talonsage:

An attempt to channel some of this...fucking crying that started and I can't stop.

( Life is unfair. Death even more so. )

talonsage:

Breaking ground on my very first Asylum...




The very best…
A Little ‘Yasha ficlet

By Talon


He was still a very little boy after all. There were many things he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand why chickens ran when you chased them, he didn’t understand why stones were so different from each other, he didn’t understand why fire burned wood and straw but not water or rocks, and he didn’t understand why he was so afraid of men.


Men were everywhere. Also children, women, dogs, goats, chickens, cattle, ducks. But men…men carried weapons. Tools. They talked in loud, rough voices. They had big, hard hands. And harder eyes that stared at you until you cowered, trying to show that you were afraid…but that you hadn’t done anything bad.

Men’s eyes never believed that.


Women’s eyes were kinder, mostly. Children’s eyes were suspicious until they learned you were just like them. They they’d play. Women’s eyes would be suspicious until they realized you would not hurt their children. Then, they could be very kind.


But not always. They went to many villages, and left many quickly to the screams of “YOUKAI THIEF/MURDERER/other words he did not understand.” Daddy would sometimes stop them, but sometimes, like when a man would hit him and he would bleed, Daddy would gather him up and shake their dust from his feet. Daddy’s eyes were never hard at him. Never.


Daddy’s eyes were soft, and they had love inside them. Daddy’s eyes told him he was not bad, even more often than Daddy’s mouth told him the same words. He tried, he’d explain to Daddy, to never do bad things. He liked to play with the children, and talk to the dogs, and see and smell all the things to see and smell. He liked when women smiled at him and gave him sweet things when they stopped to buy food to eat. He liked when other children were curious about his ears, and he’d let them touch them, to see they were real, like a puppy’s ears. Because one parent was human and one parent was youkai. He was both, and Daddy said it was good.


He liked villages.


He didn’t like men. Even other monks could be bad. Monks like Daddy, but not at all like Daddy either. Monks who muttered words of spells at him, with ofuda he could smell before Daddy would step in between them.


Sometimes Daddy got tired. And he worried about that tiredness. It wasn’t from walking, or fighting or working. It was tiredness about people. And it was his fault, because of the men’s hard eyes at him. And he would sit in Daddy’s lap and say he was sorry for making bad things happen to them.


But Daddy would smile at him, with his eyes and his mouth and stroke his cheek with his knuckle. And he would say, in his softest voice, “My precious son. Don’t you know you are the best, most blessed thing to ever happen to an unworthy man such as I am? My little ‘Yasha…you make only good happen, because you are good.” And then Daddy would cuddle him close and kiss his ears, and whisper, so that the whispering tickled the little flittery hairs around his ears, “You are the very best boy who ever was.”


And then, he would stop worrying about men’s hard eyes, and being bad and cursed and making bad things happen. Because Daddy always said what was true.


Always.


Owari