagome lost every sense she had except for her unique gift of seeing time.
The Therum called it Shye-ri, after the Sister who had perfected it. It was a form of meditation that allowed those with Therum blood to make the most of their abilities to see time. They could descend deeper and deeper into their own minds and bodies until they were only connecting with that blood, with time. It replaced all senses with time; you saw time, you touched time, you tasted it, you heard it, you smelled it. It was not time-travel, as so many mistook it to be. Time travel was moving backwards or forwards through it, and then returning to a normal pace. It had nothing to do with actually understanding the flow of it. For Kagome, it was less dangerous. Her blood was so strong that she was almost in Shye-ri at all hours of the day and night. This was just expanding on her normal condition throughout the day.
Her state perfected, she let herself drift in her new environment. She was assuaged lightly by conceptions of the future and past. Her most favorite occurrence was when a past life would come to her. Kagome was attached to all of her ancestors while in Shye-ri. Their memories were her memories. And in her present state, she could access those memories and experience them herself. In Shye-ri she might become her great-great-grandmother while she was riding over the land on the back of a stallion, or her third cousin while she journeyed outside of her manor for the first time. It could get boring sometimes, because she could only access the memories of her female relatives, and their lives would always be connected to the Therum, but Kagome enjoyed it regardless because it was something different to her own situation in reality.
She was going on one such jaunt, where she adapted a new memory to fit her mind and body so that she was tricked into thinking that she was actually experiencing whatever she was engaging in.
She chose to be one of her more adventurous sisters. This girl, her name was...Adente, she was very beautiful and strong. In life, Adente had even been so bold as to entertain thoughts of escaping the Therum. Adente had been part of the breeding program to create the Rengola, and so she had also been driven to try and escape her fixed mating.
***
Adente stared out blankly before her. It was amazing, she had never seen anything like it. All of the feelings and emotions she had strived for years to destroy came bubbling up to her and in the rush she found herself speechless.
Her trembling hand came up and fidgeted with the hem of her hood. The black robe that streamed down from it swayed about her feet in the warm wind. Her mouth hung open just a bit, and she suddenly realized that this was what she had dreamed about, longed for in the back of her mind all along. This pure, lovely, perfect land that was totally above everything else the earth had to offer. Her legs twitched involuntarily with the desire to run; run forever and ever across the landscape until she died in happy exhaustion.
One of her companions stirred beside her and she turned. The man was old and brown skinned from guiding wanderers around for ages. Adente realized for a moment that he was human, like herself. 'How rare...'
She stared at him awkwardly, her azure eyes were beaming radiantly with pure bliss. The man looked taken aback. "Do...you like the desert my lady?"
Adente turned back to the sands and gasped as she experienced the shock of seeing something that was not crawling with green again. All she had ever known was land that was crowded with trees and life, it occurred to her that theses things were nothing but parasites. This...this was what it should look like. This was paradise. The man at her side had been right to make this place his home.
Purity, pure land. Land that was as it should be. Pure land. Like the land in the beginning...and the end. She could escape to this land and start over again.
Start over again...
Her head looked back and she regarded the mountains. They were tall and ominous, stretching above her and behind her for miles and miles. Some jagged peaks were dipped in snow. Just over those mountains the green was thriving again and infecting the soil with its strange poison.
He cleared his throat. Her eyes drifted back to him again. "Yes, I like it very much."
He smiled softly and she reached for his hand. "What is your name Lord?"
"My Lady..." His voice was laced with the accent that belonged to the desert people. Rough, blurred syllables that were at the same time very sharp. "I am hardly a lord." He looked puzzled when she fitted her small fingers in between his.
"You are my Lord."
He was suddenly lost in Adente's gaze and she returned his quiet smile affectionately. "Setag."
"Setag," she repeated, trying it on her tongue. "It suits you. Shall we go into the desert now, My Lord Setag?"
"Yes, Lady."
Something rocked through her with an affect closely resembling a tremor. This was Kagome. Adente was contentedly traveling into the desert with the man she had abysmally fallen in love with in a few moments, but something was happening to Kagome.
She was torn from the memory, and it faded away from her; rippling like water being stirred. Her mind reeled in pain. What was going on? What had happened? Why was she losing the memory...
Back in reality, in her room, her physical body gasped suddenly from where it lay neatly on her bed, and her limbs convulsed in a spasm of pain.
***
She sat trembling, sitting on her legs with a straight back and eyes focused out in front of her solemnly, but she could not conceal the trembling, no matter how hard she tried. 'I am afraid...' Kagome thought absently. Her teachings, her knowledge had all faded away in light of this new situation.
How could they have done this to her? How could they have abandoned her to this...this life? It wasn't even a life. Nothing would be a life to her anymore. Nothing. She had no home, no friends or allies, she was totally alone now and forever because they had betrayed her. Kagome wanted desperately to curl into a ball and die, but she knew no one would allow it. She was bound to the earth. She had been bred and promised, alive.
Her shoulders sagged in a sob and she screwed her eyes shut tight. She wanted her Caretaker to hold her again and whisper soft things to he like in the old days before she knew of all of this; she didn't want to be strong or brave. Tears streamed down from her eyes and she made soft hurt noises.
'I don't want this...I don't want this...I don't want this...' Her mind repeated it over and over again until she began whispering it to herself. The agony of it all was almost unbearable. It was crushing and suffocating and she had never felt anything like it before. Always Kagome had had her Therum gifts to support her but now she couldn't use those. So long as she had life in her she would never ever use those damn wretched powers again!
Her fear was partially replaced by anger and her fingers balled up around the folds of her clothing in little fists. The darkness all around her was consuming her steadily. How she wished for light, something so that she could at least look around and be comforted by her natural ability to see.
Kagome knew where she was. Palace guards had taken her from her room abruptly, led her to this place and ordered her to sit down beside the bed. She had never been here before, but she knew it was Sesshomaru's room.
The light she had been praying for suddenly peeked in and she heard a door open behind her where she could not see. The light disappeared just as suddenly as it had come and she was left alone again in total darkness. But now it was worse, now someone had come. Sesshomaru had come.
Dangerously silent, almost predatory, stalking steps drew closer to her from behind and she tightened in fear and started whispering again. "No...no...no...no...no..."
"No?"
She felt something sharp-a claw, drag itself up her spine slowly, cutting through the thin silk of her kimono and raking her bare skin. Kagome gasped and the animalistic terror that had filled her suddenly reached its peak and she lashed out with her hand, making to shove him away. But it was dark, she was blind, and he had anticipated this from her. His speed and grace allowed him to capture her wrist in his grasp as her fist was rushing toward him. His other hand mimicked its twin and she felt herself being pushed backwards onto the bed.
He was hovering above her, pinning her down, and she was no match for his strength. The tears flowed more freely. He laid her out so that she was on her back, her arms stretched out and still forced down at the wrists. Her legs were still folded up a bit.
He came closer to her, she felt his breath on her cheek, and then it moved to her ear, where he whispered, his lips grazing her flesh just slightly, "You are wise to be afraid."
Kagome bit back a scream. She felt him sliding his fingers across the skin of her left leg, working upwards and gathering the kimono away as they went. They began drifting to her upper thigh, and she screamed.
***
Kagome's eyes burst open, and her she found herself panting, curled into a shaking ball on her side. Her clothes and hair were drenched in cold sweat. Her fingers were wrapped around her bed covers. After a few moments spent restoring her breath and her resolve, she began untwisting herself from her position.
Still trembling, she dragged herself up and looked around her room, drawing heaving gasps of air as she did so. Slowly, she eased herself into some semblance of order and was on the verge of calming herself fully when she turned and saw Sesshomaru staring at her icily from the side of her bed.
A strange instinct took control of her and she screamed. Sesshomaru struck at her and clamped a hand firmly over her mouth to stifle the scream. Kagome fought back, thrashing wildly, and writhing with all of her strength. He began speaking to her, telling her sternly that she had to relax. She persisted, and began to cry.
Gradually, her struggles dimmed and she exhausted herself. But when he had finally persuaded her to cease her wild behavior and removed his hand from her mouth, she was still whispering softly, "No..."
"Kagome. Stop this."
She continued to whisper for awhile until she lifted herself from the bed once more and turned to him again, this time without the frightened reaction. "Sesshomaru... what have you done?"
His voice was not the slightest bit comforting, or...predatory, but void of emotion, as she had usually known it. "You were meditating. I interrupted you."
Kagome's thoughts returned in disorder, slowly. "I-Interrupted me?"
"Yes."
She shut her eyes and sighed. His touch must have ignited one of her own memories. Of course Sesshomaru, someone she had to deal with nearly every day and had such strong feelings of rage and hate for would aggravate her in such a way. "I, I..." She trailed off and mentally berated herself for a second for even thinking of confiding in him, a monster. But for whatever reason, she desperately wanted to talk....to him. "I was meditating, yes. What do you want Sesshomaru?"
"It is night."
Kagome was puzzled, and then she remembered. "Oh yes. What have we to discuss this evening?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? That is good. Shall I still expect to see you again tomorrow?"
There was a pause. "What game are you playing?"
"I play no game Sesshomaru. Please, let us finish this pointless conversation. I am very tired."
"What were you doing?" She knew immediately that he was inquiring after the child's health, not her own.
"Nothing that would upset anything."
Another pause.
"Don't do it again."
"Don't...But Sesshomaru!" Shye-ri was what she depended on to keep her stable. Experiencing those memories that were not her own was, like her visits to the balcony, one of the few comforts she was allowed.
"I have given you an order. Do not do it again."
Kagome knew it was useless trying to argue with him, and she was suddenly drained of her little energy. She sank back, and seemed to shrink. "Yes."
She wished him to leave her in peace then, for him to just go. She wanted to be alone to cry herself to sleep.
He quickly drew her forward and pressed his face into her hair. Then withdrew. He left without saying a word, and by the time he had made his way to the door, the tears had already come.
***
As Sesshomaru was leaving, Korba came running down the hall from his room not far away. "I heard Lady Kagome scream," he said shortly as he halted before him.
"Nothing is wrong."
He looked concerned all the same. Sesshomaru briefly explained: "I interrupted her while she was meditating, it hailed a frightened reaction, and she screamed out of shock." It was mostly a lie, but he was a very talented liar. Not even Korba could catch him in one.
"I...see. Will Lady Kagome be alright then?"
"Yes."
He leaned over and looked past Sesshomaru to Kagome's door. "I can hear her crying."
"She is recovering."
Korba looked a little stunned. "Will you not comfort her My Lord?"
"She does not need it." With that, Sesshomaru brushed past him and continued down the hall. He heard Korba enter Kagome's room quietly.
***
Yeah well, this was probably the last chapter that just sort of explains stuff. In the next chapters, things really start happening. Yah.
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi, everything that has to do with Dune belongs to Frank Herbert...or...whoever owns it now that he has...passed on.
***
Flower Blooming
Chapter 4-"Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself-a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred."
***
Kagome was drifting...swaying...moving. Her eyes had gone first, that was the easy part. The hard part was all of the other senses, of which she had hundreds. She let herself die slowly. She had never learned just how far one could go to the point where they actually did die and could not return.
She let her consciousness go bit by bit until she was blind, then she was deaf, then her mouth went dry and she felt pain for a moment. Next, she lost the ability to smell, and then...then touch went. Touch was very difficult, almost as difficult as eliminating all of her spiritual senses and psychic senses. As you abandoned touch, you felt everything drop out from beneath you. It is frightening at first, then confusing. After that she could move on through her powers, dropping them one after another. Kagome lost every sense she had except for her unique gift of seeing time.
The Therum called it Shye-ri, after the Sister who had perfected it. It was a form of meditation that allowed those with Therum blood to make the most of their abilities to see time. They could descend deeper and deeper into their own minds and bodies until they were only connecting with that blood, with time. It replaced all senses with time; you saw time, you touched time, you tasted it, you heard it, you smelled it. It was not time-travel, as so many mistook it to be. Time travel was moving backwards or forwards through it, and then returning to a normal pace. It had nothing to do with actually understanding the flow of it. For Kagome, it was less dangerous. Her blood was so strong that she was almost in Shye-ri at all hours of the day and night. This was just expanding on her normal condition throughout the day.
Her state perfected, she let herself drift in her new environment. She was assuaged lightly by conceptions of the future and past. Her most favorite occurrence was when a past life would come to her. Kagome was attached to all of her ancestors while in Shye-ri. Their memories were her memories. And in her present state, she could access those memories and experience them herself. In Shye-ri she might become her great-great-grandmother while she was riding over the land on the back of a stallion, or her third cousin while she journeyed outside of her manor for the first time. It could get boring sometimes, because she could only access the memories of her female relatives, and their lives would always be connected to the Therum, but Kagome enjoyed it regardless because it was something different to her own situation in reality.
She was going on one such jaunt, where she adapted a new memory to fit her mind and body so that she was tricked into thinking that she was actually experiencing whatever she was engaging in.
She chose to be one of her more adventurous sisters. This girl, her name was...Adente, she was very beautiful and strong. In life, Adente had even been so bold as to entertain thoughts of escaping the Therum. Adente had been part of the breeding program to create the Rengola, and so she had also been driven to try and escape her fixed mating.
***
Adente stared out blankly before her. It was amazing, she had never seen anything like it. All of the feelings and emotions she had strived for years to destroy came bubbling up to her and in the rush she found herself speechless.
Her trembling hand came up and fidgeted with the hem of her hood. The black robe that streamed down from it swayed about her feet in the warm wind. Her mouth hung open just a bit, and she suddenly realized that this was what she had dreamed about, longed for in the back of her mind all along. This pure, lovely, perfect land that was totally above everything else the earth had to offer. Her legs twitched involuntarily with the desire to run; run forever and ever across the landscape until she died in happy exhaustion.
One of her companions stirred beside her and she turned. The man was old and brown skinned from guiding wanderers around for ages. Adente realized for a moment that he was human, like herself. 'How rare...'
She stared at him awkwardly, her azure eyes were beaming radiantly with pure bliss. The man looked taken aback. "Do...you like the desert my lady?"
Adente turned back to the sands and gasped as she experienced the shock of seeing something that was not crawling with green again. All she had ever known was land that was crowded with trees and life, it occurred to her that theses things were nothing but parasites. This...this was what it should look like. This was paradise. The man at her side had been right to make this place his home.
Purity, pure land. Land that was as it should be. Pure land. Like the land in the beginning...and the end. She could escape to this land and start over again.
Start over again...
Her head looked back and she regarded the mountains. They were tall and ominous, stretching above her and behind her for miles and miles. Some jagged peaks were dipped in snow. Just over those mountains the green was thriving again and infecting the soil with its strange poison.
He cleared his throat. Her eyes drifted back to him again. "Yes, I like it very much."
He smiled softly and she reached for his hand. "What is your name Lord?"
"My Lady..." His voice was laced with the accent that belonged to the desert people. Rough, blurred syllables that were at the same time very sharp. "I am hardly a lord." He looked puzzled when she fitted her small fingers in between his.
"You are my Lord."
He was suddenly lost in Adente's gaze and she returned his quiet smile affectionately. "Setag."
"Setag," she repeated, trying it on her tongue. "It suits you. Shall we go into the desert now, My Lord Setag?"
"Yes, Lady."
Something rocked through her with an affect closely resembling a tremor. This was Kagome. Adente was contentedly traveling into the desert with the man she had abysmally fallen in love with in a few moments, but something was happening to Kagome.
She was torn from the memory, and it faded away from her; rippling like water being stirred. Her mind reeled in pain. What was going on? What had happened? Why was she losing the memory...
Back in reality, in her room, her physical body gasped suddenly from where it lay neatly on her bed, and her limbs convulsed in a spasm of pain.
***
She sat trembling, sitting on her legs with a straight back and eyes focused out in front of her solemnly, but she could not conceal the trembling, no matter how hard she tried. 'I am afraid...' Kagome thought absently. Her teachings, her knowledge had all faded away in light of this new situation.
How could they have done this to her? How could they have abandoned her to this...this life? It wasn't even a life. Nothing would be a life to her anymore. Nothing. She had no home, no friends or allies, she was totally alone now and forever because they had betrayed her. Kagome wanted desperately to curl into a ball and die, but she knew no one would allow it. She was bound to the earth. She had been bred and promised, alive.
Her shoulders sagged in a sob and she screwed her eyes shut tight. She wanted her Caretaker to hold her again and whisper soft things to he like in the old days before she knew of all of this; she didn't want to be strong or brave. Tears streamed down from her eyes and she made soft hurt noises.
'I don't want this...I don't want this...I don't want this...' Her mind repeated it over and over again until she began whispering it to herself. The agony of it all was almost unbearable. It was crushing and suffocating and she had never felt anything like it before. Always Kagome had had her Therum gifts to support her but now she couldn't use those. So long as she had life in her she would never ever use those damn wretched powers again!
Her fear was partially replaced by anger and her fingers balled up around the folds of her clothing in little fists. The darkness all around her was consuming her steadily. How she wished for light, something so that she could at least look around and be comforted by her natural ability to see.
Kagome knew where she was. Palace guards had taken her from her room abruptly, led her to this place and ordered her to sit down beside the bed. She had never been here before, but she knew it was Sesshomaru's room.
The light she had been praying for suddenly peeked in and she heard a door open behind her where she could not see. The light disappeared just as suddenly as it had come and she was left alone again in total darkness. But now it was worse, now someone had come. Sesshomaru had come.
Dangerously silent, almost predatory, stalking steps drew closer to her from behind and she tightened in fear and started whispering again. "No...no...no...no...no..."
"No?"
She felt something sharp-a claw, drag itself up her spine slowly, cutting through the thin silk of her kimono and raking her bare skin. Kagome gasped and the animalistic terror that had filled her suddenly reached its peak and she lashed out with her hand, making to shove him away. But it was dark, she was blind, and he had anticipated this from her. His speed and grace allowed him to capture her wrist in his grasp as her fist was rushing toward him. His other hand mimicked its twin and she felt herself being pushed backwards onto the bed.
He was hovering above her, pinning her down, and she was no match for his strength. The tears flowed more freely. He laid her out so that she was on her back, her arms stretched out and still forced down at the wrists. Her legs were still folded up a bit.
He came closer to her, she felt his breath on her cheek, and then it moved to her ear, where he whispered, his lips grazing her flesh just slightly, "You are wise to be afraid."
Kagome bit back a scream. She felt him sliding his fingers across the skin of her left leg, working upwards and gathering the kimono away as they went. They began drifting to her upper thigh, and she screamed.
***
Kagome's eyes burst open, and her she found herself panting, curled into a shaking ball on her side. Her clothes and hair were drenched in cold sweat. Her fingers were wrapped around her bed covers. After a few moments spent restoring her breath and her resolve, she began untwisting herself from her position.
Still trembling, she dragged herself up and looked around her room, drawing heaving gasps of air as she did so. Slowly, she eased herself into some semblance of order and was on the verge of calming herself fully when she turned and saw Sesshomaru staring at her icily from the side of her bed.
A strange instinct took control of her and she screamed. Sesshomaru struck at her and clamped a hand firmly over her mouth to stifle the scream. Kagome fought back, thrashing wildly, and writhing with all of her strength. He began speaking to her, telling her sternly that she had to relax. She persisted, and began to cry.
Gradually, her struggles dimmed and she exhausted herself. But when he had finally persuaded her to cease her wild behavior and removed his hand from her mouth, she was still whispering softly, "No..."
"Kagome. Stop this."
She continued to whisper for awhile until she lifted herself from the bed once more and turned to him again, this time without the frightened reaction. "Sesshomaru... what have you done?"
His voice was not the slightest bit comforting, or...predatory, but void of emotion, as she had usually known it. "You were meditating. I interrupted you."
Kagome's thoughts returned in disorder, slowly. "I-Interrupted me?"
"Yes."
She shut her eyes and sighed. His touch must have ignited one of her own memories. Of course Sesshomaru, someone she had to deal with nearly every day and had such strong feelings of rage and hate for would aggravate her in such a way. "I, I..." She trailed off and mentally berated herself for a second for even thinking of confiding in him, a monster. But for whatever reason, she desperately wanted to talk....to him. "I was meditating, yes. What do you want Sesshomaru?"
"It is night."
Kagome was puzzled, and then she remembered. "Oh yes. What have we to discuss this evening?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? That is good. Shall I still expect to see you again tomorrow?"
There was a pause. "What game are you playing?"
"I play no game Sesshomaru. Please, let us finish this pointless conversation. I am very tired."
"What were you doing?" She knew immediately that he was inquiring after the child's health, not her own.
"Nothing that would upset anything."
Another pause.
"Don't do it again."
"Don't...But Sesshomaru!" Shye-ri was what she depended on to keep her stable. Experiencing those memories that were not her own was, like her visits to the balcony, one of the few comforts she was allowed.
"I have given you an order. Do not do it again."
Kagome knew it was useless trying to argue with him, and she was suddenly drained of her little energy. She sank back, and seemed to shrink. "Yes."
She wished him to leave her in peace then, for him to just go. She wanted to be alone to cry herself to sleep.
He quickly drew her forward and pressed his face into her hair. Then withdrew. He left without saying a word, and by the time he had made his way to the door, the tears had already come.
***
As Sesshomaru was leaving, Korba came running down the hall from his room not far away. "I heard Lady Kagome scream," he said shortly as he halted before him.
"Nothing is wrong."
He looked concerned all the same. Sesshomaru briefly explained: "I interrupted her while she was meditating, it hailed a frightened reaction, and she screamed out of shock." It was mostly a lie, but he was a very talented liar. Not even Korba could catch him in one.
"I...see. Will Lady Kagome be alright then?"
"Yes."
He leaned over and looked past Sesshomaru to Kagome's door. "I can hear her crying."
"She is recovering."
Korba looked a little stunned. "Will you not comfort her My Lord?"
"She does not need it." With that, Sesshomaru brushed past him and continued down the hall. He heard Korba enter Kagome's room quietly.
***
Yeah well, this was probably the last chapter that just sort of explains stuff. In the next chapters, things really start happening. Yah.
