Author's notes: This was meant to be just a single one shot but I had a little voice insisting I write this second piece to finish it off. So here, we are please read and review.
Shino's sandaled feet left faint tracks like a bird on the snow. He weaved back and forth across the track collecting sticks for his bundle pausing now and then to make slashes and parries with a stick as if it were a sword. He looked up at the smoke grey sky and felt the soft pull of the wind, perfect for kites, if he could convince Yoshi to come with him. Shino made another stab at the air with his stick. Maybe between them they could convince the medicine seller to come too. He shifted the bundle of twigs in his arms, if he hurried, they could fly the kites before dinner. He ran up the feet of the mountain the bundle of twigs held firmly under his arm. His eyes flicked over the ground, kindling his Kaasan had insisted not the huge wet branches he usually brought home.
His feet skimmed, silently across the snow, and then he saw it. Above a huge mound of snow that had blown against a tree. An enormous curving branch, true it was a branch not a twig or a stick but if he broke it well…then. He grinned and dropped his bundle on a vaguely dry rock before bounding over the snow to the branch. He put his hand out to grasp it, suddenly his foot caught on something and he fell forward into the snow with a soft plop. He sat up and twisted around to look at what had tripped him. It was a piece of deep blue cloth that protruded from the pile of snow. His first thought was that his Kaasan was going too be none too impressed at having him arrive home soaked in snow. The second was that the piece of cloth looked like a kimono sleeve.
A moment later after he'd brushed the snow off his clothes he grasped the piece of cloth and pulled. For several long moments nothing happened then quite suddenly the rest of the cloth and the arm within it slipped free of the snow. The small boy fell backwards, rump first into the snow. He stared at the limp hand hanging out of the kimono sleeve with his mouth hanging open, and his heart drumming a tattoo in his chest. The breeze pulled his short hair away from his face. His first instinct was to run, but vaguely in the back of his mind, he remembered his grandfather telling him that people who fell asleep in the snow died.
He crept forward steeling himself against his fear. His body tingled with fear and trepidation, his heart drummed ever louder in his chest. At the top of the mound, there was a tangle of red hair. The only person he or any of his friends had ever seen with red hair was the medicine seller. The last time Shinto had seen Kenshin was yesterday when the medicine seller had let them persuade him to join their mock sword fight. Shino could remember quite clearly the bemused and rather embarrassed look on the young man's face as he'd held up two sticks and announced himself as being Koudou Isami captain of the Shinsengumi. He scrapped away the snow.
It wasn't deep snow and after a moment, it crumbled revealing the startlingly red hair of the medicine seller. He kept clawing away at the snow until Kenshin's head and shoulders were free of the snow. His skin was very cold, and his red hair hung wetly around his face. The boy hesitated, Kenshin was so very white and cold that for a long moment Shino was certain that he was dead but then he saw Kenshin's chest lift ever so slightly. Relieved he dug away at the snow with renewed optimism.
He dug away the snow frantically, scrapping it away from Kenshin's body with cupped hands. It took a long time for his small hands to clear away the snow and before long they were numb with cold. Here and there, he came upon patches of bright red snow. To his childish mind, it looked as if the setting summer sun had spilt on to the cold winter snow. Finally, his hand sunk into a much larger patch of red that extended some way down into the snow his fingers scrapped at the deep trail of red on Tomoe's kimono for a moment, until he realised what it was. Shino sat staring at the 6 inch expanse of blood soaked kimono in horror the blood slowly draining from his face. Then in a fit of panic and fear, he stood and ran his bundle of kindling forgotten.
Fear drove him on, until he had ceased to notice that he was both wet and cold. The wind stung his face, made his eyes water. The snow had started to melt; his feet slipped and slid leaving dark muddy scraps in their wake. He ran down the path he had crisscrossed quite happily not an hour before. Once he fell, face first in to the snow half winding himself before he rose again and ran on, and always in the back of his mind was the blood soaked kimono. Finally, after what seemed like an age he made his way home nearly falling again in his anxiety to get inside.
Shino found his mother her dark hair in a bun slicing vegetables for the evening meal. She looked up at the sound of his running feet; one look at her son was enough to make her bite back her words about the kindling. He fell to his knees panting his eyes wide and frightened. Words fell from his mouth, like a litter of puppies confined for too long, but they were garbled and incoherent from fear and breathlessness. She stared at him taking in his soaked and muddy clothes and purple hands. She opened her mouth to say that he really should change when he began again this time some how though she understood.
Three figures padded softly through the snow. Two men and a middle aged woman with troubled eyes following the faint bird like tracks of a small boy.
(2005)