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Strangled Time

Chapter 59

By the time she returned to camp, Kagome's entire body felt sore; her feet were dragging and she had new bruises speckling old yellow bruises. She couldn't remember how many hours it'd been since the last time she slept, but she knew that if she tried to rest now she'd only just toss and turn on her bedroll, unable to turn off her wandering thoughts.

When she made it to her side of the fire pit, Kagome paused.

She remembered shrugging off her bow and empty quiver in a disheveled heap at some point that day, and now it wasn't where she left it. Both had been moved, propped up carefully against her backpack and away from the sparks of the fire.

Stepping closer to her weapons, the priestess reached out and touched the feathered fletchings of the new arrows that now filled her quiver to the brim.

She looked over at Saburo. Rummaging through his bindle on the opposite side of the clearing with his back towards her, the blacksmith didn't notice. Without comment, Kagome accepted the gift and filed away a reminder to thank him later at a better time.

For the rest of the night, instead of sleeping, the two of them separately and silently busied themselves with menial work that probably could have been better put off until morning.

It was as companionable as it was solemn.

...

After wrapping Izayoi's two hairpins up in a handkerchief and zipping them safely away in the front most pocket of her yellow backpack, Kagome turned to the next of her agenda's items laid out on her sleeping bag. There was a pair of mittens, a little green wand of bells, two swords, a broken stick carving of a weirdly shaped bird, and three different festival masks. Kagome picked up the mask closest to the patch of crudely shaped stitching that had appeared one day to repair the mysterious hole in her roll's polyester liner. Held delicately in her hands, she examined it.

The dog was as striking as ever, with its hand-chiseled features and fearsome open maw. After its first outing, though, it was no longer flawless and new. Now there were thin gouges crossing its muzzle where a rock scraped it and the white paint had been scuffed away to bare wood across one of its cheeks.

She could paint that, Kagome thought, but the cut was something permanent—not that she minded. Actually, it made the whole mask feel more rugged. More authentic. The paint, though, she could fix the paint.

White paint, She added to her mental shopping list as she turned the mask over in her hands. With her thumb, she traced the canine's jowls. And… maybe purple, too.

Or blue?

It was an in-between color that seemed to shift depending on the lighting. Violet? No, that was too easy. It was probably out there on a swatch card somewhere with a silly name like moonlit shadows. It wouldn't be hard to find that perfect color once she got home, what with the thousands of shades and pigments and art supplies readily available to her at just about any modern craft store.

When she did find that perfect paint though…

Would she be able to get the markings just right?

…

It was well past midnight by the time they got around to actually eating something. For some reason, though, her food tasted weird. It was too bitter, too sour, while also somehow tasting remarkably like cardboard.

She ate at it anyway.

Food was a necessary evil. They needed the calories for the energy to keep on their feet, even if the act of eating around a fire felt like a forced holiday ritual after a family tragedy. One where nobody said anything except the required pleasantries and the zipper of your clothes was pinching your skin the entire time, but you endured it for hours to avoid drawing any more attention than your drunken aunt crying over her shrimp cocktail.

After eating her fish and pickles, Kagome found herself pushing rice in circles around her bowl. The more she willed it to disappear into the melamine, the more there seemed to be left over. Just as she was starting to sort the kernels in to neat little rows one by one with her chopsticks, a large palm appeared in front of her.

Embarrassed, the young woman handed Saburo her dish and allowed him to clean up their meal. He did so diligently as she pulled her knees up to her chest and watched. When he dumped their leftovers back into the pot to discard downstream, she noticed that his bowl was just as full and just as picked over as her own.

Even though they weren't really speaking, Kagome was glad that he was there with her.

She was comforted, knowing that she wasn't alone in her mourning.

Knowing that she wasn't alone.

…

Kagome sat back on her heels and sighed.

She'd reorganized her bag eight times already that night and still it looked way bulkier than it should have been. Grabbing the sheath of the sword jutting from the top flap, she pulled the long tachi out and laid it beside her. Maybe if she rolled all of her clothes up into tubes and lined them at the very bottom? Or she could take out her kettle and tie it to the front by the drawstring—it looked silly that way and made a loud rattling noise when she walked, but she'd done it before.

As she was musing over the spatial Tetris formations inside of her backpack, Saburo got up and crossed her peripheral vision. His back was straighter than usual and his footsteps stiffly measured. However, it wasn't the purpose in his stride that made her turn, but the destination in which he was heading.

When he stopped he was standing before the massive stack of Toga's white fur pelts.

The blacksmith's hand slipped into the folds of his haori, behind his belt. Now knowing that to be the place where he regularly stashed his dagger, Kagome jumped to her feet.

"Now what are you—!?" She rushed towards him, but came to an abrupt halt when he turned to acknowledge her with surprise. "… Oh." The young woman dropped her accusatory tone and awkwardly shifted her outstretched arm to brace her bicep when she saw what he was holding.

In his hands wasn't a knife, but a little green leaf.

The third and last of their shape-shifting charms that had been given to him for safe keeping.

Saburo grunted. His expression seemed a mixture of scolded child and exasperated uncle. "This okay?"

Flushing scarlet, Kagome looked away and nodded.

"Yeah."

She'd been wondering how they were going to move those furs, but hadn't wanted to ask.

Toga had left Saburo with the stupidly vague instructions to bring the furs back to the fox village, but that was it. They didn't know if the pelts were going to magically shift into their final forms sometime along the journey, or if there was a part two to the task that they wouldn't hear about until they got to Maki. All Kagome knew was that the furs were frozen and heavy and that looking at them too long made her chest tighten with anxiety. They were huge and bulky, so moving them would have been a two person job, and the thought of carrying them for the next two days made her skin crawl like spiders.

Saburo had been right. She couldn't separate the man from the beast. When she looked at that pile she didn't see the trophies of a legacy that they were going to become.

She saw the dead flesh of her second dad.

The leaf didn't make a pop or leave any residue of power when Saburo activated it, it just happened. One minute the furs were sitting there and the next, when Kagome dared to look back, there was a bundle of kindling in their place. Long, thin branches, all tied together with purple shoulder straps. Saburo wouldn't look at all out of place carrying that on his back when they inevitably passed strangers on the main road.

Once the deed was done, the blacksmith walked away back to his own little tree in the corner of camp, leaving Kagome there to stare at the bushel. On one of the branches there was a single clinging leaf. The only leaf. That was the leaf that, if removed, would completely unravel the illusion and bring Toga's furs back into existence.

She wouldn't touch it—wouldn't even go near it.

Not until they were back in the safe haven walls of the Kitsune village.

By then maybe she will have grown brave enough to fully embrace Toga's odd gift to his children.

Then again... maybe not.

…

With a startled gasp, Kagome shot up from her bedroll. There was light from the sky filtering through the trees and through her tousled hair. The snow had stopped falling, but there was a thin dusting on her sleeping bag and on her backpack as if they'd been forgotten by the forest, and the fire in the pit was struggling real hard to stay lit on small stubs of cinders.

She'd fallen asleep!

When had she fallen asleep!?

Across the clearing, Saburo caught her panicked gaze and held onto it. His grounded, dark eyes helped her to calm. He'd been resting, propped up against his chosen tree with his dagger in his hands. Not sleeping like she'd been, but keeping guard. Watching over her.

Still, the comfort of knowing she had a bodyguard keeping her safe from the crows while she got some much needed rest didn't make up for the disquieting fact that she'd lost her battle with exhaustion without even realizing it. She'd been completely helpless to fight against it and that scared her.

Kagome hadn't wanted to sleep—not yet, not so soon after Toga's death. She hadn't wanted to come face to face with the nightmares and blood that were sure to haunt her dreams.

Only, Kagome didn't remember having any nightmares.

She didn't remember having any dreams at all.

There was only emptiness. Blackness.

That should have made her feel relieved. Yet somehow that realization only upset Kagome more. She fought back tears as she fell back to curl into her pillow.

Because when memories were all that you had left of something, even nightmares were better than nothing at all.

…

It still smelled like pepper, that green fisherman's shawl that Kagome had wrapped around her neck, and her bunny mittens smelled like the warm autumn earth. She buried her sniffly red nose into them and breathed deep. The scents embraced her, calming the nervous beating of her heart.

Honestly, there was no good reason why she should be feeling nervous. It was just another road trip, like one of the thousands she'd set off on before in her three years of traveling the warring states era.

Except this time there wasn't a demon or half demon by her side to help guide the way. This time Kagome had to be the top dog. She needed to be both hostess and compass, while also staying on high alert as their friendly neighborhood demon watch committee.

But no pressure.

As Kagome warmed her hands and gave herself an internal pep talk, Saburo readied himself to leave. He slipped into his large grey jacket, donned his bindle around his waist, and hefted the bundle of disguised sticks onto his back. For a moment he shifted, making Kagome suspect that, even disguised, the furs were still pretty heavy. Before too long, he had them secured and then he started heading over to where she stood.

The young woman's grip moved to her backpack straps when he stopped like a silent mountain before her. She gulped, trying not to stare at the horizontally strapped sticks that weren't really sticks at all.

If she touched them, would they feel like sticks?

Or would they be soft and warm, like the rabbit fur lining her mittens?

Saburo cleared her throat and she looked back up at him. Not saying a word, the blacksmith reached over her shoulder and pulled out the longsword that was jutting from her over-packed bag. At first she thought he was going to take it for his own protection—the tachi was ownerless now and he was one of the guys who made it without any formal payment, so he had every right to take it back—but then he took to one knee.

The priestess blinked and rose her arms as he tied the strap of the sheath around her hip. The two sister swords clattered together while he awkwardly adjusted them, but once he was finished they were perfectly aligned, one over the other, and made hardly any sound when she moved.

After appraising his work, Saburo rested his elbow on a knee and turned his face up to give her with a sad but gentle smile.

"She'd yer's now, Miss Kagome." He told her. "He'd want you havin' the complete set."

Looking down at the bronze guards and the pale wood of the wooden sheathes, she asked, "You don't think it's too much? It doesn't make me look silly?"

At that he broke out a rusty grin. "Nah. I think it's got ya lookin' pretty mighty."

Flushing, Kagome brushed her fingers along the wrapped hilt of Togashimaru's tachi. "Thanks." She replied, allowing herself to share with him a small smile.

"Don't go thankin' me." He pushed up from the ground and slapped the dirt from his calf. Ears red, the huge man couldn't bring himself to look her directly in the eyes. "I didn' do much of nothin'."

Before he could step away, Kagome caught his sleeve. "But you did." She told him in an airy rush. "You helped. You're helping. Really. I don't know where I'd be right now without you."

This time Saburo's entire face went red and blotchy with his blush. For the first time in what felt like a very long minute, he reached up and scratched at the short, itchy beard scruff that once again lined his lower jaw. The sight of him flustered and falling into old habits was familiar and calming.

"What do ya say we get on th' road and go find ourselves a magic deer in a fox town?" He asked a little timidly when he realized that she wasn't going to say anything else.

Kagome's hold on his jacket sleeve loosened and she let it go. "I say that sounds like a plan."

Together the two made one last sweep of the cleared campsite before heading off. They walked along the northward branch of the brook through the forest, past the tree line, and across a small snow covered meadow to where the water passed beneath the main road at a low bridge.

It was odd, starting their way back along a public highway when so long they'd stuck to the woods. But without an injured demon in their party, they were free to do that now; they could pass human travelers without any off looks and even make small talk with strangers about the road ahead. No longer did they need to hide themselves. No longer was there an underlying fear over Toga's safety.

Instead they were left with other, less visible burdens.

Like how, by walking away from Chichibu, they both felt like they were abandoning something—a piece of themselves that was a significant and irreplaceable loss.

Chapter End