Author's Note: Day 2 of the Twelve Days of Witchyness.
Dedication: To my dearest LiaSango, because she's always so awesome and wanted some family time. It might not be exactly what you wanted, but I hope you like it anyways!
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha. I do not profit from this story.
The Magic Well
One-Shot
"Has Mommy ever kissed Santa Claus?" The words were spoken softly, by a childish voice laced with exhaustion.
Inuyasha stopped immediately, letting the blanket drop from his hands as he looked up at his daughter. "What?"
The little girl, who had just turned ten, sighed dramatically. So much like her mother, it was terrifying. Inuyasha wondered how much longer it would take until the two of them ganged up on him. "You know, I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus," she sang, far too off key so that the words slurred a bit too much together. "Underneath the mistletoe last night…" She stopped, grinning.
Startled by the fact his daughter randomly broke out into song – and really, it had to be those damn television shows out now, being all strange and fancy with the singing and dancing and ridiculousness – the half-demon walked around to sit down beside the little girl. "What is all this about Izayoi?"
Izayoi blinked up at him, her golden eyes a startling contrast to the midnight-black hair. "This girl in my class was singing it, saying that her mommy was kissing Santa Claus and then her daddy was mad."
There was a twitch under his left eye. What these children talked about in school, never mind that, what the parents did to their poor children– "No, Mommy has never kissed Santa Claus," he said, reaching out to push her too-long bangs from her face. He kept saying that she needed to get a haircut but his wife merely refused. It was something about prolonging the first haircut for as long as possible. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of a lot of things that went through his wife's mind.
"Promise?" Izayoi whispered, blinking sleepy eyes.
"I promise," Inuyasha replied, smiling down at her. "You can even make Mommy promise too, tomorrow morning."
The little girl just hummed, tugging up the covers a little more. "Can you tell me a story?"
Inuyasha was thankful she wasn't looking at him, because the face he made probably wouldn't please her. "Um, you don't want Mommy to read you a story?" She always did the stories. Inuyasha wasn't exactly the storyteller in the relationship.
"Nope. Just you," Izayoi said, slowly opening her eyes back up and smiling at him. "Please Daddy?"
Oh god. It was like saying no to a kicked puppy, possibly worse. Inuyasha wasn't sure if he had the heart to say no. If he had been smart, he would've just mumbled something about a princess and a knight and got it over with. Instead, he did much worse. "What kind of story?"
Izayoi rolled onto her side, looking up at him with a look he swore meant something sly and conniving was about to happen. It couldn't be possible – his child was not that smart just yet – but, but there seemed to be something there because… "Tell me a story about you and Mommy."
"A…" Inuyasha blinked. "Well, one day we met in a library…"
Wrinkling up her nose, Izayoi gave him a look. "A magic library?"
"What?"
"Mommy always makes them special, with elves and magic faeries and stuff!" Izayoi looked rather impatient now, like she couldn't believe he didn't know how to tell a story properly. So much like her mother.
"Right," Inuyasha grumbled. "So Mommy and I met–"
"Once upon a time…"
The half-demon narrowed his eyes at his daughter. "Hey! Who's telling the story here, huh?" Izayoi grinned at him cheekily. Inuyasha didn't have the heart to complain. "Fine, once upon a time, Princess Mommy popped out of a – magic – well. The well was like a bridge between two worlds: Mommy's world with faeries and dwarves, and Daddy's world with demons and dragons!"
Izayoi looked content now, snuggling underneath and watching him with her big eyes. "Why did Mommy come to your world?"
"Her royal cat, Buyo, was lost, and Mommy found him by the well. When she looked down inside it, she accidentally fell in and then," he sped his hands across in a line, trying to demonstrate something moving at a great speed, "she appeared in my world. When Mommy crawled out, she looked around, wondering where she was."
"Why didn't she just fall back in?"
Inuyasha frowned. He really wasn't cut out for this sort of stuff. "She couldn't because…an evil man sealed the well with his evil powers."
For a moment, Izayoi seemed dubious of such great powers. Still, she waited.
"Mommy was lost, unable to get back home through the well. She didn't know what to do. She wandered for hours, getting even more lost in a forest. It wasn't until she came across a tree–"
"A tree?" There was that dubious face again.
"Yes, a tree with a very handsome prince pinned there. He was put under a spell and in a deep, long sleep. So Mommy looked at the handsome prince and touched the arrow that kept him pinned to the tree. The moment she touched it, the spell broke, and the prince awoke from his slumber. And do you know what happened?"
"What?" Izayoi asked, getting absorbed into the tale he was starting to weave. "What did he do?"
Inuyasha bent down, close enough to whisper in her tiny ear. "He opened his gold eyes – just like yours – and tickled her!" He let his clawed hands lightly rake across her blanket-covered body, getting just enough reaction to make her shriek and giggle with delight.
"Hey, that doesn't sound like sleeping!" a voice yelled playfully from the other room.
Inuyasha chuckled, letting go of Izayoi to press a finger to her lips. "Did you hear that?"
"I think Mommy is going to ruin the story if we're loud," Izayoi replied, looking very serious.
"We'll have to be quiet, okay?"
"Okay Daddy." Izayoi snuggled back down into the blankets, the smile still evident on her face. "Tell me some more, please?"
"Only because you asked so nice," Inuyasha responded, reaching out to hold her small hand. It seemed like only yesterday that he took her back from the hospital, with a tiny baby that didn't do much more than make absurd gurgling noises. "After the handsome price tickled Mommy, she told him about how she couldn't return home to her friends the faeries and elves."
"You said dwarves before," Izayoi pointed out.
"Right, them too. So the handsome prince told the princess Mommy that he would help her defeat the evil man who had trapped her in his world. Together, they travelled through forests and met a lot of people. They met a fighter named Sango and a monk named Miroku–"
"Like Aunt Sango and Uncle Miroku!" Izayoi cheered, instantly putting her little hands over her mouth. "Shh."
"That's right, shh," Inuyasha repeated, smiling down at her. "So together, the prince, Princess Mommy, Sango and Miroku all travelled to defeat the evil, bad guy named Naraku."
"Mr. Naraku next door?" Izayoi narrowed her eyes at him, giving him a funny look.
Of course she would figure out the bad guy was their neighbour. Inuyasha wondered if he was being too obvious about certain things that her ten year-old head shouldn't have to worry about. "Possibly, that's not what's important. What's important is that after years of searching, they finally found the evil man hiding in his lair. He saw them and laughed, mwahahaha, and Princess Mommy was scared. But then the handsome prince protected her, charging after the bad guy with his royal sword."
Izayoi gasped, her fingers tight around the blanket. "Did he get him?"
"Not the first time," Inuyasha conceded. "But then Sango and Miroku rushed in to help, chasing the bad guy around until he was tired from so much running. Then the prince ran up to him, telling him to unseal the well so that Princess Mommy could go home. At first, he didn't want to. He said no and was really mean. Then the princess found a bow and arrow, and aimed it at the bad guy Naraku. She said to him, 'Break the spell on the well!' Naraku was so scared that he did what she asked. 'Never come back here, ever!'the prince said, protecting Mommy from the bad man. Then Naraku the bad guy disappeared, never to be seen again."
"What did Princess Mommy do?" Izayoi asked. "Did she go back home? What about the prince?"
"At first, Mommy did go home," Inuyasha replied, brushing the hair from her face.
"But why? Doesn't she love the prince?"
Inuyasha gave her a small smile. "Princess Mommy went back home to say goodbye to her faerie friends, to let them all know that one day she would come back. She was going back to the handsome prince's world, because she loved him."
"When she came back, did he kiss her? All the good princes kiss the princess at the end."
"Who's telling this story?" Inuyasha demanded again. "When the princess left at first, the prince was really sad. He missed the princess, because she was funny and really nice and had a great laugh."
"She was also beautiful," Izayoi added.
"Very." Inuyasha leaned down closer towards his daughter. "So when he saw that the princess had come back, he ran up to her and hugged her."
"And kissed her." A large yawn stretched across Izayoi's face, despite the smile she had there.
Inuyasha watched as his daughter's eyes slowly slid closed, his hands making circles on her stomach. "They kissed, and they spent the rest of their lives together. A few years later Princess Mommy became pregnant. When their baby girl was born, they named her Izayoi, after the prince's mother." He could tell by her soft, even breaths that she was sleeping, her one hand curled under her chin. Inuyasha smiled down at her, wondering how she had gotten so big, so wise. "And they lived happily ever after."
"The end."
Inuyasha looked up from the face of his daughter, seeing his wife leaning in the doorway. Her chocolate brown eyes were fond, hands drying on a towel from doing the dishes. He smiled at her for only a second. "We had story time."
"I heard," Kagome murmured, letting the towel sit over her shoulder. "It was quite the exciting story, very creative."
"Thank you. It was certainly a lesson." Brushing the bangs from her face once more, Inuyasha leaned down to kiss her forehead softly, careful not to stir her. "I just wonder if she realized the handsome prince was her father."
Kagome laughed quietly, coming by his side to kiss Izayoi's forehead too. "If she figured out the neighbour, I'm pretty sure she figured that out."
"How long were you listening?" Inuyasha asked, frowning at her.
His wife smiled coyly at him, a finger tracing down his chest. "Just the entire time."
"Oh, no big deal or anything." Inuyasha shook his head. "The two of you are going to give me heart aches, I swear."
"We're pretty clever," Kagome whispered.
"Not clever enough, since you ended the story wrong," Inuyasha stated, stepping closer to her so that she was in his arms, no room between them.
Kagome looked up at him, the challenge clear in her eyes. "Oh really? Tell a bedtime story once and suddenly you're the genius?"
"Of course, if you make little errors like that."
"Like what?"
Inuyasha smirked down at his wife, letting his lips fall down to brush hers. "It's not the end. It can't be."
Her back was against the doorframe now, Izayoi sleeping peacefully in the bed close to them. Kagome led them out of the room, letting Inuyasha keep her pressed gently against the wall. "Please tell me you're not going to say something horrific like the beginning."
The smirk spread into an outright grin. "Exactly." And just like in the story, he hugged her.
And he kissed her too.
I renamed it, after staring at it for so long and determining it needed doing.
Feedback is love :)
Another update tomorrow. Oh, what is that? A dragon and a house made for 80's porn? WHAT KIND OF STORIES DO I WRITE?