Her Light to His Darkness
Disclaimer: I am simply borrowing characters of Inuyasha to torture in my fic for now…
A/N: Things are gonna get a little confusing from now… Kagome is a poor peasant girl who has 3 brothers and a cousin living with her, namely Miroku, Souta, Shippo and Hojo. Her father is a drunkard and loser named Hiro. Her mother, Asuka, is dead. Details about Sesshoumaru will be confirmed in the next chapter… Enjoy XD
Chapter One: Wager
16 years later…
The hare's nostrils quivered an inch from hers. If anyone had been as near to Kagome as the hare was at that moment, they would have sworn her nose also quivered. She lay in the sweet-smelling grass, her chin nuzzled in the crook of her arm. Her headscarf slipped over her blue eyes, and the slight movement startled the hare into flight. Kagome swore softly and climbed to her knees, adjusting the scarf with a jerk. With stinging fingers she plucked thistles from her yukata. She had lain motionless in the tall grass for hours to gain the trust of the hare bouncing cheerfully toward the rosy pocket of the sky.
She shook her fist at the animal and then laughed ruefully. Sheathing the long knife that hung forgotten in her hand, she trudged toward the shrine where four hungry boys were doomed to be hungrier.
As the only girl in a family of two brothers, one male cousin and a father given to long disappearances, it had taken Kagome both time and ingenuity to convince the family she was indifferent to the cobwebs festooning the grim remnants of their shrine. She had learned at a tender age that her only escape from a life of perpetual drudgery lay in becoming a terrible cook and a clever huntress. She tackled both tasks with enthusiasm, leaving her brothers to till the stony ground and freeing herself to roam the wild moor.
Kagome spread her arms, emphasizing their emptiness as she leaped from stone to stone across a sparkling stream. Shippo would even now be preparing the spit for the game she did not bear. Her youngest brother had rescued the doomed family from a life of raw cabbage when his first tottering steps had led him to the dusty kettle on the hearth where he promptly fell in. His hollow cries had echoed through the castle until Kagome's oldest brother, Miroku, fished him out.
The dry grass crackled beneath Kagome's heels. The late summer twilight descended around her in a lavender haze—a gentle reproof for the long hours she had spent running through the meadows, whistling at the larks and tracking a wide-eyed doe at the edge of the forest. To come home empty-handed would be to admit the folly of her day and succumb to a supper of boiled turnips for the third time in a week.
Setting her jaw in determination, she unsheathed the knife and turned to the forest. The sour, cracked note of a badly blown trumpet shattered the quiet like a golden fanfare.
Otousan! Otousan was home! Kagome sprinted toward the decrepit shrine she called home and the charming braggart she called Otousan.
Eight months had passed since he had left without a word to pursue his fortune. In the past those same pursuits had brought him home with a leather pouch of golden coins which he had scattered among his children like a jolly harbinger of happier times. Kagome would laughingly scramble for the coins, knowing all the while that the gold would be regathered in time for Otousan's next expedition. She dreaded the times he returned with nothing but a massive headache and a kick for the cur that skulked around the hearth. He never dared raise a hand to any of his children; even Kagome outmeasured him by two inches.
However hapless his journey, he never returned without some scrap of a present for his only daughter. The tattings of lace and velvet bows had been tucked away, forgotten, to be replaced by soft-beaten leather and a curved dagger. Kagome expressed her needs with a candor not inherited from her father.
With a hint of the ingenuity they did share, she thought with glee that Otousan's return would draw attention from her empty hands, especially if he packed the carcass of a deer on his aged gelding as he always did when his wagers had been successful.
The weatherbeaten walls of the shrine came into view as she topped the hill. She paused to grasp her side and rub away the stitch that had stolen her breath away. Her mother's ancestral home crouched on the edge of the moor, the battered walls no longer a defense against the wind that roared through the widening cracks in the wood. But in the rapidly dying light of the summer sun, the ancient shrine gleamed in a poignant reflection of its former glory.
Kagome's joy overflowed in a whoop as she skipped down the hill. But her throat went dry when she saw Otousan's slopebacked gelding tethered to a post, an empty pouch draped over its heaving flanks. She ran her hand over the horse's withers and then wiped the slimy film of sweat on her yukata with a grimace. The horse gave a gurgling snort, its head buried in a wooden bucket. Shaking off a shiver of foreboding, Kagome bounded up the splintered planks that served as a bridge over the dank moat.
Windows at the front held the twilight at bay. Kagome blinked away blindness as her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the cavernous hall. A fire dwarfed by the immense fireplace to add cheer to the vaulted room but succeeded in casting more shadows than light. The corners of her mouth tilted upward at the sight of Shippo stirring the contents of an iron kettle. The pungent odor of turnips floated to her nose.
She leaped out of the doorway, warned by the clatter of large feet on the planks. Her brothers burst into the hall bearing an array of hoes and rakes.
"Where is Otousan?" bellowed Miroku.
He tossed his scythe to the flagstones. The other two children exchanged doubtful glances, then dumped their tools with equal carelessness.
Kagome's cousin Hojo stepped out from the stairs. His plump face held an oddly glum look; he twirled a rusty trumpet between his fingers.
"Your father is upstairs," he announced. "He wanted you gathered. Said that there wasn't much time."
Even as he spoke, a deafening crash sounded from the upper reaches of the shrine followed by a bellow and a flurry of imaginative curses. They all stared upward as if an explanation for Hojo's cryptic speech would float down with the dust motes loosened from the beams.
Miroku knuckled his eyes. "Is Otousan in foul spirits, Hojo?"
Hojo scratched his head with the trumpet. "I don't believe he is in spirits at all. I believe he is sober."
Kagome's brothers nodded to each other, accepting the news with puzzled solemnity.
Kagome snorted. "Nonsense. Have you ever seen him sober, Hojo?"
Her cousin turned to her, unable to stop blind adoration from conquering his calflike eyes. "No. But I've never seen him like this before, either."
Kagome tweaked Hojo's nose with fond contempt. "If you say he is sober, then I say you've been dipping into the sake with your own greedy paw."
Hojo choked out a meager chuckle. The others laughed aloud at the thought of their pasty-faced cousin swilling a cup of sake.
"Otousan is probably just hungry," Kagome pronounced with conviction.
The look Shippo gave her was so devoid of reproach that she ducked her head in shame, regretting her thoughtless fling with the summer day. The mention of food started all their stomachs rumbling. The black bread crusts they had for breakfast were a fond but distant memory. Kagome started for the wall that housed the old bow and arrow. Shippo's words stopped her.
"Apples, 'Gome. We can spare a few. I can cook them on the coals the way Otousan fancies them."
With a grateful smile she took the sack he held out. Shippo seemed to have inherited intelligence equal to all that was divided so sparingly between her older brothers. Pulling her cap over her ears, she ducked into the deepening night.
The door had hardly closed behind her when Otousan came stumbling down the stairs.
My God, thought Shippo. Hojo was right. Otousan never stumbles when he's drunk.
Gone was the strutting gait, the bleary, sated gaze. In their place were feet that took each step as if mired in molten lead and eyes that shone with the weight of unshed tears. Higurashi Hiro stood at the foot of the stairs and surveyed his sullen sons as if seeing them for the first time.
"Kami. I didn't know there were such a godawful lot of you." He rubbed his eyes as if to make some of them disappear.
"There are four of us, Hiro-jisan, counting Kagome," said Hojo, ever eager to please.
He peered around the hall again. "Where is 'Gome? I do not see her."
Shippo stepped away from the fireplace. "Gone to fetch apples, Otousan."
" It's just as well." Otousan dragged his right leg as he crossed the hall, his faint limp painfully pronounced. He sat heavily in an ancient chair. The wood creaked beneath his weight. "Water, Shippo," he croaked.
Otousan leaned back and closed his eyes, missing the struggle that ensued as Miroku and Shippo tugged at the stoneware flagon, sloshing tepid water over their bare feet. With a choked mutter, Miroku jerked the flagon out of his brother's hands and poured the water into a rusty goblet. He allowed Shippo the honour of presenting it to their father with a flourish.
Otousan's hands shook as he took the goblet. He drained it as if it contained something far more tasty than dirty water and an errant fly.
"Gather around, sons. I have good news," he announced.
Spreading his arms wide as if to embrace them to his chest, he grinned. His sons took a hesitant step forward, and Hojo took a step backward.
"Join us, Hojo. I would not choose to cheat you of a chance for adventure simply because you had the misfortune to be born from another man."
Hojo blushed and sidled closer. "Adventure, Hiro-jisan?"
The boys exchanged blank glances, unable to comprehend the idea of any existence or experience beyond their own. Surely farming turnips in rocky fields that were never meant to be farmed was adventure enough.
Otousan leaned forward with a conspirator's wink. "You see, my boys, I truly found my elusive fortune in the course of this expedition. I was on my way home to share the prosperity with my precious offspring." He clucked sadly. "But my purse was weighted down by so many gold coins that the old gelding could hardly bear it."
Shippo crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing in blatant skepticism.
"So I stopped for a night's rest at the castle of a friend."
Hojo wondered what it was like to have a friend. He had never met anyone he was not related to.
"And they had a jolly game of dice going at the castle, did they not, Otousan?" Shippo interrupted.
Otousan rumpled his son's silver-blond hair. "Shippu, you never cease to amaze me."
"It's Shippo." Ducking away, he returned to the fireplace, busying himself once again with the kettle.
"So," Otousan continued briskly, "seeking to rid myself of some of this cumbersome load—for the dear gelding's sake, of course—I entered into a game of dice with an old acquaintance of mine, the son of a Taiyoukai whom I served as knight to before. The pup once bore me a great fondness and is now grown into a great and noble knight."
Something about the way Otousan spoke the last two words sent a chill down Shippo's spine. He straightened, the turnips forgotten.
"First I wagered what I had. Then I wagered what I didn't have. Maybe I had imbibed a tad too much sake." He held his thumb and finger apart in illustration.
Shippo's arms spread as wide as they could go, adjusting the inaccurate measure. Hojo smothered a giggle behind his plump hand. Shippo pretended to stretch as his father's gaze fell upon him.
Otousan shrugged. "So I lost my fortune. When my old friend discovered my penniless straits, I fear he lost his temper. With the unfortunate memory of a winner, he recalled my boasts of the four strapping lads who tended my shrine while I sought my fortune. So the gist of the matter is that one of you lucky lads is going to serve a Taiyoukai for the period of one year." He beamed at them, his bright pig-eyes awaiting their congratulations.
Only silence greeted him.
"You wagered one of your children?" Shippo pushed through the forest of shoulders to face his father.
Higurashi Hiro's smile faded. He rubbed his head, peeling back the hair to reveal the bald spot he usually struggled to hide.
"Not precisely. The choice was not mine to make." He surveyed them glumly, dropping all pretense of happiness. "He said he would journey to the shrine to choose one of my boys for service, or he would journey to shrine bearing my head on a sword."
"Oh, Uncle," breathed Hojo, paling to an unpleasant shade of green.
"It's your good fortune he was not your enemy. Does this Taiyoukai have a name?" Shippo's eyes narrowed to slits.
Hiro mopped his brow with his sleeve, the heat from the small fire suddenly oppressive. He froze as the thunder of hooves echoed in the courtyard. Silence followed. Then the door flew open with a mighty crash that nearly shook it from its hinges.
…
So who is the mysterious youkai that Hiro wagered with? What's gonna happen next? Tune in next time to see how its gonna turn out… Review and I'll churn out the chapters faster... XD