Chapter Fourteen: Permanence of She

Lixue wrinkled her nose in sleep, a low pungency poking her sensitive senses and prying her eyes open. She blinked her eyes in the dark, perking her ears to catch any hint of what had awoken her – when she felt the warmth in her lap and the unmistakable stench of human urine. Rin sobbed softly with shame in her lap, waking up as the demon did, rubbing her sleepy eyes and a deep frown on her small face. Lixue tried her best to close her nose to it, but the damage was done, and the sticky warmth was spreading in her clothes and dripping down her legs to the dirt.

Lixue lurched to her feet, the girl clinging to her chest and burying her face into the top of the tigress' armor before she could be pried loose, feet set upon the ground. Twin streaks of tears wrote clean trails through the thin layer of dirt on the girl's face and her chin trembled. Lixue sighed and kneeled down to Rin's eye level, putting her finger under the girl's chin to make her look at her face.

"Hey, stop crying." Lixue struggled for the right words, her gruffness only making the girl sniffle more violently. "This isn't anything to cry about. It happens to everyone at one point or another. So stop that, okay?" She smiled crookedly at Rin in what she hoped was a look of assurance.

Rin wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a thin line of mucus trailing from her nostril. "E-everyone?" she sniffled.

"Yeah." Lixue straightened. "When I was a cub I used to wet the bed sometimes too." She scanned the trees, trying to remember where the closest stream was. "Even Sesshomaru did it."

Rin's face broke into a watery smile. "Even Sesshomaru-sama?"

"Oh yeah," Lixue chuckled. "I only knew about one time, when he snuck a bit of his father's sake into the bedroom and drank it right before bed. His father was pissed." She chuckled at the memory of the red-faced Inu no Taisho, grabbing the girl's hand and leading her in the darkness. The whisper of wind cooled the liquid on her lap, its warmth quickly leading into an uncomfortable coldness.

The deep dark of the night was only broken by a thin sliver of moon; in the following night it would be completely gone. She could see in the darkness fairly easily, but from the girl's constant stumbling, she guessed that it was much harder for humans or even demons without night vision. Tiring of the tugging of the girl as she kept her balance, Lixue lifted the girl with one arm and perched her on the demon's hip. Rin squeaked as Lixue leapt forward, clinging to the warmth of the tigress in the darkness. It was not long, however, before the leaping ended in a mighty splash and she was dumped into the chill of the water with a shriek.

"You are a very noisy human." Lixue commented as she stripped, chucking her clothes and armor onto the shore and wiggling with pleasure at the freedom of nudity. The water was waist high for her, and the poor girl was nearly up to her neck in the water, splashing and spluttering, teeth chattering, before Lixue fished her out and set her back down in shallower water. "You can get out once you're rinsed off."

Lixue submerged beneath the surface of the water, the frigid liquid setting her teeth on edge. When she decided to re-emerge, she smelled the stench of… monkeys. Her pupils widened and her skin began to stripe in displeasure. They screeched in laughter, jumping up and down on their branches as they leapt to and fro across the stream.

"Come on, show us a little more, human," they chittered. "We just want to be friends!"

Rin's eyes were wide but she couldn't find their figures in the dark, clutching her drenched kimono more tightly to her body. She jumped at the sudden splash of water near her, but heard Lixue's voice ring through their laughter.

"Get lost, before I skin you alive." She snarled, standing in all her naked glory before the terrified girl, shielding her from their view.

"That's what we want!" They screeched and tittered. "Care to dance for us instead, human? We've got good money!"

That was the final insult. She shifted with a blaze of blue fire, illuminating the water and the trees with an ethereal glare as the slate tiger emerged. She lunged forward with a bloodthirsty roar, eyes wide with hatred and slashing a clean set of lines through the trees as the monkey demons beat a hasty retreat. One of her claws hooked into the knee of an unlucky demon and he was wrenched from the branches with a scream of pain. He struggled free from her hooked claw, ripping it through his flesh in his eagerness to escape. She pinned his body down with her other paw, sheer weight threatening to crack his ribcage. He pleaded nonsensically, clawing at the dirt as she brought her mouth to his neck.

"No!" Lixue paused, thin streams of fiery saliva dripping from her fangs to the ground on either side of the terrified brown demon. In the firelight, she saw the staid face of Rin. "No!" She cried again. Lixue closed her mouth and turned her massive head to look at the girl more fully.

"Don't do it, Li-san," Rin's voice dropped. "Let him go." Her small hands fisted at her side.

Lixue turned her head back to the monkey and rumbled while she considered. He had frozen, breathing shallow and labored under her paw, splayed helplessly face down in the dirt. She hadn't eaten anything decent in days, and the small human was asking her to let her legitimate prey go. And she hated monkeys.

She cocked her head, turning it again toward the girl. "Why?"

"Please let him go, Li-san. I couldn't bear it if you killed him." Rin waded through the water to the other side as she spoke, placing her open hand on the tiger's ankle. "Let him go."

The tiger thought, and after a maddeningly long few seconds, she lifted her foot from the back of the monkey. He warily got to his feet, and bowed to the girl in thanks. He reached one hairy hand toward the girl, before the irritated snarl from Lixue sent him skittering off into the forest.

Rin and Lixue stared into the forest for a time before Lixue snorted and turned away. The tiger waded into the deepest water she could find – only chest high on the creature – her paltry flames sputtering into darkness as they submerged into the water. She wished once more for her full power, her full size and fire. Her aura was so weakened that those idiot monkeys had even mistaken her for a human instead of the great demoness she was.

Rin remained on the shore, the errant breeze taking its time to dry her. She watched the tigress wade into the water, tail floating on the surface, small spurts of steam shooting from the surface whenever her flames would come in contact with the water. The tiger shook her head in irritation, snorting bubbles into the surface of the water before slapping the water with an open paw and snarling. The beads coiled around her neck glowed deep red with the heat from the tiger's fire wherever they touched before cooling back to their bone hue in the dark blue of the night.

Lixue's anger soon spent itself, leaving her standing in thought as the water coursed around the minor inconvenience that she was. She arched her back and waded slowly to the shore, shaking her coat free of water and flaring to dry her fur. She . Rin sat down next to the tiger's neck, petting the cat's silken fur and passing her hands through the demonic fire, warm to the touch but rendered harmless by Lixue's will. She giggled and pressed her hands down into the mass of fur around the tiger's neck, hands disappearing up to her elbows in thick undercoat and black stripes. Lixue groaned and flopped to her side, lifting up a paw to bat at the girl's outstretched hands, tail twitching in wide arcs.

Rin latched onto the paw before her, laughing as she was lifted from the ground and losing her grip, falling onto Lixue's furred chest and clinging there. She crawled up to the tiger's neck, settling down between her foreleg and chin as Lixue rolled upright again.

The girl sank contentedly into the clouds of fur about her, shielded from the wind and cold in the presence of the mighty heartbeat. The tigress settled down around her, the fire dying down to a thin gossamer screen on her paws.

"Li-san?" Her thin voice cricketsong. "Do you believe in soul mates?"

"Hmm." The tiger's voice rumbled all around Rin. "I suppose that I do. I guess that means I'm bad at being a tiger. Do you believe in soul mates, Rin?"

"Yeah. I want to fall in love one day." Rin played with the fur in her hands, twirling it around her fingers and brushing it lightly.

"I'm sure you will. Sooner than you know, you'll be having to beat off suitors with a stick." The tiger thought. "Maybe something bigger. You'll attract a lot of attention, being associated with Sesshomaru."

"Why?"

"He's a very powerful demon, and son of another powerful demon. He controls a large portion of Japan. A lot of families would want to marry into such power – you will find yourself having quite a few men after your hand, not all of them human."

"That doesn't sound very romantic."

Lixue chuckled. "It isn't."

"Did you have a lot of suitors?" Rin craned her neck to try and look at the tiger's face, but couldn't.

"Yes. A lot of the problems you'll be facing were exactly what I was dealing with. My father was well-known and well-liked, and my mother's lineage is somehow connected with Japanese royalty. Add in my conquests on the battlefield… it got so bad at one point that I had to kill one to make the others mind their manners."

"Did you fall in love with any of them?" Rin asked innocently.

"No. I couldn't trust them, or they were weak. I would have to protect them from danger, or would lose them in battle. Even if I could trust them, or if they could rival myself in combat, most of them were callous jerks or sadistic morons." Lixue sighed. "If I were to ever take a mate, he'd have to be strong, intelligent, and… well, not kind per se, but protective. Someone I could trust to watch my back."

"Sesshomaru-sama's strong!" Rin grinned. "And he's really smart too."

What, is she trying to set me up with him?

"Yeah, someone like Sesshomaru, but not him."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, just… someone that isn't him." Lixue chuffed. "Go to sleep."

Rin protested, but soon gave in to Lixue's order and fell silent. They slept, Rin cradled happily in the crook of the tiger's elbow.

When at last they were awoken by the morning light, Lixue gathered up the discarded armor and the pack from their campsite abandoned the night before. She felt her skin prickle with the knowledge that she was being watched; even more of a reason to pick up and keep moving. No need to be mobbed by monkey demons, despite its fun…

oOxXxOo

Taizu pressed his feet firmly into the dirt, the granules rubbing against his skin as he concentrated. The group was waiting patiently a short distance away, sometimes jostling and shushing as the monk held his mirror parallel to the ground and frowned in concentration.

"She's not far. She hasn't been moving more than a few miles for the last few days, so her spirit trail is much stronger." His voice was triumphant, wiping away the few beads of sweat that had pooled on the back of his neck and scratching at the bandages around his face. His compatriots' faces split into smiles or furrowed with thought with either the happiness that she was found or tension about the coming battle with their former companion.

"Which way is she already?" Inuyasha stamped his feet. "I wanna get this overwith today."

"Ah, I'm afraid I don't know a specific direction. Just a general… this area of land." He spread his arms in a 90 degree angle away from him. "It'll get narrower the closer we get."

Miroku smiled and patted Inuyasha's shoulder, who frowned at him. "Besides Inuyasha, once we get close enough you should be able to pick up her scent, right?"

Inuyasha glared at him. "Um, no. Did you forget what tonight is?" He tapped his nose. "I can't smell a damn thing."

Sango sighed and adjusted her grip on her boomerang. "Well at least now we know where to start looking. That's more than we woke up with." Shippou and Kirara voiced their agreement with the slayer.

"Inuyasha's just grumpy because Kagome's not here," Shippou piped, before the swift justice of Inuyasha's fist found his head, with an indignant denial from the hanyou himself – the kit began to wail. "Hey! Don't get mad at me because it's the truth!"

Taizu groaned before just setting off, Sango and Miroku flanking him. When they realized that he had left, the others began falling in behind him; a slow journey toward the tiger and justice.

oOxXxOo

The darkly-dressed man pressed the damp soil of the water's bank with his fingertips, bringing it to his lips before resting on his haunches and surveying the tracks about him. "Looks like the merchant's tip was right. There's a girl with the tiger, and they were here recently." He stood and directed his voice over his shoulder. "Go get the others, and send someone to get the monk."

"Yes sir!" His companion barked in response before leaping to the nearest branch and disappearing into the leaves.

The man contemplated the confused tracks on the stream's sides, trying to place the size and activity of the creature and its relationship with the girl. The merchant had said that the girl was human, but with a demoness who had been in need of armor. He had also impressed upon the bounty hunters that the girl must have been kidnapped, as he found no love in the demon's eyes for the human girl.

He studied the surrounding terrain, mentally noting where to place traps and diversions for the fight that would be soon coming to the hunters. The tiger didn't know it, but the noose was being slowly drawn about her neck. By the time she would realize that she was becoming ensnared, it would be far too late to escape.

He smiled.

"That reward money is ours."