Inuyasha; A Feudal Fairy Tale - The Sesshoumaru Blues
Chapter One – Happy Birthday to You
"Father, you need to explain yourself." Sesshoumaru said in his monotone voice, as usual. His father looked at him with the corn yellow eyes that are trade mark to the family.
"It is the best birthday present any demon could present you with." He responded. They were in a mid-sized castle. The room was floored with tatami(1) mats. Demon lackeys watched the conversation through the shoji(2) doors.
"The box reeks of human. It's atrocious." Sesshoumaru said, lifting his sleeve to his nose to try and block the smell. His father placed a firm hand on the box, giving it a strong tap.
The box was made of what appeared to be ash wood. There were holes all over the box, with a long red ribbon tied around it. The box was at least 3 feet wide and 6 feet tall. His father smiled because he knew how to manipulate the most difficult of people.
"You are quite aware how I traveled the world, making my power known world wide."
Sesshoumaru wanted to sneer at his father for rubbing it in his face about how weak he was in comparison. "Yes."
"Well, while I was in the desert lands for a few weeks, a 'Voodoo' priest offered me to stay for a few 'spells'." His father punned. Sesshoumaru rolled his eyes. The corniness of the joke wasn't appreciated. "Before I left he offered me a farewell present. Well, it was more like do something with her because there is nothing else we can do…"
Sesshoumaru stopped his father with a cold stare. "Her?"
"Yes, my son. Her. Go ahead and open your gift. Happy birthday to you, Sesshoumaru. I know you'll make me very proud." Sesshoumaru bottled up his rage.
Another birthday ruined, he thought. Sesshoumaru worked his claws into the crate pulling from the top. Once he worked the top free, the box seemed to fall outwards like a blooming flower.
She stood before Sesshoumaru decked out in navy blue plaid yukata(3). It was nothing extravagant. The obi 4 that tied around her waste was bright yellow with vivid vertical red lines. She had her sash tied into a perky bow called a, chou-chou musubi(5). The bow wasn't flashy, but it held the yukata together. Sesshoumaru looked her up and down. She was a golden brown color. She wasn't a horrifically black color like her siblings. It was obvious that she was kept inside their hut. And then his eyes came into contact with her eye.
The girl appeared to be 16 or 17 in age; yet her right eye had suffered an injury; an injury in which her eye had to be covered. Sesshoumaru's father was kind enough to give her a decorative patch. The eye patch was purple and on the inside of the patch was a soft pink sakura blossom. Sesshoumaru stared at her eye patch. Many people did, especially when she all she had were rags to tie around her eye. The gawking made her look away from Sesshoumaru.
"What the hell were you thinking when you agreed to take a human that was rejected by humans?" Sesshoumaru showed no mercy with his forked tongue. She was a human after all—he could care less. "Couldn't you have gotten me one of those dolls that everyone talks about? A… Voodoo doll or, something creative like that."
"This is creative." His father said.
"No, this is just disturbing. I don't want it." Sesshoumaru said like a spoiled two year old brat, but never losing his monotone.
"You don't want her." His father corrected. He seemed offended by Sesshoumaru referring to the girl as an, 'it'.
"Yes, her, he, it, dead—whatever it is, I don't want it."
"Bow, before your new master." His father said to the girl. It was as if the words blew threw her mind. Her maroon eye slowly made its up to look Sesshoumaru in the face. Sesshoumaru was staring at his father unaware that she had made a move. His eyes went to her face and she panicked for a moment. She looked away again. His father was gentle with her. The world was new to her, but being a servant was not. "Bow before him. Bow before Sesshoumaru."
The girl slowly moved to put her knee to the floor. Her right knee touched the floor as the left knee remained level. She used her left knee to rest her left arm upon. She thrust her right arm to the floor in a form of saluting Sesshoumaru. His father seemed smug and pleased about giving Sesshoumaru his first servant. His first human servant.
"What ever you desire, my lord…" Her speech was broken, the use of words new to her. She had been kept quiet while working for the village that gave her away so easily.
Sesshoumaru drew back his foot and kicked the young maiden in the face. She reared backward, but she did not lose her balance. His father gasped.
"What are you doing?" He was alarmed.
"It said what ever I desire. And right then I desired to kick it in the face. And if you bring that thing near me ever again, then I'll be force to dismember it." Sesshoumaru threatened. Sesshoumaru turned, sliding the shoji open with rage. The demons guarding the doors jumped because they were easy dropping. They snapped their arms to their sides, pretending they were doing their jobs all along. Sesshoumaru left, headed towards the castle garden.
His father kneeled with the girl, pulling out a white clothe to wipe the blood from her lip. He tended to her with hands that were gentler than a god. She slanted her head like a curious puppy dog.
"Please, don't. I am alright." She said slowly. Sesshoumaru's father shook his head no.
"I'm surprised you didn't go flying into the wall behind me. Still, I didn't think Sesshoumaru would react that way."
"I will do what needs to be done in order to serve Lord Sesshoumaru…" She didn't have a burning determination in her voice, but her eyes looked into his. "A deal is a deal."
"Don't see it as a deal. I didn't agree to anything this extreme." He said as he began stroking her head like a daughter. "I couldn't bear to see a specimen like you end your life."
Sesshoumaru's father had told him a lie. Sesshoumaru could probably smell it. The girl wasn't part of a 'farewell' token. It was truth that his father stayed with a Voodoo priest of the Congo for a few weeks; however, his daughter had taken up Wicca and other practices. She was supposed to follow in her father's foot steps and become the next Voodoo priest—a priestess in this case, but since she was finding herself in the ways of the Goddess, she was exiled for adopting foreign beliefs contrary to their own. Who would have thought that the Voodoo partakers would be so closed and opposed to other beliefs?
He noticed that she hid in the shadows in the home he stayed in. He watched her clean, kill chickens, gut chickens, practice her craft in what she thought was secrecy. The beliefs started to clash harder and she had the end of it. She bit the bullet and planned to jump into a ravine. But Sesshoumaru's father stopped her and made a proposal…
"Are you still going to let him name me?" She asked. It seemed like the girl was going to be more of a pet to Sesshoumaru than a servant.
"He lost the right when he kicked you. I'll pick the name that I was fond of for you. Your name will be Zayane. It is a special name, for a special girl." She smiled big. His kind words caused her to forget about her bad eye or anything else that would hold her back from being herself. She turned and gave him a gracious hug. She pulled him close to get a good smell of her savior. She thought a demon war lord would have smelled like blood. He did not. He smelled like ripe roses with a hint of cinnamon.
"I will go, and try and settle the young lord." She said, not letting him go.
"You'll have to unhand me first." He said making a note that she hadn't.
"I will in a moment." Zayane clutched tighter.
BLUES
Sesshoumaru had wandered away from the castle and into the wooded area that surround the castle to prevent land raids. Sesshoumaru stopped walking and rested his clawed hand on a tree trunk. Sesshoumaru couldn't believe his father to give him a human servant. He could have dealt with a demon servant, but humans were at the bottom of the food chain. Sesshoumaru found himself treating common dog with more respect that humans. Sesshoumaru saw the domesticated dog victims of the humans' stupidity, he couldn't help but to take pity on the creature.
Many demons had died at Sesshoumaru's hand, though. It was for making comments that domesticated dogs' and Sesshoumaru's dog blood resonates from the same gene pool. The notion drove Sesshoumaru up the wall with hate and malice. He couldn't lie either and say he didn't have a soft spot for a fluffy Pomeranian.
A twig snapped. Sesshoumaru turned quickly. How could have some one snuck up on him and gotten so close with out him knowing? Sesshoumaru shook his head. He must have still been distraught over his new servant. He was even more distraught because it was her who snuck up on him. He cursed in his head.
"Lord Sesshoumaru, you should reconsider about rejecting me as a servant…" Zayane said. She didn't want to come off rude about it. Zayane had Sesshoumaru's father in mind.
"And if I don't?" Sesshoumaru turned all the way around to face her. Zayane's stomach seemed to hit the ground once he gazed at her. It wasn't out of girlish admiration, she was scared beyond comprehension.
"Y-you could find my services very useful—to—you…" Zayane's words were becoming difficult to find as Sesshoumaru started to advance at her. She held her ground.
"Services?" Sesshoumaru mocked. "Do you think that I need your services? Pathetic human. You're causing an earthquake with how you quiver before me."
"But I'm still here, and I'm still quivering. Your father is very wise and he says that you having a servant, especially a human one, is for the best. I would be honored if I could be your—servant…" Sesshoumaru was in her personal space bubble. Zayane backed up, but he moved forward. She moved backward until her tiny frame hit a tree trunk. Her finger tips slowly went to her throat as it was becoming difficult to breathe. She swore her heart jumped into her throat as it pounded like the spring rain on the tree tops.
"I smell the fear on you." Sesshoumaru was pleased by putting Zayane back into her place. Where humans belonged, to always be scared and cowering before his might. At the same time he was looking into her good eye, Sesshoumaru was wondering about her hidden one. "What happened to your eye?"
"……." She stayed quiet like the calm after the storm. Sesshoumaru frowned.
"That's too bad I was really starting to like you."
"What?" Zayane spoke up. There was a sharp pain under her lung. Again, she found it hard to breath, but it wasn't because she was scared. She looked down with her eye and saw an arm sticking out of her chest. She tried to laugh it off because it couldn't have been serious. To her surprise it was dead serious.
Sesshoumaru had jammed his hand threw her chest, impacting the tree behind her so hard that the massive tree snapped in two. She could hear the tree falling to her left as she looked into Sesshoumaru's eyes.
"You say what ever I desire and yet I ask you a simple question and you refuse me an answer. You're a human indeed. A lying sack of…" The tree slammed on the ground conveniently to block out his choice of words. The blood rolled over Zayane's bottom lip, falling onto the ground. Sesshoumaru removed his hand, and flicked his wrist to throw the blood off. He licked his fingers, the blood like sweet nectar for the demon. She dropped to her knees, gasping for air—her lungs collapsing. She reached up for Sesshoumaru as the pain slowly left her face. Zayane watched him apathetically clean his hand by wiping it on her yukata. Her reaching hand touched his face.
It was like an electric charge went through his being. Sesshoumaru got the chills up his spine. The scene clicked for him. It felt like something that he shouldn't have done, but it was already set into motion and he'd have to watch the train wreck. Her gentle eye looking into his. It felt like a sack of bricks had been thrown onto his shoulder to bear the weight of his sin. A sin? No, never. Since when had killing humans bothered Sesshoumaru? Never. But this one was strange. As soon as Zayane touched Sesshoumaru, it seemed like she was at peace with the world. It bothered him that she found comfort in his touch.
She managed to gurgle, "I'm sorry" as her hand slid away from Sesshoumaru's face and she fell forward, the blood starting to coagulate. Sesshoumaru was confused and felt guilt ridden at the same time.
"You're not supposed to be sorry, stupid human! I just took your life! Why are you sorry?" Sesshoumaru nearly yelled at her corps. "I don't understand humans. So idiotic." He waltzed away the best he could with out showing remorse or any other type of emotion associated with humans.
BLUES
"She's supposed to be dead!" Sesshoumaru raised his voice at his father. He had come home at midnight to retreat into deep sleep, but he found Zayane sitting on the front steps in seiza(6) still wearing her bloodied yukata. The argument had run into another tatami room, this one larger than the first. There was a low rise table that Zayane sat at with her fist slightly balled.
"Did you seriously think that when she didn't come back from retrieving you, that I wouldn't be suspicious?" He smiled.
"I forgot you had that damned sword, the Tenseiga." Sesshoumaru was right in that conclusion. His father had found Zayane in the forest. It wasn't her absence that set him off, it was the smell of fresh human blood and the sound of a falling maple.
"Sesshoumaru, now I can't ever give you a puppy. You just can't be trusted." His father made fun. "Sesshoumaru, I am doing this so you can at least learn to tolerate humans. You can't just go around killing every human you see."
"And why can't I?" Sesshoumaru asked. "Humans go on hunts for demons to try and drive them out of their own homes. I have every right to have a crusade against those morons."
"But she's not hunting you, or saying how much of a monster you are—she simply wants to serve you."
"That's because you're making her." Sesshoumaru reasoned.
"No, I simply suggested taking her back to Japan with me. Her eye seemed to light up with joy. She offered to be a servant to repay her debt to me. I said of course not, but she begged and pleaded…"
"Liar." Sesshoumaru said. "You just blew a hole through your testimony of this thing being a farewell token."
"True, but it was all okayed by her father."
Zayane balled her fist tighter. "I do not have a father." She said with emptiness in her voice.
Sesshoumaru stormed over to her, slapping her across the face. "No one said you could speak, human!"
"Forgive me, my lord." Sesshoumaru slapped her again to remind her that she wasn't supposed to be talking. She tightened her lips. Sesshoumaru's father seemed to pout out his lips and raise his eyebrow.
"I swear, you just like hitting her. And you're going to stop hitting her because if you don't I'll have a priestess bind you two together with rosemary beads." His father threatened. Sesshoumaru was unfazed.
"Such trivial magic could not work on the likes of me." Sesshoumaru boasted.
"So you want to try your luck?"
"No." Sesshoumaru said, crossing his arms.
"Too bad, you already have." His father said lashing out at Sesshoumaru.
His father's speed was unmatched so his father landed a flaw on Sesshoumaru's face. He left a gash on Sesshoumaru's cheek. He walked out of the room and closed the shoji door. His father rubbed the blood on floor in an X-marks-the-spot fashion. He pulled out a ring of rosemary beads and placed them in front of the door. "Zayane, pick the safety word, just incase he gets too rough in there." His voice muffled from behind the door.
"Serenity." She said. The necklace of rosemary beads recognized the word and they flashed an intense white to show that they confirmed the safety word.
"Father, what are you doing?" Sesshoumaru's wound started to heal, keeping blood from dropping on the floor.
"I'm putting up a barrier that only humans can walk through. Zayane out out out, now!" Zayane come rushing past Sesshoumaru, opened the shoji door and closed it. She took a deep breath outward. She looked at him. Sesshoumaru started to pound against the shoji doors but they held up like steel rather than paper. Zayane jumped forward the sound startling her.
"I should let him out…" Zayane said passively. Sesshoumaru's father grabbed her hand, holding it.
"No you shouldn't. Come along now child, I'll take you somewhere you can get new garments." His father said to Zayane. She nodded slowly unaware to the place they would be going…
つづく (Tsuzuku)(7)
Author's notes/Translation notes:
(1)Tatami mats are made from rice/straw mixture, they typically have an off green color. Also when walking on tatami mats, it is rude to walk on the wooden beams that hold them in place. Most people forget about that nowadays—but this is feudal Japan.
(2)Shoji are the sliding doors in temples, nice homes, or castles. The paper is once again of a rice/paper mixture. For an anime reference; they are the doors that Kagura Sohma send Kyo Sohma flying threw on a daily basis, as well as Kyo Sohma destroying them from pent up rage. They are annoying to fix so don't break them in your own home.
(3)A yukata is a summer time kimono. It is made from cotton rather than silk or wool. It's made for comfort. Yukata is just being specific.
(4)Obi is an technical term for sash.
(5)The Chou-chou musubi is another technical term for wearing kimonos. It translates to "The butterfly tie" and that's it precisely it. The back forms a simple bow. Popular for young maidens and overall wearing with the yukata.
(6)Seiza is the agitating sitting on the knees that females and sometimes males do in feudal Japan, and still modern day. Standing up after sitting in Seiza can cause a dead leg effect. Pretty funny during a seiza contest.
(7)Tsuzuku is Japanese for "to be continued." It literally means, "continue" or "going to continue." It is debated that it is Romajinized as, "Tsudzuku" but I like this Romaji just fine.
Sorry about all the translation notes but I like to keep my work authentic as possible. Stay 'tuned'.
