Inuyasha: Come What May

Prologue

Prologue

200 years before Inuyasha

The soft splashing of waves fills my dark mind. It's chilling and yet, pleasant, a giant leap from the repetitive lapping of angry water against wood. This slow coming and going of water is melodic in such a way I've almost forgotten about the last few months. For a second, I believe I could be back home in bed listening to my mother humming one of our people's songs. If it weren't for the growing aches, pains, and burns of my body, I would have fallen back to sleep.

The world has never returned to me in such a slow tip toey fashing as it is right now but as my mind returns from the dreamland to reality I notice my body is not pressed against the hard splintery wood of the tiny row boat but that of cool, damp sand. The surface shapes my thin frame, sending shivers along my starving and dehydrated body while making a perfect cast form of it below.

I can't remember how long we have been out at sea. Maybe days...it could have been weeks.

Long enough though, for the sacks of food and water to run empty. Our throats dried, stomachs wrinkled, our skin reddened and peeled with no time to heal except at night when we spend hours with our eyes closed with no reprieve of sleep. Below us, the rowboat would rock, reminding us of how raw the sun made us feel and how long the days were becoming.

But for the first time in days, while I watched the ocean life below the surface, I fell asleep with the sun beating on my back and a hand drifting in the water, food for the fish. I was sure that it was my last moment. I know I should have died.

And maybe I have, and this is heaven. The soothing waves at my numb toes promising land and giving me security that the war was won, and it's all over now.

Only that...one single thing is throwing off this possibility of freedom - the softest pattering of someone's heart at my side. This is no mind game, I know this for sure because there is no better sense on or in my body and I know it could never lie to me. It's an elf's most precious gift given to us when we are born, next to our natural magic: our sense of hearing. It is the only thing I can truly rely on when all the hallucinations become too vivid to be distinguished as real or fake.

So good are my ears that I can tell by the beat of the heart and how it sounds against the rib bones, what race, and gender the person is.

Each thump of the heart is long and pauses for a brief second before the next beat follows. This song is familiar to me and I Can tell now with the cloudiness of my exhaustion leaving me that this is my mother. Her heart is normally slow, never taking speed, but right now, hers is fast. It jitters in an almost panic dance. Something must have alerted her.

This brings me back to the light; heaven is not here, and this is reality. The water at my feet turns icy and the breeze sends chills down my spine. I'm filled with a burst of energy I hadn't felt in weeks. My eyes spring open and I half expect to find myself still on the dainty row boat with the sun beaming down on us, the gulls cawing above and water rushing into our boat.

But I find what I least expect.

Land.

My molded shape on the sand is just a small part of a large white beach. We've made it to land.

My arms struggle below me, rattling pathetically as I lift my top half off the ground and glance around at my new surroundings. Ahead of us are luscious colors: bright oranges, reds, browns, greens, and yellows blanket the forest line that looks as if it expands for miles. The white sand is powdery under my fingers and oddly glistens brilliantly underneath the sky full of sparkling stars that spread apart from around the full white moon and behind us, I hear the sea and how it subtly rocks the tail end of our tiny rowboat.