F/W I don't own Inuyasha - that pleasure and honor belongs to Takahashi Rumiko. ALSO this chapter contains a lot of... Fancy wording. It's really just a prologue; the rest of the chapters are easier to read, and this one can be skipped! Enjoy this new work, and please leave a review!

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Chapter 1

Moments of Time

Once in a great while, there are moments in time when all is right with the world. There are moments when the world spins and keeps spinning, smooth and silent, like a night time lake, with the midnight reflections of the stars and moon swimming on the mirror surface, never once disturbed. Or perhaps the moment was perfect like a meadow covered in snow after a storm, glistening bright white and clean, unmarred by anything more than the prints of birds or the gatherings of fallen icicles under trees.

To the outside viewer, these moments are forever frozen in the mind's eye, a perfect spectacle of beauty, the solemn and heartwarming confirmation that perhaps all could be right with the world, at some point and for some people. But with the sun on the lake comes the stirring of the morning breeze, the splashings of children and animals. With the warmth on the snow comes the snowmelt, the refrozen, slick stale ice and chilling sludge of half snow half freezing water.

In short, those moments in time where one would wish it would stand still and stretch from one end of infinity to the next must and will always come to an end. Such were the ways of fate: cruel, cold, and certain.

Now was one of those seconds of life, where all was still perfect, where all was golden and good, before harsh and unforgiving fate had a chance to grab ahold: it had been nearly a week by now; a week of pure happiness and much celebration. While those perfect moments seemed include the loud and rambunctious festivities of the rejoicing, they also encompassed those quiet moments shared so often between a couple. Such was now.

A breeze passed through the trees, the leaves shaking and muttering in loud discontent, but the two souls sitting quietly in the branches of the Goshinboku payed them no mind. They were asleep; perched precariously ten feet above the ground, but asleep nonetheless. The young man had been in this position, sitting literally on a limb, many, many times before in his relatively short life, and the young woman - barely more than a girl - held in his arms trusted her companion too much to be afraid.

Hardly 50 feet from where the silently sleeping couple were stood part of the source of the recently abounding joy: an old wood well, set meekly within the center of a grassy clearing in the woods, and which had been for so many years the source of the couple's sadness as well. Made from the wood of a sacred tree, imbued with magic, the Bone-Eater's Well wasn't only a place for discarding the bones of dead youkai, but the bridge between 500 years time: the past the young man was living in, and the future from which the young woman came. For the past three years, the Well was inexplicably sealed, preventing passage for the two between times, and it had at last reopened.

Celebration and festivity had commenced with the woman's return. For nearly four days by now, preparations had been made for a festival. People from several villages over had begun trickling into the small town, all to see the young woman. In the year or so she had been with them in their time (though they were not aware that she was in fact from 500 years in the future), she had become quite well known in the land, both as the kind miko in strange clothing and as the protector and destroyer of the Shikon no Tama. Her disappearance had been met with sadness by many, but none so great as that as the grief of the young man's, who now held her close.

There was something remarkable about the young man, just as much as the young woman. While she was a human from the future, but a human nonetheless, he was something more than a human. He was a half demon, a hanyo, and a powerful one at that, given his lineage, for his father had been the great Inu-no-Taisho, a daiyoukai who had ruled the Western Lands until his death over 70 years ago. Few had known of his existence, fewer had known of his mysterious disappearance, but it was what it was, and here was his son.

The young man stirred suddenly, one eye opening and gazing blearily around, and then the other. They looked black and gold in the sunlight and reflections of the leaves. He was unsurprised by his view of treetops and leaves dyed orange from the setting sun, nor was he surprised by the girl he held quietly in his arms. As a matter of fact, he smiled for a moment as he watched her, and then returned his gaze to his surroundings. No matter how happy he was, he couldn't afford to allow his attention to wander, or his vigilance to slip; such were the joys of being a half demon.

Of course, his vigilance was helped along by his canine heritage: his white dog ears sat pricked and alert on the top of his head, listening for any sound of approaching hostilities, his sense of smell was heightened beyond anything any mere mortal could comprehend, and even most dogs could only dream of. But there was nothing. Not now. There was nothing save the scent of the trees in leaf, the sound of the wind in the branches, the smell of slow-cooking meats and grains, and the young woman. Her breathing, her scent, her being. It was nowhere near intoxicating, simply a gentle, mellow aroma not too unlike any other human, but it was something that he associated with so many memories and feelings, it was like reading a book with every breath, and flying through the story with a new sense of wonder every time despite how often it was read.

"Oi, stupid, wake up."

The gruffness of the young man's words would have probably surprised most others, especially when considering his position, sitting in the tree and holding the young woman his words were directed at so gently - dare one go so far as to say lovingly? - in his arms. But a smirk spread across the girl's face though her eyes didn't open.

"Kagome," said the hanyo, more insistently, jostling the girl a little in an attempt to wake her. He hadn't seen her smile.

"Ehhhh," whined the girl, turning her face into her companion's chest. The hanyo rolled his eyes.

"If you don't hurry up, the old hag's gonna get pissed coz I didn't have you back in time to get you changed." 'The old hag', Kagome knew, was the priestess of the village, a spunky, sarcastic, yet very kind old woman by the name of Kaede.

"What if I don't wanna get changed?" Kagome mumbled a little, sitting up and stretching, pulling her arms behind her head before slouching back into a more comfortable position and patting her hanyo companion on the arms. "It's not like people are going to see what I'm really wearing. It'll be dark, after all."

"Are you seriously asking me what's going on in that woman's head?"

"Good point. You should be the last person I should ask if I wanted to know what was going on in a woman's head, Inuyasha." Kagome grinned and the mildly wounded expression Inuyasha gave her before tapping him on the nose. "I'm teasing you. No need to act like such a martyr."

"I'm not," Inuyasha denied, rather weakly. "It was your stupid idea to begin with, thinking I knew what that old hag wanted."

It was Kagome's turn to roll her eyes, shaking her head, but smiling nonetheless. "Whatever. I thought you were going to get me down, dog boy."

"Well you kept distracting me!" Despite their happiness at being reunited, despite the peaceful serenity of the moment or how carefully Inuyasha gathered Kagome into his arms, it was simply part of their character and their relationship to argue. That was a comforting thing, when one considered it; it proved that nothing had changed so much between them that stopped them from acting as they had before.

Ten feet down to the ground felt like nothing as Inuyasha sprang down, setting Kagome down and straightening. Before he had a chance to fold his hands into his sleeves, Kagome grabbed one, smiling and pulling him along. She knew that despite Inuyasha's secret, anxious, sweet, longing, loving heart, his pride and his inconceivably low self-confidence would always contest with his emotions. She knew that if she were to wait for him to openly make a first move - even if that first more were such a small gesture as this, she would have been waiting for hundreds of years. Sitting in a tree together was one thing; he would write that off as "protecting her". But this was something he was both unfamiliar with and nervous of.

It took him a moment, but his clawed hand eventually closed around her own, moving and adjusting so that their fingers were entwined rather than held. His stride lengthened until he caught up with her. "I don't even know why everybody is coming to see you anyway," he grumbled after a few moments. "It's not like they really know you."

"Well, it's the thought that counts, I guess," tried Kagome placatingly.

"Yeah, or maybe the lure of free food was just too much to resist," sniggered the hanyo.

"That's a long way to travel just for some food," Kagome reasoned, raising an eyebrow at Inuyasha.

"Well, when you're desperate." He let the thought hang free in the air, and silence fell. They had crested the hill by now, looking down at the village. Small fires were beginning to burn in the streets, and the huge pyre for the bonfire was already assembled in the centre of the village, near the water well. Adults were in from the fields, preparing themselves for the festivities, their children running up and down the streets, their playful cries audible even from here.

The moment the two set foot in the steadily darkening village, Kagome was swarmed by children. Some gave her flowers, which she had promptly handed to Inuyasha as Kaede appeared suddenly and pulled her away. And so he was left to wander the streets as he waited. Some gave him a wide berth as he passed them. That was expected. What wasn't expected was when people actually approached him, thanking him, wishing him well, a few children even hugging him around the middle. His knees, he'd noticed, were often also subject to such assaults, and he had almost tripped several times thus far.

What also was unexpected was to see Kagome wearing a dark, loose, almost kimono-like garment that left her free to move and dance around with those gathered around the bonfire. He even ended up being pulled into the dancers at one point - and awkward moment, considering he hadn't danced since he was a child, but an enjoyable experience all the same. It was dark, save for the roaring firelight which warmed them all as they pranced about like idiots, pressing against each other as they laughed, none paying the other any attention as they laughed and stumbled about in their traditional dances to the music of their drums and flutes and strings; one villager even possessed a strange instrument from the continent unlike any had ever heard of before (though Kagome told him later that the instrument was called a "guitar" in her era, and was a very popular instrument). No one persecuted Inuyasha for his heritage, no one approached Kagome except in greeting, and there was laughter weaving itself between the smoke and scents.

It was perfect.

And as Kagome dumped herself into Inuyasha's arms, laughing and smiling (for he had eventually grown tired of the dancing and strong smell of burning wood), she knew it was even more perfect.

And it was perfect like the embers flying white-orange and burning into the star strewn sky, glowing brighter than the galaxies unknown in their view, rising high into the air.

But those perfect moments in time were like embers, for with their perfect and brightness, after a few breaths, those embers couldn't avoid slowing and cooling and dimming and falling back to earth, once again leaving the quiet, cold expanse of an infinite night time sky exactly as before.

Fate was cruel, cold, certain.

Fate knew that all good things must come to an end.

And Fate knew exactly how to bring about the end.

Glossary:

Shikon no Tama - The Shikon Jewel; The Sacred Jewel; the Jewel of Four Souls

Miko - a Shinto shrine maiden; priestess

Hanyo - a half demon

Youkai - a demon or spirit

Inu-no-Taisho - a title given to Inuyasha's father, literally "Dog General"

Daiyoukai - a powerful demon/youkai

Goshinboku - the Sacred Tree; the Tree of Ages

A/N I was originally writing Wishing/Tomoe as a sort of "closer" fic to Inuyasha, but it seems that only one or two people have tried reading it so far. It'll get better, I promise. It's set up kind of episodically, with one chapter being the equivalent of one "episode". I wanted it to have that kind of feeling to it, and I'm working on it. But I wasn't entirely happy with it, so I struggled and struggled to make another idea that more people would like, and this is what happened. It's a lot less structured (at the moment) than Wishing, but it's got the characters everyone loves, sooo... Hopefully it's better? Also meaning that Wishing is currently one hiatus.

Are Kagome and Inuyasha in character at all? I want them to be in character...

So here we go! Have fun, love yourselves, don't die, please review, okei bYEEEEEEE

Currently listening to: Stranger to Love - Charles Perry