Revelation

"Shippo!" the trio of little fox demons called from outside the spiritual barrier guarding Kaede's village.

Shippo had smelt them long before they called out to him, and he was already halfway to the village boundaries to meet his friends.

"Yuji! Toshi! Jurou!" he greeted them in turn as he popped out in a flash through the barrier. Like him, they were orphaned kitsune demons, although unlike him, they had older siblings and other relatives to help bring them up. He was something of a curiosity to them, as it was known among his fox friends that he more or less acknowledged an inu hanyou as his (somewhat dysfunctional) father figure, and looked to two human priestesses for a mother's and grandmother's affections respectively.

"Shippo, we've been testing your new tricks and spells over the past week, and they all seem to be working well – although none of them lasts very long!" Jurou chirped. "You're getting really, really good at making these things. Now you just have to get them to stay good beyond a few minutes!"

Shippo, scratching his head, said: "I've been trying and trying to get them to last longer, but I can't seem to get the knack of it yet. At least they seem to work perfectly for those few minutes!"

He was glad to see his friends, for he had been a little lonely for youthful company since Rin had gone on her trip with Sesshomaru. From the time he had arrived at the decision to regard her as an older sister, she had stopped treating him as if his heart was made of glass, and was back to the good old Rin who teased him, told him stories and jokes, and was willing to spend hours playing games with him. But when Sesshomaru had taken her away from the village two days ago, the whole place had seemed emptier, less cheery, and Kohaku was especially mournful, for he and Rin seemed to have been spending a lot more time with each other in recent weeks.

"Maybe you can ease up on the perfection a bit and channel some of that into durability?" Toshi suggested.

"No, I can't!" Shippo objected. "Perfection is the most important part of any spell or trick – what's the use of something that lasts for ages but keeps flickering on and off?"

"You've already passed so many of your exams that I don't see why you keep working so hard," Yuji remarked. This little fox was the bravest of the four, but not the brightest when it came to passing the tests set for young kitsune youkai who wished to make a name for themselves in the fox-demon world in order to stand among the craftiest and cleverest of their kind.

"It's important," Shippo insisted. "There will come a day when we youkai will need to be able to conceal our true forms and youki really, really well, even from one another – and excellent spells and tricks are the best way I can think of to achieve that. Kagome, who's from… er… I mean, who can sometimes see into the future, has warned me that in a few hundred years, the world won't be as easy for youkai like us to move around in. And the four of us are still so young, we're sure to live to see that time if we don't get ourselves killed before that! So I'm going to work on this stuff as hard as I can!"

"Speaking of concealing our youki even from one another, we tested out that spell of yours to hide our presence from other demons just a few days back, and like I said, it worked perfectly, but only for a few minutes."

"Who did you test it on?" Shippo asked. "Each other?"

"No – we decided to try and see if a mature demon would pick up our ki," Toshi said. "So we waited till we sensed a powerful one nearby, then we slapped on your spell and ran near him and he didn't detect us! We hoofed it out of there about a minute before we thought it would wear off, and it's a good thing we did, because he had such a stern look on his face."

"And he was talking to your human friend, you know, the younger girl with the messy hair?"

"You mean Rin?" Shippo asked curiously. "Where was this?"

"Oh, out in the fields about two miles from here. The demon was that fluffy white dog fellow who visits your village once in a while."

"What was he saying to Rin?" Shippo asked.

"Uh, something about how if some fellow called Koga 'makes advances' to her, whatever that means, she was free to accept him if she wanted," Yuji said, in the kind of voice that told everyone he had no idea what he was parroting.

Shippo, who had not spent years around the lecherous Miroku without learning some things he should not have learnt till he was much older, cottoned on at once to what it meant. His eyes, already enormous, grew even bigger. "Sesshomaru's planning to mate Rin to Koga?!?" he gasped.

"Wh- what's the matter, Shippo?" Yuji asked. "Who's Koga, anyway?"

"A wolf demon – and Rin's terrified of wolves!" Shippo practically squawked. "How could he do this? Uh, look – thanks for testing my spells – but I've got to go back to the village – I'll see you in a few days, okay?"

"Oh, all right – we were on our way to Jurou's oldest sister's den, anyway – she's caught a lot of rabbits and has invited us to share them. We came to ask if you wanted to come along."

"Erm, thanks, but no – another time, all right?" Shippo said, turning back to the village and disappearing at a trot. He had to question the adults about this!

.............

"Are you doing this to make up in some way for your pack killing me?" Rin asked Koga as they sat beside each other on the sloping bank leading down to the river that wound through the wolf tribe's lands.

She had spent two days in these fields now, and Koga's casual, easy manner had made the time spent with him far less awkward for her than it would otherwise have been. She was talking to him more freely, and trying to get to know him as an individual.

He turned his blue eyes on her and shook his head. "I asked myself that too before I approached Sesshomaru. I won't deny that I do want to make up for what happened, but I'd like to do that in other ways, not ask for you as a mate simply because I feel bad about what my pack did. That would be insulting to you, wouldn't it?"

"It would," Rin said softly.

"I thought about it, and I decided that the creatures under my command may have taken your life once, but last winter, I saved your life once. While I knew that did not compensate for the pain and terror you suffered years before, I decided to consider us even for now, where the mere fact of your existence was concerned. After I did that, I realised that I still wanted to find out if you would be willing to consider me as a mate, and I wanted to know you better for that purpose."

"Why? Why me?" Rin asked. "I'm sorry if that sounds either self-centred or self-doubting, but I must ask, because you hardly know me at all."

"I know when I like what I see," Koga said frankly, gazing at her.

Rin hated her inconvenient habit of blushing easily, which she seemed to have developed in her adolescent years, and she tried very hard to keep that under control now.

"You're very pretty," Koga continued. "My eyes told me that the second I saw you in the forest. You're brave and feisty, if a bit impulsive, which all my senses told me from the moment I realised you were fighting off the bandit, and especially when you jumped into the ravine. You're good-natured and kind, which I could see for myself during those days I spent in the village, and by observing how much my friends love you. And you're smart without being calculating, which anyone can tell after spending a bit of time with you."

He could also have added: And you felt perfect in my arms as we lay in the den, and I wanted to sink my teeth very, very gently into your neck when you bowed to me.

But of course he said nothing of the sort to her.

"I would make you a terrible mate," she said, shaking her head. "I'm not saying that to sound falsely modest, or to deliberately put you off. I'm saying it because I believe that you would do much better with someone a lot stronger than me. Your tribe needs powerful members who can defend it, not individuals who seem to get into trouble all the time and keep needing to be rescued. There's nothing I can contribute to your pack."

"You think I want you for a mate because I hope you'll protect our pack?" he asked with a smile in his voice. "My warriors and I can protect our pack. I was hoping to be able to protect you."

She did blush this time, hard as she tried not to, and fought her self-consciousness so she wouldn't lapse into uncomfortable silence again. "I'm doing my best to learn how to defend myself so I won't be such a burden to my friends. But I can very safely say that I'll never be an accomplished warrior of any sort," she sighed. "I don't want to be a problem for anyone. In a human village, I can still pull my weight and help to defend the place; but in a wolf tribe, I would only get in the way."

"May I take your hand?" he requested.

"Hmm?" she asked, baffled by the question that came out of nowhere.

"Your father threatened to kill me if I touched you without your consent – so, may I take your hand?"

"I don't think he meant that kind of touching…" she began, before she realised she had left herself open to being questioned about what sort of touching her father had meant then. Why, she asked herself as she hid her face behind her hair, is my life one long series of disasters and humiliations?

"Ah," said Koga, his eyes twinkling mischievously. "If he didn't mean this sort of touching, then if you don't mind…"

He reached his right hand out to take her left, turning his palm up so her hand could rest on it. He closed his fingers gently over hers, as if he thought he would crush her delicate bones if he squeezed.

"Now, back to your comment about your getting in the way – if you can feel my sincerity through the touch of my hand – I'm not courting you for what I think you can bring to my tribe, although I have no doubt you would be a valuable member, with your thoughtfulness, healing skills and intelligence. We could certainly do with your intelligence – I don't mind confessing that I'm not the brightest creature around, but I'm not too stupid either, and I don't think I would embarrass you excessively as a mate."

"Koga, you're not stupid," she said. "How could you embarrass anyone as a mate when you're strong and honourable, kind and willing to learn from experience? It's just that... I'm sorry... I don't know how to put this other than to say that I feel like a little girl playing a grown up's game here. I thought I was ready for marriage a year ago. Perhaps I was in my own naive way then. But now that I'm a year older, I feel as if all I've learnt in that year has only taught me how much I don't know. I do, however, know very well that you are being too generous. You're offering more than you're going to get in return."

"Isn't it ordinarily the case that the party doing the pursuing offers more than he knows he will get in return?" Koga asked. "And by saying all you've just said, it tells me that you're more grown-up than you think you are."

"If I loved you, I wouldn't care who was offering what," Rin answered honestly. "I would only know that I loved you. But I don't. And you know I don't. You knew it before you went to my father."

"Yes, I know you don't love me. But I was hoping to change that, given enough time and communication."

As he spoke, he tightened his hold on her hand, causing her to turn and look into his blue eyes, which pierced her with an intensity and emotion that she had never seen in Kohaku's eyes, or in anyone else's gaze directed at her. It made her breath catch in her throat, and for the first time in her life, she knew what it felt like to be looked at with a kind of desire that had nothing to do with physical hunger – which she had seen in the eyes of the wolves that tried to eat her; or malicious lust – which she had seen in the eyes of the bandit who had attacked her in the forest.

Koga leaned in a little closer and kissed her on the cheek as he had outside Kaede's hut, but this time, seared by the heat of his eyes, she turned her face slightly towards him rather than away from him after the peck he gave her, so that he was encouraged to place another kiss a tiny bit closer to her lips. And when she whispered the words "I don't love you" to him after that, he simply whispered back "I know", and pressed his lips to hers, tasting the softness and fullness of her mouth, like a fruit just bitten into at the moment when it first ripened.

As she kissed him, she knew it was a kind of madness to be doing so, and yet, that look in his wolf-demon eyes had broken open a tiny, locked box in her psyche which told her now, even as she felt she was melting under the heat of his lips and tongue: He took you once, long ago, maybe not like this, but take you he did – through the fangs and claws of his pack which tore you open and left you altered forever, so you belong to him in some strange way, by laws of the universe that operate in a place you've never been to.

She shivered as one of his hands gripped the nape of her neck and the other found her waist, but neither she nor he knew whether she trembled from the budding of a desire he hoped to awaken in her, or from the fear of returning to the embrace of the one whose extended power had once claimed her life.

Perhaps they were one and the same.