Legolas stepped out into the sunlight, leaving the borders of Rivendell behind as he followed his company toward Mordor.

With his keen eyesight ,sharp ears and skill with a distance weapon, he brought up the rear, walking easily over root and rock and singing a jaunty tune. Aside from the presence of one grumpy dwarf, he couldn't find much to complain about with this excursion, not that he was prone to being disagreeable. They may be headed toward certain danger but he'd do his best to keep the spirits of the little hobbits up, especially those of the ring bearer himself. It couldn't be easy being so exposed to that horrible ring, whispering to him at all hours as it was. He was strong of spirit though, so Legolas had high hopes.

"Legolas! What do your elf eyes see?!"

Legolas snorted in amusement. Aragorn would no doubt be teasing him through this whole journey, as he was want to do when his own spirits were high.

"Naught but rocks and flowrs and sunshine and clouds. It is a beautiful day to journey towards darkness."

He heard the grumbling from the dwarf and nearly rolled his eyes. Let the dwarf do his grumbling, his mood was too great to be spoiled.

"Leave it to an elf to be so jovial on such a stark journey."

"Not all would be so, Gimli." Aragorn soothed, hoping to keep relations between all their differing races as peaceful as possible. Elves are as different from each other as you and I. In fact, Legolas is very different from even his own father, King Thranduil."

"His father is a king?!" Pippin asked excitedly. It was all very novel, all these elves he was meeting. That one of them was a prince was even more exciting.

"Aye, Pip. The elven king of Mirkwood."

"Mirkwood? Oh! Mirkwood!" Frodo spun around brightly, facing Legolas at the back of the group and walking backwards to keep up. "Uncle Bilbo told me of meeting the Elven King! At the battle with the dragon at the Lonely Mountain! He did say he was rather subdued for an elf. But I had never met any elves before."

Legolas smiled kindly at Frodo before his thoughts turned inward. Frodo noticed the change in his attitude and worried that he'd offended their resident Elf. Before he could apologize, Legolas met his eyes again.

"Yes, my father is... he is sad, I believe, most of the time."

"No doubt still depressed at missing his chance to pilfer the great white gems of the mountain! Elves are vain creatures indeed!" Gimli groused, having heard the stories from his father about the fight with Smaug and the presence of the Elven King. Legolas did not rise to the bait in the dwarves voice. He knew well his father's sadness. Though he had all the elvish love for shiny things that was so prevalent among his own kind, he knew his father's heart went much deeper than that.

"Indeed, it was the loss of a jewel that pains my father's heart, but unfortunately it was no such jewel as can be found anywhere in this realm."

He stayed relatively silent after that, and the hobbits in the company felt awful for having brought up something that obviously made him so sad. Aragorn gave them all a reassuring smile, but they could see the sympathy in his eyes for his friend.

Frodo wondered what kind of jewel could cause a father and son so much pain, and hoped to never encounter such a thing for himself. His ring was trouble enough.

They had just come out of an exhausting battle with a large, shard enhanced bear youkai that had given them a fierce run for their money. They'd all sustained at least minor injuries, but it was Inuyasha in his recklessness that had received the greatest. He had a huge, bleeding gash in his side just above his hip. He'd gotten it when the the bear's massive razor claws had glanced him as he'd leapt to try and impale Tessaiga through the bear's giant head. Just as soon as the shard had been removed from its corpse and it had turned to dust in the wind, Kagome was waiting with bandages and antiseptic.

"Aw hell wench, I don't need none of that shit. Go patch up the others and leave me alone."

"Don't make me say it." Kagome warned, her 'no nonsense' look firmly in place and her foot tapping impatiently in the dirt. Inuyasha knew better than to argue with Kagome when she was like this, but he didn't have to like what was about to happen.

He removed his suiken and kosode, slumping in the grass with a "HMMPH!" and a dark scowl. Kagome primly ignored him and set to work, wiping his wound clean with antibacterial wipes and water. She sprayed the wound with her favorite infection fighting spray, earning a hiss from her hanyo patient.

"OW! That shit hurts worse than that damn bear claw!"

"Just shut it Inuyasha, I'm almost done."

"I don't why you even bother, wench, I'll be healed in the morning!"

Kagome pressed a clean cloth against the wound to keep the blood in while she used her free hand to ready a fresh bandage.

"Well at least you'll be comfortable while you heal! You could just say thank you!"

"They just never, ever learn to do this without ripping each other to shreds do they?" Sango whispered to Miroku, who nodded sagely in reply.

"Indeed. Seems our children have no hope of learning to play nice." Sango but her lip to stifle her giggles, and nearly choked when the irate voices of both Inuyasha and Kagome turned on them.

"I HEARD THAT!" They replied in unison, leaving both monk and taija perplexed as to how Kagome had been able to pick up what they'd said at such a low volume. Inuyasha, sure, but he had yokai hearing.

"And this wouldn't happen every time if Inuyasha would just drop his macho attitude and let me heal him. He's so-"

Kagome stopped and stared at her hand, which was now emitting a white glow where she held her cloth to Inuyasha's side.

"What are you doing wench?! Are you trying to purify me now?!"

"No! That's not..." the glow faded and she removed her hand and cloth, revealing an unmarred expanse of flesh.

"What the hell. How did you-"

"I don't know. I... I don't..."

Kagome looked beseechingly over at Miroku, who simply shrugged and looked completely dumbfounded.

"I have never seen anything like that from anyone with holy powers, Kagome-Sama. I... I have no idea."

Kagome looked at her hands and felt an overwhelming sense of dread sink into her gut. There was meaning to this, somewhere, just as there was meaning to the odd dreams she kept having. The bottle of jewel shards resting just under her neck suddenly felt cold and heavy, and she clutched at them and worried her lip.

Something was happening to her, and the jewel was at the center of it. If only she could figure out how.