Once Upon A Little China
Chapter 2: Welcome to Xin Jiang!
The trio finally understood why Kaede wanted them to hurry so much. It took them five hours of bumpy wagon rides to reach Kaede's house, which was located on top of a mountain. By then, InuYasha had exhausted his bank of obscenities and just wish for a swifter death.
However, a highlight was that the scenery managed to enrapture all three of them. Rows and rows of coniferous trees stood tall and silently on the slopes of the mountain, their sheer size overshadowing the pathway; where light penetrated through the canopy, they create dancing splotches on the ground. The leaves reflected a warm golden hue as the sun shone behind them. The ground was covered with a thin sheathe of ice, crunching noisily as the wagon rolled over it. A few creeks gurgled happily; weaving in between the ices and following the passengers' route as if they were curious to know wherefore these foreigners were here. High above, the sky was a mixture of pure sapphire and amber, with barely a cloud to be seen for miles around.
Kaede guided the wagon expertly along the many paths, carefully avoiding bigger dips in the trail. The wagon entered a village area, marked by its cleared grounds and wooden constructs. She turned the wagon right and down a slight slope to a wooden house. There were two women sitting outside the house, peeling off corn leaves. One was obviously a mother in her mid-forties. The other was a younger woman – perhaps the older woman's daughter - squatting beside her mother. She looked about their age, tan-skinned, rosy cheeks with her raven hair tied back into a ponytail. She did not acknowledge their presence other than glancing up briefly at the visitors while dismissively tossing some corn leaves to the pig pen behind her; and then she was back to her chore of stripping the corn of its leaves.
"Hey Miroku, maybe you could stop staring at the girl and helping us with the luggage?" Sango yelled from behind the wagon as she struggled to lift her luggage off. Man, how did that old woman manage to handle the luggage so easily?
"Aaaaahhhhhhh!"
"Now what?" InuYasha stood up and narrowed his eyes in the direction of the squeal.
A young boy about the age of seven ran up to them and launched himself onto InuYasha's legs, giggling and chattering a string of Chinese. InuYasha only stared back at the kid, unable to fathom what he was saying. Sure, InuYasha did take a year of Chinese lesson under his father's promptings before coming here, but most of the time he did not focus in class and therefore found himself now dumbfounded by the kid's language.
"He said something along the lines of welcome and being happy to see us here," Miroku attempted to translate. "But I don't quite understand his words with that heavy accent."
"Ignore the boy; he is just excited to see foreign visitors here." Kaede replied, beckoning for the trio to follow her into the small wooden house.
The house was partitioned into three spaces: the left was the women's bedroom, the center was the dining room, and the right was the men's bedroom. To Sango's horror, there were no doors guarding the privacy of the inhabitants within her bedroom. There was merely a rectangular hole cut out from the wooden walls that marked the entrance of the room. What if she was changing? Anyone could have walked by casually to exit the house and they would inevitably see her. And to make it worse, Sango knew that Miroku would be thinking about the same thing, trying to come up with a scheme to catch her unguarded.
The two young men located two out of the four beds and dumped their items on the floor. InuYasha flopped down onto the bed nearest to the window, wincing in pain as he realized too late that the bed was hard. It was only the first day and he already hated the place. There were no wireless internet excess, telecommunication signals, metro stations or any forms of advanced technology. It felt like he was going back into primitive ages where people still rely on the use of hand-built tools. Being born and bred a wealthy city kid, InuYasha was more than horrified at the lack of technology, and he will be staying at this place for two months.
A/N:
* Imagine the entrance of Kaede's hut in the anime where there isn't actually a "door". This is the same in the case of this fiction.