April 30, 1630, Nine years after Inuyasha left Japan

By the time he arrived in Nairn, Inuyasha was dirty, sweaty, and exhausted. He'd arrived in a small seafaring town in the lowlands earlier that day after being granted passage on a small boat carrying goods in from the mainland.

Thinking back to his last voyage across the sea nine years ago, he chuckled at his own previous naïveté. This time he knew better than to flaunt his demonic heritage so unwisely. Foreigners were much more suspicious of his supernatural attributes than the villagers in Japan. The crew of the Dutch ship he'd bought passage from had complained endlessly about the "devil" on board, and though he didn't speak Flemish or French, he definitely spoke fisticuffs.

Now when he needed to travel he'd use leather grease to make his hair brown and braid it to hide his ears. It was uncomfortable and sticky, but it gave him the appearance of a mostly normal human. And at least with the braid it was out of his face, off his shoulders, and the tacky feeling of the grease didn't get everywhere. His eyes he could just say were a very light brown.

But once he was in the Highlands, the true Highlands, he'd be wild and free again. During his travels through France and England he'd heard about the savage Scots and how their land was untamed, still lacking the dense human population of everywhere else. It would be a perfect place to hunker down and wait for time to pass. To pass the centuries waiting for her.

Shuffling the strap of his leather bag and moving through the town square, he found an inn with a vacant room and paid for the night. Weighing the need for food over the need for sleep, he decided food came first and sat at the bar.

As the innkeeper's wife brought him a simple meal and a glass of something strong, he overheard the conversation happening to his left despite the cramping of his folded ears. The two men were clearly drunk and talking about someone named Glaistig, or maybe that was a title? After nine years his English was good, but the way the men switched back and forth between it and the Scots Gael made it hard to follow the conversation.

He did, however, pick up that the woman was a witch, and made a note to visit the old crone later. Maybe she'd have a charm or a potion he could use to disguise himself better. The last witch he'd come across had made him a dye for his hair, but she'd died several years ago and he'd run out, thus having to use the leather grease again. His ears twitched under the weight of his braid as he heard the men leave for something called a cèilidh, and in the distance he heard a loud cheer go up at the sound of pipes starting a song.

With the last swig of his ale, he nodded to the landlady and handed over enough coin for the meal and a room. She showed him up to his room on the second floor and left him to settle in, closing the door behind her. With a snort of his nostrils, he opened the shutters to the window to air out the room. As he looked out over the small village he spotted an eerie distant flickering on the border of the forest, seeming to lead off onto a trail into the darkness. It was definitely supernatural in nature, a bright blue flickering ghost of some sort.

Eyebrows raised, he could just barely see the outline of a young woman and her several children being led down the path by the lights and he turned away, not wanting to get involved. Scoffing at himself as he paced the room and debated if he should intervene, it was the sight of the three small children following their mother and the babe in her arms that had him leaping out the window after them. He kept to the shadows as best he could in order to not draw the villagers attention, and luckily most of them seemed to be at some kind of party in the town square.

Inuyasha darted over a felled tree and stopped just short of the tree line where the small family had been led, the smell and sounds of the river winding through it obscuring his senses. The clearing was lit up with the spirits he'd seen earlier, their gentle blue lights illuminating the dark forest and deep water. As he stopped to watch the young woman and her brood, a few details hit him at once.

First, the little ghostly lights didn't seem to be threatening the group at all. They seemed to just be floating there, as if they actually wanted to illuminate the trail for the group. Second, this was a very strange bunch of children. A teenage boy whipped his head towards the intruder and the moss colored cloak fluttered in the breeze behind him. Wait was that actual moss? And why was his hair green?

And the two younger children didn't seem any less strange. The older girl seemed to be covered in pearlescent scales and had webbed fingers that were plaiting her wet copper hair into a braid. The younger boy growling at him actually just looked like a wolf hanyou, with brown furry ears sprouting from his head, a brown tail with it's hackles raised, and a bit of extra fur on the forearms and jawline.

But it was the woman bathing in the river, holding a naked infant to her breast, that stopped him in his tracks.

The gods were torturing him. What other explanation was there? How could this be another Kagome preincarnation when there was one already living in Edo? Even if Tsuru had died in the nine years since he'd found her in Japan, that wasn't enough time for a reincarnation. It always seemed to follow a pattern of about 50 years passing between the death and birth of each new incarnation.

So then what was this doppelganger doing in the Scottish Highlands decades too soon? He slowly backed away and faintly heard the children whispering to the fake Kagome. The girl swiftly handed the infant to the eldest boy and drew out of the water. Inuyasha caught a glimpse of supple skin and pale curves as the woman brought a léine shirt over her head and draped a plaid loosely around her form.

"Halò? Cò tha ann?" At his lack of response the woman whispered to the children and took back the baby before switching to English "Maybe you don't speak Scots? You can come out if you'd like. We won't hurt you." The sound of her voice pierced his heart. Was it not enough to torment him with her familiar face? Did her voice have to match as well?

She tried a few more greetings in different languages at his lack of response, but eventually she fell silent and shrugged at the children's questioning gazes. "We've got to go now, but we'll be here every night at gloaming, if you'd like to come back. I live on the outskirts of town if you need anything. Just ask for the Glaistig if you run into any trouble."

As she gathered up the bathing supplies into a small basket and wrapped the tiny infant into a sling, the green haired boy grabbed the two other children by the hand and led the way back through the forest trail. The spirits he'd initially thought were leading the group to their doom twinkled about brightening the footpath and guiding the way back to town. He waited until he could no longer sense them before standing from his defensive crouch, and fled back to the inn.