Tears Left Uncried
Raye: …So…That was my five seconds? My opening act? My grand entrance?
KB: Pretty much.
Raye: I hate you.
KB: What?
Raye: Karma is a b***h, KB, and it’s coming for you. Fast.
KB: Hey, you’re opening this chapter!
Raye: Karma. *hisses*
Lee: Weirdoes. I’m surrounded by weirdoes.
-KB
Tears Left Uncried
Chapter 3:
Cold! That Water’s Cold!
She’s dressed in a kimono, weird for the time period they’re in. Then again, are they even in a time period anymore? Lee tries to reach out towards the woman and the stranger mirrors her action, but then she’s suddenly sent flying at the woman as that familiar purple light radiates inside the woman’s chest. Lee screams, the woman doing the same, and their voices swirl into the foreign space around them.
And then the woman’s not there, as if she hadn’t been there to begin with, and Lee is thrust out of the space and dropped on her face.
“Ow!” Lee squeaks as the hard dirt smashes her nose uncomfortably. “Ow…man, that’s the second time today I’ve been dropped on my nose. What the heck is up with today?! I am not this cursed.”
Sitting, up on her feet, Lee rubs her nose warily so as not to flare up the pain any more than it already is and groans in annoyance. She knew today was going to be bad, but she didn’t know it was going to be this bad. “No more apples for breakfast, I guess.” She grumbles.
A calm wind rustles the branches of the trees above her and Lee glances back at the sacred tree. It stands silently, giving no answer to the majorly bizarre event that just took place.
“I hope you don’t eat people randomly and then spit them out for your own amusement.” She growls at it, still rubbing her nose.
“Well, we won’t eat you, but you will be used for our amusement.”
Lee freezes at the greasy voice in front of her, afraid to face it. Her eyes bulge out of her head again in fright and she swallows the dryness in her throat. A heavy group of laughter joins the voice and she knows there’s more than one of them. It sounds like a lot of them.
Maybe they came to visit the shrine too. Maybe they're lost. Maybe they just like picking on little girls. Lee fumbles through a list of possibilities to calm her racing heart, but something in their voices terrifies her. They can't be that bad.
Slowly, she turns her head back around to face them and a high pitches squeak rises in her chest. There are about twenty of them-dirty, kimono wearing, men with growth on their chins and face that only adds to their scary disposition. And their menacing grins and snickers don’t really help them at all.
No, Lee whines mentally, They could be worse.
The man who obviously spoke takes a step forward and Lee flinches back, dropping her hand from her nose and scotching back against the sacred tree. “Well, men, looks to me that we’ve found ourselves a most interesting prize. It’s not every day you find a girl dressed in such a short, tempting kimono popping out of trees.” He chuckles unpleasantly.
Short? Tempting? Popping out of trees? The words are all simple enough, but they go right over her head anyway. “Um...e-excuse me?”
“So what say you we take her for keeps?” The man grins, kneeling down in front of her. “She’s not much to look at, but she’s not bad looking either. She could catch us a nice price if we fix her up.”
A murmur of agreement and laughter shifts over the group of men and Lee’s eyes widen impossibly more. She tightens her hold on the strap of her bag that had somehow remained on her back during her trip through that wacky space and her other hand digs her nails into the ground nervously. She feels something smooth and cold against her fingers and recognizes it instantly. A rock.
The man reaches forward and casually touches a piece of her hair that has come loose from her bun and spirals down around her face. “Then again we could keep her for ourselves. She might be good for some entertainment while we’re away from our village.”
Lee doesn’t wait, nor does she understand the flash of heat that flares through her body. All she knows is the feeling of her palm across the cool stone as she grips it and the feeling of it slamming against the man’s jaw. She can feel stone hit bone and it grosses her out so much she lets out an ear-piecing shriek.
Oh, yeah, sure. Now she screams.
She rushes to her feet and takes off. It’s only then that she realizes that the shrine is gone and is replaced by thick forests all around her. The trees all look the same; she doesn’t know where she’s at.
There’s a snap and something tears into her right arm as it flings out to her side as she runs and she cries out against the pain. Loud, angry shouts are barreling after her so she doesn’t stop to check the wound. She does look behind her to find the one she had hit with a rock flinging a deadly looking whip at her. The frayed ends snap near her head and Lee picks up her speed.
“Where the heck am I?!” Lee shouts. “What’s going on?!”
The trees are so thick that she’s forced to zigzag back and forth to avoid them. The last thing she needs is to run into one and get knocked out for these perverts to have. Then again, who’s to say their real anyway. Maybe she fell asleep in the sun at the base of the tree and this is all just a crazy dream.
The pain in her arm flare and she winces. If this is a dream, it shouldn't hurt this bad!
She glances back again only to skid to a quick stop to keep from flying over the ledge that pops up out of nowhere before her. A deep river tumbles into rapids far below her and the jagged rocks make it look like an angry monster. The water roars and the sound sends a rumble of fear through her body. She can’t just jump! Those rocks would kill her.
The angry men behind her have caught up, their furious hollers becoming louder than the sound of thee river. Lee spins around and gasps as the man with the whip flings it forward in another attempt to strike her. Her heel slips at the edge and she falls back at the frayed ends of the weapon crack just above her head…where her chest had been not five seconds before.
Lee yells bloody murder as she free falls to the deadly waters below. She crashes into the surface, it breaks with a sound like ice, and all she can think is the cold that swallows her.
No, I can't die like this. This is just a dream. You can't die in a dream, she thinks. Her hands fumble through the rough waters that thunder in her ears, desperate to find a hold anywhere. Nothing aids her. The currents have her and they won’t release her until she’s either dead or the rapids end. Even then, there’s no guarantee that she’ll even survive the cold. Already, she can feel her body turning to ice.
This is so not how I wanted my day to go.
As if answering her complaint and making it worse than she could ever imagine, her head smacks into a rock and all goes dark.
When she wakes, she’s not sure if she’s dead or dying. Her body feels like it’s floating on air and yet heavier than a ton of weights. Her head feels the heaviest of all; her mind is all jumbled like a mess of fog that won’t clear.
She does make out a buzzing though. It’s faint, at the back of her skull, but it gets louder with every passing moment. Then the buzzing turns to humming, and then murmurs, and then words.
“The lord will not like this at all, Rin.” The first voice that becomes clear screeches. It sounds like a withered up, dried toad…if that was even a thing to begin with.
“But she’d hurt, Master Jaken. The river is very cold this time of year and she came down all those rapids. Lord Sesshomaru can help her, I know it.” The second voice, a sweet chime of bells, pleads. Lee groans from the pain as she tries to move her head towards the voices. As her eyes flutter open, she finds a small flickering campfire, its dazzling glow doing nothing to ease the freezing inside her bones. They must have just pulled her out because she can feel the water dripping off her bangs.
“We cannot keep picking up stray dogs!” The scratchy voice responds.
This hits a nerve. Lee glares at the fire as her vision finishes clearing and focuses. A small girl, a little younger than her little sister, sits on a long on the other side of the fire. A blade of grass is being fiddled with in her hands as she scrunches up her eyebrows worriedly. Some of her dark brown hair is pulled up into a cute pig-tail on the side of her head while the rest hangs down her back. Her kimono is warm patches of warm orange colors.
“I’m not a stray…dog.” Lee forces out through the pounding in her skull as she sits up. The small girl on the opposite side of the fire bounces up excitedly and sits down next to Lee as if they are best friends.
“Hi! How are you feeling? Better?” The small girl smiles. “I’m Rin.”
“Uh…hi, Rin.” Lee greets, caught off guard by the girl’s openly kind nature. “I’m fine…I think. My head hurts and-.”
“Rin, don’t interact with her!” The scratchy voice demands.
Lee turns to the voice and cries out. Rushing to her feet, she snatches the long staff from the creature’s hand easily and whacks it. “Agh! Gremlin!”
“No, that’s Master Jaken. He’s really nice. He’s the one who bandaged your arm!”
Lee doesn’t listen, she holds the stick up again, preparing to hit the imp creature again, when it sits up and glares at her. “Unhand that! A stupid human has no place to touch the staff of two heads.”
“The…s-staff-a-what…?” Lee asks, pausing in her attack, and takes a closer inspection on the stick. She wishes she hadn’t. “AGH! Ew! Gross!”
She drops it as if it burned her the second she sees the two, way too realistic, faces on the top of the stick-one of an old man and the other of a woman. “Okay, no way! This is way too much for me. I gotta get out of here. I got to get home.”
“No, please don’t leave. You’re still hurt.” Rin rushes after her, but Lee ignores the figment of her imagination. All she really wants to do is sit down because her head is starting to spin terribly and her stomach is getting woozy.
“This is all a messed up dream. I’m gonna wake up any second now and be passed out on that bench beside the tree. Better yet, maybe I haven’t even left for school yet and I’m still at home in bed. That’d be nice. Then I could start the whole day over again and not trip on the bus this time.” Lee rambles on and on, walking off into the trees nearby. She can faintly hear the sound of the river and that’s definitely not the way she wants to go.
“Please! Lord Sesshomaru will help. I know he’ll be able to get you home. Please, wait until he returns.” Rin calls again, rushing to keep up with her.
“Rin, leave the stupid human alone. Let her go to her death. She’s obviously delirious.” The imp screeches after the small girl.
“I’m not a stupid human. Stop calling me that.” Lee does hear this and again, that strange new heat flares into her body. As she spins back around to walk away, her head crashes into something else that reminds her of a rock and her skull throbs even worse. The spinning worsens and suddenly her knees feel weak.
“Lord Sesshomaru, you’ve returned!” Rin exclaims happily, but it sounds so far off the Lee.
Ow my head. What's going on? What's wrong with me? Did I really hit the rocks that hard? Lee rubs her forehead and looks up.
Her vision is starting to blur over again, but not before she takes in the man before her. He’s tall, taller than her, with golden cat-like eyes that observe her with cold reserve and long silky silver hair. His kimono is mostly white, tucked into dangerous looking armor and white kimono pants.
Wow, he's gorgeous, Lee thinks before passing out.
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