I do not own InuYasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi

Pickled

It was a beautiful, hot day, but one with a nice breeze, too hot to work inside. Kagome knelt outside of her small house, in the dappled shade of nearby trees, a small table in front of her.

Reaching into the basket next to her, she picked up a turnip and deftly peeled and sliced it, then did the same with a cucumber.

InuYasha walked up the path."Making pickles?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I thought you were going hunting." She measured salt into the pickling tub.

"Too hot," he said, sitting down near her. "I helped Miroku with patching the roof on his chapel." He pulled off his suikan and rolled it into a pillow.

"That sounds hot, too," she said. She layered some of the vegetables in the tub and added more salt.

"It was, let me tell you," he said, laying back on the ground, his head pillowed on his jacket and the palms of his hands. "But I figure having Kwannon happy with me can't be a bad thing." For a moment he closed his eyes, and listened to his wife add another layer of vegetables to the pickle tub.

"Hope you aren't trying out that recipe for pickles Sango made the other day," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "I thought you liked them."

"They were kind of spicy or something. Reminded me of your mother's curry," he replied. "I didn't want to say anything, so I just ate them."

"Ah," said Kagome, moving the chili pods she had on the table and hiding them under some turnip greens. "Nope, I'll just season these with some shiso."

"Good," he said, then fell asleep in the warm afternoon enjoying the shade.

A/N Kwannon is the prayed to as the bodhisattva of mercy, and is one of the most popular of Buddhist saints.