InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Tempus Terminis ❯ Tempus Terminis ( Chapter 1 )

Time touches all things.

I have seen these words come true, time and again, in an endless cycle that envelopes all. Very little escapes, and nothing escapes unscathed.

I have seen dozens of generations of humans live, grow old, and perish. I have seen nations rise and fall. I have seen islands build themselves in the ocean, and seen the ocean reclaim them.

I have seen knowledge turn into superstition and ignorance, and from ignorance come great progress, progress give birth to greater superstition still.

I have seen great tragedies. Entire cities bathed in fire and a more silent killer that resonates yet today, entire species cease to exist. I have walked among the ruins while fires burned and people were reduced to shadows on the walls, and I have beheld my own helplessness in the face of greater forces.

I have seen works of art born of simple hands and great souls, and works of art destroyed by simple minds and craven hearts. I have admired the difference a single word can make in a life, and the way a single touch in a time of need can turn the tide of fate.

I have lived for nearly a thousand years and never seen the same thing twice.

In this cycle select few things endure. The nature of the world is transience - that truth remains truth, and has stood the test of centuries of experience.

Unlike my father, I've made no attempt to become a part of this human world, no attempt to become something which I am not and can never be, and which I would find at best a mixed blessing... unlike my mother, I have not withdrawn above it, to live my life in solitude, waiting perhaps for it to end and surrounding myself with shallow mementos of a life that is no longer lived.

My brother and I have followed similar paths, if his more personal than mine, of wandering, dabbling here and there, but not truly interfering. I walk the world, on no particular crusade, a sword of destruction on one hand and life on the other. I could be a force to shape the world, if it were mine to shape. It is not. Bakusaiga will touch only those who seek to do me harm, instead of cutting swaths through the men of power, and Tenseiga will touch those I find in need of it, but is never there for them to learn the truth of their miracle when they find themselves alive. I do not wish to be known for either.

This wandering observation... it may not be a noble calling, but it passes the years, and it lets me be amused, and keeps me connected. It is hard to be connected to humans, with their fleeting lives. Hard even to be connected to the Earth, when the passage of seasons is the truest sign of the unimaginable touch of time. It would be an easy path, to hearken to the siren song of the clouds of which I am, and retreat  from the transient chaos of life as my mother has done, up where time grows stagnant and the world can be forgotten. Yet the easy path does not charm me, and stagnation holds no appeal. I continue to be carried with this world in the flow of time, counting years and seasons and centuries.

I have kept one eye on my brother in all that intervening time between ancient past and present, keeping a tab on where he is, what he is, how he is... For he, too, is one of those enduring things, like transience: one of the few forces time moves around instead of over, a companion at a distance throughout my own life. Does he do the same for me, take a sort of security in knowing that I am still here, going where the voice of the wind compels me? I can only imagine. Our conversations are few and far between; it is not necessary to talk with him overly much, only to know that he exists. What do we really have to say to each other?

He makes lives for himself in this world, a guardian of his own descendants, perhaps becoming more Inugami than Inuyoukai. He has his family around him at all times, and they are his connection, a more personal one than I have. That is his niche, his place in this world, his purpose. That is not my place, and it is not my place to comment on it, more than it is his to comment on my path through this world. Our spheres generally do not overlap; we are but scenery to each other, a comforting landmark to know we are each not too far from home, but not a true part of each other's world.

And as we were, so shall we ever be...

Inuyasha died one month ago.

I learned far too late to do any good for him. Would I have saved him, if I could? I would... Although, I do not know if it would have been a gift to him, or an punishment. He was not struck down in battle, or laid out by a foul disease, or murdered unjustly on the streets like so many of those Tenseiga graces with its touch... he was stolen slowly by time itself, passing peacefully in the warmth of his home, surrounded by generations of his family. The weight of seven hundred years of life is much for a hanyou body and a half-human heart, and I think it may have been a blessing when he finaly set aside his responsibilities and took the next journey...

But the news jarred me more than anything had in centuries. For myself more than for him, I would have pulled him back from that peaceful passing and kept him in this tumultuous world. Where is my landmark now? By what direction shall I set my compass? By what clock will I measure the years now, and in what glass see my own attachments to this world reflected?

I went to his home in the first time in the lives of all but the oldest of his humans, and though I looked I saw only pictures of an old man with fuzzy ears in his thin hair, his face lined with the weight of those years, his back stooped and his gold eyes peering though spectacles. In his family I saw sadness but no real grief, honor and not mourning, for this was no surprise. How had I not seen this coming, when they had known? How had Time crept up on my back and crumbled a small corner of my world?

I visited a shrine built where there had been forest for centuries, but the worn place in the bark of a holy tree held no answers. The conversation of a young temple master and an ailing old man who knew me for what I am and knew my brother's name held no comfort. The act of dropping a handful of ashes into a dormant well held no closure. I still do not know what I am seeking, or why my mind cannot find peace from the assault of this fact.

I can look at myself, and if I were to judge myself in human years, I would seem no more than twenty. I am nigh eternal, and I see no reason why I should not see the end of the world with my antisocial mother and whatever humankind has become in the interim. The world holds no dangers and very few surprises, but there are millennia waiting still for me. And yet...

I have begun to feel very old. ~end~

NOTES: This story was also sort of a challenge... I was having writer's block, and Silver told me “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write in the next hour Sesshoumaru's thoughts after Inuyasha dies of old age”. I did . ^^ Oh, and sorry about the unimportant note at the end, I just had to stick this down here so as to not give that bit away...