Chapter Ten:

Monk hood

We stayed in the village of Kohaku, visiting with my niece and our wolf demon friends for nearly a whole month. We sent the children on ahead once the village was back in shape, but Kagome, Inuyasha, Sango and myself remained for conversation and to help the village further. When we went home, it was with a combination of happiness and sadness, and we traveled slowly. We were greeted at the opening of the lands we knew as home by Kaede-chan. Kaede-chan swung in the arms of her parents as we walked home, and she was having the time of her life. Of course, she was missing her friends, and she was working during her school vacation, but she realized that not many children could travel through time, and so she never complained, and took advantage of everything she could.

Really, she was a very giggly child.

Approaching the village, Kagome was the first one who slowed down, and touched her heart gently. Her face was puzzled. "Something," she said slowly, "isn't quite right."

We all stared at the town, and Kaede-chan felt it next. She set her small mouth into a line like her father's, and her hands tightened in her parents'. "There's a sense of sadness and anxiety in the village." She then looked at her mother for some kind of verification, but her mother was too deep in thought. Kaede-chan looked over at her father, and his lips were drawn tightly as well. Copying his expression, she too stared at the village, not knowing why we adults were being so silent. Kaede-chan already knew why the village was sad, but she had not experienced death before and she was not aware that death was the cause of the sadness she felt.

I felt it third. No. I had felt it before Kaede, having age over power, but I was the third one who said something about the feelings from the village we could sense. "I have never felt black clouds such as this before. They are not demonic in nature. It is as if every heart in the village is consumed with worry, as Kaede-chan pointed out."

Sango tightened her hands on her sword handle and tried to dispel all of the worry in her heart, less her presence darken the clouds even further. "Then let's go and left that worry. With all of us there, I'm sure that nobody will have anything to worry about." With Shippo riding on her shoulder, who was eager to get home and see his slayer friends, Sango took a step forward.

Letting go of his daughter's hand, Inuyasha hurried down after her and stopped her with a hand on her free shoulder. "Let me go first, Sango." Inuyasha didn't even pause for her response as he drew his sword and started down before her.

She was going to fight. I could feel it, see it in the way her body tensed and Shippo looked concerned, his tiny fingers winding into her hair as he stroked her head, telling her that Inuyasha was just being himself: a dick. She relaxed and smiled, and when I took her hand as we walked down to the village, she held it back gently.

Before we had barely entered the village, Kari came running up, relief in her eyes. She skidded to a stop in front of Innuyasha and his drawn sword, and bowed politely to us. When she lifted her head, Yugo not far behind her as he closed in on us, she looked very guilty, even though she had done nothing wrong. "I wish there was an easy way to say this, without being blunt but… I don't think there is. While we were away, Kaede-sama passed on."

We were all stunned. Kaede-sama had always seemed ancient, being so old when we already met her. She had lived over a decade after that, and somewhere along the way, I think we all stopped knowing that she was only as human as the rest of us, and not immortal as we all assumed.

Inuyasha, perhaps, has an easier time dealing with death then we do. He looked harshly at Kari, perfectly blunt and honest as he always is. "If she was still the Priestess of the Shrine, then who is now the Priestess, and what are you doing with her body?"

On Sango's shoulder, still as a statue, Shippo suddenly turned and glared at Inuyasha so harshly the older half-demon was startled into utter silence. Without another word, the fox-demon pushed off Sango's shoulder and landed on all fours, speeding away in a zig-zag pattern between the houses. Sango turned to go after him, but I wouldn't let go of her hand. Shippo obviously needed to be alone, and so we had to let him.

Sensing her friend's concern, Kirara moved from my broad shoulders to Sango's more slender ones, but even a friendly cat-demon to do little from fill the whole we had discovered in our world. Yes, indeed it had seemed like Kaede would always be there…

"There is nobody caring for the shrine. The people have tended to the outside, but nobody dares enter inside it to clean or do any work in case they accidentally anger the spirits and bad luck befalls them. They merely pray outside, promising that they would find the strongest Priestess they could, as they already had one in mind. You, Lady Kagome."

Kagome stared at Kari. She held her daughter in front of her, protecting, her fingers lacing in the fabric of Kaede-chan's shirt. I had never seen anyone look so astonished before. "Me? But… I look after this shrine already... in… well, you know!"

"I do know, and the people here understand, but Kaede-sama has trained no one else, and no one else here as power to become the Priestess, except for three people standing in front of me right now. You, Lady Kagome; your daughter, and Miroku-sama."

I felt the surprise run through Sango's body, but I heard the tiny gasp of surprise coming from Kagome and even Inuyasha. I was slightly hurt. If I didn't wear my robes, if I didn't bring up Buddha now and then or prayed in front of graves, did they all forget that I had been trained to be a monk? It was of my own volition that I had left the shrines, and I don't regret it. But had my life been different, I would have loved to have served the Buddha. I tried to still keep with what I had learned as best I could, but was it truly enough?

I didn't think that such a corrupt man as myself could run a shrine as purely as Kaede did…

"But he's a pervert!" blurted out Inuyasha.

"But she's so young!" blurted out Kagome. We all stared at her, and she looked around at us, confused. "Well, Kaede-chan is young! I'm certainly not going to… oh. I think that Miroku-sama would keep the shrine perfectly well until we can train a replacement."

At least I had one vote of confidence…

Sango said nothing. She squeezed my hand and shifted closer to me, and I knew why she didn't want to speak up. She didn't want to lose me. She didn't want things to change between us. She didn't want me to have to start living closer to the shrine, to have to live in our house with no husband to warm her bed and tell her that everything would be all right when his hand touched her stomach. I raised her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles gently. She knew as well as I that Kagome made it sound easy. It took years to learn how to run a shrine.

And who knew how long it would be until we found someone suitable!

That night, Kagome and her family went home to the future to make suitable preparations for this new change in their lives. That same night, Sango slept alone in our tent, Shippo still out there alone, and it was the first night in a long list of them that we spent alone.

-

When I woke up, I first set about tidying the temple, but my plans were derailed. I found Shippo sitting in the shrine, staring up at the Buddha. His small face was solemn, his furry tail slowly moving behind him, and his hands rested on his knees. When he heard me enter the room, he turned to look at me, and I found his eyes were bloodshot, bags under them; had he slept at all that night?

Smiling gently, trying my best to be fatherly, I sat down next to him, and gazed at him. I clasped my hands over the tight fabric of my robes. "You know, Shippo, when I had a problem, I always turned to the Buddha, but sometimes, there were such questions in my life that were too difficult to be simply answered. I know that I will see the souls I meet in this life in some other one, providing I am blessed with enough luck, but I wonder why they ever had to be taken from me in the first place. It seems unfair to lose them, doesn't it?"

His tiny body shook, and I gathered that I had been wrong when I thought that death was the only topic on his mind. "If it's unfair to you humans, how do you describe what I'm going to have to go through? How could Kaede-sama have left me? How could she have left us? But it's more than that, Miroku! Look at how carelessly Inuyasha treats death! What happens when it's Kagome whose dead, or you, or Sango? I knew it was going to happen, Miroku, but I didn't know what if would feel like until now. I'm going to have to watch all my friends grow old, and die, and then… I'll be all alone, won't I?"

I softened my expression, and reached an arm around his slim shoulders, drawing him to my warm heart. His tiny hands held my robes tightly, and I wondered how we ever could have let him run off on his own, or fight, or how we could ever remember that he would be older than all of us when we were old and grey and he would be scared by some story the older kids had told him. "No. You'll never be alone, Shippo. I don't know how, but I know this in my heart. You will never be alone, Shippo."

"Yes, I was! I was all alone last night! I ran away to Inuyasha's woods, and the well, and I cried and I cried, and I cried, and no one even came to see that I was okay!" He suddenly broke into sobs, his fat tears making my clothes damp. "Why didn't you come and check up on me?"

"Sango and I, we both thought that you wanted to be alone to deal with Kaede's death. I guess that Kagome and Inuyasha thought the same thing. You'll never be alone Shippo, but we can't always be there to hold your hand and tell you everything's alright. You just have to be brave..."

Shippo sat back, drawing his cheeks, and he looked almost serene as he turned back to the statue. His voice was light, and it sounded barely his. It sounded older. "I know. I just have to be strong and brave right? I have to be… courageous. I have to grow up, right, Miroku?"

I stared at him a second, and then looked up at the statue of Buddha myself, feeling slightly wiser than my age would allow… though thirty was past middle-aged. "I'll let you in on a little secret, Shippo. Nobody ever grows up to the point where they don't want to be held or told that everything would be all right. Not the bravest, strongest warrior alive will ever be that courageous. When things are at their darkest, everybody needs to be told they're loved, and that things will be well again soon."

Turning back to him, I ruffled my fingers in his hair and left them there. "That's why Sango was mad at me for saying that I would work here. She doesn't want me to, because then I can't be there to tell her that I love her when I wake up, and tell her that she can survive anything when she gets the slightest little cramp because I believe in her. People need to be reminded."

He was silent, and then he was burst, filled with energy. In ten years, the top of his head was still not parallel with my shoulder. "I can do it for you! I can tell Sango all of that stuff until you come back, right Miroku? I mean, this kid is going to be my little brother or sister, and I really want to have a little brother or sister! Even if… even if I grow up faster than they do! I don't want them to protect me the way you and Sango do; I want to protect them, so that they can live for a long time; so that they can live lots! And then I won't have to say goodbye to them until years and years have passed! And the first way I can protect them is by taking care of their mother, right? And making sure nothing happens to them while they are in her tummy, right?"

I laughed out loud, wishing the others could have seen the hope and determination in his eyes. I kissed his forehead. "Exactly, Shippo. I think that's a wonderful idea. Now, Sango should just be getting up, and getting over her sickness. Run and tell her what I always do each morning, will you? And give her a big fat kiss on her cheek for me! I have to start getting this place into shape."

"Yes, sir!" Shippo smartly saluted and scampered off.

Still laughing, I shook my head gently, my hair falling into eyes that were slowly growing strained. But I could still make out Buddha's calm and slightly laughing face stare down at me, as if the man were laughing with me for once, instead of at me, the way I often felt he did when I was in the darkest times of my life. Standing up, I dusted off my robes and bowed respectively. "You certainly do work in mysterious ways, sir," I said to the statue, as if it were an old friend; and often, I think it did feel that way. "You certainly do, but I couldn't have picked a better carrier, or a better message."

-

When Sango woke up that morning, she was struck with a feeling of loneliness that was different than any she had ever felt before. It was not really a pain, the loneliness she encountered when she thought her family was all dead, because she knew I was still alive, it was… it was a longing. She wanted me back beside her, to make her smile as soon as she woke up, to tell her she still looked beautiful despite the tangles in her hair; she wanted me there because I made her mornings better, her days brighter.

She brought the same light to mine.

Dishes banged in the kitchen, and she grumpily went to investigate, thinking some type of weasel creature had broken into her house. That thought alone doubled her grumpiness. It's a little known fact that while Sango doesn't mind killing demons or hunting (as that preserved her own existence) she hates killing the poor creatures whose worlds interlaced with our own and were guilty of no more than trying to find a warm place to spend the night.

The same women who could single-handedly bring down centipede demons would often spend ten minutes chasing down a spider just to put it in the few plants we have outside our house that she calls a garden.

What she found was Shippo trying to make her breakfast. His little tail was still for once, his tiny body frozen, and then he looked away sheepishly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you. I wanted to everything ready and cleaned up for when you recovered from a nap after… after, well you know." He patted his stomach.

Sango smiled at him and sat down cross legged behind him, so that he could go back to work. She didn't complain about the mess at all, but she was curious as to what had brought on this bout of responsibility and charity. She didn't have long to wait, as Shippo explained.

"I talked to Miroku today. He says that he loves you and that everything will be all right. And I know he's right, and I'm here to help make sure that he's right. Because I realized something today; I realized that I'm going to be a sibling, and that I'll never be alone again because your child will have kids, and they'll have kids, and so I'll always have kids my own age to play with, ones younger than me to protect, and ones older than me to protect me. Right now, this child is younger me, so it's my responsibility as the older brother to protect them and make sure they're okay, and that means that I have to make sure they eat healthily. Which means I have to make sure that you eat healthy, Sango!"

Her smile became immeasurably brighter, and she gave him a giant bear hug, almost smothering the poor boy. Sango was deeply touched, and for once in her life, she didn't mind being "coddled", because coming from Shippo, it felt more like simply being… spoiled, or perhaps special. She kissed his cheek. "You are amazing, Shippo."

Shippo had never had a compliment like that in his whole life, and he kept it sealed close to his heart.

-

It was odd at first, but we quickly became accustomed to this new way of life. Every week, Kagome and I switched taking care of the shrine, and I went back to sharing a bed with my wife, and training my students. It was hard on all of the adults, and on all of our children. Inuyasha was left alone for a week to take care of his daughter and the shrine there, and Sango was left alone to teach.

Luckily, we have very wonderful children. Shippo was never far from Sango, stitched to her side so that he could fetch whatever she needed as her stomach grew larger. Sango was always pale, and no matter how much she ate, her stomach grew wide with a baby and her body grew thinner. From the back, it looked as if she weren't pregnant at all. The older children helped train, and set quiet examples. Sango was beginning to rely on Yugo and Kari more and more, and she was sad to start thinking that before her child was born, she might have to stop being a teacher.

In the future, Kaede-chan was busy helping her father, and when she came to visit, she spoke guardedly of help that they had begun training for the shrine, as if the topic of their helper made her uncomfortable.

It was this way for the rest of Sango's pregnancy. When Sango was nine months pregnant, Kagome, Inuyasha, and cute little Kaede arrived with armfuls of equipment, enough to last Kagome a month. Our blue-eyed friend set her belongings down in the shrine, and dusted off her hands. "No offense, Miroku, but men have a tendency to lose their heads when their wives are pregnant. That's why I'm going to be staying until this baby comes, and so will Inuyasha."

Our half-demon friend looked fierce; it had been years since I saw him look as if he would tear off the head of whomever crossed him. I gulped, and looked back at Kagome. "Pardon me for asking, Priestess," the nickname I had begun to use, as often she called me a Priest… and I jokingly tolerated it. I was a monk, not a priest. "But what exactly is Inuyasha here to do?"

She casually shrugged, and Sango snickered behind her, helping her to get settled. "Inuyasha's here to sit on you so you don't interfere."

At the word 'sit' however, Inuyasha winced, and rubbed the back of his neck, no doubt remembering the way that she used to say that command and send him face-first into the dirt… or stone… or river… Kagome and Sango giggled, easing we men over. It had been a long time since we had heard our women giggle, and when we do, it made us feel younger, even though Sango was not yet even a mother.

As if picking up on my thoughts, my wife touched her swollen belly. She looked a little bit in pain, and then the expression was replaced with a small smile. "I think I need to sit down. Lately, this baby has been kicking around a lot. It feels as if they're trying to do a kata in there."

Shippo was there in a blur of orangey-red fur, taking her hand and helping her sit down. Had he not been a demon, I doubt that he could have supported her weight, but then again, Sango had been losing weight. If it wasn't for Kagome sneaking her back treats from the future, I would have thought that my lovely wife could have wasted away.

"Miroku," she purred, holding Shippo close and playing with his hair (his eyes were closed in happiness, and I swear that he would have started "rumbling" like Inuyasha does occasionally at any second). "Miroku, come feel our baby kick."

Later, Inuyasha teased me about going white at this idea. Pardon me, but I don't like the idea of the baby kicking my wife's insides. Slowly, I came and sat down beside her, Kagome eagerly looking forward to when I was finished. Sango lifted her long shirt so that I could put my flesh against hers. It was still odd seeing Sango's belly button becoming an outtie, as Kagome called in, seeing her flesh expanded with pregnancy. Yet it was a good feeling, because that was my child in there, and she had finally been able to bring one to term. Within the month, we would have a child.

I placed my hand on Sango's stomach, and felt only the odd sensation of expanded flesh. Then, suddenly, a foot, a slight kick, and flesh again.

I had felt my little child kick.

Laughter spilled from my mouth, and I placed another hand on her stomach, and Inuyasha pulled Kagome and Shippo away. I was alone with my wife, laughing so hard I was crying. My child kicked again. My baby was moving, my little son or daughter alive and healthy and moving inside my wife!

Taking her chin in my hands, I covered her soft mouth and her cheeks and forehead and dark hair in quick little kisses, kissing even her round belly, telling her how much I loved her. I was finally allowing myself to feel that elation I had felt when I had found out Sango was pregnant. We were finally doing it; we were finally going to have a little baby together.

The elation I had kept in for so long was pouring out now, in droves, in oceans of love, in fucking torrents. I couldn't stop from kissing Sango, to telling her I loved her more than anything, how proud I was of her… how happy I was, and even thank you.

It had finally hit me.

In less than a month, I, Miroku, was going to have a son or daughter, born to me by my loving wife, the woman I have loved since I first saw her fight and the color rise to her cheeks.

I was going to be a father.

At that moment, safe and happy and holding my lovely Sango, I never thought that one week later, my baby was going to enter this world almost one whole month before they were supposed to.

To Be Continued