FIRE

The spring and summer had been dry this year, and the crops in the village were failing. The headman went to Izayoi.

"The village is becoming concerned, princess," he said, choosing his words carefully. "This is the third year of bad crops we've had, since you came." He hesitated slightly before continuing. "The villagers think it's the child."

"My son poses no threat to anyone," said Izayoi, a faint trace of anger in her voice.

"Of course not, princess," said the headman hastily. "But… the villagers think… that he is bad luck. They say he should have been drowned at birth."

There was dead silence from Izayoi.

The headman's voice was softer as he uttered the next words. "With all respects, Princess… he is not human."

She knew where his thoughts were leading him. "That should make no difference," said Izayoi. "I will not allow an innocent child to be murdered for the sake of some unfounded superstitions."

There didn't seem to be much else to say after that. The headman bowed and left Izayoi still sitting.

Several rooms away, Inuyasha pulled his knees to his chest beneath the covers, wide yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. The small hands that had been pressed tightly against his ears relaxed slowly.

Voices penetrated shoji screens with relative ease—and demonic hearing didn't miss much.

:00:00:

The next few days perpetuated the drought, sunlight illuminating the clouds of dust that were now stirred up every time something moved. The soil was too far gone by this point for there to be any hope of a decent crop, and the village was filled anew with restlessness.

Izayoi kept Inuyasha indoors as much as possible, and surprisingly, he didn't protest. But before long his energy became impossible to ignore, and after a servant caught him in his fifth circuit of the corridors he was put outside.

The village children were, by and large, the only group of people nearby who would allow the hanyou to join in their games. Inuyasha wandered over to four of them, who were tossing around a ball near one of the huts. A child near the edge caught sight of him.

"Hey, it's the hanyou," he said, turning. A couple of other heads turned, but no one said anything. Inuyasha frowned slightly—they all looked… afraid? Maybe ashamed.

He waited for someone to toss the ball to him, as usual. Nobody did.

"Can I play?" he said hopefully, after a few moments had passed.

Suddenly, the game had stopped. "Papa said we weren't to play with you anymore," explained the young boy unhappily. "Not until you stopped hurting the plants."

"I'm not hurting the plants!" said Inuyasha.

"My mama said you were bad luck," said a girl named Saki.

"Go away," offered a third child.

"But I wanted to play," said Inuyasha.

"Hanyou!" said a loud, decidedly adult voice from behind them.

Inuyasha flinched—he hadn't even noticed the hut's door opening. It was someone's parent, evidently, and there was no mistaking the anger in that voice.

"Get back to where you came from, demon's child!" said the burly villager, stopping a few feet away. One of the children, a small boy, ran to him, clinging to his leg, and the man continued to glower. Inuyasha stared up at him, nonplussed.

"You'd better go," whispered Saki.

But the villager wasn't through. "If you set foot in this village one more time, I'll drown you myself!"

Inuyasha was frozen, starkly terrified. He couldn't have moved if he'd tried. He really wants to kill me, he thought dazedly. The man's tone had left no room for doubt.

"No!" gasped one of the children, startled. "Don't hurt him!"

The yelling had attracted more adult onlookers. The first man looked affronted that someone had dared defend Inuyasha, though still he didn't move forward. "Don't you dare poison the minds of our children!"

Something hit Inuyasha in the side. He turned quickly, to see that about half the village had turned out to watch, and more were standing behind him. Someone had thrown a rock.

"I didn't do anything!" he yelled, suddenly angry. "Stop it!"

"Don't let his lies affect you!" someone yelled, and abruptly more stones were flying. Inuyasha yelped, ducking, and covered his head with his hands before trying to run. His eyes were stinging and watering as if the dust from the dry ground was getting in them.

Hands reached out and grabbed at his waist as he ran for the edge of the village. He snarled, twisting away, and lashed out before he could even see who was there—the cry that resulted was too high-pitched to have been an adult, and his consciousness kicked back in just in time to see Saki cry out again and fall away, clutching her arm.

Oh no… Even as the outrage incited more of them to try to grab him, Inuyasha ran as fast as he could manage. They didn't follow him, although for a scant few minutes, their rocks did.

By the time he reached Izayoi's arms, he was sobbing outright.

:00:00:

That night, the village headman returned, with twenty armed men behind him.

The guards stopped them at the gates, and someone was sent to fetch Izayoi.

"What is this?" she asked as she approached, although she felt that she knew already. When she caught sight of their expressions in the firelight, however, her blood seemed to freeze. It wasn't hatred, or the intense anger she'd been expecting after hearing her son's story. It was intention.

"Your creature, that hellspawn," said the headman, "tried to kill our children."

"Tried to kill?" Izayoi blinked. "I was under the impression that he hurt one little girl, by accident."

"That was no accident!" said another man, stepping forward. The resolution on his face was marred abruptly by the anger she'd been expecting. "He growled at her, and cut deep. My Saki can't move her arm now, thanks to him!"

"There are healers in the palace," said Izayoi. "If you bring the girl here…"

"That's quite enough," said the headman. His eyes were in shadow, but Izayoi could tell that he was looking at her. Her hands felt cold, clenched within the long sleeves of her kimono.

"Is it true, demon's whore," said the headman, "that you were dead five years ago, and your demon lover brought you back to life?" His face could have been carved from wood and shadows in that moment.

Izayoi almost thought that her heart had stopped. So that's it, she thought, through the buzzing in her ears. This is what they're here for, in the end. They want to doom us both.

She bowed her head, and her silence was as good as a confession.

:0:

Inuyasha screamed and struggled as they tried to pull him out of the palace and into the village. Izayoi, making up in terror what she lacked in ferocity, tried to keep them from hurting him, but someone hit her on the back of the head hard enough to knock her out. Inuyasha continued to struggle, biting and clawing at the hands that held him, and crying out for his mother at the same time.

Two stakes had been erected at the center of the village, with dry wood arranged around them. Inuyasha screamed as they tied Izayoi to the first one, and tried to claw his way to her. But he was too small, and too weak, and they restrained him effectively.

He was transfixed by the sight of his mother's head lolling forward against the ropes that bound her, even as he himself was tied upright beside her. He screamed so loudly that his voice gave out halfway, leaving him gasping for breath as his raw throat sent spikes of pain through his chest. And he was still crying, great heaving sobs that shook his whole body.

He struggled against the wood at his back as they lit the pyres. The faces surrounding him were orange-lit and eerie against the darkness—soon the smoke was obscuring the sky, blotting the slim crescent moon from view even as it choked him. Izayoi, still unconscious, seemed unaffected; though the movement of her chest beneath the ropes grew shallower.

Inuyasha managed to free himself from the ropes as the flames were busily engulfing the pyre. It was bone-achingly hot, searing his face as he left his stake. He didn't run away, though, though the villagers clearly expected him to—he stumbled over the burning logs to the other stake, and began tearing at Izayoi's ropes with his claws and teeth. It hurt to breathe, hurt to move—the heat was quickly becoming unbearable. His clothes were on fire, and he could smell burning flesh, though whether it was his own or his mother's, he couldn't be sure. Despite the brightness of the fire, everything was darkening—black fog was creeping into the edges of his vision, and he sobbed and tore at the ropes with more ferocity than ever.

He didn't notice that the villagers were screaming, not even when the hand reached in through the flames and grabbed the back of his haori. He shrieked hoarsely, struggling in vain to reach the perfectly-still Izayoi, but he was pulled violently through the wall of heat and then out.

Suddenly he couldn't hear the flames, couldn't feel the heat or smell the smoke. The ordinary summer air felt ice-cold against his skin, and it felt as if his lungs were freezing. For several seconds he couldn't breathe at all, as the wind rushed by his mouth too quickly for him to take any air in, and then suddenly it had all stopped and he was left in silence. The arm around his waist let go, dropping him to the ground, where he gasped uselessly until he had gained enough breath to sob.

"Desist, idiot child."

Inuyasha gulped immediately, shivering, and stopped crying. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on wet soil, near the bank of a river. He had no idea where he was.

As for his rescuer—he looked over to the source of the voice, finding a pair of white-clad legs. The man who had saved him was tall, much taller than any of the villagers, and had long silver-white hair in a shade only slightly different from Inuyasha's own. There was something large, white, and very soft-looking draped over his shoulder.

He was watching Inuyasha, no expression evident in his yellow eyes. "Pathetic," he said suddenly, causing Inuyasha to flinch. "It is astounding to think that the blood of our father could be so weak."

"O-our?" rasped Inuyasha, coughing.

"Yes, our," said the man, disgust suddenly entering his tone. "To think that you nearly allowed yourself to be killed by a village full of humans…"

"W-why?" asked Inuyasha. He could barely get the one word out, but the man seemed to understand his question clearly enough.

"I couldn't allow you to disgrace our bloodline like that," said the man. He tilted his head slightly, looking down at Inuyasha from a different angle. "No one bearing the blood of our father can die like that—pitifully, at the hands of an inferior species." His eyes narrowed. "The only one allowed to kill you is myself."

The stars and the moon were out, and their light was reflecting quite nicely off the rippling surface of the river, but it seemed to Inuyasha that it was quite dark out. He could hardly see the blurred outline of the white-clad man anymore—everything was grey, and blurring together rapidly. I'm probably about to die anyway, he thought vaguely, and couldn't summon the energy to care.

But there was one more thing he had to know. "Who…?"

"My name is Sesshoumaru, little brother," said the man, turning away audibly. "Remember it."

By the time he had uttered the last sentence, Inuyasha was oblivious to the world. But when he awoke, several hours later, he remembered.

END

So, it's pretty well established by now that I suck at updating long-running stories? Yeah. I have half-finished chapters sitting around on my hard drive, and I write this. It's terrible, I know, and n far more ways than one.