The Snow Angel by SunsetMiko

The Savior

Chapter 4 - The Savior *Hero* (Skye's Weekly Challenges)

Sesshoumaru looked up at her in awe. He recognized the female the second she unburied his face, but he never paid much attention to her before. She was a nuisance while he battled Inuyasha, but not a true opponent, so she didn't warrant his time. Now, however, he couldn't believe how kind she was being. Most humans, he assumed, would have ignored his whimpering. If they had bothered to investigate, when they found him in such a state, they would have left him to die rather than attempt to help him. This woman, she was an angel, his savior. If she did nothing else for him, she still had done enough to earn a life debt.

He didn't doubt that when Inuyasha returned, he would be left to his own devices, but at least he was no longer trapped and buried. He could, perhaps, find shelter on his own. Food, on the other hand, was a problem.

It had been an incredibly difficult two weeks for the taiyoukai turned mortal dog. At first, he had ignored the cold. His fur was enough to keep him reasonably warm. He had immediately searched out some kind of shelter, but everything he came across was occupied by some other animal, all of them stronger than he was. Yes, he was a large dog, but he had never fought in this form before. It wasn't the same as his true form, when he could fly and drool acid. He was just a mortal dog with no idea how to survive.

He tried to hunt, but all the small game he found easily outran him.  His bulk slowed him down, though as the days passed, he felt himself growing thinner. Starvation didn't just cause him to lose weight, however. It also made him weaker by the day. Every day that he did not successfully find food made it that much harder to do so the next. He had tried everything, even scavenging, but to no avail. He attempted to fill his stomach with tree bark, but all that did was make him sick.

Finally, he had grown desperate. He no longer evaluated whether he could best an animal in battle. He simply attacked anything he could find. It was a boar that got him. It was larger than he was and obviously well fed. The boar had massive bulk behind its attacks, and it easily caused him serious injury. Sesshoumaru had been forced to run for his life, and that was how he ended up in the situation the miko found him in.

Tsukiko had left the rope around his neck, and the long end dragged along behind him. Most of the time it was easy to ignore, but sometimes it would snag on something as he passed, so he had learned to be careful where he walked. While trying to escape the boar, however, he hadn't the time to do so. As he ran, the end of the rope became wedged between two large stones. It had stopped with such a jerk that it flipped him over. He ended up on his back, his head spinning from the impact with the frozen ground.

It took everything he had to climb to his feet.,  He had to squirm around on the ground until his body was closer to the end of the stuck rope before he could rise. He tried everything to get the rope unstuck, pulling in every direction, hoping to tug it loose. He even tried to chew through it, but he was unsuccessful. When the snow had begun to fall heavily a few days ago, he had no other option but to lay down and die. If the miko hadn't found him, he would have, too. He was weak from hunger. His body ached from his injuries, and he was chilled to the bone. He wouldn't have made it another day.

 

INUYASHA © Rumiko Takahashi/Shogakukan • Yomiuri TV • Sunrise 2000
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