I'm back again! I hadn't planned on updating so soon, but I had so many reviews that I just couldn't resist it! With these reviews came many requests about which fairy tale poor Kagome should tell next. I also had one reviewer exclaim in surprise that my story was starting to show signs of having a plot! grin

You can probably guess by now that I don't own Inuyasha; if he were mine, I certainly wouldn't be airing all of our dirty laundry on the Internet! No, I don't own the beautiful, ill-mannered, ultra-possessive, white-haired hanyou, nor do I own any of the friends/comrades/enemies that are currently sharing the cave-shelter with him to stay out of the rain. I also don't have any rights to any of the fairy tales I mention in this story. The laptop I am typing on belongs to my mother, the Internet connection is at my husband's work, and I am borrowing my inspiration from reviews I have received, so nothing is mine! pout

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The snarling and barking continued as if Kagome had never spoken. "Miroku- sama," she asked the monk, the only male that was not putting on territorial displays over her or sleeping in her lap, "is your outer robe dry?"

Miroku took his hands out of his heavy sleeves, where they had become quite toasty and comfortable, and patted his outer-most garment. "Yes, it is dry. Do you have need of it, Kagome?" he asked. He couldn't see the girl from the future in the darkness of the cave, which was even darker as the sun had set during her tales, but he imagined she was quite cold in the revealing clothes she always wore.

"Oh, could I borrow it?" she asked. "And could you put more wood on the fire, Sango? I'm hesitant to leave my current position." Sango agreed readily, not wanting to see the fight that could break out if Kagome was no longer sitting between the wolf youkai and the dog hanyou.

As Miroku stood and slipped off his outer robe, he realized how tedious this rest in the cave would become with only the sounds of growls and barks. He was aware that some important conversation was probably going on between the two snarling creatures, but the words were unintelligible to him and the other humans, and Shippou, their translator, had been quiet long enough that he was probably asleep. "I'll let you borrow it if you tell us another story," he told Kagome, bribing her with the heavy robe.

Kagome sighed. "Okay, you've got yourself a deal," she said. Miroku was trying to hand her the robe, but the fire was between them, and she couldn't get up with Shippou on her lap, not to mention the hanyou and the youkai that would leap at each other as soon as she was out of the way. "Kouga," she said, using her sweetest voice. Glowing blue eyes flickered down to her. "Could you please hand me Miroku's robe?"

There was a pause in the growling commentary as Kouga, who was closest to Miroku, reached around the fire, grabbed the robe, and set it on Kagome's shoulders like a cape. Miroku's body heat had been infused into the inside of the outer robe, the heat from the fire into the outside, and Kagome gave a contented sigh as she wriggled her arms into the sleeves and draped excess fabric over her legs, blanketing the still-sleeping kitsune cub. Inuyasha protested Kouga's momentary contact with her, though, and the canine speech quickly resumed.

"What sort of story would you like to hear?" Kagome asked Miroku, trying her best to ignore the hanyou and youkai she was sandwiched between.

Miroku grinned. "I would like to hear a story about a beautiful girl asleep in her bed," he said, anticipating and actually managing to block Sango's attack.

Sango had to settle for a verbal attack instead. "Stupid pervert," she said. "Kagome won't tell you any stories like that."

Kagome hid a smile, although the action wasn't needed, as nobody that was paying attention to her could see her. "Actually, I know the perfect story, Miroku-sama. There once was a prince who wanted to marry because he wanted an heir, but he could not marry for love. He had to keep the royal bloodline pure, so he had to find a real princess. He traveled all over the world to find a real princess, but while there were lots of princesses, he couldn't find any that were a real princess; there was always something about them that was not quite right. The prince went home very sad because he could not find a real princess to give him an heir. Then one evening a woman arrived at the castle that said she was a real princess."

"And he asked her if she would bare him a child?" Miroku asked, laughter in his voice.

Kagome cracked a smile of her own. "No, Miroku-sama, he didn't. The evening was much like this one. A terrible storm had come, with heavy rain, thunder, and lightening." As Kagome spoke these words, lightening crashed outside, very close to their shelter, and she shuddered in response. "You can imagine how the princess looked after having been out in the rain, but the old king let her into the castle because she claimed to be a real princess.

"The queen knew that appearances could be deceiving, so she devised a test to see if this girl was in fact a real princess. She went into the guest bedroom, took all the bedding off the bed, and laid a dried pea on the bottom. Then she piled twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds on top of the pea. The princess slept on this bed all night.

"The next morning, the old queen asked the princess how she had slept. 'Oh, very badly!' the princess replied. 'I hardly slept at all. There was something in the bed that was so hard that I am black and blue all over my body! It is quite horrible!'" Kagome made her voice high-pitched and a little whiney for the princess' voice; the hanyou laid his ears flat, but continued his snarling at the wolf youkai. Kagome continued, not noticing. "Then the queen knew they had found a real princess because only a real princess would be delicate enough to feel a dried pea under twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. Then the prince married her, because he had finally found a real princess."

"How happy the prince must have been, to have found a woman to bare him an heir," Miroku sighed happily.

Sango snorted. "If she was that delicate, she couldn't have borne him that many children," she pointed out. "Who would want to be married to a wimpy woman like that, anyway?"

Miroku only had to think about this for a moment. "You are right, Sango- san. I need to find someone strong to bare my heir, a powerful warrior woman that can protect the child and care for him properly." He grinned, knowing that he would be hit for his next comment, but he was unable to resist it. "Are you volunteering?"

The yelp, heard over the snarling and barking, told Kagome that Sango had rejected his offer. Kagome laughed. "If you can behave yourself, Miroku- sama, I know a few more stories about sleeping women that I could tell you."

Now it was Sango's turn to laugh. "I don't think that hentai knows how to behave," she said, "but I for one would like to hear another story."

"Okay," Kagome agreed. "Once upon a time there was a kingdom, and the queen of this kingdom was very beautiful, but she was also very vain. She had a magic mirror that could see all things, and she would look into this mirror and ask, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?' This mirror always told the truth, so day after day it would answer her, 'You are, my queen,' and the queen was pleased. But the queen had a stepdaughter who was also very beautiful. Her name was Snow White, and just like her name she had fair skin, as white as snow. She also had hair as black as night and lips as red as blood, and each day she grew more beautiful, both within and without."

Kagome had just described Miroku's ideal woman, a pampered Japanese princess, and if it hadn't been so dark the group would have seen his drooling, his earlier preference for strong warrior women (who would be tanned and not have time to worry about such things as face powder or lip color) quickly forgotten. Since nobody noticed, Kagome's story continued.

"The day finally arrived when the queen, looking in the mirror and asking, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who it the fairest one of all?' the mirror, which always told the truth, said, 'My queen, you are very fair, but Snow White is fairer still.' She went into a rage, and summoned the royal hunter. She told him to kill Snow White and to bring her back the girl's heart as proof of her death."

Sango gasped. "That is just horrible!" she exclaimed.

"It is horrible," Kagome agreed, "and the huntsman took Snow White deep into the woods, thinking to kill her, but when he saw how beautiful she was, both within and without, he couldn't do it. Instead he warned her to run deep into the woods and never return, for the queen wanted her dead. She ran into the woods, terribly frightened. The huntsman returned to the queen with the heart of a pig instead."

"He was stupid," said a muffled voice from Kagome's lap. Shippou sat up a bit, looking into Kagome's face. "Surely the queen could tell that the heart was from a pig! Pigs and humans smell nothing alike!"

Kagome patted the little kitsune. "I'm afraid that the queen was a human," she explained, "so her sense of smell wasn't very good."

Shippou was shocked. "You mean your sense of smell is that bad?" he asked. He made a show of sniffing the air around him. "Then you probably don't realize that we are both going to smell like the monk, since you're wearing his coat." The kitsune yawned before continuing, "Inuyasha won't like that."

At the sound of his name, a very riled up Inuyasha looked down at Kagome and Shippou. He sniffed the air and made a look of disgust that Kagome couldn't see and growled.

Shippou looked at her expectantly. "What?" Kagome asked.

"You aren't going to do it? That'll really make him mad."

"Do what?" Kagome asked again.

Shippou rolled his eyes and looked at Inuyasha. "She can't understand you when you growl like that, you idiot," he told the hanyou before turning back to Kagome. "He wants you to take off Miroku's outer robe. He says it is making you stink."

"Hey!" Miroku objected from his place across the fire.

"That is silly," Kagome said. "I'm cold. Miroku-sama's robe is warm. I'm not going to take it off just because he thinks it smells bad."

Shippou wisely jumped off Kagome's lap only seconds before Inuyasha hauled her up, one-handed, by the back of Miroku's coat. She squeaked in surprise as she was lifted until her feet were several inches above the ground. She struggled against his hold, trying at first to be released, and then trying to turn around in his grip so she faced him. She stilled when she discovered just how futile these actions were.

"Hey, get your hands off of my woman, dog-face!" Kouga complained, aiming a punch at Inuyasha's head. Inuyasha easily caught the fist in his left hand and squeezed as he growled a warning at the wolf youkai. Kagome, who had been turned so she faced Kouga, her back still to Inuyasha, cringed at the surprised yelp of pain that escaped the wolf.

"Inuyasha, stop it!" Kagome complained, grabbing onto the arm that held Kouga's fist and giving it a tug. Inuyasha's grip held firm, and from Kouga's whimpering and the odd crushing sound she could only guess that his grip on Kouga's fist had tightened.

The firelight flared for a moment before dying down to its original slow burn, and Kagome was shocked to see fear in the youkai wolf's face.

"Stop it, Inuyasha," Kagome repeated. "I think you're hurting him!"

Inuyasha's only response was a feral growl that Kagome thought sounded suspiciously like it was being directed at her. It was far from quiet in the cave, what with the storm still raging outside and the pitiful fire crackling inside, but Inuyasha's growl and Kouga's soft whine were the only other sounds. The rest of the party had gone alarmingly quiet. "Shippou?" she called out, thankful that the 'translator' was awake, "What is going on?"

Shippou's voice was soft and trembling with fear when he finally spoke. "Be very still, Kagome. His eyes are all red."

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More author's notes:

Look, I put in some plot! These reviews have been so helpful, so please throw some more at me. :)