MOON DOGS

Kagura squinted against the low hanging sun as she pulled a comb quickly through the knots in her hair. The sky was still an eye-burning shade of blue, nearly blinding her, reflecting off the snow laden mountain tops and the distant sea.

"What happens when the sun sets?"

She knew they were already pushing their time but that was more his fault than anything. Below, the dogs were already gathering in the courtyard, nipping at each other's heels, agitated from the last three nights fasting in preparation for the hunt or the run or whatever the hell they liked to call it. She'd heard different terms, depending on who she asked.

"We'll leave for the mountaintop."

"Like a parade?"

Sesshoumaru scoffed, and Kagura had to keep from giggling when she heard the soft rustle of fabric, the slide of silk against skin. She kept her gaze on the spectacle down below. Servants, along with the castle's ghosts, were dragging the remnants of his fight with his cousin and what looked like wheat grass into large piles along the outskirts of the yard. They shaped the dry grass into tall mounds. She could smell the dust from where she stood, and was sure that heady earth scent was even stronger for the man behind her.

"Kagura."

She ignored him, pretended like she hadn't heard, and continued combing her hair. She flinched when a quick stroke snagged her earring.

He hummed something, there was the sharp zip of a tie being tightened, most likely the short strings of his hadagi around his waist, and then a pause. Silence. She felt his gaze prickling her spine, a giddy sort of tingle running along her skin. She kept the comb sliding through her hair, her strokes smooth and even, careful to avoid the dangle of her earring.

Footsteps slid across the tatami, a gentle shuffle, and then her back burned in earnest. Kagura felt the heat of Sesshomaru's chest as he stood behind her. She could feel the warm air in his lungs as he inhaled, then the gentle pressure of his hands at her waist, moving until one of his palms slipped beneath the lapels of the robe she wore to splay across her lower belly, while the other―

"Wait―"

But he'd already gone for the loose knot of the belt resting at her hip. Kagura hissed as it fell, and he quickly went for the collar of the furisode, yanking it down her arms with little finesse. She tried to turn, but the hand on her belly kept her still. She let out a groan, her arms snapped up to shield herself against the sudden chill on her bare skin, and she fidgeted at the sensation of sleek fabric sliding against the uneven texture between her shoulder blades. He held her steady, not quite an embrace only holding her with the hand at her belly, but she welcomed the warmth at her back.

Until he gave a long and loud sniff at the fabric in his hand.

Kagura clicked her tongue and pushed off of him, knowing very well what he was thinking.

"Oh, don't act so haughty."

She brushed past him, woefully eyeing the wrinkled furisode in his fist. She'd gone for it the moment she'd seen it hanging up against the wall; the sleeves were a bit longer than she was used to―she'd gotten caught with them beneath her more than once―but the design, that all too familiar bleached white and red accented emblem, was too similar to his typical attire for her to leave it hanging by the wall for long.

Unfortunate, because it was sure to smell of sex for all the hours she'd worn it.

Not that it would make a difference, whether he wore the smell of it on him. Sesshoumaru may have had reason to be discreet about his affairs, but Kagura had no such predilection. His mother already knew, as did her companions, and it wasn't as if he'd told her to keep it secret. In fact he hadn't said anything at all, as if he hardly cared. So she'd decided that neither did she.

Neither of them had put a name to their relationship. It was just routine, she would meet him near his rooms early in the morning, and there she'd stay til the sun set, when they'd rush through twilight, getting ready for the night's festivities, and then go their separate ways with little more than a glance and a smirk.

Kagura hadn't asked, and Sesshoumaru hadn't brought it up, and that was that.

Still, calling herself his mistress felt like an insult, and calling him her lover was laughable. Paramour was too intimate for something that had hardly existed for more than a week... but it wasn't as if they were simply friends either. Regardless, Kagura supposed that their little arrangement had its perks.

She'd retaken her seat beside him, amongst his uncle―who hardly needed an explanation to put two and two together―and his mother, who'd already known and had at least started to temper some of her greater insults. Whether out of fear of drawing her son's ire or that she preferred to keep things civil in mixed company. Or the least likely: that the old bitch had actually started to like her.

As much as that would make her life easier, Kagura still wasn't sure how she felt about that.

She certainly enjoyed the days spent up in his room, over him, under him, or just lazing beside the hibachi and wrapped up in his fur during his better moods. She didn't need his mother thinking that she could influence Kagura by being nice or playing at friends. She wasn't a daughter-in-law, and wasn't interested in being treated like one, even if she'd started getting used to his warmth and the sound of his heartbeat.

Sesshoumaru could be a cold son of a bitch, but he was hard headed in the way that he refused to do anything by half measure. And Kagura was thoroughly enjoying exploiting him for it.

There were things she had to correct him on―where to place his hands or where not to put his clawed fingers, that she didn't mind being on her back but that holding her down―her arms or her throat, it didn't matter―would get him a swift kick to the gut. He'd taken that one fairly well, too preoccupied with getting back to business. Then again, she hadn't hit him that hard.

For his part, Sesshoumaru tended to keep quiet, which might have bothered her if she wasn't so aware of his heavy breathing or the thunder of his pulse.

And there were things she'd noticed, even without him telling her.

He liked his hands in her hair, to cradle the back of her head and twirl his fingers through the strands. And as much as she hated to do it, the knots she knew it would cause, she'd taken to wearing it down, whenever they were alone.

He didn't like kissing. Which at first had hurt, a little, that wandering thought that he didn't like kissing her… but then she'd realized his penchant for sticking his nose wherever it pleased him, felt the way he held the air in his lungs, and knew that the action held the same meaning.

Besides, he'd found better uses for his tongue than just her mouth, and Kagura was more than happy with that.

And she'd known that he often used his presence to intimidate, towering over his opponents and using his youki to overpower them, but she'd thought he was standoffish in everything else. Except, it seemed, when they were alone.

He was hardly… affectionate after their coupling, but he didn't shy away from her either. He was content to lay beside her, quietly, one long warm line, from shoulder to thigh, connecting them as they caught their breath. And where he did not embrace her, he still let her wrap herself in his fur, and that was enough for Kagura.

She knew better than to attempt anything that could be misconstrued as affection, but as distant as he liked to be, Sesshoumaru was certainly willing to play the role of a doting beau in other areas. The earrings had come first, then a comb, a set of rouge, and now…

A furisode.

But not the one he'd just ripped from her. Both had been hanging in his room when she'd come in, and she'd capitalized on his before he'd said anything. She hadn't wanted to talk about it, especially when his preferred style of gift giving was to simply throw something at her without a word or explanation. And she liked it that way, but now, the robe that hung so prettily against the wall in his room felt very loud, especially with her standing naked in the cold.

Kagura reached out, fingering the fabric of the sleeve. Soft, a supple silk, shimmering in the low light of the sun, a deep black with threads so polished they glittered like the night sky. The sleeves and the bottom hem looks as if they'd been plastered with ice, a hazy sort of white, frozen leaves punctuated with chrysanthemums red as freshly spilt blood, the petals dipped in luminescent gold.

"This doesn't seem quite your style," she said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. "Are you trying something new?"

Sesshoumaru huffed again, but didn't turn around, looking out over the castle as he adjusted his robes and tied them at his waist, his hair haloed in golden sunlight. She'd almost started to find it cute, his sulking silences, his generosity hidden behind an apathetic facade. His pride would never let him just come out and give her something so fine, but she knew he secretly preened under praise; she hardly thanked him, but she noticed the look on his face whenever she used his little presents. He'd dressed her before, too, the only difference now was that the gift was more than a little ostentatious.

"If you expect me to be grateful the least you could do is say something." Kagura crossed her arms, still naked, and glared at his back with a pout. The silent treatment was fine when he was otherwise engaged, but she was still waiting for this… thing to loosen his lips when they had their clothes on.

His sigh wasn't quite audible, but she felt the shift in the air and saw the heavy puff of fog dancing around his head before he spoke.

"It's an auspicious occasion, you should be dressed appropriately."

"Oh?" A grin lit up her face. "And why's that?"

There was a beat of silence. Neither had put a name to it, but…

Sesshoumaru turned, and the look on his face was one of the "don't push it" variety. Oh well. Kagura shrugged it off, far from heart broken. An unnamed thing was better than nothing.

She turned and tugged the furisode from its stand. "You want me to wear it tonight then?"

He huffed something like an affirmative as he pulled his pants up his legs and tied them off.

"Well, then I'll need some help gettin' into it, won't I?" She pulled it messily over her shoulders and stepped up to him, tugging on his sleeves to make him look at her. "Or out of it, whatever you prefer."

He exhaled a puff of fog and looked down at her, as if thinking. He raised a hand, like he might twirl a finger through the loose curls falling around her shoulders.

The shift in his weight was enough incentive, Kagura began to trail her hands up his sleeves, across his chest and down the tightly closed lapels of his furisode until she came to the tie at his waist. She gave it a tug and quirked a brow, looking up at him from beneath her lashes, and despite the layers of fabric she felt him twitch against her palm―

He stepped back.

"I don't have the time."

Kagura let out a whine.

"In the morning."

She stuck out her lip and crossed her arms, but she left him to finish dressing and turned away to do the same. Because if there was one thing she'd learned about this Sesshoumaru she'd let into her bed, it was that he always kept his promises.

…

His mother gave him one long disdainful sniff.

Sesshoumaru ignored her.

So it had been for the last week.

He had no intention of humoring her penchant for drama, of indulging her thinly veiled insinuations and insults leveled in Kagura's direction, even if the woman herself was nowhere to be seen.

So she knew of his physical relationship. It was to be expected. His mother was the type who needed to be aware of everything happening around her. He'd been too young the last time he'd attended the festival, but illicit affairs were far from uncommon. If her intention was to shame him then she was failing spectacularly, it was far more amusing for him to watch his mother flail and sniffle in Kagura's direction while trying to make small talk than to be embarrassed about his sex life being a sticking point between them.

At the very least she'd stopped the blatant insults, she knew better than to push him too far. With his scent on her, anyone with a nose knew to leave Kagura to her own devices. A fact she'd most definitely noticed and capitalized on whenever she had the chance. Whether it be sneaking into the private baths or helping herself to the best drink they had to offer, the woman he'd bedded was nothing if not an opportunist.

Not that he had any intention of stopping her. Watching her slide haughty looks at his mother and the rest of his family, the airs she wore when she sat at the front of the room, that smug little quirk of her chin―it was better entertainment than anything else that had come parading through the gates.

And of course, letting her do as she pleased had its own perks―

Sesshoumaru inhaled. It wouldn't do to let those thoughts cloud his mind, not now, not when the hazy smoke of the bonfires around them was already warming his blood and fogging his head.

He could see it in his mother's face, too, the marks on her cheeks a little jagged and her eyes a noticeable shade of pink. She tried to keep her posture straight, her proud demeanor, but her grip on her human form had already begun to slip. As arrogant as she was, she was still nothing more than a dog like the rest of them.

Her eyes flickered to him, the gold of her irises somehow colder in the light of the setting sun.

"Don't look at me like that." She sniffed and brought her sleeve to her nose.

"Yer ma's always been a lightweight," Gajou guffawed from behind him. His uncle fared much the same, but unlike his mother, his uncle was relishing in the sensation the smoke brought; claws and fangs a little longer, sclera almost completely red but his irises still a bright shade of yellow. If he was human his face might have even been flushed pink, instead the marks along his cheeks compensated by going jagged, almost reaching the corners of his mouth.

"Shut up, Gajou." Her growl was a greater indication of her mental state than her face.

His uncle just snickered.

The dogs around them were getting antsy, fidgeting, snapping at each other's heels, the smaller pups dizzy in the cloying smoke. That haze was almost sparkling in the warm sunlight and whatever snow they kicked up by their paws. The pups played, innocent, but the longer the afternoon wore on their playful yips and snaps slowly morphed into deeper snarls and curled lips.

They wouldn't be allowed on the hunt, too dangerous, even for them. As large and menacing as they looked, they were still nothing more than children. They wouldn't be able to keep up, more likely to be trampled beneath the paws of their elders or run themselves ragged with exhaustion. Better to leave them behind to play in the yard or sleep off the effects of the smoke rather than chance it in the wilds.

Sesshoumaru remembered being so young, the first festival he could recall, when he'd barely come to his father's hip, trying to keep up with his playmates on two feet rather than four, convinced that he could by sheer force of will, that he could control the transformation despite that sweet smell in the air. His father had laughed when he'd lost, gave himself over to claws and fur to pounce and play with the others.

He'd been upset at being left behind, he'd howled for hours, dug a lone line in the dirt from his frantic pacing along the wall, knowing that if he crossed the barrier there would be a sound beating waiting for him. He had started his own hunt, too overcome by that thundering in his blood, he would have rampaged through the castle chasing after the other children, the guests, whatever moved within his line of sight, if he hadn't been so small that the guests left behind hadn't held him off til morning.

When his parents had returned, he'd tried to fight them, too, to his mother's amusement. He'd snarled and snapped his teeth at them until his father had knocked sense into him, literally, and ordered him off to bed.

He'd hardly slept, kept awake by that feeling in his chest, until two days later when his mother had taken him out to the forests and let him go free. Let him run himself to exhaustion through the snow until he'd hobbled back to the castle on two feet. It was one of the few times he could remember his mother looking proud.

That urge threatened to take him even now. That heat beneath his skin and heaviness behind his eyes. But he had better control now, and kept it resolutely in check, despite the fact that with every finger the sun dipped lower, closer to the horizon, the screaming pulse in his ears grew louder, in tune with and nearly eclipsing the sound of the taiko drums.

Above them, the guests huddled, kept safe on the balconies and verandas that overlooked the yard. As safe as they would be before the dogs left for the hunt. The castle was meant to provide safety for those the clan had deemed important enough not to kill or those who had just ingratiated themselves well enough to turn the festival into a party rather than the sanctuary it had been intended as. Many of them were effected by the smoke just the same as the dogs, and for everyone else there was plenty drink to go around. Sesshoumaru spotted the fox kit and Jaken, shivering and clinging to the bannisters, trying to get a good look of the crowd below; he saw Kagura's troupe, folded over the railings and looking giddy, but as much as he tried the woman in question was nowhere in sight…

He shook his head gently. Pitiful, that he was looking for her like some lovesick pup.

The yard had gotten hazy, difficult to see past the veil of smoke that lingered, clinging close to the ground. And it was getting too crowded, stuffy despite the chill in the air and the intermittent breeze. Despite their size, most of the dogs knew better than to tread too closely to where their two legged compatriots stood near or lounged on the stairs. The handful of them who still held onto their human forms as they watched the muted chaos of the other dogs.

Kinjirou and Ginhime included, he noticed with chagrin. They may as well have taken on their true forms, as they cowered with their tails between their legs, off to the side, eyes averted to the ground, shunned. Any respect for their power and prestige gone. Even the four legged dogs showed little respect, kicking snow and mud in their direction. Kinjirou looked up and caught him staring and quickly averted his gaze, and Sesshoumaru was sure his cousin was glad their father still lived, and had simply neglected to come.

Sesshoumaru heard the sound of his mother sniffing and clearing her throat, just barely above the noise of growling and drums, and when he turned to see what had caused her sniveling―

His hackles rose―every nerve wired to attention, venom pooling beneath his claws―his body rejecting what his eyes could see but his nose could not identify.

Figures, moving beyond the smoke, descending from the bowels of the castle; swathed in silk and followed by the subtle click-clack-click-clack of something hollow… His senses struggled to make sense of it, until his gaze followed the line of spectres to the front of their march.

Sesshoumaru inhaled, seeking out that scent beyond the acrid burn of smoke―his head already clouded―but they brought a breeze with them, the fresh scent of spring. And leading them was…

Kagura, haloed by the hazy smoke and setting sun. Her hair in a looser style than usual, a braid trailing from her bun and peppered with downy white feathers. Two large streaming fans, painted the same color as flames twirled in her hands. And on her face… a dog―or a wolf's―skull fashioned as a mask covered the top half of her face, obscuring everything save for her lips and the glow of her eyes. Cut with the sun's warm rays, giving the illusion of luminescence as she peered out at them from behind the holes that had once been eye sockets. Dressed in the furisode he'd given her, the snow patterned sleeves adding to the ethereal shimmer of the pitch black fabric as she swayed through the crowd, a ruby grin just barely visible beneath the skull.

And behind her, just as jubilant as she, a procession of corpses.

She'd said that she wanted to make use of them, and he hadn't thought anything of it, but he saw the point of it now―the scent of death, something long since rotted, earth and stagnant water, disorientating, hidden away behind clean pressed robes, things that should not be…

They danced, threw their arms to the sky so quickly the flourish of their sleeves hid their skeletal hands.

He didn't want to ponder where she'd gotten the clothes.

It was one of his cousins, a young dog several decades younger than he, that lunged first. She caught the phantom in her jaws, snapping bones beneath her teeth―only for the head to continue dancing away, cackling, as its costume fell to the slush.

Chaos then, the other dogs went for the specters, tore them apart while whatever splintered bits of bone that remained continued to dance, a spectacle of rib cages and loose spines twisting and writhing between the flames, broken teeth without jaws laughing and belching smoke―fire in the eyes of skulls that had been broken in by the years or by fangs. Their shredded clothes, carried by the wind, caught flame and continued to dance, a swirling tornado of sparks and ash and bone around them, singing the air, death and fire and her scent―

It took him.

The control he prided himself on slipped away, and his skin sloughed off with it. Replaced with fangs and fur and that instinctual rage that had been festering since the moment he'd stepped foot within the castle's gates, spurred on by the energy amassed by so many dogs in one place―the hunt hadn't yet begun, the sun still lingered, just kissing the horizon, but he needed to run―

A line of Kagura's phantoms began to dance around his paws, they weaved between his legs, bringing sparks along with them, the ash smudged his fur and the sparks caught in the dry hairs around his wrists, clouding the air with the scent of burnt hair. He smashed the specters beneath his paws, the sound of bone cracking delicious if not for the laughter that followed―Kagura's, carried by the wind along with the hot sparks that stung his nose and singed his fur, the skeletons kept dancing, but he only saw her, leading them, her movements more fluid, buoyant on the eddies and punctuated with the ash and the snow and the firelight.

The hunt hadn't yet begun, but Kagura may as well have sounded the horn herself. The phantoms were nothing more than bone and fabric, and yet the dogs tore into them with glee, snapping bone between their fangs, the crunch and crack louder than the drums and the sparks and smoke almost blinding, but Sesshoumaru paid them no mind, too focused on her and her dance.

Kagura weaved, jumped and bobbed between them, avoiding snarling maws and clawed paws that stomped in her path, as if she was unaware of the danger towering over her head, lost to the music of the carnage around her.

His mother and his uncle had given themselves over to the change, his uncle picked his teeth with a femur while his mother spat acid at the spectres, leaving the melted calcium to mix and solidify in the mud, the stink of if mingling with the already potent miasma that permeated the entire mountain.

Tensions rose, her phantoms an appetizer of what was to come, throwing the dogs into a frenzy, crazed as they'd already been. A smaller dog he didn't recognize began to tear into an oni's skeleton, close to where Kagura danced, he tossed the bones into the air and shook the bones until they were scattered and broken at his feet until there was nothing left within the scraps of fabric that sizzled between his teeth and he turned his attention…

To Kagura, who paid no mind to anything, too lost to the music. She just kept dancing, while the dog squared his shoulders and padded forward.

It wouldn't take much, small as he was, the dog still towered above her head, and while Kagura was powerful there was still a churning in his gut, a tingle over his flesh at the mere thought of the dog baring his teeth at her. At his―

He leapt, snapped at the other dog's flank―tore flesh, nothing more than a taste of blood―and the son of a bitch rounded on him, fangs dripping venom that sizzled in the slush. Sesshoumaru snarled, unphased by a dog not even half his size as he moved to bracket Kagura between his legs.

Whether she stayed put he couldn't tell. Too focused on facing down the other dog, his lip curled and hackles raised until the bastard backed away, still snarling, but smart enough to recognize his betters.

Kagura's laughter tickled his ears. A gleeful thing. And when he looked down at her she was still dancing, framed between his paws, her robes splattered with mud and sleeves singed from the sparks. She swung her fans and he felt the movement, the way the air traveled along his skin, between his fur, in his lungs―he inhaled; that electric scent, the beginning of spring―almost a caress, the entire castle her domain as she made her puppets writhe beneath the setting sun…

The golden light glittered in her hair, and when she looked up―that wolf's skull peering at him―her eyes glowed with the same hue and its fangs may as well have been her own, with the way she laughed.

She reached up and pulled the skull from her face, revealing the flush to her cheeks, indents from where the bone had dug into her skin. But she was still laughing, still swaying to the sound of the drums and pulling the wind with her, letting it caress his snout and tickle his ears. He bowed his head, moved his nose closer, almost eye to eye so that he could find sanctuary in the bubble she'd created, free of smoke and fire, nothing but her scent to wash away that fog that had overtaken his mind―

A howl went up, loud and ear piercingly shrill, and before it had ended there was already the thunder of paws, bodies throwing themselves over the castle's wall and through the barrier, charging up the mountain in a frenzy.

When he looked back down Kagura was still staring at him, expectant, her eyes glowing, bloodthirsty in the warm light. A strong wind buffeted them, dispersing the smoke and throwing the sparks and ash to the sky. She reached out a hand to his snout, tiny compared to him, but like a shock of cold to his system.

"Good luck." And she smiled.

Sesshoumaru took a breath, breathed her in and savored it. And then he ran.

The barrier passed over him, and while his blood thundered he could still hear her laughter, carried on the wind. It followed him as he clambered up the mountainside, following the paw prints of his brethren, through the snow and the slush and trampled trees until he finally crested―the top of the mountain, where the smoke hung like a thick cloud, a great pillar impaling the sky, whipped by the wind and blotting out the last light of the sun as it rounded the horizon, giving way to a grey twilight…

Silence settled. Even the howling wind held its breath as they waited, heartbeats screaming, clinging to the barren rocks of the mountain's peak, watching the sky as it darkened, from a misty grey to almost black, oppressive without the moon save for the pinpricks of flickering starlight. The River of Heaven began to flow, at first nothing more than a trickling stream but as the darkness grew so did its banks, until it was raging across the sky, watering the constellations as they danced to life. Brighter and brighter, shapes that his eyes struggled to recognize, but then one shivered and―walked out of the sky.

Barely there, its limbs not quite yet defined, formed from millions of stars, so fleeting, his eyes struggled to focus on the writhing, sauntering mass until the sky was black as pitch, and the sheen of its fur solidified―jagged, glittering fangs opened into a wide mouthed grin, a furred spine, all shimmering silver, a trick of the light, maybe, hazy in the dance of the smoke around them, but the stars continued to sparkle, brighter and brighter, a bright fiery red in one blink and the color of blood the next, and when his eyes adjusted, he blinked and he could finally see―the snarling maw of the former Dog General towering above them all.

More ghosts emerged around them, stepping out of the stars, fur kissed by their light, but Sesshoumaru cared little for long dead ancestors. His eyes locked on the specter of his father, waiting, expectant―he'd come so far, once he might have scorned the progress he'd made, but now, with the spectre of his father watching him, Sesshoumaru hoped that he could see. His father, dead for nearly a century, but still just as formidable and imposing as an apparition.

Did he know? Could he recognize his new strength? Did he acknowledge the son he had once scorned?

The ghosts never spoke, but he was sure that they understood…

The great dog met his gaze, and with one slow nod he threw his head back and howled.

The others joined, howls and yips and barks of elation, dogs joining in on the call for a hunt, to run, to dance amongst the stars across the moonless sky… It didn't matter who started the run, a ghost or flesh and blood, an avalanche of paws falling down the mountainside, plumes of smoke and snow following in their wake as they tore through the trees, a stampede thundering through the mountains, along the coast, past human villages and their cowering residents―all snarling fangs and sharp claws.

Illusions of grandeur, all his self doubt and apprehension melting as they cascaded through the mountains, cliffs, and valleys.

The cold did not penetrate his fur, all he knew was the heat―blood in his mouth, bones between his teeth, ice beneath his paws. He only saw the red, bright, vibrant crimson―on his muzzle and down the skin of his neck, dripping from his jaws, the taste of metal that soothed his raw and frozen throat―

He kept running, kept howling, kept his fangs bared, shoulder to shoulder, he kept pace, the icy air burning down his throat nothing in comparison to the chill that wafted off the apparition at his side.

They kept running―

Nothing more than feral dogs led by their ghosts.

…

Happy December y'all. Not super happy with this chapter, which is why its taken so long to publish, but lemme know what y'all think! Hopefully I can get the next one up before the end of the year.