Tuesday, March 23, 2004

   Past Collides with Present: Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Escape

The forest in Makai was silent as death. It was dark, and the creatures that roamed at night were fearsome, indeed. No creature made a sound if at all possible. Stealth was the best means of protection, and stealth was also the best means of finding one's prey. No one understood this better than Youko Kurama, who had once ruled the cold forests in the north of Makai. He stole silently through this forest with all the skill and all the patience he had learned with four centuries of hard living and dangerous thievery, following the familiar scents that grew stronger every second.
He was gaining on them.

* * *

Far ahead of him in the same forest, the demon who had kidnapped his mother had foolishly decided to stop for the night. He was tired, and his castle was still quite several kilometers away. Besides, the human woman he had captured wouldn't dare try to escape, even if she thought she could. This particular demon had quite a low opinion of humans, even though he had had very little contact with them. As such, he was very likely to underestimate them.
Shiori had realized this and was thinking hard about how to use it to her advantage. She had no idea what the strange man with dark orange hair and pale orange eyes wanted with her, but she didn't plan to find out. She had no idea where she was, for there was no forest anywhere near her house, but she was willing to escape from the creepy man and take her chances in the wilderness.
The captor's first mistake was building the fire. He wanted the heat and believed he was safe in the forest (which was true enough), but Shiori already had many ideas as to how to use it to her advantage. His second mistake was to tie her hands behind her so loosely. Shiori, masking the movements by leaning her upper back against a tree, had managed to loosen them even more. She watched the demon very closely as she kept picking at the knots. He was making his third mistake as he nodded off on the other side of the fire. /Keep sleeping/, Shiori pleaded silently as the last knot began to loosen considerably. Her kidnapper obeyed the silent command. He even began to snore lightly.
/Yes!/ The knot came undone, and Shiori slipped the ropes off her hands, bringing them around and rubbing her wrists. She got up slowly and started toward the fire. Her kidnapper had cooked food earlier and didn't share any with her. She was hungry and intended to have the leftovers. The guy owed her that much. He hadn't spoken a word to her since she had woken up despite her many demanding questions.
However, just as she reached the fire, she stepped on a twig. It snapped with a loud CRACK. The strange man jerked awake, saw her, and got up, lunging around the fire. Shiori instantly dropped to her knees and scooped up a handful of glowing embers. She flung them at her captor's face, and scrambled away, mentally cursing at the pain in her hand as the man screamed and clawed at his eyes.
She got back to her feet and ran through the trees, pushing branches away from her and trying to put as much distance between herself and the man as she could. She couldn't tell how fast she was running, and time seemed to slow down. Suddenly, she tripped over something and hit the ground hard. Pain shot through her leg. Shiori reached down to make sure her ankle wasn't broken, and after satisfying herself that it was just twisted, although badly, she began to crawl until she reached a tree, then pulled herself up by the lowest branches and continued on, hobbling badly. She had no idea where to go, but the silence of the forest, broken only by her captor's continued screams, was unnerving, and she felt like she had to keep moving. She stumbled again and gritted her teeth in agony as she put too much weight on her bad ankle. She started to crawl forward again, looking for a tree to help her back up. She froze after two seconds, scared to death by the slight noise she had just heard. Slowly, carefully, she looked up.
The face she saw looked human enough, but it was framed in what looked silver, and the ears on top of the being's head looked like they should belong to a fox instead.
Overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all, Shiori did the only thing she could do in a situation like this.
She fainted.

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