Big thank you to dawnsama for helping to motivate me as well as edit this, and to Wendy, of course, for also beta-reading. You guys rock. :)
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"Why, why did you bring me to birth,
wretch in this world,
exile from the other?"
-- Basavanna
Pennies
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The wind witch would never admit to having an interest in the boy, in any sort of fashion.
---
There was to be a third child.
At the age of four he knew only this. When his mother's body began to sweat and shake with the internal motions of birth, he was sent forth from the room, not understanding the strange illness that had suddenly come over her.
The small bundle that was carried from the room did not alert him. Through the crack between the screens he watched a group of women hold up his mother as they removed a sheet from beneath her, sticky and stained with the bright bloom of blood.
It was his sister who took his hand and led him away, silent as the baby his mother had birthed.
---
She came across him lying on a grassy hilltop, with his limbs stretched out like a creature from the sea. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, as if he was wading down the river of death.
Her fan snapped loudly as she opened and closed it with a flick of her wrist. It startled him, and he rubbed the invisible sleep from his eyes. She sat down beside him, continuing to play with her fan, stirring up little breezes to dance around them in circles, rippling the grass.
"Oi, kid. What are you thinking about?"
---
Death came to the village on the backs of rats, and crawled into his home.
On the day of his mother's funeral, he watched her ruined body disappear beneath the dark earth, then remained at her grave until his shadow stretched the length of it, and Sango came to take him home.
---
"Oi!" Kagura nudged him roughly with her fan, and he jerked into a sitting position, rubbing his shoulder.
He said nothing, only looked at her, the sun at his back hiding the patient expression on his face in shadow. Kagura tipped her head and frowned, staring at him in thought, tapping her chin with her fan.
"You don't say much," she said, and poked him in the shoulder again, just enough to make him sway slightly. Sitting back up, she folded her hands in her lap. "You're probably the quietest prisoner I've ever met."
The boy Kohaku only looked at her, his face obscured even more in the fading light.
Kagura barked a laugh, throwing back her head. "You're useless," she said flippantly as she stood, gripping him by the sleeve and pulling him to his feet. "Come on." She motioned with her head and pulled him along, down the hill. "Naraku wants something."
---
He was sitting in the shade of the house, staring at the ground, when she found him. A bruise had spread over his left cheek, his knees were scuffed, and dirt was smeared on his nose.
"Kohaku," she said, crouching down in front of him. She reached out a hand to brush the bangs from his forehead, but he turned away, colour rising in his cheeks. It was as he turned away that she saw the wooden sword hidden behind him.
"They beat me," he whispered, ashamed.
Sango took the sword, and placed it in his hands.
---
The exoskeleton of the cricket made a satisfactory crunch as Kagura crushed the insect in her fist. Opening her hand, she watched the remains blow away, leaving behind a sticky residue on her palm. Grimacing, Kagura picked up a cricket leg and flung it away. The boy beside her only glanced at her as she wiped her hand on his shoulder.
"Did you know that some consider crickets lucky?" she asked, grinning wickedly down at Kohaku. The expression slid from her face as he continued to walk on, without so much as an acknowledgment of her presence. She sniffed, turning her face to the wind.
"They really do believe this, you know, out there," she said, gesturing grandly with her fan. "Across the sea." She looked down at Kohaku. "What do you think, kid? Am I unlucky now? …Oi!"
Kohaku rubbed the back of his head, giving the fan she clutched a glare that held more emotion than she had seen him display all night. She smiled smugly.
His eyes drifted to her face, and her eyebrows lifted, waiting.
"There is no luck," he replied softly, "only fate."
Startled, Kagura blinked. "You believe that, kid?"
Kohaku walked on in silence.
Throwing up her hands in exasperation, Kagura groaned. "I could have a better conversation with a rock."
---
Even as a child, he had been small, but often he would look up at the figure of his father and feel a thread of confusion and disappointment wind itself into a tight knot inside himself. His father was a big man, a stalwart sort of person, who seemed in a perpetual state of command.
To Kohaku, he was like a mountain, a towering extension of the earth, to be looked up at in awe. The distance between them sometimes felt palpable, as if it really could be measured by their difference in height.
Standing in the man's shadow, he lifted the worked metal up so that the sun's light reflected off the blade, obscuring its edge. His father's hand grasped the handle over his own boy's fist, encasing them both. His other hand was taken gently in his father's left, and loosened to let the chain slip through it.
The sun danced as the blade flashed out, chains clinking like rain, only to return to his hand with a snap. Kohaku started.
"This will be yours, my son," came the deep sound of his father's voice behind him.
Taking a breath, he stepped forward, the other man's hands falling away, and he held the weapon flat on his palm. As he tilted it, the crescent blade caught the reflection of his father, a stern figure at his shoulder.
His father took a step toward him, casting Kohaku once again in shadow, and his image disappeared.
---
Kohaku looked up at her face.
"Back now, are you?" She quirked an eyebrow, grinning maliciously. "How nice of you to join us."
He frowned, and she waggled a finger under his nose.
"Don't go zoning out like that kid, it creeps me out. Besides, you walk slower when you're daydreaming, and I don't want to be the one who has to face Naraku's bitching, not tonight." She straightened, folding her arms across her chest and frowning down at him, trying to make an impression.
He blinked, once, then again, as if her remarks were just registering in his mind. Her gaze remained on him, unwaveringly, as if she meant to force him into the very ground with its intensity. Seeing that she was of a mind to be obstinate, despite her recent urgings of punctuality, he spoke to end the ridiculous staring match.
"Of course." And he walked on.
"Oi!" she yelled a second later, running to reach his side. He turned to look up at her, void of expression.
She huffed, and he thought he heard her mutter something about an "unpredictable rock". She was odd.
"Where do you go, anyway?"
The question startled him, and his toe dragged on the ground in his sudden unawareness, causing him to fall forward, but he was shocked, yet again, when her slim fingers fastened around his arm, halting his forward motion. He dangled over the ground at a lopsided angle, the brief numbness of shock freezing him in position, her own surprise keeping her still, so that they made an interesting tableau.
Kagura was the first to shatter the humourous image, a bare moment later, pulling him to his feet roughly and hitting him on the shoulder.
"You alright, kid?" she asked, out of amusement rather than concern. "And you didn't even answer my question," she added, adjusting her sleeves with mock dignity before striding off.
Kohaku followed her, almost hesitantly.
She looked back at him over her shoulder, and tapped her fan against her lips. Whisking her fan open suddenly, she laughed and twirled it about, sending flurries of wind around them in circles.
"Oh, come on," she prodded, "tell me. Where is it that you are always going off to in that head of yours, kid? What makes it so much better than this world?" She continued to laugh.
She had stopped walking by now, so he reached her and stopped, observing her placidly.
Her laughter had receded into low chuckles, so she managed to say, with a poke of her now closed fan, "Well? Tell me."
Kohaku looked away, his eyes following the waving grasses, a great ocean of green.
"Where do you go, kid?" Strange, her voice sounded almost soft, though it was followed by a sharp jab between his shoulder blades.
---
She was laughing, at what, he did not know, but the mere fact that she was, pleased him, and he stepped into the room, already smiling.
His sister grinned, and even his stoic father, though frowning disapprovingly at his daughter, seemed relaxed and content.
Kohaku sat down with them, taking a sip of his tea, holding the warm liquid in his mouth before swallowing it, letting the warmth fill him.
---
"Oi, either talk or move – or both, if you can manage that much. Hey, kid, I'm talking to you!"
"The past." His voice seemed to be swallowed by the movements of the grass.
"What?" She entered his peripheral vision, a curious expression hovering in her eyes.
"The past," he repeated, though louder, and he turned to her, focusing on those intent eyes of hers.
An eyebrow lifted. "The past?" The words sounded as if they were meant to shame him. "Now that's certainly not fascinating – how cliché," she murmured, lengthening her spine and facing the wind. She made as if to continue moving, but stalled, dropping her eyes to rest on his.
Blank eyes, of course, the eyes of a dead man – a child, really. She nearly scoffed openly, but then, she stopped, slowly cocking her head to the side. Perhaps it was the expanding of his pupils, or the slight widening of his eyes, but whatever subtle change had instigated her abrupt swerve in thought, she could not deny it now. Those dead eyes of his were flickering with – what was it? Pain…remorse?
Kagura snorted softly. "Well, I guess I'm no great judge of that though, eh kid?" And she rapped him lightly on the head with her fan, before spinning around, setting a brisk pace through the field.