Moonlight Sonata

(Recommended music: "Moonlight Sonata" by Ludwig van Beethoven.)

Moonlight glittered down the length of the sleek surface, a curtain of wet, silky, silver tresses flowing gently aside as he turned his head. Deft fingers worked at the gleaming threads, swift claws tearing out mats and neatly snatching an inch of trim from the ends. Bright, luminous amber eyes glinted just out of sight beneath a veil of shining bangs; tempting her further to reach forward and smooth aside the fall of silver with her fingertips.

Kagome found herself entranced as she observed her demon guardian's grooming, ensnared by the silent beauty of his rare stillness and the quiet they so seldom shared. She'd never noticed him combing his hair before, though it always seemed to hang in a perfect, shiny sheet down his back as if it had been brushed for hours. She knew, as she pretended to busy herself with starting a fire from the raw materials already gathered and ready for her, that he had always done this; it was only now, however, he was allowing her to see him do it.

He seemed to express himself silently better than in any other manner. He hid anything remotely intimate from everyone he came in contact with for as long as he could; but slowly, he was beginning to show her more and more. His own unique and discrete method for conveying to her that he was coming to trust her. Care for her. And this, this seemingly endless hair-combing was the most private thing he had allowed her to see yet.

The half-demon was naked to the waist, fresh from a swim, his fire rat haori and kimono pooling beneath him in a waterfall of crimson and white fabric. The restraining rosary necklace gleamed against pale skin, firelight now picking out the roundness of the beads that bound Inuyasha to her. The first thing that had bound him, at any rate. His amber eyes looked deceptively soft in the ruddy orange glow of their freshly made campfire, but it cast cruel shadows over his well-formed, but harsh features and added to their sharpness.

She thought, as she continued to watch his graceful and painfully careful movements, that this ritual was strangely intimate. Strangely more important and binding than any daily act of hygiene had any right to be.

"Inuyasha," she didn't know what had come over her or why she had spoken, but the whisper of his name had gathered in her throat and bubbled from her lips before she could stop it. Her voice was soft and gentle, indeliberate, probing without meaning to be or even knowing why.

He glanced up at her, inhuman eyes meeting hers for long uncounted moments, the deep silence pregnant. Then, purposefully, tellingly; he went back to the immense thickness of his hair. Absolute acceptance of her presence during his repose suddenly announced with blaring clarity to the heavy silence between them. His complete attention of his task signifying his ease.

Moisture gathered in her eyes as she watched him, uncertain when such tiny, insignificant gestures had begun to mean so very much to her. When he had begun to mean so very much to her. These small things that she never would have noticed before, but had learned to appreciate to the depths of her being as she managed to fall in love with an emotionally constipated, verbally challenged half-demon from five hundred years in the past.

She had had to learn. It would have been a painful and frustrating relationship if she hadn't- not that it didn't still have its moments. Inuyasha didn't like to talk about how he felt, about anything, and expressed himself almost exclusively through a physical tenderness, sharing a formally private personal moment or showing her things he didn't normally allow anyone to see. She only knew when he was telling her that he loved her back because she had grown to know him so very, very well. A stranger could blink and miss everything that marked them as a couple, much less as a couple in a serious relationship.

Then again, she was almost certain that she liked it that way. Not yet ready for too much fanfare, not ready to face the obstacles in their path before they could be together… not quite ready to admit to herself how serious her feelings really were and what that could mean for her future. She couldn't think about that yet. She only wished that there could be more time for them to be alone, away from their rag-tag band- as much as she loved them. Wished that there could be more time to watch Inuyasha comb his beautiful waist-length hair….

She wished for the moonlight to linger forever and wished... so much...

That she could touch him. When neither of them was leaving or dying or in some other pain… Just once, she wished she could relax completely into the touch of this otherworldly being she had come to love.

"Kagome…"

But what good were wishes, when there was so much left to do? When so much was still wrong with the world?

"I'll… let ya braid it…"

Then again.

"If you want…"

Sometimes wishes came true.