The faint singing of a female caught his sensitive hearing. Whoever was singing was either strong enough to protect themselves from any who would wander to investigate as she had a beautiful singing voice or completely clueless as to how many youkais lived in these woods. Jumping down from the tree he had been in, he glanced at his pack as they slept around the fire. The young mute human girl was curled up against the two-headed dragon, Ah-Un, tucked in between several fur pelts while his retainer, Jaken, was asleep on the other side of the fire. Ah-Un lifted their heads silently in acknowledgement as he left the clearing to investigate the singing woman.
Reaching a large clearing full of wild lavender that he had passed earlier during his patrol, he paused seeing a blackened circle visible in the moonlight near its center where the singing seemed to be coming from. His nose picked up the remnants of fire and ash but the lavender fields covered up any other scent. He sensed other youkais hiding in the woods around the clearing but none seemed to dare go any further. Sneering at the thought that the dozens of youkais seemed too entranced in the woman's voice to move closer, he moved through the fields to its blackened circle.
Reaching the edges of the blackened lavender, the Western Lord finally could smell the woman's natural scent of blackberries and hints of vanilla and he noticed that it was a perfect circle around the young woman was bare of any clothing. Her long dark hair was braided over her right shoulder and went past her hips. A scar across the center of her chest from a couple inches below her collar bone down to just above her navel could be seen under the black markings across her chest. It ran just below both collarbones from the tips of her shoulders and down her sternum and spread out under her formed breasts to cover her lower ribs and curved down to meet just above her navel. It looked like a mix of chains and lace spread across her body, almost hiding the scar completely. Across her neck was a silver chain, but he couldn't tell if there was anything else to it as the chain disappeared under her.
"Onna, have you no shame or do you wish the dozens of youkais to come and have their way with your person?"
"Oh…? That voice…?" The woman stopped singing and tilted her head back to look at him revealing dark eyes that did not show color in the shadows. "Hmm your eyes are darker than his…"
"Why is your person bare?"
"I wonder…" she mused as she looked back up at the night sky. "I honestly can't feel my body right now so I didn't realize that I was naked. It seems that I cannot move very much of my body since I have woken up. Last thing I remember was dreaming, but then again my dreams have made no sense lately."
"Your speech is odd. You are not from here." Sesshomaru frowned. The way she spoke was odd, her wording and how she pronounced words was accented.
"Says the person who speaks in third person. I wonder if I'm actually dreaming, this place is like no place I've ever seen. It's better than the ocean in my other dreams."
That comment made Sesshomaru frown, remembering waking from several dreams that had been set at his bedroom balcony that overlooked the ocean weeks ago. Stepping forward, he pulled his outer haori off and knelt beside her and sat her up. Propping her limp body against his leg, he started to dress her in his haori when his hand came in contact with the rest of her necklace. Pulling it into view, he frowned seeing a crescent moon connected to a rhombus.
"What is this?" He frowned, feeling a familiar energy wrapped in the gems of light blue and amber.
"Someone dear to me had it made. He said he had infused his energy into it, but I can't tell a difference," she spoke quietly as he finished wrapping the haori around her small body before pulling her into his arm and started walking back towards his camp. "What are you doing?"
"There questions that need to be answered," he spoke.
"If I am dreaming, please let me wake up now," she groaned as her head fell back against his shoulder. "Or this paralyses better be temporary because I feel like a child with you holding me like this."
"And why is an onna like you so small?"
"I've been sick for a two-thirds of my life. From all the treatments and medicines to try and help me, my growth was stunted."
"Hn." He reaches his camp and pulled out several extra pelts and laid one down before laying her down on its white fur and laid the other fire on top of her. "Sleep onna."
"I can feel that helping me like this is not your usual style around others so thank you," she whispered.
"It is not for your wellbeing that this one acted."
"I appreciate the help no matter what reasoning you had behind your actions," she mused as he jumped back up into the tree he had been in before she had caught his interest. As she closed her eyes, he heard her whisper quietly to herself, "Please let me wake up in my own bed."
As the young woman fell asleep, he studied her and noticed that as the fire illuminated the immediate area, her hair seemed to have a deep violet shade of color. Comparing her form to the young mute child sleeping near by, he could see a frailty in her small frame that made him wonder why kind of illness she had.
Closing his eyes, he listened to the sounds of his pack and noticed the weak beats of the woman's heart compared to the others. Her heart was struggling and the long scar across her chest seemed to make a little more sense. Hoping to make sense of this strange woman before her weak heart failed, he let himself slip off into a light sleep.