AUTHOR'S NOTES: It's a good thing I'm not being held to a deadline. But anyway, here's Scroll Five, somewhat late, but better than never! Thanks for reading, but give me some reviews! (As always, thanks, Hawker!)

And for you Fluffy-fans, Sesshoumaru will finally make an appearance in the next scroll...

SCROLL FIVE: THE RITES OF SPRING

It was spring in the Sengoku Jidai. Flowers were beginning to bloom, as nature woke up from its slumber during the winter. Farmers began to plant the all-important rice crop that would feed the country, while it grew steadily warmer. The humidity had risen as well, but so far–aside from that unseasonably hot day atop Mount Naga–it had yet to reach the sticky, blazingly hot temperatures that summer would bring.

As the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson would write (in a few hundred years, except for Kagome, who had read 150 year old Tennyson poems in English class...time travel is not fun to write), spring was the time when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. In Inuyasha's case, that meant steadfastly denying that he was in love with two women, one of whom had nearly killed him on that infernal DDR device three nights before and now walked shyly alongside him, and the other, whose current whereabouts were unknown, but had definitely tried to kill him on several occasions with arrows.

Shippo was, of course, too young to really understand the concept of love. He thought of Kagome as a surrogate mother, and of Sango as a kind of aunt. Other than that, he found girls kind of strange and frankly icky, though he had enough maturity to recognize that Inuyasha was being a moron.

Which left Miroku, whose thoughts were always turning, rarely lightly and not just in spring, to love. Or to its reasonable fascimile, lust. Normally during this time, Miroku would seek out a village girl, talk to her sweetly and get her blushing and giggling, then ask them if they would bear his child. Usually he got shot down at that point, or run out of the village by jealous suitors of the young women, but Miroku was not unwise in the ways of the world. Lately, however, he had restricted himself, rarely asking "the question." This was due partially to the fact that villages were sparse in this section of Japan, but more to the fact that the monk's heart had been captured by the slim, attractive woman walking next to him.

Miroku glanced at Sango. The taijiya walked demurely, her eyes following the road. As usual, she was clad in her white and lavender striped kimono with its clinging green dress. Miroku preferred the skintight catsuit she wore into battle, since that didn't hide her shapely curves. It always amazed him that a woman of Sango's seemingly slight stature could carry something as heavy as the hiraikotsu boomerang, but she was stronger than she looked. In memory, his cheeks began to tingle.

This was always something of an internal struggle for Miroku. On one hand, the movement of Sango's shapely rear beneath the green fabric was a definite turn-on, reminding him of two small kitsune fighting in a small tent. Certainly all of Sango was attractive, from her sweet-smelling, windblown black hair, to her delicate toes, and everything in between. Yet Miroku admitted to himself that this part of a woman's anatomy most intrigued him; by intrigue he meant "drove wild."

On the other hand, indulging his desire to massage that shapely rear would at the very least earn him a slap. And not just a slight, womanly slap across the face as Kagome might administer, but a rocket that threatened to dislocate his jaw and knock out some teeth. Sango was a warrior after all, raised from birth, and she knew how to hurt people if the situation warranted it. Miroku counted himself lucky that slaps were her chosen form of retaliation, other than the occasional bash over the head with her boomerang. To his mind, that proved that Sango had feelings for him, because she had wanted to permanently damge him, she was quite capable of doing so. She had never resorted to the classic knee/foot to the groin, for instance, or simply drawing her shortsword and running him through in his sleep. Even when he had been unable to control himself when they rode on Kilala, she had never thrown him off the bakeneko or ordered her to fry him. As a matter of fact, Miroku thought, Sango nearly always rode in front of him when they used Kilala to travel, with the full knowledge that Miroku would have to ride behind her, and the full knowledge that he would just have to make a run at her bottom. He dismissed that notion as being merely coincidence or force of habit; surely Sango didn't like for him to rub her butt.

After all, the flush of embarassment and then anger on her face made her so much prettier than she was normally. And that, Miroku decided, made the pain or even eventual death at the taijiya's hands worth it.

Decision made, Miroku nonchalantly reached out with his left hand–the non-cursed one–and gently rubbed the familiar and gorgeous curve of Sango's right buttock, not missing a pace. Sango did, that brief hesitation he knew so well. He watched her face and got the expected flush of surprise and embarassment, then the scowl. Next would come the slight shift of the hiraikotsu, the half-turn to the right, and the whirring sound her hand made as it cut the air, and the stinging crack of her calloused palm against his cheek. Of course, none of that was a reason to stop his hand from roaming across her rear end.

But to Miroku's surprise, she did not take the next step after the scowl phase. She simply sighed and kept walking, her eyes now fixed resolutely on the horizon. Miroku blinked in surprise. He increased the tempo of his hand's rhythm, but except for a slight, possibly involuntary quickening of her step, Sango did not react. The monk swallowed and took a chance, allowing himself to squeeze. Sango gave an almost inaudible squeak, but she kept walking.

Miroku stopped squeezing, though he did not remove his hand. "Sango," he said quietly, "what are you doing?"

"Nothing," she replied tightly.

"Yes, I realize that."

She glanced at him sidelong, and her lips curled into an almost cruel smile. "What, you expected me to slap you?"

"Actually, yes."

"Then why did you grab my butt?"

Miroku didn't have an answer to that one immediately. He paused, and then said, "Because I find you beautiful."

Sango's mask of indifference slipped slightly–for some reason, she thought herself unattractive–but then her iron control reasserted itself. "In that case, houshi-sama, I see no reason to stop you."

Miroku's eyes got very large. "You mean...you want me to continue?"

"No, but I won't give you the satisfaction of getting under my skin or my kimono. I ask only that you find some sort of rhythm, because it's very difficult walking with you doing that."

"You won't stop me?"

Sango sighed. "No, because what's the point? I could rip your head off and feed it to Inuyasha, and your spirit would be there rubbing away before your body was cold. So indulge yourself, houshi-sama." Inward, Sango was enjoying the cute confusion on the monk's face. After the last time he had gone on one of these lecherous escapades, Kagome had wisely suggested Sango try some–what did she call it? Reverse psychology. The words were foreign to Sango, but she understood their spirit. Watching Miroku go into a fit trying to figure out a woman's mind was worth a hand or two on her bottom. Besides, it wasn't like Sango didn't enjoy being called beautiful...

Miroku removed his hand. He looked down at his sandals, now suddenly depressed. They walked in silence for a long few minutes, then he murmured, so quietly she almost didn't hear him, "You sure took the fun out of that."