"It is a perk of old age, to be able to watch history repeat itself," says Bokuseno. "It's also one of its biggest downsides."
The humans think this forest is enchanted, they think the forest is cursed: maples and red cedars and yew pines and oaks and elms and cherry trees that do not blossom, leaves that do not yellow, life that does not whither, a green as familiar as it is unnatural, and Bokuseno, the old magnolia-spirit, tallest among all, a magnificent giant of strong wood and will and wiry branches like a canopy beneath the black sky, its low, gravelly voice marked by the aeons he's withstood.
They're not wrong, the humans, for even the trail cutting through the forest would be treacherous for them—roots squirming to rope and twist and pull weak bodies into the swamp, and its animals, lowlife demons, hiding, waiting, salivating.
It is not something he'd ever concerned himself with, until he made the journey here with Rin instructed, very clearly, to sit atop the A-Un and not get down. It could have been yesterday, the revelation of Inuyasha's demon form, the jagged stripes on his face a perversion of his own.
It is early enough that yew is yet to form. "You summoned me," says Sesshomaru, who can see in the dark: the holes of the ant colonies in the spongy ground; the praying mantis about to cannibalise its mate; the tree-spirit's placid expression carved from the bark. "Speak clearly, then."
"There are rumours, Sesshomaru," says Bokuseno, and when Sesshomaru's expression reveals nothing, amber eyes unreadable and unblinking, the old tree-spirit thinks about another meeting: another great demon that stood in the same place, who had come to him humbled and in need, and whose amber eyes could be penetrating and mischievous and wise, but rarely a foreign tongue.
"Rumours," Sesshomaru repeats, as if to get a taste of the word.
"It appears that you have slowed your wandering."
Sesshomaru offers a small smile. "Who is spreading such rumours?"
"My roots run deep," says the magnolia tree. "Deeper than you can imagine. The ground quakes and shifts, and them with it. A simple log, miles away, even if chopped and rotting, can feel the violence of a fire and echo it to me—"
"The next blood Myoga sees will be his," says Sesshomaru.
"It was a reverb of blunt nails," says Bokuseno after a second. "Small palms that had handled eucommia bark and magnolia flowers," and reminisces: lifetimes ago, human hands cradling the sandalwood body of a shamisen back in the Western Lands.
"Totosai will meet the blade he hasn't made."
"You used to wander and meander and roam, like the stars in the summer sky," says Bokuseno. "Now you orbit, not unlike the half-moon on your forehead."
Outside the edges of the forest, cursed or enchanted or both, the world is about to wake: something scurries out of its burrow through the heavy leaves of the thick bushes; the mantis, full and bred, is done eating; a bird twitters. Sesshomaru's eyes narrow considerably. "Enough of this," he says. "You waste my time."
"Why are you preoccupied with time, when you should have no shortage of it?"
Sesshomaru turns, offering him his back, as young and impudent and proud as ever, and Bokuseno remembers some more: a bow, in gratitude and respect, then the glint of a sword gliding into its case. Too soon, afterwards, the earth-shattering violence of a mansion of polished wood collapsing onto an ethereal being that had once been bigger than life itself.
"When your father came to me, he asked to turn a part of me into sheaths," says the magnolia tree. "Tell me, Sesshomaru, what will you make of me?"
A twig snaps under the weight of Sesshomaru's booted foot. "Logs for a campfire. Hard flooring. Either way, it will be difficult for rumours to reach you."
"When your father died, it was a death like a plummeting to the ground," says Bokuseno. "Don't let me feel your aftershocks."
But, by then, Sesshomaru is gone, a shimmering orb of light shooting through the trees, tearing through trunks and low-hanging branches of dense foliage, the maples and the red cedars and the yew pines and the oaks and the elms and the cherry trees that do not blossom, and then as a gargantuan white dog with a trail of petty destruction behind him. Bokuseno muses that the demon has not yet come into his second tail, and then he listens, and listens, and listens, for he is a tree, and there is little else he can do but listen and reminisce.
Sesshomaru's feet do not once strike the earth. Rather, they land, softly, back in Edo.
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