satorisama: this chapter is sort of angsty, i guess. Maybe dramatic? Not sure of a genre. Please review!!!
Chapter 5: Memory
Daja: I smile for the first time in about a week. As the wind thrashes my hair violently, I can't help but to say, "Ah, the phenomenal landscapes of the Makai hills always amazes me every time I return to the realm's simple rolling plains." I sigh and close my eyes, reliving every pleasant memory I can before I am awoken from my reverie, it doesn't take all that long. The hand resting on my shoulder is cold. I dislike coldness, it reminds me of my birth.
"What are you thinking about," asks Kurama.
"Ask no questions, curious one, and you will be told no lies." I do not want to share anymore with him, because I fear for my safety. He seems to know that I am not telling him everything. I suppose he is very curious, dumb kitsune curiosity. I shake out of grasp and begin to walk toward the city I sense in the distance.
"Daja, where are you going?" asks Yusuke.
"To the city, Yusuke." He must know it is there because he nods.
"You know, we have got to figure out how to find this guy you know."
"I figure that if we begin our journey now, we might get to the city before night fall." I reply. We walk and walk for hours upon hours, but we have to stop many times to stop a serious fight from breaking out between Hiei and Kuwabara. Needless to say, we do not arrive at the city by nightfall, and we make camp in a cave.
Kuwabara is going out to look for wood picking up every stick or log he sees no matter where it might be situated. Yusuke begins to fish in a small pond nearby by securing a worm to his large barbed fishing hook. Kurama unpacks some cooking utensils and generally starts to set up camp because he knows that if he doesn't do it, nobody else will. Hiei sits by the mouth of the cave waiting for some wood to be set up before him for his designated task is to start the fire on which Kurama will cook dinner on tonight.
I suppose that these are the jobs normally taken up by the rest of the team. I leap on top of a lone boulder many a feet away from the cave, sit down "Indian" style, and rest my chin in my hands that now are propped up on my bony knees. It's not that I feel left out or overlooked by the rest of the fighters and it's not like I want to be right there helping any of them either, but I feel depressed at my sudden inactivity and lack of certain purpose or job. I have never like the feeling of idleness or even the idea of idleness a great deal. Activity, or just plain movement, is more to my fancy. Idleness gives one to much time to think about the past, present, or future as well as friends and family. I rustle through my bag silently praying for something I can do whilst just sitting here, alone on this rock.
Upon the serendipitous occasion my hand brushing a long forgotten flute-like instrument, I am overtaken by the urge to play a prelude I learned when I was still a mere child. As the aria echoes through the leaves of the trees, I notice that they seem to be listening to my every note, straining to hear every last reverberation of sound. The plants nearest to the boulder have the spark of unrestrained growth in them. I cannot believe I remember that tune or that I still have this little hand carved instrument. I begin to play a requiem, trying to forget the painful memory that is flooding through my soul, invading me like a viral parasite taking over my body.
"Daja, take this."
I do not know what to tell the dying boy in my arms. Blood pours over my limbs, and I cant help but to feel repulsed by the blood that normally gives me happiness when I see it on my hands.
"It is your flute, Damien. I cannot except such a gift."
"Daja," his face scrunches up in pain as his hand clutches his side in desperation to keep the life giving liquid inside his rapidly emptying body.
I readjust my grasp on him and a tear exits my eye rolling slowly down my cheek.
"Don't cry, I cannot bear to see you in anguish," my tears are immediately put in check.
He looks up at me and I look down at him in return.
Our gaze seems to confirm every, last unanswered question.
I lean closer and kiss his trembling lips.
As I pull away, he smiles weakly and whispers one last thing into my ear, "I love you." His eyes glaze over as he gives me one last smile and squeezes my hand one last time.
I pull him close. I continue to weep for a long period. I bury my face into Damien's chest ignoring the blood still slowing oozing out of his now soulless body. I cannot even begin estimate how many hours I have been sitting here nor how much the pain flooding through me is going to shape me into something I should not become once more. My tears only begin to wane when I to realize I have lost the only person I ever cared for my whole life since conception in my tramp of a mother. Without any more delay, I pick him up and set his body in his canoe. As I watch it go over the falls, a part of me is banished to a dark and desolate place deep in within my suffering soul. I doubt it will ever return from its lonely exile.
I continue to play, the melody growing more ghastly and strange at every interlude. I cannot stop playing this song; something inside me is urging me on. The only things I have left are the melodies, but I buried Damien in my mind so long ago, wishing I could forget look in his eyes as he fell or the touch of his hands or.... I begin the song again, striving to hold in the tears that are welling up behind my eyes forcing their way to the surface. He would not want to see me in pain even after his death. I try to stop again, but I cannot let the flute escape from my lips. The song is reaching a crescendo of sound as I surge on with the tune. I am beginning to get scared. Why can I not stop playing?
The stone beneath me seems to give away like a bag of sand might and I begin to fall to the terrain below. I cry out fearing I will fall and hit the ground. I do not land on the ground. A pair of arms is supporting me. They set me down and I begin to rock back and forth on my knees. The memory, that godforsaken memory. It will not go back into the dark recesses of my psyche. I clutch my head in agony and scream feeling as if white-hot knives slash at my skin, driving the blades deep into my body. The pain surging through the veins in my body is unbearable even though I know that I should not be able to feel the pain.
A hand touches my temple and a small voice says, "It will be okay." I feel the world slip away from around me and the memory is no longer what I see when I close my eyes. The darkness is comforting. I am safe again, I murmur, unsure if I am conscious or dreaming this beautiful blackness to ease my own suffering. A reassuring hand holds my own as I drift off into a restless slumber filled with nightmares and dreams of what ifs.
Kurama: I feel so uneasy in the Demon Realm today...is it because I don't know as much as I would like know about Daja? Hmm...
"Kurama, when you are done would you like to come and fish with me?" Yusuke shouts as he casts his line into the pond infront of him. I smile as he almost slips and falls into the water, regaining his balance just before he would have fallen off the rocky shore.
"Sure, Yusuke. Give me a little bit to get reacclimated to the realm."
"Ok Kurama. But if you don't get here soon, I think that Kuwabara might steel your fishing pole."
As I look up from my frying pan and my bedroll, I notice where Daja is. She is solitary sitting on a large rock nearby, her face resting in her hand and her expression blank, yet very expressive if that is possible. But everything is possible with her since I know nothing about her shadowy past. I wonder if Hiei knows anything about her. Afterall, Hiei is the one who trained her for the previous 6 months. Then again, it was against his will, perhaps he just wanted to get it over with so he asked no questions. I think that is his philosophy, 'fight first, ask the questions later'.
Daja is one of the people you want to know, but you don't want to meet them in a dark alley in a strange town. What she said earlier about not asking her any questions seemed final, as if she doesn't feel we ought to know the truth about her or that it us best that we do not know about her past. The more I think about that, the more I want to ask her about her past. I.....
I am interrupted in my thoughts by a...a...I think it is a flute playing its soft delicate music to the world. I must find the musician for I want to know what this enchanting tune is called. I look up from my work and my eyes instantly fall upon a girl sitting on a rock. It's Daja....she is playing a flute, her nimble fingles plugging the holes strategically to allow certain notes to befall around her while the wrong ones are passed up with no remorse. She sits with her back as straight as an iron pole. Her face is soft and smooth, looking as close to delacate and beautiful as she can be without being an angel from the eternal paradise or a nymph from the spirit world.
These I know she is not because the woman playing is none other than our own companion Daja. As she plays, I feel drawn towards her by a strange feeling of unrestrained growth and warmth. As I walk a little closer to the source of this feeling, I notice that the plant life around Daja and her rock seem to be strainging to hear her melodic sounds. The flora also seems to be getting larger with the spark of growth in them.
I stop walking towards Daja when the music stops alluring to me with its indescribable charm.
"Kurama...Kurama!!" Yusuke shouts at me irritably, "Can you hear me or do I actually have to get up and physically shake you to get your attention....Gah!!!"
"I can hear you, but didn't you just feel that?" I reply goodnaturedly trying to get Yusuke to simmer down while asking him a question as well.
"Feel what?" Kuwabara asks having just heard that part of the conversation for he just got back from collecting the firewood.
So neither of them felt the strange calling towards Daja when she was playing her instrument. I shake it off as a human lust for my adolescent body has been receiving a lot of late.
"You didn't feel anything just now as Daja was playing her whistle?" I ask again still unsure of my infered answer because I know that Yusuke and Kuwabara are not hard of hearing thought they often yell at each other like the other is deafer than deaf.
"Kurama, I think you are imagining things. I did not here any kind of whistling sound now or this morning. Futhermore, I..."
Yusuke stops his face suddenly unreadable. I hear it too and I think Kuwabara must because his face looks like it does when he senses something around him he cant see. Its another song coming from the direction of Daja's boulder. This is nothing like stunning song she had been playing before this strange tune.
The melody of it is harsh and dark, its notes twisting and turning around in the air, fighting each other till one gets dominance over the other. It's ghaslty and scary and the melody chills me to the bone.
I notice something about Daja. She is not the pixie lass I saw her to be before, but a strange demonesce quaility surrounds her now, enveloping her with such a feeling as hatred and painful remorse. Her body teeters to and fro, coming dangerously close to falling many a time before she finally does. She lets out a terrified shriek and I am called back into my normal healer self, going to see if she is okay and not in trouble, or worse... I shudder at the thoughts running through my head.
Hiei gets to her first, catching her body afore she ever reaches the ground which is nice because I am still quite in a dazed trance from both songs. She lies in front of him, rocking back and forth on her knees while at the same time clutching her head as you would if your head was splitting down the middle.
Daja screams again before I reach her and Hiei takes things into his own hands. He gathers her into his arms and stands up clutching her hands in his assuring her that her head in not falling apart. She quiets down immensely as he lets her hands down to rest on her curled legs. Hiei looks at Daja's now peaceful sleep filled expression with a strange look on his face. He looks understanding and pained by something in his mind he struggles with earnest.
Hiei watches helplessly as I take Daja's sleeping form out of his arms. He doesn't seem to mind all that much though for he doesn't growl at me or make a rude comment to make me feel bad about taking Daja away from him. I suppose he doesn't care all that much about her... then again, I did feel a surge of energy emit from him as he grasped Daja's hands to pull them off her forehead. I dunno... I will ask him about it later. Right know, I need to settle Daja down into the cave we now refer to as base camp. She doesn't move or struggle in her restless sleep. I wonder what she is dreaming about... I suppose she wont tell me though, or she will be telling me lies. I guess that is for the best however much I want to know. It is now time to get ready for dinner, my frying pan and I are late for a date with Yusuke's fish. I will have to figure this out later....
satorisama: Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed yourselves. Please review! thanks in advance. Where am I going, you ask? My lair...
