An Education by UnknownRandomness

Ensure Due Diligence

A/N: Please note- I love Shippo to bits and I would never ever want this to happen, but the idea popped into my head. Please review!

Prompt: Sodden - Heavy with moisture or water.

Word Count: 324

He hadn't been watching him, even though he had agreed to the responsibility. He had failed to do what he had promised to and now there was a mother crying as though her soul was being shorn in half, because of his mistake. 

Shippo stared at the baby boy's bloated face, swollen from drowning in the shallow river his curious toddling feet had led him into, when the kitsune had been too preoccupied with his spells. A mere half hour before now, there had been a laughing, smiling babe playing at his feet, looking at him as though there was no one in the world he adored more. 

The fox trembled. He had agreed to watch the child as his guardian and the mother had gone off to do errands, thinking that it couldn't be too hard- so long as their were no youkai around, they would be fine. Shippo had forgotten how dangerous the natural world could be; Kagome had told him once that it was possible to drown a person in water an inch deep. How could he have forgotten that?

The miko tried to console the mourning woman, but she wouldn't be calmed. He had basically murdered her boy. Tears streaked down his round cheeks, incessantly pouring, until his vest became sodden and his skin began to itch.

The childless mother eventually stopped crying and turned to the small kit that had unintentionally let her son die.

"Leave. Just leave- I don't ever want to see you again!"

Shippo's face scrunched up and he ripped a fistful of fur from his tail, placing it at the woman's feet as a token of his shame before turning and running as though he could escape her judgement.

Kagome called after him, but he kept on going. He would keep running until he collapsed. He had to get away from them, the village, everything.

But what he was really trying to outrun was himself.