Warmth

Koga was stunned when the girl jumped off the lip of the ravine and plunged towards the river. At once, he dived after her and only just managed to cushion her against the impact with the swift-running water at the very last second, when he pulled her into his arms and twisted over so that his own body took the brunt of the fall.

Somewhere in the handful of seconds during which they fell through the air, it occurred to him why she looked so familiar – she was the little girl who used to travel with Inuyasha's older brother, the shy one who had trembled and hidden herself behind the twin heads of her dragon mount when he'd tried to say hello to her about six years ago.

As he caught her in his arms, he vaguely recalled Kagome once mentioning that the girl was afraid of wolves, but no one had told him why. Had she been so terrified of him when she saw he was an ookami demon that she had preferred to commit her life to the river than to trust him? What an impulsive creature!

They hit the water and went under, and he fought to find his bearings. He would live even if he was deprived of air for some time, but she wouldn't. So he looked swiftly around him while submerged, determined which way was up, and kicked hard against the water to rise through it quickly, clutching her to his chest. Her head fell back against his shoulder as they broke the surface, and her eyes were closed. She had either fainted from the fall or from the impact, but she was alive, for he could feel her blood pumping strongly through her veins.

The water was deep, and the current fast, and he could find no solid footing from which to leap back up to the banks. They had already been carried a good distance downriver, so he fought the current and swam for the south bank, pulling her after him and holding her head above the water. The river was icy cold; she would not survive much longer if she remained immersed in it in these temperatures.

When at last his feet found some purchase, he jumped clean out of the water and onto the bank, and set his light burden down on solid ground to check on the state she was in. He could just make out the sound of her heartbeat over the roar of the rushing water, and could see her chest rising and falling, so his next step was to find her shelter and get her warm. If he didn't, she would die or fall seriously ill from exposure.

He couldn't waste precious time making his way back to Inuyasha's village, which he had been on his way to when he heard the girl scream as she ran from the bandit, so he lifted her into his arms and leapt to the top of the ravine, looked quickly about in the deepening twilight, and spotted a den which was being used by a bear – an animal bear, not a bear demon, thank goodness, because the latter would have taken a fair bit longer to deal with.

He laid her down on the forest ground, entered the den, hauled a very surprised, plump and sleepy creature out of it, and gave it such a fright that it took off into the woods, probably not to return for some time. Even if it did, he could keep it at bay until the girl had recovered.

He carried her into the den, removed her layers of soaked-through, freezing-cold clothing, and wrapped himself around her after quickly pulling off his armour, to share as much of his body heat with her as he could. As a canine-demon, he naturally had a higher body temperature, and although he was as wet-through as she was, he would be able to keep her warm.

He did not fail to notice that she was a pretty little thing, with hair as wild as Kagome's, and just growing into a woman, but he tried to be honourable, to keep his eyes and hands off her pert breasts, and not cast his gaze any lower down her body. It was a rather difficult job, but after having smelt the lust rolling off the bandit as he had attacked the girl, and having felt thoroughly disgusted by it, he was not about to try victimising her himself.

Sometimes, Koga thought, having a sense of honour was such a pain. Because holding a nubile, naked female against one's body and not doing a thing about it was a bit more than any hot-blooded demon should have to take.

...

Rin awoke to the aura of wolf youki, the overpowering smell of some wild animal, the prickling of winter cold attacking the blanket of warm air that seemed to have settled around her skin, and the realisation that she was held in someone's partially fur-covered arms… and that she was as naked as the day she was born.

Her throat tightened in terror and she tried to scream, but the cry died somewhere inside her. She struggled mutely and violently against the one who clasped her from behind and pressed his body against hers – she had no problem at all discerning that he was very male and very wolfish, despite not being able to see a thing in the darkness.

"Stop that!" he growled into her ear as he seized her wrists and pulled them back against her own chest. "What are you doing, girl? Be still – I'm trying to help you!"

His spoken words seemed to override her instinctive horror of wolves which might have taken over completely had he said nothing. Rin momentarily forgot he was a wolf and only cared right now that he was a male stranger, and she found her tongue in time to splutter furiously: "H-help me? I-if you're trying to help me then where are my clothes? And why are you pressing your – your thing – up against me, you HENTAI?"

"My 'thing'?" he asked, grappling with the fact that she was now assaulting his shins with her heels and he had to try to stop her from kicking him while not hurting her. Eventually, he had to hook his legs around hers from behind and completely enclose her within all four of his limbs, as if she were a bolster. "Oh, you mean my cock–"

"Don't say that word! You sick pervert!" she shrieked, fighting uselessly against his strength. "And get – get IT out of my behind!"

"I'm really, really sorry, girl, that my penis offends you by being pushed up against your pristine backside," Koga growled in exasperation, through gritted teeth. "But it wasn't as if I could take it off and put it aside while trying to save your life by keeping you from freezing to death after rescuing you from your suicidal leap into that bloody river – what the hell did you do that for, anyway? And I'm really, really sorry that 'it' is still pushed up against you now that I can see you are no longer freezing to death, because I still have nowhere else to put it while we're in this position, with me trying to prevent you from adding more bruises to my shins. Besides, it's not as if I've put it in you, is it? And I'm sorry if 'it' is a bit hard right now, because you are after all a rather pretty thing, and I can't help it if…"

"I KNEW it – you're a twisted pervert!" she yelled. "GET OFF ME!"

"Will you keep your voice down, you silly girl? Do you want to attract every predator for miles around? We're lucky enough as it is that that bear hasn't come back yet!"

"B-bear?" she stammered. "What bear?"

"The fat thing I hauled out of here so I could give us a shelter to keep you warm in, you foolish child. Can't you smell its stench all over this place? Now if you stop struggling, and promise me that you won't do anything stupid like try to run naked out into the forest, I will let you go, and then I can get my 'thing' off your posterior."

She stilled herself.

"Promise me that you won't run?" he asked.

"Yes! Just get off me, you disgusting wolf."

"Now that will really encourage me to go to the rescue of the next damsel in distress I come across. For goodness' sake, girl, I'm not going to hurt you. I give you my word that I didn't molest you while you slept, and I won't do anything to harm you now – I know who you are, all right? Kagome and Inuyasha, the slayer and the monk – they're all my friends."

She calmed down further at the mention of the names she knew so well, and he carefully released her. She scrambled away from him deeper into the little den, keeping her back to him and her derriere firmly planted on the ground, while covering her breasts with her hands. She turned her head towards him, even though she knew she would be able to see nothing in the night, and shuddered again at the smell of his wolf fur, but she feared him as an individual much less now that he had spoken to her properly – unlike the wordless, animal pack that had killed her – and she remembered now that when she had encountered him by the ravine, his eyes had been kind, and he had looked familiar.

"I also know you're the child who used to travel with Inuyasha's big brother," he said. "I remember meeting you before."

She recalled now where she had seen him, apart from the time when she had watched from the doorway of a hovel as he sent his pack out to kill and eat her and the other humans in the village she had lived in at the time. Some time after she had been brought back to life, he had encountered Sesshomaru-sama, Jaken, Ah-Un and herself on the way to hunting Naraku down, and she had been so frightened of him on that occasion that she had wished she could vanish into Ah-Un's saddlecloth.

"Yes," she said. "Years ago."

"Yeah," he agreed. "You're a sight bigger now."

She pressed her arms more tightly over her breasts and turned her head away from him again, and he had the good grace to redden slightly when he realised that she might have thought he was talking about her chest, when he really hadn't meant that at all.

"I didn't mean…" he began.

"You'd better not have," she muttered icily. "And where are my clothes?"

"I'm afraid I didn't have time to build a fire, so they're still completely wet, and in a heap over there – not that you can see where right now. I'm sorry that I have nothing suitable to clothe you with either. All the fur you may have felt on my body earlier isn't just adornment – it is actually my fur, so I can't give it to you to wear."

"Oh."

"Look, just stay put and I'll get a fire going, then we can dry your clothes, all right?"

She nodded unenthusiastically, knowing that the process wouldn't be quick, which would mean having to spend even more time with this ookami demon who sounded decent enough for a wolf, yet had a tongue as coarse as Inuyasha's, and uttered double entrendres without a thought.

"By the way, my name's Koga."

"I know," she said. "I didn't recognise you by the river, but I remember you now."

She didn't offer him her name, and after waiting a second in vain for it, he strode out into the surrounding forest and gathered materials to start a fire with – it would be a tough job in the cold and dampness of this winter night, but his demon strength meant that he would be more likely to get a spark of some sort off stones and twigs, and a lot faster, than a human could.

After a fair amount of time, he got a fire going, and heaped more twigs and leaves over it to make it bigger. Then he returned to the den, picked up her wet clothing, and carried it out to the fire to dry it the best he could.

She could see him clearly now, when she looked out of the den at his figure stooping beside the flames, holding her inner robe close to the heat. She blushed at the thought that this male she barely knew was handling her garments, but there was no other way to get them dry – she could hardly squat naked by the fire to dry her own clothes while he looked on, could she?

He concentrated mainly on drying the thinnest inner garments, because the thick winter robe would have taken all night, and if there were other demons around, then they certainly didn't have all night. When at last the white fabric seemed sufficiently dry not to make her even colder than she already was, he carried it back into the den and handed it to her.

"Put this one on first. The other layers are thicker and would have taken far too long to dry. But we can leave them there next to the fire for a bit longer. Would you like to come outside to warm your hands?"

She nodded and wrapped the white underlayer about her body, then rose and went over to the fire. It felt good to have that warmth and light in the darkness of this winter night, out in the wilds, and she knew now that if Koga had not stripped off her wet clothes and curled himself around her in that den, she would have died from the cold.

"Thank you for saving my life," she said softly.

"Don't mention it."

As they warmed themselves by the fire while it burned on, he was puzzled by the emotions he sensed from her. She appeared by now to be unafraid of him, personally, and yet she seemed repulsed by what he was. Again the memory came to him of Kagome mentioning that Lord Sesshomaru's little ward was afraid of wolves, but he didn't know the story. He had no idea that she was among the villagers his pack had once killed for food.

Humans, back in those days, had been nothing to him but a good source of nourishment for his four-legged family members, until he had come to care for Kagome, and later for the female slayer, the monk and the half-demon. Then he had ordered an end to all attacks on humans by his own pack and other groups that swore allegiance to him. It was better this way too. Humans were growing greatly in number, and when the ookami ceased to trouble them, they in turn left them alone except on those rare occasions when the paths of a human hunter and wolf hunter clashed.

Kagome had also told him before that in the future, humans would number in the billions, a figure his mind could not even wrap itself around, and that they would begin to kill for the sake of killing and destroy everything good on the earth for their own selfish reasons. But that would be later, she said. And perhaps if they did their best in these times to teach whoever they could about the value of all life, they could change the future.

Koga doubted that. It was not only humans who were voracious, but demons too. And even among demonkind alone, endless slaughter, internecine warfare, ungovernable aggression and sheer bloodthirstiness had decimated their numbers to the point where people were outnumbering them. But one thing they all agreed on, humans and demons, was the need to exterminate all youkai beasts that were nothing more than killing, eating machines – the gigantic ogres, enormous worm, snake and insect demons – anything that could not be reasoned with or controlled, for these wreaked far more destruction on the earth than any billions of humans could in the future, he was sure.

He called himself back to the present and gazed over the fire at the girl across from him. She reminded him a little of Kagome, especially with her enormous brown eyes, her wild, unbound hair and petite frame. He had once hoped to make the miko his woman, and he still cared greatly for her as a friend, but ever since he learnt that she had chosen Inuyasha as her mate more than two years ago, he had done the decent thing and backed off, and now was able to see her as a sister and dear friend just as his pack brothers Ginta and Hakkaku did.

"How's Kagome?" he asked the girl now.

"Kagome-sama is very well," she replied.

"Has that mutt given her any children yet?"

"No. She says they're in no hurry. And please don't call my uncle a mutt."

"Hmph. If you say so. He'll always be mutt-face to me. So his big brother adopted you, did he? Unusual thing for a demon to do."

"Sesshomaru-sama is no ordinary demon."

"Yeah, I can tell. Are he and mutt-face still… you know…?"

"Things are complicated," she pronounced as sagely as her nearly fifteen years of life would allow her to, which amused Koga greatly, for he was pushing three hundred.

"I'll bet. If I had a brother you'd never catch me with my tongue in his mouth, but that's just me. If Kagome has no complaints, who am I to comment?"

"Kagome-sama has no complaints," Rin said stiffly.

"Heh – she's always been a remarkable character, that woman. She was pretty hot-tempered back then, but I liked that fire in her."

"She's much calmer these days. She says she was only a child back then, and she's grown up now."

"Lucky mutt-face. He doesn't deserve her," he murmured. Rin did not respond, so he continued: "You've grown up a lot too. You're a woman now. And you're really very pretty even when you've just been dragged wet as a drowned sparrow out of the river, if you don't take offence at my saying so."

"Thank you, but not everyone thinks so."

"Oh, come on. Who wouldn't think so? Someone with holes for eyes, perhaps. What? Did someone spurn you?"

She blushed and stood up. "If you don't mind, I'd like to return to the village now. My friends must be worried sick about me."

"They're probably out searching for you," he agreed, rising to his feet too and putting out the fire, then fetching his armour from the den and strapping it on. "We'll travel back along the river before cutting through the forest once we're level with the village – that way, we're more likely to run into a search party from there."

She gathered up the wet clothes she wasn't wearing, and draped them over her arm.

But Koga said: "I'll tie those around my waist – best for you not to hold anything cold or damp – you were frozen enough as it was earlier, and I don't want you dying from a chill now, after all I've done to keep you alive."

She had lost her slippers in the scuffle with the bandit, and the ground was cold, so he offered at once to carry her, and after hesitating for a few moments, she let herself be lifted onto his back, the way she so often saw Kagome being borne by Inuyasha whenever they travelled far or over ground that would have been hard for the priestess to negotiate by herself. Her inner kimono was sufficiently thin and loose for her to grip his sides with her knees, but she flinched when his hands went under her thighs.

"Sorry if where I'm putting my hands upsets you too," he said casually. "But I don't mean anything forward by it, and it's the best way to hold you securely to my back."

When she said nothing, he took off through the woods, following the path of the river upstream, back towards her village.