Edited 5/22/2020

Beautiful Moon

Change of Plans

Throughout her life, things had a way of going unexpectedly. Her quest for an appropriate job, for one. That her parents rejected her proposals so often that she'd filled half a notebook with scrapped career choices had not been part of her plan when she'd first voiced her opinion on the position they were grooming her for. She had learned years ago that planning ahead often left her disappointed when she had to change direction, and so she had adopted a habit of adjusting on the fly, which often enough helped her avoid trouble when it tried to catch up with her. Change was not something she was unacquainted with as a result.

She usually anticipated plans falling apart, so she really should have foreseen the way this one would shatter under the weight of her trust in it.

Later that evening, with her belly full and mind much more at ease, Mizuki had drifted off to sleep once more sometime after their conversation ended. It had been a comfortable rest until someone decided that what should serve as an alarm clock for someone who didn't do mornings on a good day was a firm rap on the skull, which resulted in several things; the return of her headache, a renewed disdain for her company, and an imp sporting several lumps more on his head.

When she had finished returning the favor several times over, Rin was pointedly chiding Jaken for being unkind while Mizuki leaned against a tree to get rid of the dizzy feeling that had come back. Sesshomaru acted as though nothing had transpired, though he had been the one to eventually rob her of the imp's staff, and she would forever swear he had been amused rather than concerned for the smaller demon's well-being.

After that fiasco had resolved, Mizuki went about preparing for the day. She eventually managed to work her way back into her shirt with a bit of careful maneuvering, and a little help from Rin had resulted in the fashioning of a crude sling through the use of her jacket to keep her arm from moving too much while they traveled. In the end, she was grateful that she hadn't sacrificed her shirt for bandages.

For the most part, it was quiet during the beginning of their journey, largely due to the fact that she and Rin were working their way through a couple handfuls of berries the girl had eagerly gathered for breakfast, but mostly because Sesshomaru wasn't much for conversation, and Jaken was still nursing his bruised pride. After nothing continued to be said from either the humiliated imp or from their imposing leader upon finishing their food, Rin had taken to drilling Mizuki with innocent questions.

Unfortunately, the innocent questions were about her and where she was from and the possessions she found unusual, so Mizuki had a time of it trying to keep her replies relatively vague but full enough to satisfy her interest. That had worked out alright for a while, but then the girl had asked about whether she had family or if they were gone, too.

The implication of too had made her hesitate, and Rin's reason for choosing to be with Sesshomaru suddenly became much heavier an arrangement.

"It's just my parents and I," she eventually revealed when Rin looked concerned by her silence. "They're probably pretty upset with me right now for taking off, though. I'm not supposed to be here."

"They'll be happy when you come home, I'm sure!" she said with a confident smile.

"They'll be angry with me first, but yeah, probably." She didn't know how she was going to explain her absence or her injury yet, but some way or another she'd get through that conversation.

Rin beside her hummed, apparently thinking of other questions she could ask, but Mizuki wondered if she could get away with asking her own and decided to use the time to gain some insight into the girl's decisions.

"Can I ask why you stay with these two?" she inquired. "I'm not an expert on demons, but I've heard most humans find them scary."

"Hmm, some demons are scary," she confirmed with a thoughtful nod. "But Lord Sesshomaru is not, and Master Jaken is a little mean sometimes, and very nice other times."

The imp in question huffed indignantly, affronted by the thought that she considered him kind. If the other demon disagreed with the assessment that he wasn't scary, he kept it to himself.

"Brigands are scarier," she said confidently, an edge to her tone that spoke from some experience Mizuki decided she didn't want the details of. "They kill just because they want to. I don't like people like that."

She nodded in agreement. "Humans can be pretty scary," she said, thinking about some of the more horrifying criminals in her own time.

"I did live in a village once," the child offered after a thought. "The people there weren't always nice, though. It was attacked one day, and Lord Sesshomaru saved me. Because he is very kind and strong, I'm following him. Sometimes he has to leave me behind when he goes places, but he always returns, which makes me very happy."

To prove that, she smiled brightly, and Mizuki found herself laughing lightly at the girl's eagerness. "Sounds like you're an expert on homecomings, then," she told her. "I guess you're right that my parents will be happy when I return."

"Of course!"

As they giggled, Mizuki wondered privately what had driven Sesshomaru to save Rin. It was a nice image to put to the demon, probably unappreciated if she ever revealed that to him, but nonetheless comforting to her. She couldn't help but begin to see the group less as a strange collection of beings and more like a weird family now, something she intended to keep to herself.

Rin returned to rattling off more questions, apparently having found more within their conversation. "So, is your mom pretty, too? Does she also have strange eyes? How about your dad?"

What did she mean by too?

"Well, I don't think my mom's that pretty," she answered with a short laugh. "She's kind of average, probably. My dad's the same. Nothing remarkable about either of them, I'm afraid, including the eye color. I'm the only one in my family with it."

"I thought she might be pretty like you," Rin noted. "You dress strangely, but your hair is very shiny, and because your eyes are so blue, they really stand out. They match your necklace!"

Embarrassed and slightly thrown off by the praise, Mizuki waved off the compliment. She'd never been adept at navigating flattery around her appearance, both because it seemed like a shallow way to gain her approval, and because it wasn't something she paid any particular attention to herself. Coming from Rin, though, she knew the remarks were sincere.

"The eyes are one thing because they're weird, but I'm pretty average back home," she eventually granted her, thinking about the kind of people some of her classmates would chatter on about.

She wondered if part of Rin's assessment had to do with the things available to her in the future. Hair care products certainly helped, and there was an abundance of bath oils and lotions to keep skin clear. Rin didn't know the kind of people that were considered pretty in the future, so maybe she was something in comparison to those of this time period.

"Really?" the child gasped, as if the prospect were difficult to believe. Then she turned to Jaken, who had taken to ignoring their conversation as best he could. "What do you think, Master Jaken? Do you think Miss Mizuki is pretty, or do you think there are prettier people?"

She wasn't quite sure she wanted an opinion from the creature who had decided abuse was a fine way to wake someone up, and even if he hadn't, the prospect was still strange.

"Why are you asking me, girl?!" he barked, flashing the two of them an indignant look.

"Fine, I'll ask Lord Sesshomaru," she concluded, undeterred. Raising her head to look directly at the back of the man before them, she opened her mouth to pose the question to him.

"Ah, no, it's alright, Rin!" Mizuki said quickly, trying to push back the heat crawling up her neck. That was an uncomfortable thought regardless of how Mizuki viewed herself. "Really, I'll take your word for it."

She gave her a strange look, not understanding the reason for her protest.

"Are you alright, Miss Mizuki?" she questioned after a moment. "Your face is very red."

That wasn't helping!

"I'm alright, Rin," she assured her, glancing quickly between the girl and the demon who made no indication that he was even listening to them. If Rin really didn't understand, then… ah, damn it. She did not have explaining why you don't just ask that on her list of things she never wanted to do again until now. "If a person says someone is pretty, that can imply that they like them a lot, which can be embarrassing for the person they're talking about."

She knew her face was getting redder by the moment, but somehow leaving the girl to make that mistake in the future felt wrong.

"Then why didn't it get all red when I asked Master Jaken?"

The girl was perceptive, she would give her that.

"Well…" she hesitated, looking at the imp as though he might give her an idea. She couldn't very well say it was because Sesshomaru at least had the appearance of a human and the imp hardly held a match to him, because that was way worse and implied things on her end instead. Her eyes traveled up to the imp's staff, giving her a good excuse.

"Because I'm still mad at him for this morning," she finished.

Rin nodded with a satisfied oh, and Mizuki assumed she could relax with the knowledge that the girl would likely move on to her next topic, following the same pattern that she had since she began. She might have, except for a soft sound that reached her ears from ahead of them.

Amusement, and definitely at her expense.

"I heard that," she called up to him in an annoyed tone before she clamped her mouth shut, having realized that she'd just reacted the way she would normally have to Kimura whenever he made a snarky remark, and that was definitely not the way she should be speaking to someone who was helping her. She was still lost in this forest, after all, and their agreement hadn't exactly rested upon Sesshomaru feeling indebted to her.

"You are quick," he commented, leaving her to assume that he was referring to the answer she gave to Rin.

"…Is that a bad thing?" she asked, emboldened by his tone. Apparently, she wasn't as out of line as she thought she was because he made no indication that she'd crossed him.

"No," came his light answer. "It is simply an unexpected trait to have."

In a human, she assumed he was implying. A crooked frown was her reaction, and she quickened her steps until she was in pace with him, a bit of a feat with a stride of his length. He gave her a slightly raised eyebrow in response but said nothing.

"How many humans do you actually know?" she questioned pointedly, looking him in the eyes.

That rare smirk graced his lips for a moment, warning Mizuki that he was about to inform her of his superior logic.

"Simply observing is enough to come to such a conclusion," he remarked, and while his tone displayed his arrogance, his smirk faded to a passive expression. It irked her that he played a straight face well.

"Making assumptions can be dangerous," she advised him, an unwanted echo of her parents in her voice. She stopped herself from speaking further, trying to reign in her annoyance at both her upbringing and his clearly deficient observational skills before she said something else that could be construed as conceited.

"True enough," he replied before she could finish fighting back her irritation, with an inflection that told her nothing of how he took it.

His gaze remained ahead as they walked, so she took to observing his impassive features for a moment, wondering what made him so different from the other three (and a half, she supposed) demons she had met so far. He had a good, if annoying poker face, though his inflection seemed to betray him at times, and she wasn't sure if he was aware of it or not. The others she'd encountered wore their emotions on their faces much more openly. She wasn't sure if that made Sesshomaru simply more in control of his or more lacking in them, though given the way he was treating her, she figured it was the former.

Mizuki was reminded suddenly of the intense gaze of the teen she had met back at the shrine. She hadn't taken the time to commit the color of the other demons' eyes to her memory, so she was forced to wonder how common the hue was among their kind while she compared the strikingly similar shades of gold between the supposed half-demon and the demon before her now. Curiously, they shared a comparable shade of hair as well, making her contemplate whether they could be distantly related.

Sesshomaru found his head tilting slightly, having some difficulty following the rapid fluctuation of the woman's emotions. He supposed he could understand where they came from; given how she regarded him and the remarks he chose to make, her frustration was an expected (and not necessarily unamusing) reaction, and her lack of common fear of demons likely made him an interesting subject to study. Her curiosity had given way to something less uninformed though, as if something about his face was recognizable despite them never having encountered one another in the past.

"You seem intent on discovering something," he commented as his gaze shifted back to the path in front of him.

She jumped slightly and set her eyes deliberately on the path, apparently having just realized she had been staring.

"Sorry," she apologized after a moment. "Just thinking about my own observations about demons, like how common certain features are. Eye color, for example. I met someone else with golden eyes before I came here."

His steps slowed minutely, because he knew that it was uncommon.

"He had white hair, too," she continued, a nervous continuation of her thoughts, "though thicker, and a rough look about him. Seemed to like red a lot."

An image formed in his mind with a decidedly familiar face, and he found himself wondering just what demon she claimed to have escaped from before the one he had cut down himself.

"Dog ears," she seemed suddenly to recall. "He wore a bandana to cover them, but it had slipped off and I caught a glimpse of them."

Sesshomaru stopped.

"Inuyasha."

The name rolled off of his tongue with a touch of bitterness that briefly surprised her more than the thought of him knowing who she had met in the future. She stopped just ahead of him, concerned by his reaction and looking back at his companions to see if they were offering anything more. Jaken's mouth stood agape, not helping her nerves, while Rin looked on in open curiosity.

The air pricked with that same static charge, and Mizuki turned back to the demon it came from.

"…You know him?" she questioned apprehensively, unsure if he was angry with her, himself, or the half-demon five hundred years in the future.

There was a long moment where nothing but the sounds of the forest around them penetrated the suffocating silence before the demon composed an answer.

"My sire was his as well," he replied coldly. "Nothing more."

"You're half-brothers," she surmised aloud carefully. Not distantly related, then; exactly the opposite, and judging by his tone and his opinion on humans, not at all close. "You two…don't get along, I take it."

"It seems your quickness is not simply a fluke," he told her, the remark an answer itself. The hint of humor in his other comments of similarly mocking tone wasn't present this time, leaving her feeling cold.

"…I'll keep him from being a subject, then," she concluded, nodding gravely to herself.

Sesshomaru gave her a long look, sensing her distress. While the girl was by no means very polite, she apparently knew when courtesy was appropriate, and he belatedly realized how much she was sensing his own ire. It was likely that she was attempting to diffuse a situation she felt responsible for, and he scoffed inwardly at his reaction to a simple name. Ridiculous, a part of him reprimanded. From merely being surprised?

In a rare display of courtesy his own, Sesshomaru closed his eyes briefly before attempting to calm her nerves.

"You have not angered me," he said evenly, watching as her countenance took on a relieved air. "You had no knowledge of our relation."

She offered him a soft smile.

"Thanks," she said quietly. "I appreciate you telling me."

Whether she was referring to him speaking of their relation to each other or of the fact that he was not angry with her, he was not sure, but she was relieved just the same. Sesshomaru found himself pleased by that, and unsure why.

Conversations drifted in and out for the next few hours, none of which involved Sesshomaru again. Mizuki hoped, despite her determination not to care about the feelings of the demon when she'd attempted to convince him to escort her, that it wasn't entirely because she had accidently brought up his half-sibling that he clearly regarded poorly. He'd assured her he found no fault given her unfamiliarity, but his silence sat like a weight in her gut.

She forgot about it once she spotted the shrine's god tree.

It was scarred just as her friends had described to her, and she marveled for a moment at how long one tree could live while the demon in charge of their group gave it a flat consideration. Moving on had her feet rushing in excitement. She managed to keep them in check up until they passed into a clearing, and the swell of sheer relief at seeing the lonely wooden well at its center was where she met her limit. She nearly collapsed once she reached it, and touching the wood brought tears to her eyes.

Not a dream.

"I'm going home!"

She turned back to the small group behind her, a wide smile spreading across her features. Rin and Jaken looked at her in question, and even the dragon shifted its heads curiously. Only Sesshomaru remained impassive, though she had expected that, and was too happy to care otherwise. Somewhere in there he probably had questions, but it no longer mattered.

Her home was just a jump away.

"Thank you so much," she said with a tone equally grateful as she bowed at the waist. "I wish I had some way to repay you for this."

"There is no need," he replied indifferently, and she wondered if he felt the slightest bit indebted anyway.

She shrugged minutely, retaining her smile.

"Still, I know when I owe someone, and I can't offer you enough for literally saving my life." She sat at the lip of the well, before considering the merits of climbing out of a well with one hand, and gently slipped her jacket from around her neck. Her arm still hurt quite a bit, but she could move it when necessary. Stitches would likely be in her future. She swung both legs over the edge and peered down into its depths, contemplating.

At about the same time as she thought of a small way to repay him, Sesshomaru asked, simply, "Where is it you call home?"

"When," she corrected, the response her answer regarding what she could return the favor with. "My home exists five hundred years in the future."

To that, Jaken squawked, "Impossible!" while Rin awed with wonder. Sesshomaru simply narrowed his eyes, likely skeptical, and said nothing.

"It's not much of a payment, I suppose," she continued. "but I figure the information may have its uses. This is the site of a shrine, in the future. I was on a trip with my classmates when I ran into this," she indicated the stone pendant, "and it called me to the well. That was where I met Inuyasha. In the future."

It added up, he supposed, though he found it no less difficult to believe. The woman's mannerisms, clothing, and possessions could all be explained this way. The scents he could not place, her lack of fear, her regard of demons, all could be the result of such a span of time.

His brother having seen such a place was not an image he could reconcile.

"If I think of something, or you have use of something more, I could likely get it to you through his friend, since she comes from my era as well, and she has better access to the well," she offered. "I guess that means talking with Inuyasha, but if you ever find yourself able to, don't hesitate. I'll leave my contact information with the Higurashi's.

"I'm very, very late, and I have quite a bit to sort out at home, so I need to go," she concluded. "Thank you again. Rin, you really saved my life. I can't thank you enough."

"You're welcome, Miss Mizuki!" the child said cheerfully.

"And Jaken…I suppose you kept the fish from burning," she shrugged. "Keep a better eye on Rin next time you're babysitting."

"Good riddance to you, too!" he returned, indignant.

At last, she turned her gaze back to him, and he fought back his curiosity at the new information as she offered him, "Take care," before she propelled herself off the edge and disappeared into its depths.

Energy pulsed from within the well, a power that radiated out from the ground as though water still flowed into the old well from some vein within the earth, and it obscured her presence almost entirely. It left him wondering if his hypothesis had been correct at all when his interest did not waver, and he found himself impatient for the moment when the human would disappear entirely.

It did not come.

The agitated hum he had sensed when she offered the artifact to him echoed from the well suddenly, and he moved to inspect it as the original source of energy diminished to nothing. Something hit the bottom as he approached.

Adapting to changes was not a particularly difficult feat for him. Sesshomaru changed routes as needed, dispatched enemies as they appeared (with very few exceptions), and he shifted tactics when the former approach proved ineffective or insufficient. He would do just the same for this situation, now that his initial plan to rid himself of the woman and her apparent effect on his interests met with an unexpected barrier.

The well was not empty.

Mizuki cried out as her plans all crumbled to pieces around her.

This chapter got a little cleaned up as far as Sesshomaru's thoughts and how Mizuki says her goodbyes. Before, it seemed like she was attached to our favorite demon without realizing it, and I want to stress that there are no plans to pair the two of them. In the very first (and very, very bad) version of this story, long before it had any plot direction involving mysterious artifacts, that had been a thought. The Mizuki of this version isn't interested and just wants to go home.

I ended up scrapping what I was actually trying to do with that when it didn't want to play nicely with the rest of the chapter, so instead we get to focus on Mizuki's relief and gratefulness.

And because I'm a very mean author, we also get to watch that relief pass through a paper shredder.