Sesshomaru should have realized what was happening before it was too late.

She's a witch, was the only thought that registered before she blasted him with what?- he will never know. She was gone the second she did it and whatever witchcraft she used on him was powerful enough on him, rendering him a few minutes motionless on the ground. The second he realized he couldn't move he panicked. Unless she was a demon witch- which he already discarded- that human woman had used a blood spell. He only heard of these blood spells from his mother- her warnings to stay away from them and the persons willing them- though never would he imagine he would cross roads with a witch no less that he would be stricken with one of these spells.

After seven minutes feeling started Sesshomaru's body and though weak and with trembling knees he will himself up. He had been halfway near Rin's village. He was supposed to visit her today and she was expecting him. Surely she would notice that he was late, would know something was wrong. When he reached her she would make old priestess Kaede cure him of whatever was wrong with him.

As he practically dragged his legs towards the direction of the village, in plain sight for the witch to return and finish the job, Sesshomaru tried to assemble all the details that put him in this predicament in the first place.

He had her new kimono in his hands, soft and expensive. It was a gift to compensate his nine month absence. When she saw him she would first look him in the eyes-hurt, a thousand things already about to burst through her mouth in her usual babble- but then she would notice the kimono majestically resting in his hands and she would forget about those nine months completely. His transgression none existent. It would mean nothing and he would go on normally about his day just as so.

"Oh, that is some exquisite material," came a voice just ahead.

Sesshomaru first tensed, before he discarded the woman none threatening. Human.

He didn't answer instead he tsked and pretended he hadn't heard or noticed her.

The woman tried again. "Would you spare some coins for this traveling wanderer, my lord?"

Finally, Sesshomaru fixated his stare on her, cold and disdainful. "I don't do any charity work towards beggars of your kind."

She didn't seem insulted- the opposite, she seemed amused. This woke his senses to some level of alertness but never taken fully serious. Little were the humans that dared to be funny with him, most dead before they tried to be clever with him.

He instinctively reached for his sword.

The woman most have noticed because her face fell. She raised her arms in defense, a sheepish look taken over her features. "No need for that, my lord. I understand, I'll leave you be."

As he passed her he kept his hand near his sword the other tightly gripping the kimono just in case she tried to snatch it (though if she did her fingers would be laying on the ground the next second) that's when he noticed how her expression darken- disdainful.

"Pathetic human." He said.

And he should have kept his mouth shut.

"Someone should change that awful ugly monstrosity you keep yourself alive with," she said.

Before he could even behead her for her comment he was laying on the ground.

Sesshomaru doesn't know how he did it but he did and in time before it turned too dark outside. He was just breaking through a line of trees when out came a voice followed by a single silhouette calling "My lord! My Lord I was so worried." When she reached him he could partially see the twinkle of her eyes and he was aroused by a feeling similar to dying.

"Rin-" he said his tongue too heavy to explain that he need help.

"Is this for me?" Rin's hand quickly reached out towards the kimono he hadn't even realized he was still gripping tightly. As if she knew something was wrong she looked up at him, eyes concern squinting through the darkness, mouth pursing the way it does when she concentrates. "Are you alright, Sesshomaru?"

He had to blink at her question his vision starting to fail, hand leaning on a nearby tree. He saw things in blurs and swirls as Rin laid a hand sportingly on his shoulder. "I… I-" he began and yet again couldn't finish, feeling something rise in his throat.

He heard her gasp. "Your eyes- they're –they're-"

Sesshomaru coughed-gagged- gasped- blood. Almost embarrassed (though he felt too awful to care) he looked at his hands, at Rin and both of their clothes covered-ruined with his blood. His knees started to tremble again and he cursed himself for his lack of equilibrium. To his disdain he felt Rin's hand on his chest keeping him up, ignoring everything as if it were the usual to her every day. At least, he thought, she forgot about the nine months.

"What happened?" She almost shouted, making his ears ring. His head spun.

He could only get out "witch" before he fell on her.

It was like his body was dead but his mind was still alive. And while his thoughts floated on the blackness of his conscience they tried to figure out what really happen. When he finally woke up her words still rang in his ears as if the witch were there repeating it herself. Someone should change that awful ugly monstrosity you keep yourself alive with.

He shot up first, his body almost groaning in the process, and he felt like returning to his original position. But being the arrogant demon that he was he kept himself upright, assembling yet again the situation he found himself in.

He was inside one of those puny human huts- no, Rin's, it was her home. The place practically reeked of her scent, he was probably even laying in her cot. That instinctively made him look down, making him notice that his armor, swords and clothes were gone, replaced by some human garment- too cheep for his skin.

What happened?

Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming from outside the curtain that served as a door.

Before her scent registered she was standing there and before he could understand what was happening she had her arms around his neck in an embrace.

Sesshomaru feared he might have been suffering a stroke by the impact of what she had done but once she removed herself he still felt his heart beating to oblivion.

"What happen?" he tried to keep the discomfort about everything-from the pain in his body, the clothes, the hut, the witch- from his voice as he asked.

Rin sat down to look directly at him, something in his face catching her attention. She stared at him intently and almost distractedly she said, "I don't know, you collapsed before you could explain. Kaede said you were poisoned. She said it seemed to her like it was witchcraft."

Sesshomaru looked at his hands, picturing the blood from last night or nights ago,(he couldn't tell, really, seeing how the stiffness in his body was hard to identify as one or the other). At that a word came to mind, blood spell. He had to talk with priestess Kaede, she seemed most likely to have the answer to all his questions.

When he looked up he saw that Rin was still staring at him, intensely. "What is it?"

Rin looked down for a second, almost embarrassed, then she looked up again, whispering, "Your eyes… they're brown."

Sesshomaru tried to concentrate as he laid under a shade, eyes closed, meditating. Heart. They had deciphered that much after they resorted to their only means of information. Kaede.

"She be talkin' about ye heart," Keade said, the woman so old now that her eyes appeared closed under all those wrinkles. "What else can keep ye alive?"

Sesshomaru eyes furrowed, trying to control a list of curse words trying to file out of his mouth. He was not about to become his brother, losing his temper over foolish things. Of course all that that witch did to him was foolish. He felt quite the same, nothing was out of place that he could feel. He didn't feel weak or sick. Maybe she just had intended an insult and away out of his wrath, paralyzing him as means of escape. But then there was the problem with his eyes.

"Though why ye eyes changed color I can't tell," Kaede continued as if reading both of their minds. Rin besides him was quiet, keeping to herself since they arrived at the priestess's house. As if sensing him she turned to him, offered a small smile and pat him on the shoulder. After her hand just rested there, limp.

"Ye really can't recall what she said exactly?" Sesshomaru shook his head at Keade's question, trying to concentrate above the scorching feeling he had at Rin's hand on his shoulder. "Only then we could really figure out what bewitchment she used." But of course he already had an idea what that witch did to him- making him shorten the truth for the sake of his own reputation. If he told her that he knew for certain that it was a blood spell then the miko would ask him how so. And he had to explain that blood spells (as his mother had explain once one after noon not only affected humans but demons) were used for two purposes. One: rendering a person of their power whether it be invisible like a position or physical like strength and what not. But he had tested this theory out hoping above all hope that it were true only to find that he was as powerful as ever, leaving him to mourn the second and only logical option. A love spell.

"Don't worry, my lord," Rin chimed in for the first time since they were there, squishing his shoulder. "I'm sure it will wear off eventually."

Of course it didn't. He rubbed his closed eyes, desperate. Human eyes were more sensitive than demon eyes. He had figured this out just a day ago once he kept reaping the witch's words over in his head. His eyes were just a mere sign of the change the witch had caused on the inside. The only thing Sesshomaru couldn't figure out was why she had changed his eyes and heart for those of a human. It was quite easily identifiable, really. His eyes were obvious enough but after a while he felt his chest easily contradictable and fragile to the silliest things and so he knew. Yet, still her goals where unclear to him.

As if to irritate him his eyes snapped open at the sound and smell of Rin approaching before she could call out to him. One of the silly things, among squirrels and flashing objects, was Rin. It was hard to explain. Since she had asked him to stay in her village to keep a better eye on him (not like he could back off, she used the nine months on him) every time he saw her there was this light that seemed to follow her everywhere. He wasn't sure if all human eyes did this, but it irritated him to no end.

"What is it?" he asked annoyed. Now that he's here she's been after him night and day, never leaving him a time for himself.

Rin ignored his mood or did not notice because she smiled wide, dimples and straight teeth. He noticed those a couple of days before and it annoyed him further with no end. Not that he hadn't noticed before but that when he did he felt like he was having a stroke. And not only was he diagnosing himself with human casualties but he was constantly having them.

She threw herself down beside him, completely oblivious that she had interrupted. It irritated him even more that he was relieved he had a distraction that could rid his mind out of that witch, that he was really interested in what she was about to tell him- whatever that was.

Rin giggled, practically squirming in place, hands behind her back and he had to hold back a smile of his own. He sighed a second later, returning to his usual mask. As of late he was easily influenced by her moods, nerving him to no end. He did not smile or consider her jokes funny.

"Rin," he said warningly, almost commanding her to control herself.

Rin took a deep breath, nodding. "Here," she pulled a crown of flowers, vaguely resembling the ones she took care of at the back of her hut he noted, "this is for you." She didn'twait for him to taken them rather she got up on her knees and swiftly located them on top of his head.

When she sat back in front on him he reached out to take them off.

"No." she quickly said, making his hand hover just inches away. "Don't do it. You owe me, remember, Sesshomaru? Nine months." He doesn't know why but he allowed his hand to drop.

"It's a gift," she explained. "For all you've done. I know you don't want to stay with this hollering Rin going about annoying you but I appreciate that you stayed anyway. I was sad- they were long months for me, my lord, and I thought perhaps your forgotten I existent or worse… that you hated me-" her eyes looked like they were about to water and he fear they might but just as so they disappeared replaced by a smile, "but now I rejoice." She got to her feet and started doing her silly dance.

Sesshomaru knew he should look somewhere else. This was the third time she make a ridicule of herself, preforming the same dance she did when she was small and was happy. But he couldn't, it was painful but he couldn't. The pain in his chest was a nostalgic pain that he liked to relieve anytime he could, for no better judgment. He doesn't know how to express how he felt. If he tried he might appear as Rin trying to explain why she says what she says without thinking before she does "because I can".

Then expectantly she threw herself at the ground, flat in her back. But there was this moment, the moment after she lean in back and the moment before she touched the grass covered ground, just as she was free falling. When he felt his heart lurched and his mind soar like sailing ships in the sky. When his breath was caught, prisoner to unknown forces. Just as the sun was staging her skin like it does when it starts to set against the horizon, painting the sea gold. The wind flipping her long locks like birds wings, dancing to their own direction. It was there as she laying, laughing, reaching a slim hand to him saying "letsrejoiceletsrejoiceletsrejoice" over and over that he realized something.

The witch had not used a spell as he originally thought rather she had bestow a curse.

Because when she slipped her fingers through his and squished-a friendly gesture she always did since she was small- he felt something inside him hush quiet. There was this muteness in the world as he squished back and suddenly the only words in his head were three. Let us rejoice.

Just like that he got up, almost shooting to his feet, letting her hand drop in the process. As he walked away from her a sort of ring of alarm started to drum in his ear. He started to shake his head and when that didn't help with the one million thoughts popping to his mind, consuming him to a whole piece of nothing- he walked faster.

He doesn't know why but Rin doesn't follow him and he felt insulted by the proposition that she doesn't care what disturbed him and that disturbed him more.

Suddenly Sesshomaru lets that list that he held go and every curse word he knows spilled out of his mouth. He felt his body slump, the distance helping him with his unsettling stomach. He pictured his hands wrapped around the witch's throat as he finally understood why she had had chosen the human heart.

"No," he muttered slowly.

It definitely was a love spell.

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