Categories > Anime/Manga > Inuyasha > A Darkling Alcove
Disclaimer: I disclaim. InuYasha, its characters and all related indicia are sole property of creator Rumiko Takahashi and her affiliates. No monetary profit is sought or gained in the writing of this piece.
Shades
He remembered her, late in the lazy summer heat, quiet as a timid young field mouse, flighty as a little brown wren. Dull and human, she crept around the verges, crept and crept until he snarled at her, but she was young and old and faded and far from bright enough to know when she should be scared. Instead she ran to fetch him water, and foraged like the furtive woodland creature she had become, and when she came to make her humble tribute he glimpsed the murky shadows living in her eyes.
She was a half-wild thing, careful and reticent and cautious and kind. He was burned and bloodied and beaten, she had seen it, and she had tried to help him in her own hopeful, hopeless way. He wanted nothing from her, and she had nothing to give. So in that way at least, it made perfect sense.
But that had never occurred to him in the beginning. She was barely visible in his eyes then, opaque and irrelevant though . . . curious. A tiny brown spot in a gray area. Her pale shadow lingered, and he did his best to ignore it. There could not be an it. There could not be a human. Humanity had no distinction in his eyes; they were a shared singular mass, unworthy and colorless as a mold spreading across the ancient roots of a Goshinboku. And yet . . . something was taking shape in his mind, like a ghost coalescing in the mists . . . A strange, unaccustomed something that flickered on the periphery now and again. Like the strange little creature that had called the sensation into being, he did his best to ignore it too.
But even now he still remembered, one pale yellow morning when he opened his eyes to something new. He saw the colors, an ungainly, unaccustomed weight on her tiny, weary shoulders. Black and blue and brown, the faded stains of violence and rough, clumsy hands. Strange, that dull and colorless as she had been before, he thought she had been better off. She couldn't tell him where she'd gotten them from, but she shared a secret with him when he asked. She showed him the hidden, pristine white tucked clumsily away in her smile.
He thought, perhaps, that he should have recognized it for what it was.
A flag . . .
A little white flag that waved, Farewell to the old.
And not long later when furry brown bodies and splashes of warm dark red obscured all else, he swept the canvas clean with but the swing of a sword.
*
OWARI
*
Author's Note: Ahaha ... And one of these days, I'm going to write something that isn't rife with purple prose!
... Ahem.
This piece was written for MF_Sanctuary Week 29. The theme was "Unrequited."
Shades
He remembered her, late in the lazy summer heat, quiet as a timid young field mouse, flighty as a little brown wren. Dull and human, she crept around the verges, crept and crept until he snarled at her, but she was young and old and faded and far from bright enough to know when she should be scared. Instead she ran to fetch him water, and foraged like the furtive woodland creature she had become, and when she came to make her humble tribute he glimpsed the murky shadows living in her eyes.
She was a half-wild thing, careful and reticent and cautious and kind. He was burned and bloodied and beaten, she had seen it, and she had tried to help him in her own hopeful, hopeless way. He wanted nothing from her, and she had nothing to give. So in that way at least, it made perfect sense.
But that had never occurred to him in the beginning. She was barely visible in his eyes then, opaque and irrelevant though . . . curious. A tiny brown spot in a gray area. Her pale shadow lingered, and he did his best to ignore it. There could not be an it. There could not be a human. Humanity had no distinction in his eyes; they were a shared singular mass, unworthy and colorless as a mold spreading across the ancient roots of a Goshinboku. And yet . . . something was taking shape in his mind, like a ghost coalescing in the mists . . . A strange, unaccustomed something that flickered on the periphery now and again. Like the strange little creature that had called the sensation into being, he did his best to ignore it too.
But even now he still remembered, one pale yellow morning when he opened his eyes to something new. He saw the colors, an ungainly, unaccustomed weight on her tiny, weary shoulders. Black and blue and brown, the faded stains of violence and rough, clumsy hands. Strange, that dull and colorless as she had been before, he thought she had been better off. She couldn't tell him where she'd gotten them from, but she shared a secret with him when he asked. She showed him the hidden, pristine white tucked clumsily away in her smile.
He thought, perhaps, that he should have recognized it for what it was.
A flag . . .
A little white flag that waved, Farewell to the old.
And not long later when furry brown bodies and splashes of warm dark red obscured all else, he swept the canvas clean with but the swing of a sword.
*
OWARI
*
Author's Note: Ahaha ... And one of these days, I'm going to write something that isn't rife with purple prose!
... Ahem.
This piece was written for MF_Sanctuary Week 29. The theme was "Unrequited."
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