It's lonely on the road. But that's the way it's supposed to be. That's why I travel it. If I can pretend I'm lonely from a normal cause, if I can tell myself it's only natural....

I don't believe it. But the pretending helps.

Not that I could stay long in any place. No longer than ten, twenty years at the most. Then people start whispering, start wondering. And I move on again.

How long can a man stay sane when he's all alone? Forever alone....

If I could just find another, another like me to join me in my lonely journey, my desperate search.... Maybe then I could give up my search, just for a little while.

I seek death, and death finds me, but it's never the final, irreversible death I desire.

I've been murdered more times than I can count. Have been killed in battle, drowned, crushed by boulders... I've even been stung by a thousand hornets at once.

I seem to be a magnet for disaster.

Each time I can't help but hope that maybe this time... maybe this time something will be different and I'll stay dead.

But it never happens.

I always come back, and when needed, I exact my vengeance, and then....

Then I'm back to the road.

The road, the lonely road, the damned road....

Where I'm nameless, where I'm unknown, where no one questions, no one points, no one tries to destroy the "demon"....

Gods, but I loathe my existence.

*****

Yuta sighed and shifted his pack against his shoulder. It was too light, but he'd take care of that in the next village he hit. He had a small stash of money, earned from his last job, and he was ready for a bath, a night in a bed, and some real food.

However, the closest village was still over a day away.

Well, it gave him something to look forward to.

Meanwhile, the light was fading from the sky and he was growing more tired, not less. Looked like another rough camp tonight. Well, he'd had worse. At least he was in a thinly forested area, where there were a few scattered farmsteads, and little danger of cut-throats or other dangerous types.

Yuta *still* bore a few faint scars from the time he'd tried to camp on a nasty pass, about a week ago. First the bandits had descended and taken his few meager possessions, then they had beat him senseless. Then he assumed they'd thrown his body down a crevasse, though whether he'd still been alive when he'd gone over the edge, he didn't know. All he knew was that he'd awakened at the foot of a high cliff, broken and bloodied. It had taken a day before he was healed enough to climb out.

No, there was really nothing to complain about here.

He set up camp with a mindless familiarity. How many times had he done this before? It was too disheartening to even consider.

The country around him was green with the new growth of spring, so he dared to risk a small fire to roast the last of his meat over. Salted fish, but better than nothing.

He gnawed on a hard roll as he listened to the fish sizzle. It was quiet, only a few singing insects and the distant chorus of tree frogs, interspersed occasionally with the cry of a night bird or the rustle of something small in the bushes.

It was quiet, cool, peaceful....

Lonely.

Yuta swallowed hard as a lump of bread stuck in his throat, not even noticing as his fish began to burn.

He was so tired of being lonely....

"WAAAAAH!!" Suddenly the calm was broken as a loud scream sounded and a girl fell out of the sky and landed on him. "OOF!"

Yuta blinked into a pair of slightly dazed, clear violet eyes, trying to catch his breath. The girl sitting on his chest was tiny, but she'd landed with a great deal of force. Where had she come from anyway?!

"Nani shugure?!" he finally managed to snap, too sore to be polite.

"Acha!" The tiny girl jumped off of him, her eyes huge, her hands clapped over her mouth. "Gomen nasai, onegai! I'm sooooo sorry!" She looked near tears, and Yuta felt a little bad, though he was still completely confused.

"Daijoubu." He sat up, wincing and rubbing his chest, trying not to scowl. "What... just happened?" he asked cautiously.

The tiny girl sniffled. "I fell off," she wailed, then clapped her hands over her face, weeping hopelessly.

"Eh?" Yuta blinked, looking at her more carefully. What in the hell was a tiny little thing like this doing alone in this forest? She couldn't be more than twelve, probably closer to ten, and that pink kimono was not exactly common attire around here. Even more unusual was the pale blue color of her hair. He'd seen a few people with brown hair in his travels, and one or two red-heads, and he'd even seen a golden-haired gaijin once, but never *blue*!

She was cute though.

"Oi, doshita no?" he queried, slightly concerned.

"Ara!" Suddenly the girl jerked her head up, shock on her pretty round face. "You can see me?!"

Yuta blinked. Obviously the child was insane. Perhaps she was the daughter of a noble who'd escaped her servants and wandered off. That might explain the fine clothing and her cleanliness. As for the hair....

"Hai...."

She blinked a few times, then reached out and grabbed his face, her small hands warm against his cheeks. "Why can you see me? Did I mess up again?" She gazed long and deeply into his eyes. Yuta was too startled by her strange behavior to do anything but stare back.

"Eep!" The girl suddenly jumped away, clapping her hands over her mouth again, a distraught expression on her face.

"Nani?" Yuta frowned. He was beginning to serious worry about this girl. Not that she could do him any harm, but there was obviously something not right with her. "Look, kodomo, where are your parents? Do you need me to help you find your way home?"

She shook her head wordlessly, then reached forward and wrapped her arms around Yuta's shoulders, pulling his head to rest against her flat chest. "Gomen ne..." she whispered softly, stroking his ponytail. "I wish I could help you...."

"Nani?" He didn't try to pull away, as he didn't want to risk harming the girl, and she didn't seem in any hurry to let him go.

There was something comforting about being held here, actually. She smelled sweet, comforting, though he couldn't place the scent, and the silk of her kimono was soft beneath his cheek. Somehow she was radiating peace. The pain in his chest that never went away, the lump of loneliness that had settled in the center of his soul, eased a little. For some reason he felt as though he was... where he belonged....

The tiny girl kissed the top of Yuta's head and continued to hold him until he drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep. It was the closest she could get to what he really desired....

Once she was sure he would not waken, she gently lowered him to the ground, then dug his blanket from his pack, covering him with it, and placing a folded tunic under his head as a pillow.

"Gomen nasai," she whispered, kneeling and brushing his bangs back from his brow. "I wish I could take you with me, as you wish, but Enma Diaho-sama would be sooooo angry!"

She bent and kissed his cheek softly, then stood and called up an oar out of thin air. Giving it a nasty glare, she climbed awkwardly aboard. "Yosh'! Let's make it work this time!" she said with determination, then nearly teetered off the other side. "Acha!"

Eventually getting her equilibrium, she urged the oar skywards. But first she paused for one last look at the still figure sleeping next to the dead campfire.

"Matte ja ne, Yuta-kun," she whispered, her eyes dark and glistening with barely restrained tears. "It won't be for a long, long time, but I'll come back and get you. I swear it."

And one sad little spirit guide wavered away into the night sky, clinging desperately to her oar.

Author's Note:
I played around with Botan's age in this fic - I'm sure she's WAY older than four hundred or so (since Yuta is 500 in the early nineties). But it was too cute to resist. Also, Yuta doesn't really want to DIE, he just wants to be able to grow old. But, once again, I couldn't resist. ^_^;; Oh well. It was fun to write this! ^_^

~Kuwabara no Miko

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