Edited 5/24/2020

Beautiful Moon

Analyzing Variables

He could sense a myriad of emotions from the woman supposedly returning home as she yelled wordless frustrations into the dirt. The pendant that hung around her neck since last evening was consumed by a white-knuckled hand, the other too busy trying to gain purchase on the ground.

She had miscalculated the factors involved in her ability to return.

Ridding himself of her presence was a goal he still intended to meet, though how he went about doing so now would change. Without her absence he could not confirm the source of his unnatural interest, and killing her seemed a waste at this point. He would find no more answers to his questions from a corpse, after all, and Rin would likely raise objections to her death.

"No, no, no," the woman eventually spoke. "It was working. Why won't it let me go back? Let me through, please!"

Something twisted within him at the sight of her coming undone. He could not say the panic in those words worried him, because that was far too heavy a term and not an action he saw himself capable of. Nonetheless, he felt uneased by her current state, so markedly unstable compared to how she had presented herself before.

While he was busy examining the reasons behind his disquiet, he found his gaze pulled away as her cries drew the attention of his wards, both of whom quickly ran to meet him. Rin flashed him a concerned look that he was uncertain how to acknowledge around his own battle with something resembling the emotion.

Blue glinted in the corner of his eye and his hand snapped out on reflex. He found not a threat but the pendant's leather cord in his grasp, and he seized it from the air to examine it instead of letting it fall away. The energy within it hummed incessantly, agitated, apparently, by its owner's choice to throw it away. A will was alive within it, much like his own swords, and the woman was ignoring its direction.

She was trying to circumvent any interference it might be causing, he gathered, but the jump she made from the ground caused nothing, and her attempt to leap from a higher point ended unexpectedly when a too strenuous stretch of her injured arm caused her to prematurely release the vines in her grasp and fall right back to the bottom, with only a muted reaction that clearly lacked the power to transport her home as a result.

"Damn it!" she hollered out in frustration, realizing her efforts were futile. "Why now?! Why let me through but not back?!"

She kicked the dirt wall as she stood, sending some bits of it flying, though she recoiled from the impact against the hard-packed earth.

"Miss Mizuki…" Rin said with concern, sympathetic to the woman's distress. Despite how fiercely she glared at the walls around her, tears streamed down her face.

"You cannot return to your proper time," Sesshomaru eventually observed.

"No shit," she replied bitterly, though the bite of her words did not seem directed at him, because she quickly became subdued, absorbing the information without another word.

Finding her anger dissolving away suddenly, Mizuki felt weak. She was stuck here. All of her conclusions had led her to believe that she could get home just as easily as she had gotten here. Unless Inuyasha lived long enough to be alive five hundred years in the future, Sesshomaru knowing and being related to him had essentially confirmed that he had passed through the well and back. She should be climbing out into the wellhouse in 1997, not finding that demon's face and a blue sky above her again.

The well was working. She could feel it, hear it, but then the noise from the pendant had overwhelmed and drowned it out. Throwing it away only resulted in the well responding less and her head hurting more. Even when she begged it to open up, it only whispered back, as if frightened by the noise that echoed from above or unable to muster the strength without its support.

The stone was the only reason it had worked before, she concluded. And now, the stone was fighting to prevent her from getting home.

Making assumptions can be dangerous.

The words rang mockingly in her mind, a twisted echo of what she told Sesshomaru not long before. She had assumed she would be fine, and her injury proved otherwise. She had assumed it would be simple, quick, and here she was a day and a half later than she intended to be. She had assumed her safety, had assumed there would be answers, had assumed she could get home, but she was not, had none, and now…

She couldn't go home.

The realization hit like a truck directly to her chest, and she stumbled back against the dirt wall behind her. She was trapped in this era of demons and wars and everything she was unfamiliar with. She was alone and unprepared and hurt. She hadn't apologized for lying to her friends, hadn't told them or her family goodbye, hadn't graduated, hadn't accomplished anything…

Trapped, hurt, stuck, alone, lost, wrongwrongwrong.

She couldn't have realized how her breathing had devolved into hyperventilation, her mind speeding too rapidly through thoughts to process any of them or warn her that she was doing so, nor could she have noticed the narrowing golden gaze that saw how she was falling apart as she was too busy trying to cling to all of the pieces of her life slipping through her fingers.

"Mizuki."

She wouldn't have noticed, except that the voice that called down to her cut through everything, a sharp, firm tone that carried the weight of an anchor and offered the buoyancy of a life raft. The unwavering gaze gave her something to focus on, and the hand he eventually extended down to her was something real she could grasp once she climbed to reach it. She lacked the presence of mind to question the gesture as she was pulled easily from the dry well.

The weakness that had come over her chose to collect itself in her legs the moment her feet touched the ground, and they promptly collapsed beneath her when she was released. She was only vaguely aware of Rin by her side, questioning her while she was still busy testing the waters beyond the raft she'd been offered, wading through her thoughts and realizations. Eventually, a wave of one rushed over her head, and she felt her tears suddenly renewed. Aware of everyone staring at her, she tried to stop them and the sobs that followed, gritting her teeth in an effort to subdue both, and found herself failing in every attempt.

"What am I supposed to do?" the woman asked, having apparently found her voice once again. "I can't survive here. I don't know anything about this place! I can't fight off demons, I can't defend myself, I don't know the first thing about survival…I've never been on my own like this!"

As if revealing these faults had released the last of her grip on herself, she gave up on any semblance of trying, and she reached out to cling to the first thing she could get her arms around, which happened to be Rin. Though slightly unbalanced by the force behind her grip, the young child tried to comfort her as best she could.

"I don't know what to do!" she cried into the girl's kimono. "This wasn't…this wasn't supposed to happen!"

"It'll be alright, Miss Mizuki," Rin said confidently despite the worry that showed on her face. "We'll figure something out. You'll see!"

Despite his silence, Sesshomaru found his thoughts tumultuous. He had hoped pulling her from the well would avert the breakdown he was sensing, reduce the unease he felt growing as her emotional distress increased, but it had failed to do either. Calming someone was not something he would ever claim to be proficient in. Comforting was a word he had never been described as, and his lack of empathy for her situation left Rin much more suited to both.

Yet, as the cries continued, he felt a strong need to step in and find a way to accomplish the task himself. It was not a desire motivated by care for the woman or annoyance at the sounds, but simply by the thought that the answers he sought would be lost if she should continue to despair. He knew of some beings broken by insurmountable loss, and he imagined humans could break just the same as the source of his curiosity flickered like a small candle in a storm.

Sesshomaru could not let that flame die. Not before he was satisfied, anyway. Not before he understood why this human caused him to be so needlessly caught up in her story and the pendant at the center of it.

That thought had him retrieving the necklace from where it hung on the hilt of Tenseiga, where he had set it aside to free up his hand for the task of retrieving her from the well. It hummed with a sadness that reflected the woman's own, as though the will within it felt responsible for its owner's state and was helpless to watch as the repercussions of its actions unfolded.

For answers, he told himself, so that he had an explanation for his actions when he questioned himself later.

When he knelt down beside her and Rin, the only one who registered any surprise was Jaken. Rin attempted to calm the woman enough to get her to focus on him, and he forced himself to be patient with her, until finally reddened eyes were looking at him and then at the artifact that he held up for her to see.

"Do you know of this artifact's origins?"

She stared at him for a moment as she processed his inquiry. Fitful intakes of breath followed even exhales as her crying subsided, and eventually she shook her head to indicate that she did not.

"You said that it was the reason you came to this place," he reminded her, and she nodded to confirm. "Should you trace it back to its source, you may find the reason it drew you here. The pathway may open more easily to you once you understand its purpose for doing so."

It was odd to notice a light returning to her eyes, mostly because he had not noticed it had been absent until now, and he watched it grow until it was obscured by her hands as they wiped at her tears. The concern on Rin's face lessened as the woman seemed to pull herself together, confirming that his actions were having the desired effect.

"You think so?" she questioned, and he could sense the storm subsiding within her.

"It is theory," he said frankly, unwilling to let his words be interpreted as more than they were, "but somewhere to start."

His speculations were just that, but he could see they were something she could put some hope into. As she struggled to wipe at her face with the short sleeves of her clothing and Rin offered her reassuring words and gestures, her mouth was set in a firm line that conveyed she was giving strong consideration to his words.

Good, something within him noted with satisfaction, and he tried not to be too pleased with himself. His unease now a thing of the past, he examined the artifact again, noting that it had quieted itself. After a thought, he wondered if his curiosity should be more directed at the item. Perhaps it was not simply the woman that affected him, but the power of the will it contained.

"How did you come into possession of this?" he found himself asking. It had not seemed like something she had carried on her for long, given her willingness to give it up in return for her safe transport and her lack of understanding of its powers. Conversely, though, it seemed suited to her, and he found himself struggling to explain why beyond sensing a similar feeling from both.

He watched her hesitate, thinking over her words as she had been more prone to doing, and she shifted in either nervousness or simply to relieve her legs of the rest of her weight.

"…It's complicated," she finally revealed, taking a sharp breath through her nose as she found her speech warped by fluids. She would not meet his gaze. "Long story short, I stole it from the Higurashi family. I'm not proud of that, but I felt like I needed it. Like, more than I've ever needed anything. It's hard to explain."

"Higurashi?" The name was unfamiliar to him, and the most relevant information from her explanation.

"They're a shrine family. Their place was one of the stops on our class trip, and we were supposed to look at old items and the like while we were there," she explained, and he assumed this might be how she had come to find the stone. "They had some information displayed with it, but it was really more of a summary than anything else, I think, because the old man who talked to us about it started off by saying my eyes would have marked me as an inheritor if I had been part of the family it came from, and that information wasn't on the placard."

He had noticed the unusual color of her eyes before, but now that he looked with more intention, he could see just how closely the hue resembled the stone.

"But the shrine stands here in the future, not now." This problem had her biting her lower lip in irritation. "I don't know how much stock I can put into my speculations now given how wrong I was about being able to use the well freely, but there's a chance their daughter can and has traveled through here herself, and if that's the case, she might be someone I can talk to."

"Describe this girl," he told her, though he was certain he already knew who would be revealed. The realization quickly seemed to dawn on her as well.

"Her hair is a little shorter than mine, probably wears strange clothing, possibly a priestess; Kagome should be her name. She seemed close to Inuyasha."

And that confirmed it.

"She has returned here, then, along with Inuyasha." At the look that told him she did not understand how he knew, he explained, "Two days ago, judging by their scents, though the woman has come and gone since. Both trails lead toward the village."

Mizuki remained confused for a moment longer before something clicked.

"Inuyasha's name and ears probably make him half dog demon, so his half-brother would be…"

"…Good nose," she commented. Sesshomaru didn't look like what she expected a dog demon to look like, given that he lacked four legs, fluffy ears, and a tail, though maybe that could explain the fur over his shoulder. She reminded herself that she didn't have any proper knowledge of demons, and decided to drop the speculation, especially as Sesshomaru didn't reply.

He seemed to be thinking about something for a moment before standing, and Mizuki's eyes widened as she realized all that had occurred since she had realized she couldn't return home.

A man of status (or so she might assume, given the reverence with which Rin and Jaken paid him) had offered her his hand, bothered to come down to her height rather than address her from above, and had taken the time to comfort her in his own way.

Etiquette was something she had always been forced to be aware of because of her family, though she hardly practiced what they demonstrated unless her parents were over her shoulder. Sesshomaru spoke and carried himself like someone with higher status, or at least someone who considered themselves above common people, and it highlighted how very out of character his actions seemed to be. Considering he was a demon, that made the contrast even more stark.

Maybe it was because of Rin. Maybe human etiquette didn't apply when demons were involved. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but Mizuki found herself far more humbled by his actions than she would have been had he been anyone else.

"She should have some of the information needed," he eventually continued. "The village is just beyond this forest. You will find the woman there."

She put the strange gestures out of her mind for the time being, realizing her focus needed to be elsewhere.

"Inuyasha will be there," she noted apprehensively.

He didn't reply, but she figured it was because that was too obvious to confirm, and she took a deep breath. She'd had no reason to really fear him before, but given that she had stolen from his friend's family, the way he was quick to jump to anger, and the advice he'd given Kagome as she eavesdropped on their conversation, Mizuki found herself unnerved by the thought of running into him.

"We didn't start out on the right foot," she revealed, offering him a serious expression to let him know this running commentary about the half-brother he wasn't fond of was necessary. "When I met him and Kagome, the pendant did a lot of weird stuff. Freaked him out. He'll probably find me threatening if the growling and yelling were anything to go by."

Sesshomaru met her gaze and sighed internally, another obstacle rising up to meet him.

Irony might have been a cause for amusement if the situation were of a different nature. While entertaining, the fact that the hanyou already did not trust her was going to make double the mistrust he would view her with given whose scent she would have among her own. It was not exactly a favorable situation.

This would mark one of the very few instances when the demon briefly pondered the way things might have been had he ever considered the hanyou worthy enough for respect.

"This complicates matters," he noted.

"…No chance you're actually planning on coming to a human village with me, right?" His expression did not change, but she seemed to understand he would not provide her company because she frowned in disappointment at the silence.

Mizuki had really hoped he would pull a surprising breach of etiquette there, too, but it didn't appear she was going to get that lucky.

Since they didn't get along, it was likely Sesshomaru wasn't welcome in the village anyway, so she supposed her wishes on the matter were irrelevant in the bigger picture. It didn't help her worries, of course; Inuyasha hadn't struck her as the type of person to wait and listen so much as strike first and ask questions later, and she wasn't certain of her ability to talk him down. For that, she would have to trust Kagome, and even then, she wasn't sure how the girl would view her after what she had done.

Beside her, Sesshomaru's expression had shifted to something more openly contemplative, and his mouth had a slight curve to it that she would argue was a smile if he weren't someone who could manage to make the expression look lethal. Unable to understand his thoughts, she eventually asked what he was thinking about.

"You fear a hanyou more openly than you do myself," he revealed. "I merely find the thought amusing."

It probably shouldn't have angered her so much, but Sesshomaru looking at her anxieties and being humored by them instead of being understanding about her situation hurt in a way that sent her blood pounding through her head.

"You think my fear is funny?" she asked him, and the expression on his face fell to neutral. "You think the fact that I can't trust whether he would choose to listen to me or kill me first is funny? I'm trapped five hundred years in the past because of a stupid rock I couldn't ignore, I may have lost everything I've ever known and loved, and you think the best thing to focus on right now is how funny it is that I can trust you, but not your brother, simply because one of you is a little more human than the other?!"

Watching tears well in her eyes as she shouted made Sesshomaru realize it would have been better to keep that to himself, given her current situation. What broke his amusement, however, was not her anger but the word she used. Trust? Ridiculous. To so willingly assign such a regard to him after merely humoring Rin's request was not something he expected, nor did he believe he was warranted it. The only reason they were here, after all, was because of his own interest in what it was about her that inflated his curiosity to such a degree.

But this human, he reminded himself, did not see youkai in the way one typically did. Perhaps trust was a far simpler matter. He did not, in fact, have any plans to harm her. As far as Inuyasha was concerned, the woman had no such guarantee, and knew little of him to inform her of anything different.

He regarded her carefully for a long moment in a silence that expressed his understanding of her point of view without having to verbalize as such. Her eyes remained narrowed at him, but the flush of anger receded, and that she did not continue to berate him told him that she understood his silence for what it was.

Considering Inuyasha's typical behavior, he was not entirely surprised by her revelation that he met her presence with hostility. He likely felt unnecessarily threatened by either her or the pendant and the power it possessed, and then jumped to the conclusion that he needed to protect the priestess from that perceived danger. Without thinking, of course; the hanyou fell short in that area.

She did not want to put herself in a situation where she was at the mercy of the hanyou's assumptions. She could not trust that he would listen to her long enough to understand that she posed no threat to him or the people in his company.

Mizuki could, however, trust him.

If he wanted to put any distance between them to test his theory concerning his interest in her, he was going to have to make her feel safe. He would use this trust she had in him to his benefit.

"If you should feel endangered," he started, looking off into the trees, "just shout."

Mizuki found herself staring at him, unsure what he was saying.

"I will be able to hear you."

In other words, he would rescue her…?

She had never given much thought to the whole concept of a knight in shining armor, nor had she ever imagined the ridiculous English cliché to actually be applicable to a real-life situation. Standing there like that, though, Sesshomaru looked like he fit the image. His armor didn't exactly shine so much as his kimono was simply bright in the sun, and she certainly didn't think he was the kind of person who served anyone like a knight did, but he presented the same sort of understanding of protection that the concept was supposed to imply. It took her aback. After the exchange they had just had, she wasn't expecting him to take this turn.

"Besides," he continued, turning back to her again, "foul as he may come across, Inuyasha seems to make a point of not killing humans. You have no need to worry."

Considering he didn't like him, Sesshomaru presenting his half-brother in a way that could be argued as kind seemed disingenuous. Mizuki couldn't exactly say that she didn't trust his words, however. She was far from trusting him fully, or course, because that wasn't something handed out freely, and given that she was hardly the most trustworthy person herself, it was advice she found difficult not to follow. He never seemed dishonest with her, though, even from the beginning, and just because she couldn't read his motives didn't mean he wasn't sincere.

So, he probably wasn't lying, she concluded. Saying things that could be thought of as nice about Inuyasha probably meant he had reasons for doing so, and he wasn't freely offering them.

"…If you're sure," she nodded, shaking those thoughts from her head for the moment. No time to be cynical of the demon who so far had been helpful. Getting a lead on this was far more important than breaking down his reasons, anyway.

Attempting the use of her legs once again, Mizuki found that they were back to being capable of supporting her weight. Sesshomaru must have noticed as well, because he then motioned for her to follow him. Letting him guide her away from the well and through a copse of trees brought them to an area with a good vantage point of a whole village.

She found herself distracted by the sight. Reenactments were good, but they didn't nearly do the real sight of an honest Sengoku era settlement justice. Rice fields extended from the hill out to the edge of the village. Small houses with shingled and thatched rooves alike dotted the area. She could hear the sounds of construction and the voices of farmers in the distance if she strained her ears, and something in the back of her mind picked up a gentle hum from everywhere else around her.

So much about this place was alive, she realized, and then something decidedly less excited chimed in, how did you manage to miss this?

"He cannot sense me at the moment, due to the wind's direction," Sesshomaru said, interrupting her observations and the argument about how dark things had been she was about to have with herself. Her attention was drawn almost immediately to the point he was actually referring to; the blot of red moving through the rice fields and lugging toward the village a couple of shaved tree trunks that might be used in some sort of structure. She swallowed hard, imagining the strength one needed to pull that off.

Right there was Inuyasha.

Unfortunately, he was alone, so there went the small hope that his friend could run interference.

"He will likely return for the other building materials," he told her, indicating the pile of similar materials and the rest of the lumber that had yet to be processed. One tree still stood next to it, its branches used for hanging tools, apparently. "It would be unwise to enter the village unannounced, so wait for him there. You may hide, if that is your preference."

His tone did not reflect humor at her expense this time, which she appreciated, but she still gave him a nervous glance. His next words were an attempt to ease that.

"I will watch from here," he said dispassionately. "You are in no danger."

Coming from him, those words were far too close to a promise, and Sesshomaru was acutely aware of how unusual it was that he was handing her that. She needed to feel safe enough to go with his half-brother, though, and words of such nature were the kind to accomplish that quickly. If telling her that he would be near enough to defend her should the need arise would instill enough confidence in her to leave, then he would do just that.

"…Alright," she finally conceded, nodding sharply more to herself than to him, he supposed. "If…if things go well…I'll come back here when we're finished, so I can let you know what I find out."

He nodded in agreement. While his original intention had been to rid himself of her influence, the revelation of her origins and the discovery of the will within the stone had given him further reason to explore this matter at length. Answers, he reminded himself. He wanted a way to explain what he was experiencing.

That settled, he held out the pendant with the intention of returning it to her. She stared at it for a moment before looking up at him.

"…You really don't want it for payment?" she questioned.

"I told you, I have no use for it," he replied, gesturing for her to take it as it hummed. "It appears to have a preference for you, anyway."

Mizuki cupped her hands beneath it, allowing him to release the artifact to her. She seemed to contemplate it for a moment before bringing it protectively to her chest. Despite her negative regard for it and her willingness to toss it aside, she still appeared to treasure it. The air around it hummed in the same way she smiled.

"Thank you, Sesshomaru," she said as she placed the pendant around her neck and tucked it away beneath the collar of her odd clothing. "You've done much more than I could have asked for."

He knew that, which was precisely why he needed to enact his little experiment, and now.

"You should go before he begins to head back," he urged. "He will see you coming, otherwise."

Her eyes widened in apprehension, and she nodded quickly, paying no mind to his deft change of subject. She turned toward her destination and paused for a moment to look back at him, but she seemed to think better of whatever she had intended to say and took off instead.

Later, as Inuyasha finally led her off into the village, Sesshomaru would remain where he was, questioning just what kind of power the woman and her pendant contained as his curiosity slowly, incrementally, pulled away with her.

This chapter mostly suffered through dialogue changes, though there were definitely some edits to the flow between actions and thoughts, particularly where Mizuki's panic attack was concerned. Despite having experienced them myself, writing one is difficult in the sense that it never seems to last long enough on paper, and there are never quite words that describe how losing control of everything feels.

I'm a terrible author to my characters, because I use them to write my own life experiences at times, and those aren't always the most pleasant ones.

This chapter sets the rest of the story in motion and plays off Mizuki's original reasoning that jumping into a well was an appropriate choice. I didn't forget that, and I assure you that her choice of thoughts was intentional for a couple of reasons; one, answers are the common goal shared by her and Sesshomaru, and two, that's for later in the story.

As always, improvements are inspired by you, so please let me know if you have suggestions!