Disclaimer: I own some but not most characters. All characters featured in the Inuyasha series are property of Rumiko Takahashi.
Chapter One: 2013 (Present Day)
There's no easy way to start this. I woke up today, the same as any other. Yet today I knew that it wasn't the same as yesterday. Today I have to meet people. Talk to people. Be around them and see them all around me listening to them speak about things that I don't know right now. It makes me shake to think about all those people in one place. Of me sitting in a classroom surrounded by 20 other people the same age as myself existing at the same time as me and hearing what I hear and seeing what I see, even if for a small period of time. At first I thought I was excited for this, but now I feel something I would assume is similar to seasickness.
Without anything else to do, I look in the mirror. Blue eyes. Nothing outstanding or unique, blue and empty. Pinkish red lips, I wonder what color lips are typically called. Apricot I suppose. Or cherry, if you're one of those girls. A square-like jaw, bones sticking out of my face from under my eyes under dark brown hair that falls in a curly sheet to cover my shoulders and part of my back. Prominent collarbones- sometimes desired in women but never in an animal. Strange that what the world considers sickly in any other creature is attractive in a human. My boniness should repel, and maybe it will. I'll know soon enough.
Fighting off the urge to do something unproductive, I moved into another room. Pavel's cries, though completely ignorable from my bedroom began to reverberate down the hallways until I felt overwhelming pity for the creature and went to check on him. His room was stark white from the wall to carpeted floor, with a sickly shade of tan painted onto the ceiling. Father only agreed to paint the ceiling when I brought up that the bright white may be painful for a newborn.
This was a lie- I'm pretty sure a newborns sight isn't developed enough to be hurt by any bright colors but I just wanted the thing to have some happy in his room. That was four years ago, and the kid's room still hasn't changed. The only difference is the furniture- a slightly larger bed in place of an unbalanced looking crib that I eventually removed the legs from so that it could sit more safely on the ground. The "changing table"; a fold-open card table that was to small for eating on, was also replaced by a white wardrobe with 3 drawers.
Standing in his room I watched Pavel lying in his bed crying for a few moments before closing the door and walking over to sit on the edge. I placed my hand on his side and sat for a bit, staring at his blank walls until colors formed in my eyes from lack of a distraction. I stood up, pulled a mechanical pencil from behind my ear and walked around Pavels bed until I reached the wall. Taking the end of the bed in my hands I pulled the bed away from the wall and sat on the edge again. Smiling at Pavel, who had sat up in begrudging interest, I began to sketch a wolves face. Kneeling down I continued to draw the neck and shoulders of the wolf while Pavel laughed and reached over to hug my shoulders. When I finished the drawing I stood and looked at Pavel.
"I can paint that for you after school tonight. I'll stop by the store and grab some bigger brushes, and maybe tomorrow I'll draw something else! You can have a mural by the weekend." Pavel grinned, then hesitated.
"I'd rather be going to school with you Saran, I don't wanna stay here alone. I can only make toast and I can't reach the peanut butter!"
"Next year, Pavel. And you shouldn't get too excited for it, hon. Remember how mummy told you this will be my first day in 2 years?"
"Why, Saran? Were you too smart? I hope I'm too smart." I grinned at Pavel's innocent sincerity, then realized that a long overdo story was about to come out. I twisted my hands together than took his left hand with my right.
"I hope you are too, sweet. But I wasn't too smart for school, I just wasn't ready for it."
2010:
"I'm totally ready for this, mum! 7th grade is the best grade; everyone says it. So that means it'll be the best grade to start off!" I bounced a little and swung mums left hand with my right.
"Just breath, Sarany. Good things come to sweet girls, and you're a sweet girl. Don't be afraid to talk to new people, everyone's there to make friends and learn just like you. And no one will make you sad unless you let them do it." Her smile was thin and closed but her eyes were bright and sparkled.
Bright and sparkling. Pavel's eyes were filled with hope and they made me smile, remembering the hope I see in my mother's every once in a little while. I couldn't bring myself to tell the little flower the truth.
"You see Pavel, I went to 7th grade all prepared to learn and make new friends. But it turns out, not everyone there was ready for me. They noticed some of my differences and it made them nervous."
"Whose they?" Pavel asked, genuinely confused that someone may not like me.
"The student's, flower. Well not all of them- one in particular."
Walking into the first class of the day I glanced at the tables thrown about the room: two chairs behind each. I chose a chair next to a girl with jet-black hair tied into to knots on top of her head. Of course, most girls in Japan had jet-black hair, and those who didn't had dark brown like me. But at the time all of the girls in school wore their hair in a single long ponytail down their back, and I thought this girl seemed creative and different.
"I love your hair- it's really cute!"
"It's more then cute, flower. It's the new thing. I'm the new thing hon."
I don't like the way this girl called me 'flower'; it's a cute pet name but she says it as though she's trying to spit it out of her mouth as quickly as possible.
"Oh, I didn't know that. Being a new thing must be fun though." I muttered the words quickly and quietly without making eye contact and proceeded to take my jacket off. The girl is staring at me. Knot girl is staring at me and I'm uncomfortable and I pull out my pencil case and begin to fiddle with different school supplies as students filed into the room around me. Finally the teacher walked in through a door by the blackboard and looked around the room. I began to shiver- there's a real teacher in front of me and I'm going to learn new things and take notes in my clean new notebooks with my new mechanical pencils and colored pens.
Knot girl is raising her hand.
"But why wasn't everyone ready for you? I don't get it Sarany. Had she never seen blue eyes before?"
"Pavel lots of people have blue eyes! None are as pretty as yours', flower, but people all over the world have tons of different eye colors. Anyways, there was just one girl in particular that wasn't ready to be in classes with me. She thought I was a little bit too different, and she told other people how different I was."
"But how are you different Sarany?"
"Well, I make art honey. And they hadn't seen the kind of art I make before. They just weren't ready for it! So they told me to wait a year or two and try again, and that's what I'm dong today."
"I love your art Saran! I love my new wolf too." Pavel keeps me going every day; it's dumb stuff like this little 4 year old telling me he likes his new wolf that keeps me going. I can go to that fucking school and sit in a class and keep me to myself. I can do it.
My hands shook and dropped the safety scissors in my hands, leaving a trail of blood on my palm and covering the floor tiles in tiny droplets of red. I heard distant screams and loud crying and sirens, but above all else one thing shone through my quickly blurring vision- partly caused by the faint nausea caused by the sight of blood and partly blurred by the tears streaming from my eyes.
A loosely knotted clump of black hair lying in a steadily increasing puddle.