Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of InuYasha, they belong to the wonderful Rumiko Takahashi. This was written in response to Forthright's Fortune Cookie Drabble Challenge and hopefully the inspiration will last long enough to get me through the ones I've picked!

Love is for the lucky and the brave.

He liked to think that he had a remarkable memory despite the pauses he often had while attempting to relate a story of the history of the venerable shrine that he lived in and served as a Priest, yet he found that even he wasn't certain when that woman had begun spending time around him. He referred to her as 'that woman' for a very long pair of months because it had taken her that long to properly introduce herself and yet he found himself unable to remember her full name and was reduced despite his amazing memory to calling her Midi-san.

She on the other hand had taken to calling him Jii-kun as if they were schoolmates of Kagome's age and while he couldn't help the way his cheeks pinked when she did it he would grouse a bit and turn up his nose and suffer her infernal soft laugh every time that he did so. She seemed to think that was the most adorable thing and would seem to go out of her way to make him do it, following him about while he kept up the Shrine grounds and walking with him when he gave the daily tours to visitors, and she had even taken up helping him sell the charms and souvenirs in the little gift shop though for some reason the Sacred Jewel key chains seemed to make her sad.

She was there for a bit when the Goshinbuko bloomed for the first time in centuries, and she came with hot food for he and Souta when it tragically snowed and she sat with him during the cold night while he prayed and hoped for the best. He found then that night that his heart had not forgotten how to love someone that was not related to him, he found that even at his age and all he had lost that he was able to at least fall in love once more. He would never have thought that such luck would ever come to him again, for deep down he often felt that it had been sheer luck that brought his first love to him all those years ago.

He wondered often if his Midi-san felt the same about him until one late summer evening when they finished cleaning up from a Festival the day before she sat with him sipping chilled tea and looking up at what stars they could see and without looking over at him she began to softly speak.

"I often thought that I would never find someone to love me, Jiji-kun. For as you know I am a contrary woman with my own ways and it is hard for a man to accept me as I am, exactly as I am, yet … yet I think you have?"

He was silent a moment and then set his glass of tea down by his feet and he turned a bit to her to take her slim hand. It was soft in his despite the feel of callous on her fingertips, he knew that she knew the traditions and could shoot a bow and write Sutras, he had more than once lamented that hers seemed more effective than his own. But now that hand which had been strong was soft and gentle as his fingers held hers, and he did the bravest thing he thought that he perhaps ever had.

"You have, Midi-san."

The sparkle of joy that came to her eyes made her look so much younger in that moment, and while he felt and always had that she had aged beautifully he caught a glimpse there for a moment of the strength and beauty that she must have had in her youth. For her his quiet return smile showed her what she had always known, that within this modern Priest there lay the bravery and loyalty that she had always sought. So it was that when Midoriko's last incarnation laid her head upon his shoulder under the starlight that at long last she felt the peace she had yearned for, and the love she had long deserved.

AN: Word Count 695