A/N: I can promise you all right now that I probably will never again upload more than one chapter over the course of a day, but this chapter got itself written pretty quickly. I haven't had anyone look over it yet, but again, this is a first draft of this story. I'll come back and do some revisions once more chapters are up.
Chapter 2
A primal howling cut through the silence of the forest as Ashitaka walked out into the night air. He sat down at the mouth of the cave and stared up at the twinkling stars hanging low in the nighttime sky. Horo must have caught his dinner and would be bringing back a large carcass of meat within the hour to share with the rest of Moro's tribe. San's two wolf brothers would never bring themselves to consider the young Emishi prince a member of their ragtag clan, but he was nevertheless one of the few humans they didn't attack on sight.
Ashitaka stayed rooted to his spot at the entrance to the cave where he, San, and the two wolves, Horo and Goro, had been seeking shelter in for the night. He acknowledged Horo with a faint nod when the giant wolf materialized out of the trees with a fresh deer cadaver in between its jaws. The young man continued turning over his dream in his head. He thought of Jii-san, and how he had saved the old man from the collapse of his watchtower. He thought of the oracle, whom he thought of as a grandmother, old, sweet, and very dear to his heart. He thought of Kaya, the girl with whom he had been betrothed to marry, until he had been cursed by Nago and forced to leave.
Where the walled fortress of Iron Town had once previously stood, there was now a fledgling but prosperous village that had been dubbed Eboshi, in reverence for the village's headstrong and confident feminist leader. Losing an arm had done little to temper Lady Eboshi's boundless ambition, though she regarded the forest and its well-being with a hard-edged respect now. Since Eboshi had a smaller population to support compared to Iron Town, the people of the village had turned to firearms manufacturing as their primary source of revenue. Under Lady Eboshi's leadership, every tree that was felled was replaced with a young sapling, and iron ore was now carted to the village from a distant mine. As a result, the forests surrounding Eboshi flourished unhindered.
Ashitaka had offered his assistance and labor in the initial rebuilding of the town and had spent much time there getting to know the citizens that now called it home. He had witnessed the birth of Toki's and Kouroku's baby son and had helped take care of Lady Eboshi as she was recovering from her wound. For all his efforts, Ashitaka was now one of Lady Eboshi's most trusted confidants; she afforded him as much respect as any of the village's women. The village and its people were largely back on their feet now after years of persistence and hard work. Ashitaka's days were largely filled with meetings with Lady Eboshi and the town's other leaders, lending a hand with construction of a stretch of wall or someone's house, or helping individual villagers settle disputes amongst each other as a mediator. He was kept constantly busy, but this fact just made him relish the time he spent in the forest all the more. The tranquil forest, with the singing of birds, the rustling of trees, and the rattling of the kodama spirits, helped to calm his encumbered mind and body.
San didn't always join him in the forest. Oftentimes she was off with her wolf brothers convening with other forest spirits, for reasons Ashitaka could only begin to comprehend. She had tried to relate to him once about all the matters of the forest, the various scales of power that were constantly shifting one way or another between different spirit tribes. Recently, it seemed, with the death of both Ottoku and Moro, Ruijinen's tribe of apes had been growing in territory and numbers. San apparently spent much of her time away dealing with the aged ape leader, judging from the tidbits of information that she relayed to Ashitaka. It all sounded surprisingly political to the young man, who was reminded of the council sessions he had attended back in his village, discussing matters of agriculture and infrastructure, and settling disputes amongst the villagers whenever necessary with the elder members of the Emishi council. He was always happy to help out his fellow villagers, in any way he could, whether by attending meeting and letting his opinion be known or by rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty. Nevertheless, at his core, Ashitaka was a man of action who preferred to seize the initiative rather than sit around debating for hours on end.
Images of his dream continued to force their way into the forefront of his thoughts. Despite the fact that he hadn't gone back at all since he had been wounded by the rampaging demon Nago, his memories of his childhood and the Emishi village had never faded or become distorted in his mind since he left. Surely the people in the village of the Emishi weren't as well off as they had been in his dream. Such delusions were best left unfulfilled. The only bit of his dream that seemed plausible to him was Kaya finding a new husband and starting a family while he was gone. He sincerely hoped that she had gotten on with her life and moved on, because he surely had. In his mind, he began to wonder about how everyone back in Emishi village was faring, whether they were even still alive. A sudden longing gripped his heart; he wanted to find out the fate that had befallen his village.
There was a silent pit-pat of bare feet on stone behind Ashitaka, but his gaze didn't waver from the night sky. "What's the matter Ashitaka? Having trouble sleeping?" asked San, her voice heavy with sleep. She sat down next to him, noticing his furrowed brow and distant gaze. "What is it you're thinking so hard about?" she added.
"I'm thinking about my village. The place where I grew up. About all the people I left behind, my family, my friends," Ashitaka replied. "I never told you about who gave me this dagger," he continued. San's eyes hardened slightly, sensing that he was about to tell her something she wouldn't like hearing. Her fingers rose to the crystal that hung beside her necklace of wolf fangs around her neck.
"Back in my village, far to the east, I was the prince of my people, the Emishi. I was raised with the expectation that I would one day come to lead them out of the darkness, for we have been slowly dying for the past five hundred years, rotting away until we were only dust left to the mercy of the winds." Ashitaka paused before continuing, "I had a fiancé too, Kaya." San made no visible reaction to this statement, though Ashitaka had expected her to. Sometimes it was just so easy to forget that she had been raised in a totally different environment, one that was completely alien to humans. Oftentimes she didn't understand simple human gestures and was oblivious when it came to common customs and mannerisms. Ashitaka continued with his telling.
"The two of us were expected to one day marry and bear children, but I forsook my title of prince and all that came along with it when I left my village in search of the source of Nago's hatred and rage. Kaya gave me the dagger you now wear around your neck to me the night I left, as a token of remembrance. She knew our marriage contract had been broken, that there was a good chance that I'd never see her again, that I'd never return to our village. I believed that myself," Ashitaka's gaze wavered. To San, it looked like he was ashamed of the events that had transpired and which had forced the scruffy young man before her to abandon his people and travel westward in the first place.
There followed a lingering pause before San spoke, "I don't think there was any other way things could have turned out. In that moment of battle, you only had two options: turn to fight the demon yourself so your people could get away, or keep running and put them into harm's way." She wasn't looking at him. Rather, her gaze lingered on the distant nighttime landscape of treetops. Her brow was furrowed though, and Ashitaka could tell that this wasn't easy for her, to connect on a human level. She's learning, he thought, smiling to himself. He took her hand in his.
"I miss them a lot," he said, his voice tinged with sadness. "I'm no longer their prince, but that doesn't change the fact that they're still my family." San looked at the young man before her, and thought about when Moro had died, how lost and confused she had been for weeks afterward. He's been feeling the same way ever since he left them, she realized. In that moment of rare human connection, she knew what he wanted, and she accepted it.
"You should go to them," she whispered.
She noticed his eyebrows raise and his eyes widen, at least for a brief moment, before his face returned to normal. Then he smiled at her.
"I'll leave first thing in the morning," he replied. She smiled back at him, her forehead leaning towards his. Their words were sealed with a kiss under the starlight.
Princess Mononoke is the property of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki. I do not own any of the characters in this story. Thanks to Swansae515 for her significant contributions and critiques to this particular chapter as well as giving me a lot to think about with regards to future chapters. Please tell me what you guys think!