Ahh, okay. Authors note time. Okay, I don't own YuYu Hakusho, not even Kurama (Sadly), but I DO own Skye Wingthorn. Thanks. Also, critisism is appreciated, though downright flames will be donated to needy Pyromaniacs. As for the lack of description of Skye, well, I did that on purpose. I'll be uploading a couple chapters today, I've already finished this story. Working on Wingthorn: Come What May as we speak. Well not exactly, but...echh. I mean this to become a trilogy.

Thanks for listening to me babble, and enjoy.

Chapter two unknown

The unknown carries promises of pain.

"Can you tell what it is?" Yusuke knelt near the pallet Kurama was (unwillingly) sitting on. His eyes blazed with anger, and she heard his mind using all of the most vulgar and vile words she had ever heard, ranting at the one who did this, whoever that person might be.

"I'm not invalid." Kurama informed them tiredly. She checked his body functions with her Spirit Energy, forcing it to act as her eyes, and they seemed to be running normally. She passed through veins and arteries on her way to check the brain, and it felt strange.

She examined the blood quickly, scanning for anything that wasn't supposed to be there. Skye felt a touch on her arm, and knew she must look odd, all stiffened as though she were dead.

Wait.

Disease! Kurama wasn't poisoned, he was sick! It did not feel familiar to her skilled, if young, touch. Some kind of one-shot illness, as she referred to the ones that could only be had once, ever.

She left his bloodstream, back to her own body, to watch him with troubled eyes. "Kurama, I was wrong. I haven't been so wrong in a long time, since before I was born. Traditionally, the Ka'anuuk have one Miko, one WolfSister capable of using all five elemental energies. We pass on our knowledge of…everything our ancestors have known through an evolved form of instinct. I can remember everything the first Miko of the Ka'anuuk knew, with difficulty, though I cannot remember how she learned it.

"You are not poisoned, Kurama, as I had thought, but ill with some disease that five hundred years of Mikos know nothing about. All I know is what I have learned from you, which is that it is something you can only get once, and that it causes high fever early on. And a rash, which you will find beginning on your left shoulder."

Three faces watched her to see what she would do, and she felt nothing at all moving through any of their minds. A quiet, unobtrusive kind of shock, she supposed. She swallowed, and beckoned for them all to follow.

"Where…" Kurama began, finishing in coughs. Skye added another item to the growing list of identifying symptoms.
Apprehension touched Hiei's thoughts, with a blaze of inner pain that she didn't fully understand immediately. It dawned on her with horror, to see that Kurama's best friend had decided that she could do nothing for the fox.

"How long has it been since it started?" she asked calmly, serene in the face of a possible epidemic. "Did you pass through any nearby villages since then?" she felt Kurama resist an urge to scratch at his shoulder, and he shook his head, trying to clear it.

"Maybe three days. We passed through VineRose and WindStorm since then, though it really wasn't that bad…maybe I was just feeling a little off then." He told her hopefully. She shook her head, feeling how bad the fever was, and the potential to rise, and went off to search the deeper parts of the cavern that served as her home, to her fireplace. The water pot was boiling, and she steeped Willow Bark in it, and carried a cup of the willowbark tea for Kurama.

VineRose and WindStorm… how contagious was this, and how many had the group spread the disease to in such a short time? VineRose and WindStorm were named for the chosen name of the Miko who served there, as was customary in the area. SilverSand was also nearby, it might spread there as well.

She approached Kurama, and gave him the tea, threatening to hang him upside down from the roof of the cave if he didn't drink it all. Her usual calm that hung in her words convinced him more than the words that carried them, and he grimaced as he drank the bitter tea.

"If it tasted good, it likely wouldn't be much good for healing." she informed him with a mischievous glint in her eye, as she tried to lighten the mood in the 'room'. Yusuke groaned at her attempt with humor, and she gave up on that venture.

"Good news first?" Kurama nodded, and she could hear his mind hoping that it would be something foretelling a short time in bed. "The sickness is very contagious. You will have to be quarantined, and even then you may have started an epidemic." She firmly held him still while she checked the rash on his shoulder, though pox would be more accurate.

He had small gray spots that looked like necrotic flesh, if a little off color for it. Just about the size of a dime, the size of chicken pox.

"What's the bad news!"

"That was the bad news." Skye informed them. She could hear fear in Yusuke's voice now, and heard him worry that maybe he had gotten it as well. She sighed, decided that she had better tell them all of it.

"Then what's the good news? No, don't tell me. There isn't any." Yusuke sighed as well, and flopped into a sitting position on the packed dirt floor. He had given up, she knew, and was silently crestfallen.

"No, don't give up hope," she told him gently, "Not while he still has breath to go on. Not while I'm here to help him. If he has a spark of will in him, I can help him pull through, unless it's a lot worse than I thought.

He had given up, though, and was sure she wasn't good enough to save anyone, let alone someone he had grown to care about. The three had become close knit, and didn't want to separate, not like this, not at all.

"It is Pox, though, and it may be milder than Chicken Pox, or it may be harsher. We have no way of knowing at this stage. It feels like a nasty one, but I may be wrong. My quarantine area can hold ever village in Yomi's realm." She paused with slight satisfaction at the sharp intakes of breath, silent to human ears.

She peeked at Kurama's mind, and felt him shudder at the thought of cold white walls, antiseptic, and horrible hospital smells, and the sense of the dead. She picked him up, ignoring his protests, and walked deeper again into her home, ignoring the fox's protests.

"Sickness does not spread in my land, and you will find no reek of death there. It is my own world, sparsely populated, and it makes a perfect quarantine area. When we pass through the door, no one who hasn't contacted you already will be in danger. I will not confine you to a bed, only to your room. But you should like it, you can have the one with the garden and the small waterfall. The library room has a very pleasant man in it, it's right next door. He has pneumonia, though, so try not to tax his energy too much if you decide to talk with him." Kurama felt a wash if cold, icy river water it seemed, inside a out, and then he was in the bright sun.

"Will you put me down now?"

"Not until we get to your room. Once there, you are free to do as you will, but do not stray beyond the hall outside it. The next ward over is the Mental Heath ward, and they do sometimes get out. Be sure to tell me if they enter yours." She pushed through a fence door.

The fence around the fence door was a long row of small pines, the kind that made a good wall. Skye could hear him trying to remember which way he had come, as they twisted through a maze of hedges. Finally they were in one last hallway, and then…

His room.