Chapter Text
She is eight years old and going back to the life she swore off. Back to a human village. She would never had agreed, had her lord not insisted it was for the best. It would only be for a little while, he assured her, until she was old enough to make an informed choice.
She is eleven years old and her childhood is starting to slip away. The days of running barefoot through flowery meadows are becoming distant memories as the human world engulfs her. She learns from the old priestess of herbs for healing, how to make salves and medicines. She learns to live within walls and to care for herself beyond foraging the woods and streams. There is no medicine to cure the ache in her heart, though, the one that tears a little wider every time he leaves.
She is fourteen years old and one night when the moon is full her childhood leaves forever. She wakes from a dream of flying through the clouds with demons to find blood soaking through her bedclothes. She is a woman now. She sits outside and stares at the moon and wonders if now he will come back for her.
She is sixteen years old and aware of what the villagers whisper about her. They never dare in front of the Lady Kaede, but she still hears them. The other young women in the village glare over her collection of kimonos, finer than anything they’ll ever wear in their lives. Her lord told her she has no need to wear peasant garb, even if she lives among them.
But the adults talk of other things: her childhood with demons as companions, particularly the silver-haired one that comes to visit. They are used to him now, yet still understandably wary. Centuries of animosity between their species does not go away in a night, or even a thousand nights. His visits were innocent enough when she was a child, but since she became a woman, her reputation changed. After all, what else could a demon possibly want with a beautiful young woman?