Here's chapter three, thanks for waiting. I was supposed to update yesterday, a thousand apologies.

This chapter dedicated to Rei, and thank you for that… interesting analogy, which actually got me uin trouble because apparently you're not supposed to laugh that hard in a library.

He didn't need to look at the trees. He could smell much better than he could see, and there wasn't anything more dangerous than a squirrel for over a mile. There was a fox at a nearby creek, but the water was stuffed so full of fish that he wouldn't bother going after the human.

Sesshoumaru looked over his shoulder at her. She was asleep again. A look of quiet contentment, even peace, was on her face.

Quickly he turned his attention back to the woods, There was no reason to look at some ugly human wench. None at all.

He convinced himself of this for three whole minutes, then looked back at her. No, he was wrong. She wasn't ugly at all. Quite the opposite, actually. She looked nice, she smelled nice... And she was a human. Nothing more.

He turned back to the woods, wondering if he wasn't going crazy. She wasn't a human at all, she was a witch, trying to drive him out of his mind.

He spent the night alternating between watching the woods and staring at Rin. Twice he decided he would kill her, just to get rid of this damn indecision once and for all, and twice he gave up the idea. He ended up spending most of the night watching her sleep.

It occurred to him once or twice that humans had to eat, as well as sleep, but he couldn't really think of anything that they ate, other than rice, and he didn't know where to get any of that anyway.

When Rin finally opened her eyes again, Sesshoumaru was watching her. Not only that, but he was a good deal closer than he had been the night before.

"Good morning."

"How would you know? You've been conscious for ten seconds."

"Its more a greeting than a statement, Sesshoumaru."

"... Oh."

She stood up, slid her sword back in her belt, and grinned at nothing in particular.

"Ready to go?"

"Go where?"

"I dunno. Somewhere with food, I hope. Road's this way, right?" She pointed in a direction at random.

"That way, actually, but there's no humans for a long while."

"Hmm. Well I'll just have to find something then."

"What do you humans eat?"

"You really don't know? Interesting. That would mean that not only do you not associate with us, you also avoid us with what seems to border on phobia."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Meat. Some kinds of plants. Fruits and stuff."

"Fish?"

"Yeah but we'd have to light a fire. Why?"

"There's a creek that way that's been dammed and stocked. You could probably get something there."

"How very helpful of you."

She set off through the woods toward the creek, and within a few minutes they had come to it. The water was full of fish. A fox and two wolves were upstream of them, but they ignored them.

"I bet I could grab one of those right out of the water."

Sesshoumaru said nothing.

"Watch. I'll grab one right out of the water."

Rin rolled up her pants, wading out knee-deep into the water. Sesshoumaru found another rock to sit on, and pretended not to watch.

She stared intently into the water for a minute. Then two. Fish came back into the area and started to swim around her legs. She set her eyes on a pretty big one, and watched it as it swum lazily closer and closer.

"There's a hundred fish! Grab one and let's go!"

"If you need something to do you can light a fire!" She yelled back at him. She didn't think he would do it, though. Grumbling, he slid off the rock and disappeared into the forest.

The fish she wanted was within arm's reach, and getting closer. She slid her hands into the water without making a ripple. The fish, as a demonstration of the great stupidity fish are famous for, swum directly between them, and she grabbed it. It flopped furiously, but she didn't let go, grabbing it by the gills and pulling it out of the water. Trapped in this helpless position, the fish gave up all hope and died.

"Well that was easy."

Sesshoumaru watched all this from the top of a nearby tree. Trees were as good as rocks, and better camouflage. He had expected to be sitting in this tree for at least an hour while the human lunged at every fish in the river, and was very pleased when she caught one right off.

By the time he returned to the side of the water she had already started her own fire, and the fish was cooking, giving off a powerful smell.

"There you are. It's almost done, want some?"

"Your kindness is wasted. I don't eat human food."

"Ah well. Your loss."

She sat cross legged on the ground, across the fire from him. After a second, he sat too.

"So where will we go?"

"You're asking me? I don't know. Don't you have a destination?"

"Not really. Somewhere with people, or, more precisely, food. Now that I've got that, I'm left without a place to go."

"You don't want to be with your own kind?"

"My own kind? Yes. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find them."

Sesshoumaru sat back, annoyed. If she was going to find a human village then following her would be a waste of time. One was bad enough, and he had no desire to go anywhere near a whole village of people.

"Humans are everywhere. They're not that hard to find."

"Perhaps. But not all humans are my kind."

"So you're not human? I thought you said-"

"I am a human, but just like spider heads are not your kind, neither were the people in my village my kind."

That made some sense, he supposed.

"Did you ever wonder as to why I can dress this way, and wield a sword, when most women would rather die?"

"No," he lied.

"Then I won't tell you."

"You might as well."

"No. If you don't care then telling you shall do no good."

"I...please tell me."

"See? You do care. I'll tell you then.

"In my village, there was hardly ever trouble. Every once in a while some demon would come around and cause some trouble, or a traveler would be killed by a beast in the forest, but usually, life was quiet. That's when the war started to reach as far out as my village. More and more young men left every day, whether they were drafted or if they left to avoid such a fate, they were still gone. Soon there was no one left but women, children, and the elderly. While we never went hungry, it was obvious that if a serious threat hit the village, we would be completely wiped out. We needed some force to defend us, and, barring bribing over some spirit to protect us, there was no place to get such a force.

"It was my idea that if we were to train the young women to fight, we would be at least a bit better off. It wouldn't be as good as the men, but we would be far less defenseless than we were already. Not unsurprisingly, the village elders did not take kindly to the idea, when my father presented it to them. The thought of teaching women the ways of the sword bordered on blasphemy.

"But my father saw the sense in such an idea. He, like the other men, was forbidden to teach me anything. But he did give me his sword, and I taught myself. I was thirteen then, still a child, but I grew up quickly, like so many children now must. Five years went quickly, watching the stores and then even the reserves dry up, and watching my once proud village pulled to it's knees.

"And then only three days ago, the marauders attacked. They came in the night, and I was awakened by the sound of my mother calling my name. It was too late for her, or my father, but their killer went down quickly under my sword.

"I was determined to protect myself, at least, if no one else. I saw people I'd known since childhood struck down, defenseless, and it occurred to me that many of them had never even known that there had been a way to protect themselves. I could have killed some of them and waited for the rest to leave, but I acted stupidly, and decided to go after the leader, high and mighty on his horse, watching his lackeys do the dirty work. I tried to kill him, but he was too heavily protected.

"The end you already know. I was captured instead of killed, for reasons I shall probably never know. I figured I'd be killed by them eventually, and was determined to go out fighting, at least.

"And that's when you showed up. So now you know."

Rin pulled the fish's stick from the ground, checking to make sure that it was done.

"You never did tell me what you were doing there."

She took a bite of the fish, chewing expectantly.

"You wouldn't care."

"Sure I would. If you hadn't I'd be dead now."

"Fine. I was out by the river and some of the guys were pissing me off, so I killed one, and the others pissed me off more, so I decided to kill the rest of them. They led me back to the camp, where the rest of their buddies decided to kill me, so I killed them, too."

"And then you found me."

"Yes. By accident."

"Maybe. Maybe fate. You believe in fate?"

"No."

"I do. I believe in fate because of the future. If there is a future, then this is the past. If this is the past, then it has already happened and there is no way to change it. Everything's eventual."

Now Sesshoumaru was completely convinced that Rin's singular purpose on earth was to drive him insane.

"And you actually think about these things?"

"I know, it's really weird. And that's why I know I wasn't among my own kind when I was in my village. They never thought of anything more complicated then what to have for dinner. It was impossible to talk to them about anything."

Sesshoumaru said nothing. Rin stared at him a moment, then shrugged and went back to her fish.

An hour later they were on the road again, Rin walking along commenting eventually on a bird, or how there was water nearby, or how such and such a cloud looked just like a monkey, didn't it? Sesshoumaru walked in silence, wondering how she found such wonder in water or birds, or how she could get 'monkey' out of a random shape of a cloud. He was used to going for days in silence, but Rin's amiable chatter was not entirely bad.

Ah, the first seeds of not-hate are planted! Bwahahahaaaaa!

This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. If you receive this message, please press the purple 'go' button located in the bottom left corner of your screen. Type a short message. (nice stuff appreciated, flames also OK) Thank you for participating.

If this had been an actual emergency, well, we'd all be pretty screwed cuz there's nothing I can do.