Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or its characters. 'Nuff said.


Chapter 5

"In case you haven't been informed," she started, "I am currently blind."

The daiyoukai scowled lightly as the woman continued to stare up at him unflinchingly, seeing nothing. It was aggravating, he thought, for someone such as him to be caught unawares. Yes, he could concede that rumors were hardly ever completely accurate, and the woman had yet to wake and thus Gina could not have known when she first contacted Chiharu; nevertheless, he could not help the twinge of annoyance that threatened to make an appearance on his face.

Then he remembered she couldn't actually see his face; and as soon as he did, his face relaxed to show exactly what he had been adverse to revealing a moment earlier. Sesshomaru inhaled deeply in an attempt to recenter his thoughts, but that promptly backfired when her scent flooded his nose and drowned out all else. His lips parted ever-so-slightly in shock; and that only furthered how deeply her scent impacted him; he could practically taste the ginger and grapefruit that was her on his tongue.

"Hello?" Her hand rose up to wave in the space in between them, and the implied misinterpretation of his silence for a lack of attention equally insulted and ashamed him. Clearly, she needed to be taught how to behave in his presence. She had been right in her assumption, but he would be damned if he let her know it.

"This One was thinking, woman," Sesshomaru reprimanded, and watched as the woman raised an eyebrow, almost as if to say, I'm sure you were. "You are rumored to be able to see the nature of any illness or malice that could possibly fall upon someone," he continued, forcing himself to take several steps away from the other person in the room; her scent made it hard to think. As he turned away, he noted the raise of her brow - surprise, perhaps? Intrigue? Curiosity? He watched her, gaze predatory and honed in to see any change in her demeanor as he continued to speak. "That you can see a person's soul. Can you do any of this, woman?"

Silence.

Then, out of nowhere, she laughed.

It wasn't a loud thing; like that scarred man from before's had been. It was a soft thing, like a feather carried over the wind, like liquid satin and the wistful chime of a kalimba. But it drifted away just as gently as it came. "I could do some of those things, maybe. But as I said before, I'm currently blind."

Her repetition of that specific phrase gave him pause. "Currently?" he echoed, and the woman seemed to look almost sheepish.

"It's such a technical word, isn't it? But yes - I'm currently unable to do many things. It appears I've been forced to serve a temporary retribution for the crime of existing."

Sesshomaru allowed a small snort, and he noticed her head shift slightly to find his new location. "You are human," he offered simply. "To be robbed of your sight seems an unusually deep grudge for a species who lives so shortly."

She laughed again, but this time it held some hidden depth to it. "I am human in many ways." Again, her less-than-informative answers had him frowning slightly. She adjusted her body, so that it wasn't just her head facing Sesshomaru. "Considering that you have not attacked me, and that your reiki is purely demon, I believe you're powerful enough to be human in many similar ways."

Sesshomaru's eyes narrowed at her claim. "You are mistaken," he told her, as icily as he had when she had mistaken him for Toga. Then, he had believed her to be making a false accusation. But now, when she had acknowledged yes, she was human, but simultaneously didn't confirm that was all she was, he wondered if perhaps she had known the Inu no Taisho.

"Am I?" she countered evenly, as she took several conservative steps in his direction. "I've no idea what you look like, sure, but I've lived long enough to understand how demons work. You're powerful enough for a more humanoid form; powerful enough to control your scent and aura." Megumi took another step forward, a delicately faint wry smile twitching on her lips. "I wouldn't touch you, Mr. Demon, but I would assume that you're looking rather - " and at this her smile grew slightly wicked " - human right now, are you not?"

Several things about her comment full of slights further bristled him. For starters, the implication that he - Sesshomaru - was the one to be wary, even if it was just an unwarranted breach of his comfort zone, made poison thrum to the tips of his fingers. The audacity of this woman, to assume that he had more to fear than her should the other turn hostile. Then, of course, it was her use of the phrase "Mr. Demon" that reminded him that he had yet to tell her his name. Or why he was here. Or anything really.

Then there was that last bit, spoken with the undeniable undertone of satisfaction, like she already knew her answer. But that was precisely why it bothered him - really, only powerful demons like himself were able to choose willingly between their natural form and a more humanoid one. So, if she knew he was a powerful demon, then why was she carrying herself with such ease in his presence?

Sesshomaru decided then, more like realized, what he might be getting himself into. Usually by now, he had people dishing out all of their secrets on a platter and begging him to consider reading them to curb boredom. And yet, this woman hadn't. Really, it was a testament to how well she'd resisted by the fact that the conversation had so easily been turned to focus on him again. Then again, it wasn't like he needed this woman to spill her secrets to him. He needed her to heal Rin. The line, he imagined, was very clearly drawn there. But then again, he decided with almost predatory satisfaction, there was no rush to spilling his secrets either. He would omit any mention of his status to the woman, completely sure that time would only draw out more those Don't worry, I wouldn't be bothered to touch you statements. He was sure that once she realized his status as the Lord of the West, she would at least comprehend the social insult to what she was so boldly declaring in his presence.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt if her eyesight was returned at the same moment she discovered who he was.

Sesshomaru certainly acknowledged his more-than-obvious ego; and of course, he knew very well the full attraction he could garner. As a daiyoukai, it was a given that he would be gorgeous, even in a less traditional sense with his facial markings, molten gold irises, and the traces of his dog nature apparent in his claws and ears. However, he was not used to the complete lack of a reaction that this woman seemed so keen to give. He'd never been one to wish for attention (well, there had been that brief rebellious phase where he enjoyed the power he exuded over women), but of course the one woman he wished to discover her humility against her own words was literally unable to see him. He scowled openly at the pretty little thing before him; really, there was no sense in hiding it.

And yes, Sesshomaru would grudgingly admit that she was pretty. Clearly, her personality needed work, but there was little wrong with her aesthetically. She was definitely smaller than him, something he noticed when he had stood boldly near her and she had titled her neck back to try and look at the source of his voice. He would not deny that her long, silken hair seemed only to serve as a source in furthering her natural appeal; nor would he deny the way he knew her eyes could undoubtedly charm lesser men when they were filled with emotion, not sightless fog. But the acknowledgement ended there. He was here for one thing only, and that was Rin; he was no lesser man, and if he had to be subjected to her presence in order to restore his ward he would make sure he put the spirited thing in her place before they were through.

The woman in question broke the daiyoukai out of his thoughts as she sighed faintly and elegantly descended to the floor. He watched her silently as she ran her fingers over the deep blue of her informal kimono before falling still in her lap. Waiting.

"I do hope someone's managed to point out that you're rather insufficient when it pertains to carrying a conversation," the woman chimed pleasantly, even as she stared at no one.

"Hn."

When it became evident to her that the daiyoukai had no intent of expanding on his comment, the healer sighed once more and continued. "I believe we've avoided the subject long enough, have we not? I'm beginning to wonder if you plan on staying, with how long it's taken you to get to the obvious reason for your visit."

Mentally, he cataloged that comment as another thing that would make the healer mortified upon seeing him as the Lord of the Western Lands, even as he moved to sit across from her.

"This One's ward has obtained a mark that prevents her from waking. My healer cannot uncover the root of the problem, and has advised me to seek your services."

"Which I'm currently unable to provide," she added, almost cheerfully.

"There would be an adequate reward."

"There is little you possess that I feel I may be bribed with."

Again, another slight to add to his list. She was making this too easy. "I am well endowed with funds," he countered, daring her again to refuse to help.

She raised an eyebrow slowly, giving off something that felt close to judgement. "Money is the least of my concerns."

Sesshomaru could feel his claws twitch as they started pulling poison to the surface. Insufferable woman, this one. "Supplies, then." He nearly grit his teeth while he was in the middle of having to offer something else.

"No, thank you. Those will be wastes of time."

"Name what you wish, then."

The great demon almost outright glared as he caught the shift in her behavior; the grin that she started to form before his last response had shifted into one conveying blatant smugness. He knew instantly from her reaction, that his question was what she had been shaking him up to ask after all. What a clever, clever woman.

"I'll help you heal your ward in earnest, if you help remove my seal with the same fervor I dedicate to your end of the bargain."

"Seal?" He found himself murmuring, briefly forgetting her earlier victory against him.

To this, her lips pursed ever-so-slightly as she tried to refrain from frowning. "And quite a nasty one, I'm afraid." Sesshomaru held his tongue, wary that she may find something in any response he gave to steer the conversation away from herself. However, she seemed willing to indulge his curiosity a little, if only to lay out the terms of their agreement. "The seal is more than something simply to hinder my sight. Many of my powers require focus through my eyes, and so I will be unable to use them while it's in place. Additionally, my power levels refuse to restore themselves as they naturally would. I have been able to restore my reserves in minuscule amounts by consuming food, but that is all the progress I've managed." She paused to raise her hand and gesture to her face. "In case you've yet to be informed, there seems also to be a block on my physical recovery. Wounds result in excessive bleeding because of no clotting, and my system seems to care little about recovering until it receives an outside push. Like Gina," she adds, dropping her hand back into her lap. "I'd hardly be surprised if I caught a light illness in the near future."

Sesshomaru mulled over all she had said, surprised by how risky things had become for this woman. Again he found himself wondering just what sort of enemy she would have had to make in order for them to instill such a violent seal. It dawned on him then, as he was thinking things over, her earlier reluctance. "You were weak before the seal was placed," he said, and it was almost a question and a conclusion. "You wish not to deplete your powers further."

She inclined her head fractionally, again pursing her lips. He wondered if that was her sign of showing frustration. "I prefer not to relive the complete depletion of my powers any time soon." In yet another breath she had only added more information without giving much away, and he was left with more questions. He surmised that clearly, if she was kneeling in seiza in front of him, that pushing her complete limit wouldn't kill her. He was about to ask why, then, she was so averse to it, when she actually answered that silent question on her own. "I'd prefer a decent level of power as a last resort in case I find myself facing the seal's creator sooner than expected."

"You're being hunted?" he mused, but left it at that. He was surprised, then, when her smile turned wry.

"I suppose a closer word is eliminated. Managed with preemptively. My existence threatens certain people."

Sesshomaru's inner curiosity was out before he could stop it. "Why?"

"Who knows?" she purred, the expression on her face betraying that she certainly did.

Sesshomaru frankly wanted to growl at the woman and her antics. He was surprised though when the lowest of warning growls rose up from his chest. Clearly, he'd gotten slightly accustomed to allowing his emotions to register more freely on his face, and that meant they had managed to slip in other ways. He tightened his perfect control around himself, but not before noticing how the healer's eyebrows rose slightly at the sound he made.

"Shame such a voice is wasted on a man of little words," she commented wistfully, and it was Sesshomaru's turn to raise his brows. Before he could say anything really she plowed on, letting her first statement wash away like tears in rain. "I believe we've more or less agreed to each other's terms in this exchange, ne?"

The Western Lord found himself agreeing with her. "We will leave today and travel to my home. You shall heal Rin, and then This One shall consider attending to your request."

Again, that little smirk of hers danced on her features and again, Sesshomaru frowned. "And if I discover I cannot heal her fully until the seal is broken?"

"You shall see through to her complete restoration," he commanded, in part ignoring her challenge, while still regarding it. "Seal, or not."

Seemingly satisfied with his answer, the healer reached forward in a clear attempt to grab something. She froze in the middle of the act, eyes widening before that delicately mirthful laughter of hers was spilling out again. "I don't suppose the floor spared much of my tea," she mused, and Sesshomaru wondered briefly what she would look like if that smile really reached her eyes.


Katsumi was not one to obsess (except when it came to her revenge).

Also, Katsumi was not one to lie to herself (except when she didn't particularly like how things were playing out).

And so, as she peered distastefully into the reflection that peered up at her from the golden bowl, she tried to convince herself that she, of all people, was not obsessing over her clearly weak counterpart. Certainly not enough to spy on her occasionally. Certainly not. Only paranoid people did that. Her paranoia had served her well, however; she had gleefully noted Temperament's champion looking consistently worse for wear over the course of the past few days. The flimsy thing had crumpled under the blow from a meer stone, needed a constant guide, and ate like a ravenous pig (she lied to herself and said the last part wasn't an exaggeration). The damned woman was beyond useless, Katsumi determined, and would have been more than content to leave her to suffer if it hadn't been one of her other news sources that brought displeasing news.

She had been using the Western Lord's ward, occasionally popping up in the girl's head in order to listen to whatever the damned fools in that palace thought safe enough to be muttered in the unconscious child's proximity. She had never expected to hear much, but that pretense quickly abandoned her as she had happened to overhear the bastard son himself talking about finding a healer his chief healer's apprentice had stumbled upon.

It had to be sheer, dumb luck that it was the same person she was trying to render useless to the damned Lord.

Katsumi had to bite back a snarl and suppress the urge to upend her bowl. She watched with growing distaste at the woman, who seemed to be laughing about something, and the Lord that seemed . . . content in letting the sound run its course. Katsumi wished her spell would allow her to hear what was being said, but as she dissolved the magical image and stood she concluded that she had bigger problems to solve. The woman was utterly incompetent; of that she had no doubt, but she would not deny her wariness should the moronically uninfluential woman let spill that she, Katsumi, was the one who placed the seal on her.

That is, of course, if the pitiful bitch even realized that much.

Nevertheless, it would hinder her plans of revenge should that wench lead Sesshomaru to suspect Katsumi as the cause of Rin's development as well. It wasn't exactly an easy conclusion to reach, but Katsumi had not waited centuries to let her guard down on such a small, seemingly trivial thing as this.

No; Katsumi would take care of the woman. Permanently.

Triumphant in her superiority for coming to such a conclusion, Katsumi straightened herself out and strode out of the room that housed little more than the pedestal and the bowl resting atop it. She had since returned to her lair, a remarkably pretty thing high up in the mountains. She was loath to the cold her summit residence came with, but she enjoyed the isolation far greater than she enjoyed a little heat. Besides, she had long ago made sure to use her powers to keep things deliciously toasty. The mountain shiro of hers was originally that of some human lord, who must have been utterly senile to think a house up here would be a good idea for someone his age.

He had taken encouragement from his most beloved concubine, though, and saw through the construction anyways; or at least, as much of it as he could before his concubine made sure his "accidental tumble" down the cliff-side of the summit was fatal. Now, his once lover stood in the halls which the idiotic lord actually believed were for him, and thought fondly of the way his liquid of life had run in rivulets like lava down the slope so many decades ago. She claimed many of his followers, robbing her memory from the minds of the rest (or killing them) and over the years, she traded the service of older humans for fresher demons, taking the creatures of youki in fairly early so she could inebriate them with loyalty unwavering. She delighted in watching her subjects fear her, sure, but it would do no good if that fear resulted in a betrayal in hopes the leak would find someone worthy of hunting her down.

Katsumi snorted at the thought as she strode through her halls and swept past her servants and minions. No one was worthy of her.

And her little brainwashed minions thought so too; they worshiped her as a Goddess, frequently calling her kami-sama and singing her praises far into the night. Katsumi might have been annoyed by the trouble and pain her rare eyes got her when she was younger and less capable, but she relished in it now. No creature, not even that whelp Sesshomaru, could rival her for the sheer admiration of her beauty that her followers clearly displayed for her. Unlike Sesshomaru she welcomed it; encouraged it; and the difference was only all too clear by the fact that her spies were in his lands and not the other way around.

Although she would concede that she had refrained from leaving a noticeable name or presence these past centuries. In part, it had been for her to grow capable of casting her curse once more, but it had also been a slight apprehension in being encountered prematurely by either her dragon counterpart or Toga himself. Oh, she had been fucking furious when she learned a so-called 'dragon' had managed to fell the great Inu no Taisho before she had been able to fully enact her revenge, but she had recovered quickly when she realized many decades later that his two sons seemed to have patched things up with their late sire. Of course, the bodies she had carved out in her anger were too far gone to recover at all, but she felt that was a minor detail in the grand scheme of things.

So she had decided Toga's debt was now in their hands, but she wanted first to eliminate the current Western Lord. She knew from studying the Dog General's offspring that while the half-breed bastard likely wouldn't be prevailed upon to help his older brother in such humbling circumstances, Inuyasha's companions would not be ashamed to reach out to any and all of their associates for help had she decided to eliminate him first. Especially that young miko he kept practically strapped to his side. At the thought of her, Katsumi found herself grinning yet again. The woman was pathetic, considering what Katsumi was capable of in comparison.

The Dragon of Temperament rounded a corner and entered her study, barking off quickly to the slightly aged man kneeling attentively to her side that she wished for a certain group of hers to be summoned. The man rose, though not with the complete ease of a youthful man, and hurried quickly to find those she wished to speak with. Katsumi studied his retreating figure almost hungrily; it was near time for her to find his replacement.

When the man returned he had six figures in tow; all demons, looking more or less the same (they more or less were; rabbit demons tended to get busy frequently).

"I have a mission for you boys," she purred delightedly, without even bothering to wait for them to properly bow before her. She was too eager to spill blood on this night to waste precious time finishing up the annoyingly easy target that was the current Twin Dragon of Temperament. "You will hunt down the woman I had you seal," she started, letting the demons watch transfixed as she pulled her lips up in a triumphant smile that showed her teeth, her long canines rather distracting as she raked her tongue over them. She could feel the satisfaction of a kill already hanging thick in the air, and she wanted her youkai to achieve it immediately. "You will kill this woman, and you will return to me."


Megumi decided she did not like traveling with this new demon.

It had been tolerable (up until the whole rock projectile incident) to travel with the merchants, because at least they understood that she quite literally couldn't fucking see where she was going. She always had someone making sure she wasn't tripping over roots or fumbling over particularly large rocks, and they had given her privacy to bathe in the one stream they passed. They had been, for all intents and purposes, very nice.

Unlike the high-and-mighty ass she found herself with the misfortune of walking with.

For starters, he had not allowed her the chance to say goodbye to any of the people she had come to know in her short time since her sealing. Not Gina (which she felt slightly bad about, considering the last time she'd seen her was in that crowd of people), nor the merchants. She hardly got the chance to even say goodbye to the passing villagers as the daiyoukai led her straight from the inn out of the village mere minutes after she agreed to start on their way towards his home today. The infuriating man apparently had meant "today" as in "now," and his current treatment of her made her regret her earlier statements bitterly.

For starters, as soon as they had left the village he had abruptly stopped guiding her with that warm palm of his in between her shoulder blades. She had known they were out of the village mostly because she hadn't heard anyone speaking for a while, and she wondered if he only escorted her out to make it seem like she would be in decent charge.

Clearly, considering how she'd fared the last few hours of travel. She had been offered to be escorted in a swifter way, but he had not elaborated and that slightly haughty tone of his made the more instinctively stubborn parts of herself kindly refuse instantly. She would be damned if she would need excessive coddling in her current state, she had thought, but she would abandon her earlier refusal if it now meant she could allow her feet blessed rest. She was travelling with a wicked, wicked man she decided, who simply did not care when a lady like herself was clearly undignified by her frequent stumbling and mutterings of annoyance. Megumi was sure that she had managed to stub her poor toes more times today than she had in her entire lifetime.

And she'd lived for centuries.

Her companion, however, remained infuriatingly indifferent to the situation. She wished that she could see him, if only to drill a rock in the back of his head with pinpoint accuracy. Her frustrations might have wavered had he chosen to talk in that low, pleasingly masculine voice of his, but no - he had spoken no word since his invitation to an alternative form of travel, and so her resolve remained unshakably firm.

There was a small part of Megumi's brain that tried to remind her she wasn't stumbling along completely; he had instructed her to hold onto the tail ends of what must be a freakishly large pelt of his, so that she could follow where he deemed the path fit to walk over.
The other part of Megumi's brain reminded her that the so-called "path" had viciously snubbed her toes more times than she was sure the poor little digits could handle.

"I suppose you're enjoying yourself," she muttered dryly under her breath to avoid muttering a curse as she tripped over something. Again.

She was surprised then, to hear the demon make the softest of snorts. He had heard? She wondered then what sort of demon he was.

Megumi huffed when he continued his deliberate silence. She wished she had something to distract her from the near-constant annoyance of the forest floor that wasn't her mind or the supremely annoying blackness she had been unwillingly subjected to.

"Tell me what you see," she blurted softly then, annoyance and desire for distraction fueling her impulses.

She was surprised to find herself colliding with his back a second later; he had stopped when he'd heard her, and she hadn't noticed until she'd rather embarrassingly collided into him, flush against his back.

Frankly, she was alarmed with what she felt beneath her palms when her hands had risen up instinctively to feel what she hit. His back was warm beneath her fingertips, and she could feel lean muscle rippling as the demon shifted slightly. She gasped softly when her proximity allowed her a full breath of his scent; dimly familiar to Toga's but unique nonetheless. It was so clear, so pleasant, that wonderfully brief smell in the air of a forest just after rain. Before she could catch herself, she had taken another breath, unconsciously leaning closer to breathe more of it in.

The daiyoukai, for his part, had continued his characteristic stillness and silence, but with the muscles of his back under her hands, she couldn't help but feel he had grown a bit . . . tense?

Startled out of her brief trance she pulled quickly away, and was glad she didn't have to avert her eyes since it wasn't like she'd seen through them anyways. She could hear him turning around to face her, almost deliberately slowly, and felt a second wave of relief for being blind.

She was about to apologize for not noticing his abrupt stop sooner, when his voice startled her yet again. "Trees."

"What?" Megumi was sure she was probably gaping up at him, but she couldn't help it. She was rather confused and disoriented at the moment; the memory of what had passed mere seconds ago making her fail to get a grip on her thoughts.

"Trees," he repeated again, this time almost patronizingly so. "You asked me what I see; the answer is trees."

For a moment, Megumi was stunned into silence. Then, as his words registered and her own uncharacteristic loss of composure dawned on her, Megumi let out a quick breath that sounded somewhere between an exasperated exhale and a laugh, her hands reaching up with the obvious intent of rubbing clear her mind.

So she was startled when rather than feel her palms rubbing over her temples, she felt two slightly warm hands trapping her wrists and preventing them from moving further towards her face.

"What - "

"Your wound," he explained, before she could get much further. "Disturbing it will likely cause it to bleed once more."

" . . . Oh."

He held her wrists for a second longer as she realized what he meant and allowed her arms to go limp in his grasp, a silent sign she understood. "Hn." As he let her arms slide through his hands she could feel scant traces of his nails - no, claws - graze gently over her skin, ghosting over her pulse points and making her shiver.

They stood there for a second longer, and Megumi wondered how things managed to feel so awkward in a mere moment. Dully, she remembered she was supposed to be irritated with the man in front of her, and as she heard him turn around with the clear intention of resuming their trek, she allowed herself a small huff in frustration. "You're an enigma to me, demon," she confessed, and felt rather than heard him give pause once more. He said nothing more, though, and it seemed a clear prompt for her to explain herself. "You drag me through the forest like degraded livestock and avoiding talking to me, then you're answering a question you've no obligation to and warning me against reopening my cuts."

They lapsed briefly back into silence, and Megumi wondered distantly if she would see the completion of a full conversation with this man before they parted ways. So she wasn't expecting him to speak not long after she did. "This One believes allowing you to harm yourself further will serve as counterproductive to his own means."

She hadn't anticipated that, and she played his response around in her head for a brief moment before returning his answer with her own comment. "That doesn't explain why you felt it necessary to tell me there are trees around," she countered, grumbling faintly. "I'm well aware of what connects to the roots I keep colliding with."

Her companion let out another Hn but otherwise left it at that. It was also then that Megumi noticed how cold the air had grown; night was clearly upon them, and she wondered how long the demon had led her through the forest. Megumi found herself hard pressed to repress a shiver; to her, nights were only comforting when there was a light about to illuminate and crack the darkness. She wondered if the daiyoukai had noticed her sudden awareness, as he finally said they would rest here. Megumi found herself more than happy to comply, despite the fact that she was incapable of contributing much to setting up a suitable camp. The only thing she found herself insistent on was a fire, and as her companion disappeared beyond her hearing to locate suitable branches Megumi set to clearing a suitable spot for her to rest, removing rocks and twigs from a vaguely human-shaped spot which she deemed equally close and far away enough from her soon-to-be fire that she would be warm without risk. She busied herself with laying down a cushy bed of leaves, plucking from various trees in her little campsite so she wouldn't have to deal with the annoying snaps and crunches of dry leaves should she shift and turn in the night. She paused in her preparations to listen for the demon, but she'd yet to hear him, so she set to work quickly dressing down to her nagajuban, though keeping her deep blue kimono wrapped firmly around her. She'd keep it like that until she made the fire and laid down to rest, at which point she would use the garment as a modified blanket. She wished rather regretfully that she hadn't been given the time to gather more supplies; she was disappointingly unprepared.

When he returned, she set to work constructing a structure with the branches suitable for catching flame, and sat back to let the demon ignite it. Afterwards, she retreated to her surprisingly comfortable leaf bed and thought vaguely of what the stars looked like on this night, or if the canopy was too thick where they were for her to get a good view.

She contemplated asking her traveling partner about what the moon looked like tonight, but she loathed the idea of him finding a way to insult her moon like he did with the whole 'tree' thing from earlier.

She found herself wondering about him then. For reasons beyond her, he had yet to reveal anything beyond himself other than the fact that he had a ward who needed her help. Megumi's blood cooled over when she considered how she might have naively followed him, and he could be leading her to some sort of betrayal or ambush. A sliver of fear sliced through her. She knew, almost instinctively, that the man she had temporarily allied herself with was undoubtedly dangerous, and in her current state she doubted she would stand a chance at all. Megumi couldn't ignore the part of her being that now screamed at her to make a break for it while she could, to run without pause and pray she returned to the village or somewhere safe.

But a greater part reminded Megumi what she didn't necessarily want to admit - that, for all intents and purposes, she was weak in a way she hadn't been in ages. She had no idea where she was, and couldn't find her way back if she wanted to; she'd be forced to use her powers to avoid falling into a river or something equally problematic, and that was a risk she desperately preferred not to run. Not to mention, it would undoubtedly take something close to a miracle for her to be able to sneak away in the cover of night from the man supposedly taking her back to his home.

"What sort of demon are you?" Megumi asked suddenly, in an attempt to calm her rapidly alarming thoughts. She kept her head trained on the sky above her and she made sure her face looked as if nothing was troubling her beneath the surface, but vaguely she wondered if her control had been as tight as it had been before the seal; but if her previous slips with the merchants were any testament, her hopes weren't awfully high.

"An inu," the demon told her, and frankly Megumi was surprised he gave her an answer. She supposed she would have recognized him properly if she could see, though, so it wasn't really like he was revealing anything of importance to her.

But the more she thought about it, the more she was certain any notions of escape were doomed the moment they started. Of course she had waltzed off with the literal definition of a flawless tracker. He was not just some youkai; he was undoubtedly a daiyoukai, and if he was an inu then his keen eyes, ears and nose would be hellish to mislead even if she was in the state she had been before that damned sun ritual all those days ago.

The inu seemed to sense her sudden spiral into helplessness, and he was quick to point it out. "You must not have actually known Toga, for the mention of a dog demon in your presence to despair you so."

Megumi found herself rolling her eyes softly at his obvious goad. Surely, he should know by now that she only ever revealed information that she had decided would be uncompromising for others to know. Trying to get a rise out of her certainly wouldn't do the trick.

So instead of glorifying this near-stranger with an answer, she rolled over to put her back facing him. "Goodnight," she said pleasantly instead, and tried not to simmer in temporary satisfaction too long as she allowed herself to drift off to sleep. Escaping from an inu youikai would be definitely too much work at present, and she decided she had plenty of time yet to discover if his intentions were genuine or not. And hey; if she got to sleep on her way to potential trouble, she might as well take advantage of it.

Satisfied, she drifted off completely, unaware of the six demons steadily and stealthily approaching, and the sudden disappearance of all traces of the inu daiyoukai.


Author's Note:

So, they had a little moment (sorta) . . .

Anyways, I'm sorry this chapter took so long to update. Realistically, I won't be able to compile each chapter and have enough time to write the full thing each day, but I've taken the break to plan out a lot of the plot coming up. That way, it won't take as long for me to fiddle around with where things are going.

Hope you enjoyed the update; please continue to read!