Chapter 1
Kamiko gently set down her spindle and looked at the loose skein of brown threads. Actually, calling them 'threads' was a misnomer; they were just barely too thick to properly be called thread, but thinner than the thinnest marketed yarn. She sighed and shook out her hands. "I knew getting all of that done would be tricky, but at least I finally got around to it." Then she set up a wood structure on Machiko's side of the room in its largest form, which took up about half the wall. "Let's see…how much of this do I have…"
The end result was she started weaving a piece of cloth that was five feet square. "I'm amazed that it took me this long to get around to weaving Yusuke's cut hair from when he'd gone totally demonic!"
She wove until her coloration had turned completely brown. That was actually a game Kamiko enjoyed playing; every time she was weaving with a thread that wasn't spun from her colorless hair, she would weave until her hands had turned the same color as her threads, and then she'd move the color to some other point on her body. The way she knew she'd been weaving long enough when she was doing that was when she had no other place to put the color. Kamiko was always aware of her coloration, just in the back of her head.
Just as she was putting away her leftover threads, she heard a knock on her door. "Kamiko?" Her mom called through. "You've got a visitor."
Kamiko looked at her still-brown hands and started thinking her color back to her chosen skin tone. "Who is it? I was weaving, and…not with my own hair." There was a very small number of people she could greet at the door totally brown.
"It's Suichi."
Kamiko strode briskly over to the door and opened it with a smile, fully aware that her hair and demon-half were still brown. "Sweet!"
"He's in the kitchen."
She considered skipping to the kitchen while her hair and fur returned to her standard golden, and then sadly discarded the idea. Her clawed feet just didn't lend themselves to skipping, and she wasn't about to trade to her human form. There was no point: Suichi, aka Kurama, already knew she was a demon; he was one himself, just reborn as a human.
So she settled for a confident stride, her long tail swishing behind her as it returned to gold.
She and Kurama had dated for a few years now, and Kamiko was starting to wonder if anything was going to come of their relationship. Sure, she considered him a boyfriend, and by a passing remark she heard at school she knew he considered her a girlfriend, but…
Then she entered the kitchen.
Her mother had said she'd put Kurama there. She hadn't said that she'd been playing with the photo albums at the time. Kurama was flipping through them.
"Hi, Kurama!"
Kurama looked up, and his smile set rainbows in Kamiko's heart that she was amazed weren't printing themselves on her skin. "Kamiko. I'm glad to see you're well and…" his smile turned amused, "keeping busy."
She glanced to one side at her hair, which was slowly returning to gold from brown. "Ah, yeah. I was weaving with brown threads. So what have you been up to?"
"Studying, mostly." He turned another album page. "Your mother told me that she developed all these pictures herself."
"Those are those photo albums? Um, yeah, back when we were that age, she wanted a record of our lives, but she couldn't trust anyone else with that film because of the content. She didn't start letting other people develop her pictures of us until we'd gotten the hang of our human forms, and even then, she still tended to develop them herself." She walked over to see the pages he was looking at. Almost immediately she winced. "Yeah…that's why I go by a skin tone between Machiko's two normal shades with golden fur and hair."
The picture was of her and Machiko as babies in their halfway states, both holding toys and staring at the camera. Machiko didn't look much different in coloration from how she did in the present day, maybe her stripes were a bit wider. But Kamiko was completely off-white, except for her outright colorless hair. And what shade the 'off' was, was impossible to tell. Her purple eyes just about exploded from that face at the camera, they were so bright and colorful compared to their dull background.
"Machiko calls that color 'off-white in the worst way.' I agree with her." She twirled a lock of hair around her finger.
"It's unusual, yes. Do you ever return to that color?"
"Erm…almost never." She glared at the picture. "You can't even tell that I have eyebrows or eyelashes in that picture! Sure, those are faint to begin with on a baby, but at least you can tell in part for Machiko!" Even Machy's eyebrows were black-and-white striped, and the black bits were visible in the picture.
"You really dislike this picture, don't you?" Kurama turned the page.
Kamiko sighed. "I just…don't like being reminded that my original color scheme is so…bland and boring. I'm glad I'm a chameleon where colors are concerned, because I like bright colors. Even back when I was coloring myself at five to fit in better with human kids, I didn't get the hang of coloring my eyelashes until I was thirteen. Mother actually had to put mascara on me to make my eyelashes looked normal so I wouldn't get teased!"
He stared at her. "You wore makeup when you were a child?"
She covered her face. "Mom made me swear not to tell anyone about it at the time, but yes. She knew, thanks to my responses to conflict in books and movies, that if I was teased I'd change color. So, rather than risk my revealing my big secret by turning blue as well as bursting into tears, she gave me a small secret."
Kurama put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. "I will admit, if you suddenly decided to revert to the colors you were born with, I would have to adjust to it since I've gotten used to seeing you in this way. But I would still think you're beautiful, because it's not just colors that make beauty."
She blushed shyly as she lowered her hand. "Thanks – ooh," she saw the next picture in line. "That one's not much better."
Kamiko was sitting on a blanket patterned with hearts and staring at it in amazement, and every visible patch of skin had turned to the same color and pattern as the blanket.
"That's why you never catch me wearing patterned fabric. Mom had discovered that I tended to turn the same colors as something new at that age, and so she made an entire montage of me sitting on differently-patterned blankets with their patterns ending up on me." She covered her face with her hand; the glimpse of her skin that she got before her sight was blocked told her that her hand had turned her embarrassment-bright-red. "She's tried to get me to do that recently, and I've told her I'd sooner move to Demon World than sit through a photo shoot like that."
She heard the book close, and then felt Kurama's other arm behind her shoulders. Then he spoke into her ear. "I won't say I won't ever ask you to do something like that, but I can promise that I won't ask without a very good reason. You're just too precious a treasure to be treated like that."
She'd been enjoying that right up until the word 'treasure.' She flinched, sensing a streak of white blazoning right before Kurama's eyes.
And Kurama must have seen it, because he let go. "Kamiko, what's wrong?"
She turned to face him, trying to throttle that white streak out of her hair again. "Sorry, it's just…well…I had a dream back before the demon tournament. A dream where…Yoko called me a treasure."
Kurama studied her for a second. "That wasn't all that happened. That in and of itself isn't enough to qualify for that white."
Kamiko locked eyes with him. "What if I told you that that dream happened the night following Hiei marking Machiko as his mate?"
Kurama's eyebrows shot up into his bangs. "Ahh…"
She heard it in his tone. He thought he knew, but he wasn't sure. She sighed. "That dream has blazoned itself into my brain." She caught hold of his hands and looked at his eyes. "This is probably rated-M, but you're still a fox-demon so I think you can take it. I'll try to get it out of first-person, though."
Yoko Kurama approached Kamiko. His golden eyes were fixed directly on her. She was trying to hide, for something about his gaze was unnerving, and yet he could see her anyway.
"You can't hide from me," he said as he reached out a hand with delicate sharp nails towards her. "I will always be able to find you. You are the most beautiful treasure a thief could ever hope to steal."
She moved to get out of his range – but not soon enough. He caught her shoulder and lowered the two of them to the ground, placing her on her back. Dream-logic, she had her wings, which meant that she couldn't get up, and she really couldn't get up after he settled down over her.
He caught her wrists and anchored them over her head, and she started thrashing her head back and forth, trying to avoid him. But the end result was inevitable – his lips came down on hers.
Kamiko broke off the connection before the rest of the dream could be relayed, shivering.
Kurama was shaking a little, too. "And, ah, how far did your dream take you?"
"Um…" Kamiko rested her hand lightly on her chest. "Let's just say, I got woken up before Dream-Yoko got below the waist."
"…You're really afraid of my demon side, aren't you?"
She sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. I know I should at least accept the guy, but…every time I try to broach the subject with my emotional side, that stupid dream pops up in my memory."
Kurama held his hand out to her. She hesitated for a second, and then took it.
"I understand you're not ready. But you do believe that I won't hurt you, right?"
Not ready? What's that even mean, Crypto-boy? "Yes, I believe that you won't hurt me."
It's Yoko I'm not sure about.
He pulled Kamiko back into his arms for a proper hug, and after a second she returned it, taking in his warmth and his scent. It was always so incongruous that a guy smelled like roses, but it worked for him.
Then something occurred to Kamiko. "Did you really come all this way to look at photo albums and see me?"
His breath ruffled her hair and tickled at her ear as he laughed softly. "Isn't seeing you enough?"
She knew she was going lavender and didn't care. Still… "Play up my ego all you want, Kurama, but is there another reason?"
Kurama was silent for a second. Then he puffed out a sigh. "There was another reason. Hiei called me. An issue has come up in Demon World, and my help is needed."
"Is anyone else going?"
"Yusuke has a wife to look after, and Kuwabara might be good, but…"
"But…demon blood would make this job infinitely easier, right?"
Kurama nodded.
Kamiko remained silent for a few seconds. Then she looked up at him. "So what was this visit supposed to be, a farewell?"
He took hold of her shoulders, pushed her back and looked her straight in the eyes. "An invitation. I want you to come with me back to Demon World."
