Chapter 14

Soft as Chalk

Since their initial meeting, Shinokiri and Sesshomaru had been joined only by glances in passing until their betrothal. The female seemed a curiosity to the male. She was ethereal. He would see her slipping passed him and it irked him that it caught his attention at all.

To him, her voice seemed to stay in the creases of the floor, and ring out at him as he stepped through space. Now that they were mated, there was an uneasy happiness to it all. He would watch her as she barely seemed to notice him. Going about her day, focused on individual tasks. He found pleasure in this.

She had always managed to be busy from afar but under closer inspection never seemed flustered. She bounced from one task to the other, making no show of it, simply doing. With such ease, it then seemed necessary to always give her more to do.

Something about it was inappropriate. His mate, filled with the vestiges of his scent from the night before, still fluttering around like his father's vassal. She was his father's vassal. Yet, that all should have ended once their union was consummated. The whole thing was an insult.

He had managed to track her in a rare stationary moment and sat in observation. Grey hair fell around her face, framing its serenity. She was most beautiful in these moments of supreme focus. She cleaned the staff of her naginata with a hum of satisfaction. Such an oddity in a demoness. Looking up at him, her eyes smiled.

"I'm not sure if you're aware my lord, but it's hard to concentrate when you stare at me."

"You'll get better with practice."

Her shoulders shook in amused delight. He continued.

"Why do you persist in running around upon my father's whim…considering your new status?"

"It was this running around that gave me my status…such a beautiful prize"

Her eyes shone mischievously at him as she added, "Work rewarded with beauty begets more work."

Sesshomaru sniffed in annoyance. She had a tendency to treat him like a princess in a castle.

"You were the one who was given to me, Shinokiri."

She scoffed at this. "You did nothing to deserve me…you were just born. All that you have; everything is by virtue of simply being alive. Even now, the work that I do for you father ensures that your inheritance is a grand one."

With that, she lifted the naginata, shrinking, back into her hair. "I have made an investment in you, and being joined with you is the return."

"Is that all it is then?"

Sesshomaru rested his eyes to the scene on a painted screen, imagining himself within it, removing himself from the conversation to some extent. His question betrayed him.

"I believe you'll be a great leader. You're less impulsive than your father…except that you are quicker to anger…colder. He is right, you need compassion. Though, I find your company enjoyable regardless."

Shinokiri got up; it was on to the next task. She paused before passing him, resting a clawed hand in his silver tresses and letting them fall from finger to finger in her grasp. They locked eyes and she gave him a small smile.

"Your dryness is very endearing," she stated before leaving him to himself.

Centuries of comfortable silences and slow glances had somehow dissolved into the bitter tension of this ordeal. No matter what glimpses of turmoil had appeared between them in the past, those moments culminating into this current mess was not a foreseeable occurrence.

"So what then?"

Shinokiri, now relaxed, looked up at him with some tenderness.

"My lord, I have accepted your ward, and given her a means of protecting herself in lieu of your presence. I have eased your greatest burden. Allow me some time without a master. After being imprisoned for so long, give me this freedom and I will consider it compassion."

"And will you one day return?"

"I hope so."

Sesshomaru eased himself off of her and lay next to her in the grass. It was cool and soft and the breeze tingled at their flesh. Neither looked over at the other.

"What brought this on?"

"Those two women…you helped free them, you gave them peace. I want the same."

"Their peace would've lied in being what you already are."

Shinokiri smiled to herself, "What I am? I'm rarely ever that."

"I offered you your offspring."

"It's a great offer, will you keep it on the table while I decide?"

Sesshomaru never answered, he simply evaporated. In moments like this, it was more expected for the demoness to leave without issue. It was usually her that was detached.

His voice still rumbled within her. Shinokiri thought on the conversation. What really was the point of all of this? Was she being dramatic? In the lengths of their estrangement which had begun some two centuries ago, there had been a drastic change in her mate. It was all the more shocking to her as she had not witnessed it taking place in the slightest. She simply dropped into this new world with a new Sesshomaru.

She had to admit. His patience with her was more than she could've ever asked of him before. However, was she making that all up? The part about him being at the center of her actions? Or was it really only his father that bound them together?

It was not an alien thing for the young Shinokiri to fantasize about Sesshomaru. She had been raised on the idea of his eventual rule. How he would receive the splendor of the territory Inu no Taisho created. The dog prince would shine on the horizon of the bright future his father had laid the foundations for, and Shinokiri desperately wished to be a part of it. She was sold on the dream Inu no Taisho peddled.

Sesshomaru was beautiful and powerful and distant. Ever distant. He floated in and out of her sights, never speaking to her. In her toils, she had hoped to be so present as to be noticed, but it never happened. In a strange way, it seemed right to her, to obsess over the fawn of her idol. She too wanted to be in Inu no Taisho's vision of the future, side by side with Sesshomaru. She wanted to help the son fulfill the dreams of the father.

Now that she was grown and Inu no Taisho's soft looks became tainted to her as they had become toward Izayoi, she wondered—what were his intentions? Was her loyalty to be rewarded with status as an heir or to be sullied with the hollow honor of his bed? It seemed a strange thought.

He had mentioned that a match was to be made. Did she dare to think it would be Sesshomaru? Still, it was a fanciful folly of a hope. She didn't know him beyond the gloating of his father. Even if she was given the opportunity to lay claim over him. What did she really know of his actual competency beyond his promise? Could she stomach to be around him, or would she have to use his beauty as a veneer for everything else?

The adolescent peaked out to the garden, watching the young prince. Silver and achingly gorgeous. He was other-worldly. I will have him…

The demoness hoped to think it into being. Would it not be magnificent to be so ingrained in Inu no Taisho's great legacy? She would have little models of Sesshomaru running around, mighty and alluring, to make her proud.

Rin breathlessly returned to Kaede's hut and clumsily wrapped her lacerated hand. She paid no real attention to it as the adrenaline pumping in her veins was shielding her from any sensation of pain. She bubbled at the koto in her hands. She lumbered the great instrument down in the emptiness of the room and began to strum it with abandon. She had agency now, she could choose when to unleash the instrument's destructive powers.

The sound which came from its strings was so sweet. Sweeter than someone of her proficiency should have been able to create. Rin felt like a colossus. An artist. An assassin. It was so adorably misguided.

"Rin! Ri—"

The sudden burst of Jaken into the hut had shook Rin out of her daze, terrifying her to mal-effect. The sudden fear that traveled through her sent a wave of energy knocking the wind out of Jaken.

"Master Jaken!"

She rushed over; trying to shake him into a revival. To her relief he stirred.

"Master Jaken, you're alive!"

It seemed the koto had altered its attack to take into account the unknown. Rin became effervescent. The entire thing was fascinating.

"Girl! What on ear—"

"I'll see you later Master Jaken! Don't move till I return!"

With that order, she grabbed her red lacquer practicing koto and flew out the door toward the interior of the village. Rushing passed everything she parted startled passersby's, making them stumble in her wake.

Rin looked like colored paper lost to the wind as she tumbled through the village searching for her destination. Nothing in this moment could break her focus, so much so that she almost missed her stop. Halting on her heels she fell backward in front of the house of her koto-master.

Brushing herself off she cried out, "Aiko-sensei! Aiko-sesnsei!"

Confused, the young woman stepped out to see a beaming Rin jumping up at her.

"Rin-chan?"

"Aiko-sensei, I don't need this anymore. Thank you so much, but you can have it back!"

Terrified the musician took the instrument in her hand as her eyes bulged out at the child.

"You're quitting? B-b-but you can't? I was supposed to teach you to master this…will this not anger your guardians? What will happen to me, thoughtless child?"

Aiko looked around in panic. Rin only giggled in reply.

"What? No! I just mean I don't need to use that one anymore! See you next lesson!"

Rin jolted off, leaving the baffled woman to her own devices as she skipped off. The child had never held this much control over her own life and her prospects were now thrilling to her. She was determined to become a being of legend like so many of her loved ones, old and new. She was no longer, just Rin, a helpless child in need of protection.

Despite being on a cloud, just like that, Rin was literally snatched from her dreaming. Coming to, she found herself a relative distance from the ground looking at clawed feet and red hakama.

"Kid, what are you doing here by yourself?"

"Master Inuyasha! You're back already?! Did you slay the oni? Was it big and scary like this?"

She smooshed and jumbled her words into an excited mumble as she curved her hands into a claw and made her best menacing face; ending with a weak growl as the fabric of her kimono loosely spun so that her face met the hanyou's.

"Answer the question."

"I was just visiting Aiko-sensei. I wanted her to see how good I had gotten."

"You see her all the time whelp. What's so special this time?"

Rin shrugged. Inuyasha was suspicious.

"Fine, don't tell me."

He lowered her to the ground and sniffed, focusing in on her blood spotted bandaged hand.

"Lying is a nasty quality to have…"

Rin looked up at him blinking. Her feet shuffling and digging into the dirt, trying to hide her need for momentum.

"Whatever. Get your butt back home."

"Bye, Master Inuyasha!"

Rin gleefully ran off, making no stops, back home to her precious koto. Inuyasha kept his eyes on her, scrunching his face in discontent. What the hell is going on with her…?

Shinokiri was in the air. The half-breed was not surprised. She was always getting involved in things that had nothing to do with her, even if it was in spite of herself. Her innate helpfulness was her greatest failing. She had definitely been here, checking up on Rin's progress, most likely. Hmhp! Inuyasha doubted she'd ever change.