Odds & Ends: General Audience: Miasma (Kagura)

Disclaimer: The characters of InuYasha are not mine, they are property of Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Yomiuri TV, Sunrise, and Viz. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Genre: Dark/Angst

Characters: Kagura, Naraku

Type: Drabble

Rated: PG

=#= Miasma =#=

Her earliest memory is of frolicking with other zephyrs under a crisp starry sky, with the dreamy murmurs of the slumberous sea below.

Her next is the white feather.

Its innocent, tantalizing beauty enthralls her as she imagines all of the playful possibilities it embodies. She reaches for it…and everything goes black.

Her third memory is of the fog.

It binds her; she who has always been free. Dark and slick, it leaves an oily rainbow smear where it brushes against her shining hide. It burns like acid every time she inhales, each breathe an inevitable vulnerability it gleefully exploits. Thick blackness invades her throat as she cries in pain.

The fog's seeking tendrils entwine their way through her essence like the twisted, gnarled roots of a tree. From an infinite number of tiny, stinging bites, it sucks her dry, stripping her of her identity.

It cocoons her gently within its gut in a grotesque parody of a mother's embrace. With starvation and captivity, it teaches her how to feel despair and rage. She learns to hate; and her corruption is complete. Her innocence and freedom lost.

The fog shapes her into a new being. Then it tears her heart from her chest and seals up emptiness inside.

Light and sound return as her dark sheltering parent spews her onto a wooden floor. Naked, shivering, she struggles with her heavy new body, looking up into the contemptuous crimson eyes of a sinister, eerily beautiful man.

“Servant, thy name is Kagura.”

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