This story was removed from the site because I didn't have a rating on it so I'm reposting it.
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I wrote it in a hurry because I was trying to make Skye's weekly challenge deadline which was the next day after I found it around 2 in the afternoon.
Word prompt: Ink
Word count: Minimum 1000 words
Never seen Ink Like This Before?
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Even though Sesshoumaru had left his lands to find a way to defeat the evil half demon Naraku as the Western Daiyokai Lord he still had to perform his royal duties.
That very sadly for him still included a lot of paper work which was his least favorite part. He could deal with the defending the innocent part and killing the bad guys. But force him to sit still and read and write on issues he cared nothing about personally and his mood immediately soured.
No matter where he was. Once a week a messenger from the palace would somehow manage to find him and his pack in the middle of nowhere to deliver all the important official documents that had been piling up on his desk in the past week.
Memo’s on things that needed his attention and things that needed to be signed off on.
He always dreaded Monday’s for that was the day the messenger would most often arrive making him have to stop in what he was previously doing and having to devote most of the day to finish said paperwork before the messenger returned to retrieve the documents early the next morning.
Sesshoumaru guessed it was easier than always having to return back to the palace to do it. Saving him a lot of time but it was harder for him to complete without the privacy of his office with a desk to write on.
In the wild he had to resort to his leg also the writing implements in that time period weren’t as easy to use.
It had become a larger problem lately after he had collaborated with Inuyasha in the fight against Naraku merging his small pack to join his brothers strange grouping of people. They where all very nosy people who seemed to need to know what he was up to all the time and asked a lot of questions. He liked to do his paper work in silence.
The first time the messenger had come Inuyasha had tried to kill him thinking they were under attack for their jewel shards. Going for the ‘kill now ask questions later’ root. Luckily the Miko managed to stop his brother before Sesshoumaru had to look for another messenger with the ‘sit’ command.
It was a lot simpler before for he was left in peace to finish his work. Jaken knew never to disturb him while in the middle of it unless he wanted a nice kick or a precisely aimed rock at his head and Uh-Un was a dragon who had no care to.
Even after the inquisitive Rin had started to follow him and joined his pack only to regain the ability to talk. She never tried to question him again on what he was doing after that one time near the beginning. He managed to silence her with a well placed saying of her name. “Rin”.
He guessed she recognized the tone in his voice and decided it was none off her business after that and just went on to pick some flowers. The humans in his brothers group didn’t get the message when he tried to send them away many times while the small fox kit avoided him.
Shippo knew that Sesshoumaru was related to Inuyasha so he probably had the same short temper but he’d have no safety net from the Miko like he did with the half demon. Usually if Inuyasha picked on him with one whine of displeasure Kagome would reprimand him with a firm ‘sit‘.
***
Sesshoumaru stopped in his tracks and winced when he could feel the yokai of his messenger coming towards them.
“Fuck not again? Now we‘ll have to stop.” Inuyasha hated this as much as his older brother did but for different reasons. He had to wait around for the demon lord to finish while they could be out searching for the jewel shards.
“Calm down Inuyasha we all needed a break anyways. I‘ll set up camp.” Kagome could tell by the way Inuyasha said it and the day of the week why he was pissed.
They all covered their eyes as the messenger kicked up the dust as he slid to a halt in front of Sesshoumaru whose eyes widened when he took in how large the pile was this time around. It towered over the messengers head as he carried it in his arms.
‘How could this much paperwork possibly accumulate? Its only been a week since I did it last.’ His previously soured mood darkened in the dreading thought of having to complete it all.
He signaled for the messenger to follow him to find a nice quit spot to work with almost a defeated stance in his walk. He found a small clearing not to far away.
“You can put it down over there.” Sesshoumaru commanded as he pointed out a spot under a tree. The messenger put down the large pile and gave him his writing utensils before bidding adieu.
As soon as the messenger was out of his senses range Sesshoumaru let out a long sigh as he looked at the large pile left in his wake. As long as no one was around to see it was ok to let off a little show of emotion.
‘Now lets see what I have here.’ Sesshoumaru grabbed the first sheet off the pile as he sat down on the ground beside it. Apparently the reason for most of the paper work was human villages were being attached on the eastern border. He started to sort out the large pile into many smaller ones based on importance and topic.
He froze when he reached the middle of the pile instead of another document there was an invitation.
It was from his most hated adversary, well it was from the Eastern lord so you could say he was his most hated friends. Can you have a friend and hate them at the same time?
He’d known the other daiyokai since his father started bringing him to war meetings with him. A lot of the time they were asked to leave so their fathers could talk alone leaving him in the company of the other young lord to be.
As they grew playtime turned into sparring sessions. They both became very competitive with each other always trying to out do the other even now.
It was probably for another one of his horrid balls that he would be forced to attend as his duty as the Western lord. Only to be passed around like a piece of fresh meat as the demonesses of the court fawned over him. He read the details and pulled out a fresh sheet of mulberry paper to write his response.
When Sesshoumaru was studying to become a lord calligraphy was a huge part of his studies. The ink brush allowed variation in thickness of the curve of the line and every kanji character could be written in eight strokes or less.
One of the main influences of Japanese calligraphy was Zen thought because the brush strokes can’t be corrected and even a lack of confidence will show up in the piece. The brush writes a statement about the calligrapher at a moment in time.
At this moment Sesshoumaru was having a very hard time clearing his mind and instead of stressing his connection with the spiritual he was more concentrated on the physical as his hands tightened.
As his brush flew across the paper he knew it had to have a strong form but when he actually leaned back to look at it his hand looked shaky and he’d smudged some of the ink with the tip of his finger.
Sesshoumaru let out a growl of frustration as he crumbled up the page and melted it with his poison claws.
He was just about to grab another sheet to start anew when Rin and Shippo came jumping out of the bushes not noticing he was even there and continued playing their game of tag.
As Rin came whipping by him she managed to avoid his materials but when Shippo jumped to try and catch her he knocked over Sesshoumaru’s one and only ink well which without he wouldn’t be able to finish his work.
Shippo didn’t notice anything amiss until he wasn’t moving forward any more and he could see Rin’s horrified face. He was confused until he felt the spike of a powerful yokai.
He looked back only to see the angry face of one ticked off demon lord who had a hold on his tail.
Shippo looked around in a panic for the reason for this until he noticed he was standing in something wet. He lifted up one foot to see what looked like black ink then he realized what must have happened.
Kagome had warned them to stay clear of Sesshoumaru because he had a lot of paper work to do and wasn’t in the best of moods right now. They’d been having so much fun that they didn’t realize what direction they were going in.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I can get you some more.” Shippo covered his head waiting for the hits he usually received from Inuyasha but instead felt himself get lifted up by his tail to be brought face to face with the demon lord.
“How do you purpose to get some more?” Sesshoumaru raised one eyebrow.
“If you just let me go I’ll get some and return it to you.” Sesshoumaru dropped the fox kit making a gesture with his head to hurry it up and Shippo waited no time before dashing away to do as he promised.
As they were in the middle of nowhere Shippo’s only hope was Kagome’s big yellow backpack. He climbed up the side and started to sniff around. He picked up the first thing that smelled like the ink without even checking what it actually was for he was panicking for his life to find a solution.
Shippo dashed back as fast as he could not wanting to anger the impatient demon lord any more. He arrived out of breath and tried to get out a message. “I got it.” He held up the bottle to Sesshoumaru who took the item to examine it in question.
He’d never seen an ink well that looked like this before. The bottle was a short cylinder with a smaller longer black lid at the top. The substance inside had a very similar smell but instead of being black it was instead a deep red colour.
As his curiosity got the best of him Sesshoumaru unscrewed the lid and took a sniff of it. Before he knew it his world was going black as the smell was to strong and was over powering his sharp senses.
The last thing he heard before the world went completely black was Rin running and yelling for the Miko for help.
“Lady Kagome, something wrong with my lord Sesshoumaru!”
***
The first image Sesshoumaru woke up to was the Miko’s face very close to his own. He tried to move his head as far away back from her own in shock.
“Good your finally awake. You really worried Rin. I tried to convince her that you’ll be just fine but she’s been in hysterics ever since so I sent her and Shippo with Sango to have a bath. Hopefully she’ll calm down.” As Sesshoumaru had just woken up from a fainting spell he didn’t catch anything the Miko just said but just nodded his head anyway.
“What happened?” Sesshoumaru’s head felt all fuzzy and he couldn’t remember how he got here.
“Shippo told me every thing that happened. He grabbed my nail polish thinking it was ink. I don’t know why he didn’t just ask me. Here.” Sesshoumaru took the item offered him and examined it carefully keeping his nose far away from it learning from his mistake of last time.
It was a long metal stick with a hole on one end and a metal bar sticking out the other end. He clicked it and a point came out the other end. He took a slight sniff and realized that the metal stick was hollow and the interior was filled with ink.
He took the pointed end and pressed it to a piece of paper as an experiment to answer his suspicion. When he got a nice clear black line he could’ve hugged the Miko.
“Are you crying?” Kagome asked in complete shock as she saw a tear fall from one of the demon lord’s eyes. It’s just a ball point pen so Kagome didn’t see the big deal about it but Sesshoumaru had to live for centuries with only the use of the messy brush so the invention of the modern pen was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. As for the cryiny it'd been a long week...