Dying to Live

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

The inari officer sat at her desk high up in the heavenly clouds. She fiddled aimlessly with her stuffy kazaori-eboshi headdress that perched between her pointed fox ears. Meanwhile, lower-ranking inari fox messengers bounded up to her desk where it was situated in one of the many celestial bureaucratic receiving halls.

One, two, three. Three scrolls were placed neatly and efficiently, side-side-side, on her desk. Sighing, she read each one. The first two contained boring news, recorded easily enough in the log on her desk, which would later be reviewed by other officials that needed to know of such minutiae. The third scroll caught her eye.

Inu-Daiyoukai reported to devour third human village this mooncycle.

That was a headline that would be considered possibly of some consequence to certain officials though not exactly dire or surprising. Yet, really, though - the wild, earth-bound youkai free-wheeled often, didn't they? Still, supernatural violence occurred commonly enough that not all of it merited special attention.

Though as the inari official took it together with a scroll she had received the morning before, she wondered if it was a bit more than just a minor consequence after all. The official reached into the shallow papier-mache bin she kept at the right hand side of her inkblot and withdrew the scroll from the prior day's morning. Unfurling the rolled paper again, she recalled her uncertainty at what to do with this message.

Inuyasha, second son of the late Touga, the Inu-no-Taisho - Status change confirmed - Elevated from Hanyou to Inu-Daiyoukai.

There were more than a few, particularly ladies, in the heavenly court who would willingly prick up an ear at the mention of the late Inu-no-Taisho and his ilk. Known as a rogue in his early centuries, there were a number of spirits who had taken a tumble with the Great Dog Spirit in the wide prairies of the Western Land. Of course, none of those dalliances had been serious - while it was fun to frolic casually, real mixing between Heavenly and Demonic beings was too taboo for everyone's taste. No, indeed: it was said that Touga himself had shrewdly avoided such lasting ensnarement, and finally settled himself - certainly, to the resigned (if well-predicted) chagrin of some - carefully selecting only Her Ladyship of the Dog Demons and the Human Noble Izayoi to birth his sons. Of course, there were those that pitied the first wife after Touga turned to the human; Her Ladyship was as well known as her husband for her rare qualities of high-style and civility among their kind, even if those in the heavens could still only acknowledge the inuyoukai were derived from no more than mere animals...

Naturally, there were still those who had tried to entangle the demon's first son, Sesshomaru, in casual trysts like the kind the father had appeared to enjoy. Yet, after centuries of trying, the court labeled him an unsaveable Ice Prince - far too disinterested with polite ethereal society to be counted on for a "good time".

Then there had been Inuyasha, the second son, who was ultimately too lowly regarded to be a lasting object of interest to the Heavenly Court. Rather, for the better part of his existence, his crass reputation preceded him. Perspective had changed somewhat upon a few brief highlights that eventually reached the heavens, the full-revelation of his tragic romance with the well-regarded priestess, Kikyo, Keeper of the Shikon-no-Tama. Despite the eventual heart-wrenching update of the unjust besmirching of the hanyou's name, even the cautionary tale of star-crossed love appeared as a fleeting blip on the radar. It was essentially categorized as heavenly tabloid fodder. Still, the officer had toyed with letting that scroll about Inuyasha's status promotion slip to the rumor messenger inari's desk in exchange for a bit of well-earned palm greasing...

However, the scroll about the three devoured mortal villages now changed things a bit. Maybe it was just a bender of kinds for a new inuyoukai? The inari official thought, depending on how you looked at things, it wasn't confirmed that Touga's second son had done this... but also wasn't confirmed that it wasn't him.

It was probably worth a warning though. So the inari messenger rolled the two scrolls together, the one about devoured villages and the one about the new Inu-Daiyoukai, and sent them off to the desk of the Lower Secretary to Ame-no-yane himself, the Administrator to the Gods.

The Lower Secretary scowled, as the messily rolled-together scrolls landed unceremoniously on his desk from the grasp of a too-hurried messenger fox. He glared at the sloppy looking scrolls unfurling themselves across his desk given that the sender had even failed to tie them. The Lower Secretary had been invited for an afternoon shag by one of the beautiful, higher-ranking Tennin messengers, and now, he would be delayed

In a single sharp movement, he yanked open and parted the two scrolls. Quickly, he scanned them side-by-side. Damned beastly youkai, he scoffed, instantly chalking the news up to the inferior creatures' typical barbaric habits. He would simply take care of this directly. Hastily, Lower Secretary spread a scroll in front of him.

And then, promptly hesitated.

Aish- now, who to address the blasted message to? Lower Secretary thought, grinding his small canine fangs together. With the demise of the Inu-no-Taisho some years ago, it had become something of a task to guess who was in charge of the clan. He considered the short list of options quickly. Sesshomaru, Lord of the Western lands, was notoriously unreachable, being remote and civilized, though always traveling and aloof.

Lower Secretary shook his head - not him.

Then the thought came to him - who was it who kept the Castle in the Sky? The thought hit him, and quickly, he scrawled out the recipient's title: To Her Ladyship, Inukimi of the Inuyoukai Clan.

Rapidly, the brief warning flowed from Lower Secretary's brush onto the parchment.

There, he sealed it fast with his signature and the heavenly stamp and tightly rolled up the scroll the moment it dried. Without even having to be called, an inari messenger scrambled forth and took the scroll. Adjusting his voluminous courtly sleeves and adjusting his formal black hat, the Lower Secretary rose from his desk and tossed aside the previously received scrolls of youkai-related news. Forgotten, the messages fell into the pile of refuse by his desk leg, as he swaggered off to forget about work.

:

Inukimi was holding an early dinner party at the Castle in the Sky. Every inch of the late afternoon sun-kissed halls of her magnificent ethereal estate glowed in immaculate, imposing beauty. Her Ladyship was in high spirits, debuting a new kimono made entirely of Sichuan silk brocade. It thrilled her when the material she had ordered from the Continent finally arrived. While it did not take as long for transport by youkai means as did for those of mere mortals, Inukimi was not a patient demoness. She had commanded her possum-youkai seamstress to make the kimono at breakneck speed, a feat that could only be achieved in the time allowed by a being with extreme skill that also did not require sleep. Indeed, the moment Her Ladyship laid eyes on the precious, hard-to-get silks woven of the unusually strong, lustrous threads gotten from specialty enchanted silkworms kept by foreign demons, she had to wear the fabric for her next social event. And her seamstress did not disappoint.

To the demoness' delight, though it was against her sensibilities to show it too blatantly, her ensemble received the attention it deserved. The under kimono was made of austere, pearlescent white silk, while the outer layer was of a rich base of deep, warm violet, one of her signature colors; a fine, repeating pattern of egrets traced in delicate turquoise and gold thread decorated the material. The obi that encircled her ever-slender waist, was crafted of bright yellow-gold brocade in a design of gently curling clouds layered in with more matching, luminescent golden thread. In her hair she kept her favorite silver ornaments atop her shining, tied up tresses. Resting over her shoulders that she held proudly upright over her shapely chest, hung the strand of enormous, deep-sea pearls on which she kept her treasured amulet gifted by her son's late father, the Meido Stone. The midnight purple gem glinted sensuously, as if eating up the radiant light that abounded in all the entertainment halls of the Castle. She ran a pale, slender hand, tipped with freshly lacquered, crimson claws through her iconic snow white pelt, which wrapped around her upper arms and back. She was listening with great interest to the story of one of her inuyoukai guests, when a servant discretely tipped her off to the arrival of a guest.

Inukimi liked to keep a busy social calendar, meeting with her own kind whenever possible. This was made easier as most of the parties were held in her own grand estate, so naturally she relied on the convenience of just being able to step away to handle brief matters from time to time. As she drifted to the receiving hall of the Castle, she was brought up abruptly at the sight of the inari messenger. With well-practiced control, she hid her disgust behind a soft, polite smile. As experience dictated, celestial emissaries were not always the most welcome sight in Her Ladyship's view.

"Her Ladyship Inukimi of the Inuyoukai Clan?" the inari messenger questioned.

Her Ladyship refreshed her genial closed-mouth smile with a slight quirk of her dark-plum painted lips and nodded her head in affirmation. The scroll was handed to her, and as Her Ladyship found that the large-eared fox in the celestial court uniform had not yet left, she inferred that it apparently expected to view her reading of the scroll's contents.

Though her impassive expression did not slip, she intentionally let out an audible sigh, as she undid the scroll's tie and unrolled it. Her naturally magenta-rimmed, thick, snow-white eyelashes flicked back and forth, as her sharp, golden eyes scrutinized the message. A moment later, she barely hid the disdain from her features any longer. She replied in the most basic way, "Indeed, it's received." Satisfied, the inari messenger bent for a rushed bow and scrambled away to its next assignment.

Left alone, Her Ladyship stood looking after where the inari messenger had exited. The scroll was closed again and slowly her hand closed around it, crushing as her razor-sharp nails scarred the parchment. The nerve, she thought as she considered the vague missive:

The clan of Inuyoukai be warned to refrain against overindulgent slaughter of human lives.
- Per the Decree of the Heavenly Court

The script showed a careless rush in the way the nonspecific warning had been written, a seeming afterthought. Not to mention half the remaining Inuyoukai were currently seated, dining at her table and none had given her any reason recently to believe a single one of them was aware of a member of the clan rampaging. No one had even mentioned a suspected threat to their territory.

What lazy mudslinging, she scowled. The Heavenly decree did not even bother to mention a perpetrator by name. It was not the first time she'd encountered such treatment with the Heavenly Court.

Her Ladyship cooled her mind, preparing to return to her guests. She would keep the message to herself for the time being; however, she believed it was time to pay her son a visit. He had been unusually quiet, and if any one of them - though very controlled this generation of the Inuyoukai elite generally were (for now) - was occasionally given to odd or extreme behavior, possibly Sesshomaru might know something of this occurrence. He was Touga's son after all.

The next day, Her Ladyship cleared her schedule. She began to pass through the typical haunts of her only son. The proud boy probably did not notice it, but his mother had noted over the ages that he had a tendency to cover the same areas of his territory again and again.

Yet, two days and a couple visits to allies off Sesshomaru's borderlands, and the mother still had not found him. It was a bit odd even for Sesshomaru, though of course she was aware he occasionally left the region presumably to harass his half-brother, Touga's other son...

Her Ladyship decided she would first go check her son's Western Castle anyway, where she knew on rare occasions, he was given to pause his travels. Soaring through the air in her majestic, natural form, she reveled in the sunlight and the mist of sparse, wispy, low-hanging clouds. However at the distance of what would be a normal day's ride on horseback for a mortal, Her Ladyship could already tell something was not right. Before long, she scented it: though faint, Sesshomaru's blood hung on the air.

Through her cold, refined exterior, Her Ladyship often pretended not to care, but at the smell of her son's blood, she hurried through the air.

She landed on the castle property by the stables and began to prowl forward, keeping in her monstrous form to inspect the unexpected situation. The stables were empty, and the odor of rat demons lingered everywhere, though none were to be found. It seemed the rodents had been gone for some time as had been the horses. She wrinkled her nose in distaste; the keeping of stables had to be less of an irritant for the upkeep of a landbound castle, but again it reminded her of how superior her Castle in the Sky was to other demonic estates. Perhaps eventually Sesshomaru could be convinced to abandon this drab property. If only he would turn in favor of something more fitting of their familial majesty, complete with a full, loyal youkai staff capable of the kind of enchantments that ensured the Castle in the Sky's secure, beatific existence.

But first she would have to find the detestable boy! Why did the secretive, proud child have to trouble his mother so? She followed the scent of the vanished rat demons up the hillside to the manor, of which she noticed the broken, open shutters, some of which hung with apparent despair off their hinges.

Transformed in a flash down to her humanoid appearance, Inukimi glided, wrapped in a kimono of bright turquoise stitched with tiny white-pink sakura blossoms. The playful extravagance of the intentionally oversized bow at the back of her light-lilac obi that matched the jeweled sprig of blossoms woven in her classic updo clashed horribly with the demoness' distressingly grim surroundings. Inside, rat demons had been everywhere. Empty hooks indicated that any decorations or treasures that had been there had been removed from the premises. That wasn't Her Ladyship's main concern though, as her sharp gaze followed the swirls of blood and claw scratches that led through the dim interior halls. Blood had been apparently scrubbed off in certain areas, but it was obvious that the better portion of the old, rusty-red stains had been left by Sesshomaru's blood.

What a mess, and what had happened? The Lady Mother sighed and shook her head. Perfectly arranged wisps of her moonlight hair brushed her magenta facial markings.

Being mother to Touga's child was never easy. In the old days, her mate himself often had a target on his back for all kinds of trouble. Now it seemed that Sesshomaru had gotten himself a good helping of the same. There was a special connection between parent and offspring in their kind, though with age, Her Ladyship's bond had faded with her adult son. Nonetheless, she was quite sure she would have been able to tell if he'd altogether died.

No, she would continue the search for her son. Where to go though? She focused on tracks left around the manor halls. She identified the little demon - the imp. She frowned. Perhaps if Sesshomaru was injured, then she did not expect the imp would have stuck around, too easily scared off or eliminated. She focused again - the little girl. She was different, that human that traveled with one of the most dangerous demons in the land. Surely, if she was alive she would still be with Sesshomaru. Her Ladyship would follow the girl's trail.

She walked out of the manor into the setting evening sunlight and admired the rays of light passing through the trees. Though the property could not compare to her own luxurious perch among the clouds, she admitted that this view was quite nice. Then, something shuffled in the brush ahead, confirming a scent she caught on the wind.

The familiar two-headed dragon emerged timidly from the thicket of leaves that almost matched the color of its hide. The creature had been a childhood gift to Sesshomaru, so that the mother recognized the creature well; yet, seeing it separated from her son worried the cool-headed demoness a bit more than she wished to tolerate.

She pushed down those feelings again, as she called to it: "Little dragon, come out to meet this one, please."

The creature lumbered forth, surprisingly quiet for its size. "I seek your master, is there perhaps any memory you can show?" the she-demon asked as she put out a palm toward one of Ah-Un's heads. The head on the left slowly bowed to meet her touch.

While it was not one of her better skills, Her Ladyship felt the vision from the dragon's mind slip into her own: a brief, monochrome glimpse of a man with long, dark hair standing with arms lifted out wide. This vision paired with intense feelings that could only be described as distress, as the sensations passed through the mental link from the two-headed creature.

Her Ladyship withdrew her hand from the creature's scaly but warm hide. "Thank you for sharing with me," she replied, her mind replaying the curious image paired with the deep sadness that accompanied it. "Little dragon, I must find the girl that traveled with my son - would you accompany me to assist in my search?"

The demon stepped toward her, nudging her shoulder with its right head this time while the left head stared dolefully at her with its large, yellow-green eyes. She gazed back at the creature, which was missing its harness and saddle. The rat demons must have stolen the gear if it was not on the demon at the time they left with their plunder.

As it was getting late, Her Ladyship gestured for Ah-Un to follow, as she herself leapt into the air. From a whirl of visible energy, she emerged in her natural form and soared high into the sky, while her son's pet followed. Her Ladyship was determined: they would regroup at her Castle in the Sky and resume the search for Sesshomaru in the coming day.

:::

Note: Hey, dear readers! I need to say a big thanks! June was another record month for readership on Dying to Live. I am so grateful for all of you who are reading along with this adventure :D

Kind thanks for new favorites and follows of course - thank you for taking the time to add this fic to your lists. Hoping we can have newcomers join all the time too ~ as ever, welcome to anybody new reading this now!

And of course, I love hearing from you all when possible. Huge thanks to:

Inusesshyfan: Glad you like the opening for "Chapter 51"! I debated whether to start it like that, and I'm glad it got the reaction it did. And yes, it's a bit of a "battle"-ground between Rin and Sesshomaru right now. Hope you enjoyed cooling down for the moment with this chapter!

crashletastrophy: I appreciate the compliment on the battle scenes ~ writing these types of scenes is something I am growing into, and I am happy to hear you are finding them something you can visualize and enjoy. So thrilled you are still loving the fic so much!

anime weabo: If only we could get your advice directly to Sesshomaru because you are right on! Our Sesshomaru is definitely on the way to realizing it might not be for the best to just take certain things and people for granted like he had come to. I really appreciate your insight on your reading ~ reading your review, I feel like I am doing what I set out to do in this tale!