Kagome and Sesshomaru had been flying over an ocean for at least an hour. It was easily the longest hour in Kagomes' life. The only reason that she had been quiet for this long was she was playing a game with herself. The goal of the game was to be silent longer then Sesshomaru.
'I will win, I will win, I will win' Kagome kept repeating to herself. 'I will wi--. This isn't helping at all.' She thought 'If anything, it's making me want to talk more. Let's see. What else could I think about? The ocean! Yes, the ocean. It's very pretty, and blue. It just never seems to stop. It goes on and on, ohhhh! Was that a fish? I think…… no.' Kagome looked up at Sesshomaru. He hadn't moved since the last time she looked at him. 'It can't be much longer to where ever we're going. Where are we going? NO! I must not ask him! Must…. Not….'
"Hey Sesshomaru?" Kagome said, inwardly crying over losing her game.
Sesshomaru kept looking ahead.
"Where are we going?"
Sesshomaru spared her a glance.
"To where the bells are." He answered simply.
"And where is that?"
"You are the one who can sense the bells. So it is your job to lead us to them."
Kagome stared at him open mouthed.
"You never asked me which way to go." She said with growing anger.
"I'm sure that if you sensed something, you would have shouted it to me by now."
'That's it!' Kagome seethed.
"Well if you had just asked me which way to go, I would have told you that I haven't felt anything except cold for the past hour! I don't even know what I'm supposed to feel when we're near a bell!" She shouted. "I would have told you politely that we were near a bell and I wouldn't have shouted it."
"It is not my problem that you are cold and as for the bells, you would know what they were when you sensed them."
"Yes it is your problem that I'm cold. You're the one that got us lost."
Sesshomaru almost growled at her. "Do you doubt this ones navigation skills human?"
Kagome took a deep breath to calm herself down. Enough not to scream at him anyway. "Of course I don't doubt your navigation skills. You never had any to begin with."
"Don't push your luck human. I could easily drop you into the ocean right now."
Kagome suppressed a small shiver of fear, or cold, before replying. "Well if you dropped me, you'd have a much harder time finding the bells. If I remember correctly, you need a miko to find these bells, and it's highly unlikely that you'll find one who would come with out kicking and screaming."
Sesshomaru paused to consider this. He knew that no other miko would come as easily as this one did and that they would kick and scream until they passed out. He didn't know how long he would be able to last with a miko like that without killing her. He wouldn't let this human know that though. 'I have never lost a fight to a human, mentally or physically, and I won't start now.'
He didn't need to look at the girl to know that she was radiating smugness that his pause caused. "Don't strain yourself. I need you to be at your full awareness in order to find the bells."
"Huh?"
"If you keep using big words like that, your head would explode from the effort it takes you to think of them, and I don't want to get blood on my clothing." Sesshomaru knew how childish that sounded, but he didn't care.
"Are you saying that I'm stupid?" Kagome asked, the anger coming back into her voice.
Sesshomaru looked down at her once again. "Yes."
Kagome gaped and tried to think of a come back. When she couldn't, she huffed and looked back out towards the ocean. 'That's Sesshomaru 2, Kagome 0.'
Sesshomaru could have grinned when he saw that she wasn't going to make a come back. As much as he hated to admit it, he had enjoyed his argument with her. He hadn't met anyone who was willing to argue with him. Jaken would complain once in a while, but all Sesshomaru had to do was look at him and Jaken would bow and apologize. Rin was still too young to get into an argument with him and InuYasha…. Well the arguments with him weren't even good enough to be considered an argument. Sesshomaru knew that there would be more of these in the near future, and he was strangely looking forward to them. For now though, he would enjoy the silence. He probably wouldn't get much of it later on.
Sesshomaru was enjoying the silence when he felt his cloud vibrate. He looked back at the girl to find her shivering. He wasn't going to let this girl's intolerance to the cold ruin his silence. Sesshomaru uncoiled his tail from his shoulder and wrapped it around the girl. He saw her look up at him in surprise.
"We went over this before. I will not have you go and get yourself sick when you have a job to do."
Kagome felt to warm and comfortable to complain so she just nodded her head in a sleepy acceptance. Kagome yawned and looked out at the ocean one more time before asking "Where are we going anyways?"
"To the nearest piece of land we can find. We need supplies."
Kagome vaguely noticed that they hadn't brought any supplies and remembered that she had left her backpack at the castle before falling into a light sleep.
Kagome woke up to the feeling of something wet on her face. She reached up to brush the moisture off when she realized that she couldn't move her arms. She sat up quickly and looked around, trying to see where she was. She blushed when she realized that she was curled up In Sesshomarus tail. Kagome attempted to untangle herself when she heard Sesshomarus voice.
"Stop." He commanded. He must have felt that she was going to retort so he said "The temperatures here are many degrees below freezing. If you unwound yourself, you would freeze to death."
Kagome realized the truth in his words, so she settled to look at their current position. They weren't as high up as they used to be. They were actually pretty close to the water, which would explain why her face had gotten wet. She twisted around as far as she could and looked around Sesshomaru. What she saw nearly took her breath away.
They were quickly approaching a land that was covered in white snow. The snow went out as far as she could see and as they passed over it Kagome could see no signs of life marring its surface. Everything was in black and white, almost like someone had sucked all the color right off the face of the planet. Even the animals that lived here were in black and white. There were snow white bears that easily padded over the snows surface, and a little further on, there were some kind of black and white ducks. Only that these ducks had no feathers! Kagome had to continually look up at Sesshomaru to make sure that she hadn't gone color blind.
Sesshomaru and Kagome flew on through this peaceful landscape for a while before Kagome saw something odd.
"Sesshomaru, look!" She shouted at him, not caring that he probably had already seen the strange lumps of snow in the distance. These snow lumps were all about the same size and were arranged much like the houses in a town would be.
"That is the village." He replied.
Kagome tried to remember if she had learned about anything like this in school. She couldn't remember since for the last week that she had been in school they had talked about feudal Japan, so she had just zoned out. Kagome was sure that there was nothing like this in Japan.
Kagome felt them descend further so that they were finally hovering over the ground. Sesshomaru gracefully stepped off the cloud causing it to disappear. Kagome squealed in surprise and closed her eyes when she felt it disappear from under her. She expected to land on the ground when she realized that Sesshomarus tail was suspending her in the air.
She held in a laugh when she realized what the two of them must look like. An intimidating demon lord being followed by a fluffy, floating, miko.
As the two of them got closer, Kagome began to hear the normal activity of a town. So when they actually got to it, she wasn't as surprised as she would have been. There were twenty or thirty demons out there doing everyday things like shopping and talking happily. Nobody spared a passing glance at the foreign demon lord and miko.
"Where are we?" Kagome asked.
When she got no answer, she began to pull on as much of Sesshomarus tail that she could reach and asked again.
"I don't know the name of this village." He replied "It is obviously used as a rest stop for travelers since the inhabitants act as if they see this kind of thing every day."
Kagome nodded in acceptance as she took a closer look at the lumps of snow. They didn't look very much like lumps any more. They were all made in the same fashion, a half circle sitting on top of the snow with a oval hole that was used as a entry way.
"Well, we should look for a shop to buy supplies at." Kagome said to herself.
Kagome looked around at all the identical houses.
"Umm, do you know where we could buy supplies?" She asked a female demon that was passing by.
The demon stared blankly at them before pointing to one of the houses and saying "Rolland." The demon smiled and then walked away.
"I guess 'Rolland' means 'there' in this language." Kagome said.
Sesshomaru gave a short nod before walking to the house the woman had pointed to.
Kagome curiously looked at the villagers as they were walking to the house. They all had silvery white hair and deep blue eyes. 'I remember that from somewhere,' she thought 'Oh yes, they must be the same kind of demon as that white bear I saw earlier!'
She looked up just in time to see Sesshomaru walk into the house. She was blasted with warmth that she hadn't been able to fell outside and was suddenly wishing that Sesshomaru would put her down. The inside wasn't what she expected a shop to look like, but then again, nothing made sense to her here. There were fur chairs in the front of the room surrounding a table made from a material that she had never seen before. There was also a hole in the back of the front room that probably lead to a back room.
Sesshomaru stood there for a second before unwinding his tail, letting Kagome fall to the ground with a thump.
"Hey! What was that for?" She said, getting up quickly. The inside of the house may be warm, but the floor was still made of snow.
"You no longer needed the warmth my tail provided."
"Well you didn't have to just drop me."
They were interrupted from getting any further when they saw someone immerge from the back room.
He was tall, only an inch or two shorter then Sesshomaru and had the same silver hair and blue eyes that all the people of this town seemed to have. His eyes were the only thing that had color though. He wore loose black pants with a loose white shirt. His hair was about as long as Kagomes, but it was fine like Sesshomarus. The thing that surprised Kagome the most was that he didn't wear shoes of any kind.
'Don't his feet get cold?' She wondered.
The man looked at them and said "Rejiah goad hpnan."
"Excuse me?" Kagome said "I can't understand you."
"Ahhh, this is the language you speak." He said grinning at them.
"You speak our language?"
"Yes, I asked you what language you spoke in my native tongue to see what language you would reply in."
Sesshomaru raised an eyebrow.
The man chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "You see, I'm one of the village translators. If a foreigner, like yourselves, asks then a question they don't understand, they will send you to me or another translator."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Oh," Kagome exclaimed remembering something "we met a woman on the way here. She pointed to this house and said 'Rolland.' What does that mean?"
The man chuckled. "Excuse my rudeness. My name Is Rolland."
"I'm Kagome and that" she said pointing over at Sesshomaru "Is Sesshomaru."
Sesshomaru slightly narrowed his eyes at being called a 'that.'
"Well it's my pleasure to meet you both. May I ask what you are doing here?" Rolland asked looking skeptically over at Sesshomaru.
"Were here for supplies." Sesshomaru said icily.
"Well where are you going?" Rolland said, trying to be polite.
"We don't know." Kagome answered, feeling the tension in the room.
"Do you know what kind of weather you'll be facing or what kind of people live where you might be going?"
Kagome looked down ashamed. "No."
Rolland grabbed her chin and made her look up at him. "I'll just give you the basics then, okay."
Kagome pulled away, blushing. "Yes. Thank you."
Kagome's eyes widened when she felt Sesshomarus tail wrap around her once again, but this time covering her all the way up with only a little hole to breath through.
"Well be expecting the supplies within the hour." Sesshomaru said before leaving the house.
Kagome barely felt the blast of cold when they stepped outside. She attempted to wiggle her head out, and succeeded, but just barely. She was still covered up to her chin by Sesshomarus tail.
"What was that for?" She said angrily at Sesshomaru.
Sesshomaru didn't answer her and continued walking away from Rolland's house.
"It is rude to walk out of someone's house like that. For all we know—"
Sesshomaru stopped listening to her and began to think about why he did that. 'I acted like a jealous pup.'
"--I think that he was a really nice guy! What did he--"
'I've never acted like that before. It was probably because I'm starting to get a headache.'
"--Can't judge people like that. Is it--"
'His voice was starting to annoy me. The female would have talked to him with her consistent chatter and we would never have been able to leave.'
"—What! I think he should join us. He would know the languages of--"
'So it was a good thing we left like that. That pup needs to be put in his place. No matter what the female says about him joining--'
"What do you mean joining us?" Sesshomaru growled out, interrupting Kagome's rant.
"Well if you were listening to me, you would know. Rolland could be a big help. He understands the languages that we don't."
"There are other translators here."
"But we know Rolland, so that makes him the best choice."
"We are not bringing along some pup that will get home sick the minute we leave."
Three hours later
"We're back Rolland!" Kagome said when they returned to Rolland's house.
"You were gone longer then expected, but I have your stuff ready to go." He held one light blue bag out to Kagome.
"Hey Rolland," Kagome began.
Rolland looked at her strangely. "Yes Kagome?"
"Would you like to come with Sesshomaru and me?"
Rolland looked over at Sesshomaru.
"I don't think he would like that very much."
"Oh, don't worry about him. We were two hours late because we were discussing if you could come or not."
"Two hours huh?" Rolland paused considering his options. "Sure I'll join you."
"You only packed enough for two." Sesshomaru cut in.
"Don't worry. When you were two hours late, I knew that you had either been killed, or you were going to let me come with you. So I packed enough for three." Rolland answered, grinning evilly at Sesshomaru.
Sesshomaru wrapped Kagome back up in his tail and left the pack to Rolland before heading outside. Rolland grumbled while picking up the pack and trotting outside. He was greeted with the stoic face of Sesshomaru and the grinning face of Kagome waiting for him about fifty feet away.
"Come on or we'll leave you behind!" Kagome called out to him.
Rolland knew that Sesshomaru would not hesitate to do just so, so he ran over to the two of them. He stopped a few feet away from Sesshomaru and was mildly surprised when he felt something like a cloud form under his feet.
Kagome must have seen his expression because she grinned at him and said "Don't worry. I was surprised too at first, but it really is stable."
Rolland nodded his head and stared at his slowly retreating village as the duo turned trio set off for an unknown place.