– 29 –
.cat and mouse.
Back at port, she trades her hair pins for passage to India, and in a month’s time she sets foot in an unknown land.
The air is dense with exotic spices, with the clamor of foreign tongues. For a time she diverts herself with exploring this new country and its customs, though beneath the pulse of it all is the same human experience to which she finds herself eternally at odds–a thing as beautiful as it is fleeting, as alien to her as the past she will never know.
And yet she was human, once. Or so he told her.
She cannot help but crave kinship with another. The loneliness, the longing, builds within her to the point that when he appears before her at the window of her suite, she does not turn away.
It is no coincidence he is here now. He can sense her weakness as well as any predator.
She backs into the bed as he stalks toward her, pressing his advantage.
Yet he, like her, is a living fixture upon this earth–unchanged and unchanging.
It is enough to let him slide the sleeves of her gown from her shoulders, to lock eyes with her as he cups the heated flesh between her thighs.
“Kagome,” he breathes against her neck, and she shudders. “My Kagome.”
Every touch fills her with self-loathing, every stroke shatters her illusion of freedom.
Tears spill from her eyes as she cries out against him–in anguish, in fury–despising herself even more in that moment than she despises him.
Above her he is relentless, determined. When she attempts to push him off, he pins her down by the wrists, driving into her harder than before.
He is here to remind her of her place. And when it is over, he leaves her there, still trembling in the wake of that knowledge.
…
By the end of the next day, she is bound for Egypt. A few years later, Istanbul.
As the novelty of her surroundings fades, she moves on in search of new horizons–new distractions from the monotony of her existence, and from the monster ever at her back.
From Turkey, she wends her way through Europe. Germany first, then Italy, then France.
She collects languages like souvenirs. Although by the time she moves to London, she finds, unsettlingly, that English comes to her much easier than the rest.
The friendships she forms now are strictly for convenience. Her only enduring interest is in the study of history, and she admires the scholars she meets as one would flowers in spring.
But there is solace in the subject itself, not least because it is more ancient than she.
With enough time, she sees, there is change.
That patterns of events repeat themselves, that history is often cyclical does not escape her. Neither does it deter her.
It is only, she thinks, a matter of perspective.
…
As the world wars with itself again, she abandons England for the Americas.
In the jungles of the Amazon, a shaman leads her to the shores of an uncharted lake.
These waters, he tells her, are fed from the underworld.
Kneeling at the edge, she peers down at her reflection. A length of black chain protrudes from her back, its glinting links coiled around her in a serpent’s embrace.
At her side, the shaman mumbles a quick prayer.
“What does it mean?” she asks him, fear stabbing through her at the sight.
“That you are bound,” her translator answers, “in life as well as in death.”
Somewhere behind her is the flutter of wings.
She cannot see where the chain ends. She does not need to.
Even now as she senses him draw near, her bonds are losing their slack.
Her sudden laughter startles the shaman–startles them both.
She doubles over from the force of it, her shoulders shaking, her last possible route of escape cut off from her before she could even begin to contemplate it.
She should be crying. She should be screaming.
But all she can do is laugh.
And laugh.
And laugh.
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi