Silk frowned as she watched the "girl" staring at her from across the fire. Even in this disguise, she was certainly not human. The girl had pale silver hair, though considering her own dark blue hair that was a minor concern. The hair contrasted with the dusky grey skin the creature had. Her face was attentive as she watched Silk prepare her spell materia for the day. She was learning fast, as the current disguise she wore proved. Silk wondered how long it would be before she regretted leaving the creature alive rather than killing it.
Silk coughed slightly and frowned after gaining control of herself. That cough was becoming more insistent. She almost immediately noted Silk watching her, probably wondering if that sound had been another word. Silk corrected that as she looked to the girl and saw a hint of worry in her eyes. She frowned suspiciously and twisted her arm about.
"Mistress good?" she asked.
"I'm fine," Silk said angrily, though she didn't quite agree, most of her injuries had healed well enough, but there was a long, angry red gash running the length of her arm.
"Is hurt?" the girl asked, apparently not hearing the denial. She stood up and started to cross the camp site toward Silk.
"Stop!" Silk snapped jabbing a finger towards the girl. The dark girl stopped and looked to her uncertainly before sitting down again as Silk gestured at her. She stared at Silk, fidgetting nervously, and a worried expression plane on her face. Silk didn't trust any of it, the girl's species had a rather well deserved reputation for deceipt and destruction.
"Not let me help?" the girl asked. Her language skills were improving daily, both Japanese and Mandarin, in no time at all she'd be saying complete sentences. She was becoming slightly dangerous.
"You're just like a glob of tar," Silk said irritably. "Almost as black and just as sticky."
"The cough is getting worse, Mistress," Tarre said. She had settled on the English version of the word for the creature's name. A short, harsh word that could quite easily be converted into something of a swear word. Silk wasn't pronouncing it quite right, but she didn't care.
"I can tell that," Silk said. She'd given up on reaching a city big enough to have a hospital that could treat her. Her home village was closer anyway, they would have healers to handle this disease. Her own meager herbalist skills and healercraft were having little more than a delaying effect on the demonic disease.
A particularly heavy series of coughs started to drive the woman to her knees, but Tar was there to hold her quickly.
"Mistress," Tarre said hopefully. "I can carry you where you want to go."
"No!" Silk said impatiently after a moment's consideration. "I'll walk." Another benefit, the village elders would probably recognize and kill Tar on sight, relieving her of the problem of deciding what to do with her.
The dark-skinned girl was hovering ever close to Silk as they walked on. Tarre wasn't certain what to do, the strong and powerful woman that had rescued her from those little green monsters no longer looked so strong and powerful. She was thin, leaning on a make-shift staff she had acquired, and wracked by painful sounding coughs. Her right arm hung weakly at her side, the veins visible with whatever poison or disease ran through her body. Every time Tarre suggested helping her, the Mistress told her not to.
She was considering this when Silk wearily let herself down to the ground. Tar looked around, confused, the sun was still up and yet the Mistress was stopping? This hadn't happened before.
"Mistress?" Silk asked, confused. The woman leaned against a rock and concentrated on breathing deeply.
"I just need to rest a moment, Tarre," Silk said wearily. "We'll get back to walking in a few minutes." Tar sat and watched, the minutes stretched into an hour and Silk still hadn't woken up. She knew that the Mistress was in a hurry to get somewhere East, and that she needed to get there in time that whoever was there could help her. Sleeping like this was the last thing the Mistress needed.
"Wha..." Silk blinked weakly before coughing a little. She couldn't figure out at first why it seemed that she was moving despite having just woke up. Then she realized that someone was carrying her. Her eyes widened and she gasped as she realized who that had to be.
"Mistress!" Tarre's voice called out cheerfully upon realizing that Silk was awake. She didn't stop moving forward.
"What are you doing?" Silk asked, too tired and weak to put much of any emotion into it.
"I...I know you said not to carry you mistress," Tarre said hesitantly, still moving forward. "B...but, you said you didn't have much time. You are too big for me to carry while flying, Mistress, and I couldn't hold you like that anyway." The girl sounded very sorrowful for the apparent failure.
The girl, creature, she had to keep reminding herself of that, was actually carrying her in approximately the right direction. She hadn't tried to take Silk out somewhere and devour her while she was unconscious. She frowned and considered still telling Tar to set her down, but her beleagured body fought against that notion, and she let herself be carried further.
"Mistress?" Tarre asked. Her voice faded back out as Silk went back to sleep.
"The cough is getting better, Mistress," Tarre said cheerily as she handed the herbal tea to Silk. Now that Silk let her do a number of things, mostly things that Silk was having too much trouble doing herself, she dived into proving herself useful. For the last three weeks of their journey, Silk didn't have the heart to explain why the cough was going away as she slowly drank the tea. She didn't want to say it outloud for her own benefit to a degree, but she wasn't coughing anymore because her body was giving out.
I'm not going to make it to the village, Silk though sadly. They couldn't help me now anyway. She glanced unhappily up at the girl that was helping her drink.
The girl hadn't shown much more magical aptitude than the ability to take this strange disguise. Silk had at first assumed that she was hiding her power, but realized now that the girl was just a few decades too young to develop the magic that her kind normally were considered to have. She just had a few basic abilities like that shapechanging ability. And her fighting skill was mostly instinctual supplemented by what she had learned travelling with Silk these last two months. She wasn't a skilled fighter, though she was more than dangerous enough around normal animals and, Silk assumed, about ninety percent of the human population.
"I want you to stop calling me Mistress," Silk said. Tar looked as if she had been slapped.
"But..." Tarre started. Silk raised a hand, her left hand, the right was gone. Tarre had smelled the gangrene a week before, and Silk, realizing what the girl had detected from the description of the smell, told her to cut the arm off. She probably should have done that the moment she saw the demon claw mark had been infected, but she had thought she could make it to help and it wouldn't be necessary.
"You've been loyal and caring of me all this time," Silk said. "I should have accepted your offer to carry me the first time."
"But, it wouldn't have worked," Tarre said. "I could carry the weight, but my wings..." Silk interrupted her again with the effort of raising a hand.
"I should have accepted the offer at least," Silk said. "I'll not continue to treat you with scorn over this. Quickly, I need you to find my three things."
"Hai," Tarre said quickly, but nervously. She had a task now, but something in her "Mistress's" tone bothered her. Silk listed off three herbs and described them for Tarre thoroughly before finally sending the girl onto her task. It wouldn't take her more than three hours to collect everything she asked for, they were common herbs in the area, but it would give Silk the time do to what she needed to do.
She sat up with difficulty and after some time of painfully digging through her pack had retrieved her pen and ink. Gripping the pen even seemed to bring flaming pain to Silk's hand, but she had to get through this.
"What do you need these herbs for, Mistress?" Tarre asked as she returned.
"They make a wonderful tasting tea," Silk said weakly with a smirk.
"Mistress?" Tarre said, not having a well-developed sense of humor yet. She was starting to worry that the woman's mind was slipping.
"No more of that," Silk repeated. "I already told you no more of that."
"But..." Tarre repeated. Silk made another effort to sit up, aided by Tarre as she did so. Silk accepted the help and then gestured toward the ground in front of her. Tarre immediately kneeled down in front of her
"Tarre," Silk said weakly, but ritualistically. "I adopt you as my daughter." She leaned down to kiss the surprised girl's forehead. She struggled to straighten up again, silently commanding Tarre to remain where she was. "Tarre, you may refer to me as 'Mother.'"
"Hai," Tarre said quietly.
"Daughter," Silk said quietly. "I need help lying back down now." Instantly Tarre was at her side to help ease her down to a lying position. "Make yourself some tea, I think I'll just go to sleep now. Tomorrow morning I'll tell you where we'll be going."
"Hai, Mi...Mother," Tarre said. She went to prepare the herbs she had collected and wondered why her...Mother had sent her away.
"You're going to want to avoid going any further this way," Silk said after having what resembled breakfast, a cup of medicinal tea.
"But," Tarre pointed ineffectually in the direction they had been going.
"I won't be in condition to lead you safely in that way," Silk said. She took a breath and continued. "My people will kill you on sight if I am not able to tell them otherwise, and the Phoenix People the same, more so if I'm with you. Those are the kindest options. The Musk are that way, and you would be a great prize to them, daughter." She stroked Tarre's cheek. "You are too weak to fight even their weakest warriors. You may as well go back to those goblins if that happens." Tarre paled as much as possible with her near-black skin.
"But," Tarre said. "But...who is going to help you?"
"I won't need it much past sunset tonight," Silk said sadly, hoping Tarre missed the implication.
"That's...good, Mother," Tarre said, trying to smile. "Where are we going to go?"
"You'll fly North," Silk said quietly. "Fly by night, never stay in your true form except when flying."
"Hai," Tarre said, noting the urgency in that command.
"When you have traveled for about two days," Silk continued. "Turn back again East and seek Japan. You've seen my map, you know where to look. Once there, never take your true form again unless it is absolutely necessary."
"Hai, Mother," Tarre said. "But I can't carry you when I fly."
"I'll be a lot smaller when you begin this journey," Silk said. Tarre blinked in confusion. "Go to Tokyo and find my husband and your sisters, the Tendo Dojo in Nerima, bring me to them and give them this letter." She indicated the paper on top of her pack.
"Hai," Tarre said. She really didn't like the sound of any of this.
"Tarre," Silk said hesitantly. She sat up and turned to face the West and stayed seated. "When the sunsets...this will be over, the pain will be finished. When that is done, there is an urn in my pack. I wish my ashes to be placed inside." Tarre gasped and looked to Silk stricken.
"Y...you," Tarre whimpered.
"I was already dying when I rescued you," Silk sighed. "There is nothing to stop it now. Just help me to watch the sun set, please?" Tarre sat on her knees next to Silk crying freely, but she nodded her head.
Soun had felt a sense of dread and loss for the last few weeks. He suspected why, but hoped against hope that he was wrong. That sense of loss, however, spiked as he opened the door to find a small and slim, grey-skinned girl with silver hair standing outside his door and clutching a simple clay urn that he recognized as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
"Soun Tendo?" the girl asked tentatively. Soun grasped the doorframe to steady himself as he nodded. The girl reverentially presented him with the urn and a letter before kneeling down in front of him and bending her face to the ground.
"My Love,
I am sorry that I deceived you. I have robbed our daughters of their mother and you of your wife. All for the sake of a memory of glory days.
I was not visiting family. I had a dream about a demon and I felt I needed to face it alone. I won the battle, and killed the demon, but it left a disease or poison that is killing me.
Not much more strength, this hurts to write. The girl who should be with this note, I have adopted her as my daughter. Tarre is dark skinned, light-haired, not human. I hope the girls will accept a fourth sister and you a fourth daughter in place of a wife and mother. I hope you do, she has earned a family.
Silk"
Soun collapsed to the ground crying with the strange girl.
Kasumi, ten years old, walked timidly around the corner to see her father crying on the ground next to some white-haired woman.
"Father?" she asked, frightened. "What's wrong?"