A/N: Ah, done with finals! Yes, Dr. Seuss degeneration has found me at last. Though I must offer a nod toward a famous Emily Dickenson poem alluded to in this chapter as well.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Seawater rushed through his hair and over his skin in cold, numbing waves as Kichiruka swam as fast as his yoki could propel him. Coral, caves, clams, fish, life – all blurred past him in a dizzying array. Without Rin what was the point of the empty hours? There wasn't any purpose to this exercise. If there was any destination, it was away. At first, Kichiruka wondered if this were part of some sort of wanderlust, the kind that had driven him from one coast to another when he was looking for others like him. But at the day's end, he always returned to the domain of Ichikawa near Mikan. Like a reverse undertow, he was always drawn back to shore.

I'm dwelling too long on this. Kichiruka increased his speed. Then he felt the current around him slow, though the force of his yoki hadn't been reduced. What's—? Suddenly, the slowing force retaliated in a shove its own, as if Kichiruka had been pushing against a force-field. It gave marginally, but then it rebuffed with ten times as much strength.

He spun out. Completely addled, Kichiruka drifted in space, trying to regain his bearings. Did I trip up on a barrier? Something that felt like a heavy cloak helped steady him. It was a little rough in texture, but it still had the familiar black coloring.

"Thanks, Master Ten—" Kichiruka darted out of the hold as soon as he realized exactly who had caught him.

Ichikawa's smile was meant to be disarming. Truly. "I'm sorry to detain you," he said, the horns that curved from his forehead still glowed a soft violet. Presumably, Kichiruka thought, from creating the barrier that stopped me.

Though genuine concern tinted green-gray ocean eyes as the manta ray loftily continued, "Your recent melancholy has not gone without notice. What's wrong, my not-fish?"

Kichiruka defensively stretched a grin on his face. "Wrong? Nothing, m'lord! It's a nice day out, wouldn't you agree? What's to be wrong?"

"Dear Kichiruka, has anyone ever told you," Ichikawa said cheerfully as if offering a compliment, "that you're an exquisitely terrible liar?"

Kichiruka laughed nervously. "No. I was never praised in such a way before."

"Hmm…might not be too helpful right now, though." Spreading his wings enough to increase his size,Ichikawaasked, "Have you had any communication with Lord Sesshomaru of late?"

Honestly? "No, my lord." Kichiruka might not be able to lie to the manta ray's face, but he could omit information. No need for Ichikawa to know how matter had proceeded.

"Why?"

"…Well…"

"Isn't it obvious?" Tensai's sharp tenor cut through the water as he swam to his student's defense. "Human and yokai relations are still unacceptable."

Ichikawa's eyebrows, which looked like little more than the dabs of a paintbrush, rose up to the root of his horns. He turned toward Kichiruka. "So, it's never going to happen?"

Tensai hated the way the way Ichikawaweighed so much sorrow into that sentence. And it had nothing to do with a relationship concerning Sesshomaru. He's provoking the situation, selfish bastard. Yellow eyes flashed a warning in Kichiruka's direction to keep silent. "We don't want to make undue enemies, now do we?"

Ichikawa pursed his lips, considering Tensai's remark in whole. "Perhaps you're right. It won't do to have a failed project lingering here. May stir the waters too much."Ichikawaplaced a fin under Kichiruka's chin and sighed. "Ah, what am I going to do with you now? We've already found a replacement jester. I suppose I could sell you. My wife wants a new Persian rug."

Kichiruka winced. "I'm only worth the price of a rug?"

"On second thought, we might only get half a box of opium considering…"

"He can stay."

In a movement that left his shoulder-length hair swirling, Ichikawa turned to his surly spell-caster. "Tensai, you didn't even want him to begin with. Has he grown on you?"

"Like a cancer," the swordfish drawled, not bothering to so much as glance at Kichiruka. "Am I to waste my time training someone anew? With all due respect, Lord Ichikawa, I'm not getting any younger."

The daiyokai laughed. "You do have an indefinite lifespan."

Tensai harrumphed. A lot of good that had done him.

"Ah, but I suppose I should grow to resent any subject of mine who becomes indispensible. We'll need a stand-in for you, eh Tensai?" A black wing waved indulgently. "Oh, fine, fine – keep your boy-toy."

Tensai's face twisted in disgust. "He's not my—"

Before he completed his protest, Ichikawa's wings spread to their full, tremendous span and in one great sweep, the daiyokai left a small whirlpool in his wake. His subjects were still spinning long after he had vanished.

As soon as regained orientation, Tensai wasted no time in bashing Kichiruka upside the head. "I hope you're happy, nitwit."

Stars exploding into his vision for the second time that day, Kichiruka cradled his skull. "Actually, I'm in pain…"

"I can't believe I compromised my reputation for your idiocy. Now damn Ichikawa thinks I'm as depraved and indifferent as he is."

"Oh, he's probably just teasing. I think he was serious about the replacement thing." Then, more innocently, Kichiruka asked, "Indifferent?"

"To swing both—ah, never mind. Go ask a clownfish or a sea snail." Caudal fin pumping, Tensai headed back toward home. Behind him, at not too far a distance, he could sense Kichiruka drifting after him.

"Quite a ways to have gone out to sea," Tensai observed as they finally entered his study some time later.

The dolphin yokai nodded listlessly.

Although he already knew the answer, Tensai still asked, "Looking for anything in particular?"

"No."

"Well," Tensai said, settling himself behind his stone desk and started sorting the ensorcelled documents he had left scattered earlier. "Ichikawa's right about one thing – you're a miserable liar."

"Thank you, master," Kichiruka said with just a touch of sarcasm.

Tensai went about his business, setting his student to the task of helping him organize. And, at length, Kichiruka started talking. "I look at the spaces between my fingers and can only imagine how perfectly hers would fit there…It's just…"

"Irritating, I know," Tensai gruffly completed.

"I was going to say depressing." Kichiruka smirked mirthlessly. "But I still hang around, you know? 'Cause I feel as if…like what if I'm not here? And she comes looking for me…Then what? I know how it feels to keep searching and searching for something or someone who's not there. To be lost."

Although he now attended to sorting several jars and other wares, Tensai tilted his head, listening. He didn't have much information on Kichiruka's past. He knew the boy was something of a stray, but whenever anything that may have hinted to his history came up Kichiruka usually waved off the subject, laughed about it. Made light of himself.

"I thought I could offer her another option. Just in case." Kichiruka laughed. "It's st-stupid, I know."

Before the silence stretched too long, Tensai suddenly injected. "No, Kichiruka, you're absolutely right."

"Sir?"

"…The worst thing you could possibly do, and I know you'll hear otherwise no matter where you go, but the cruelest fault you could commit would be to deny a woman her sovereignty." After holding Kichiruka's gaze for minute, Tensai's eyes quickly dropped. That was all he would say on the subject. He got up and drifted toward the vials on the far high shelf.

"Memories?"

Tensai barked a rough ha! and swept the vials aside, reaching for the gourd stashed far behind them. "Something to suppress such things," he said, his chuckles coming in odd jerky spasms.

Kichiruka wondered if his teacher's laughter would ever be complete.

"I took everything from her. It was I who failed to provide her with a son." Tensai considered the drink in one hand, and dropped it to his side. "Damn, I'm too tired to imbibe right now."

Kichiruka slipped toward the exit.

"Where are you going? I did say you could stay."

Laughing in his odd dolphin cackle, Kichiruka teased, "You wanna give Ichikawa something to talk about?"

In good humor, Tensai lobbed the gourd at Kichiruka so it bounced off his head. "Don't tarnish my hospitality, idiot." But why the hell am I sheltering him anyway? True, he felt someone had to be strong for Kichiruka, but…"I've always wanted a boy." Tensai shook his head in private mortification. He hoped he hadn't disclosed such a thing aloud.

Idly, Kichiruka spun the gourd on his finger for a moment before setting it under the stone desk where he knew his teacher would find it later. "Master Tensai?"

"What is it?" he snapped, now irritable with his own dissonance.

Kichiruka traced the moss out of one of the desk's engravings, carefully considering his words. "They say time heals all wounds."

Tensai blinked, barely suppressing his bitter laugh. What a lie! Time never did assuage…Sores only worsened with it. If it did heal anything, then that just goes to show there never was a malady. But he looked Kichiruka's way and for the first time felt the obligation to lie to his student. He was much better at it, too.

"So it does," Tensai said coolly. And when Kichiruka smiled at him, he couldn't help but reciprocate. Because we don't know what new remedies may come to us in due time. "It does."

And, in some ways, that was the whole truth.

oOo

Deep inside the dormantMountKaena, Sesshomaru navigated his way toward the source of the hot, sulfuric air – the respiration of the hound at the volcano's base. It had not even yet been a full year since his last visit and the dog-demon's stiff-legged gait stamped his irritability. Never had he ventured this regularly to see anyone on his mother's side in such close succession. He barely visited his own mother for that matter. When there was another inhale, a break from the blast of foul breath, he made a go for it down the last bend in the cavern. Delicately, Sesshomaru sprang over the puddle of luminous green drool and, with a burst of yoki, landed on the ancient dog's nose.

The wet ground beneath his boots quivered and Sesshomaru quickly crossed to the rest of the furred snout. Wouldn't want him to sneeze.

"Grandfather," he barked to be heard over the snoring. "Grandfather!"

"I hear thee…whelp," came the graveled growl. Of all his grandchildren to visit it him why did it have to be only the whiny ones that kept their ties? "How now?"

"Unchanged since last seen." Or smelled, in your case. Sesshomaru still wasn't sure what was left of the old hound's vision.

"Huh. Unchanged to be sure. Trouble still cloaks thee."

Sesshomaru snorted. And started to deeply reconsider if this visit were worth the time and energy.

"Come now…I canst read the minds of my own kin," rumbled the ancient dog-demon when no reply was heard. With a gusty sigh, he tried humoring his grandson. "Is the question called a daughter-who-thinks-like-a-son?"

"Yes," Sesshomaru relented and ground his fangs. And she's acting like a fool. "She has made a selection against my better judgment."

"A lower class?"

"A prohibited one."

"Seh-sho-maru…" the old dog carefully enunciated. "do not lie to thine grandfather…My eyes may no longer sight down the stars nor my ears pick off a knotworm, but I can smell the human on you and the affection in your voice. You have no daughter by birth. To that end…you haven't anyone to protect."

Sesshomaru didn't flare his yoki, but it crackled enough to get the point across.

"Mind yourself, puppy," he woofed. "Mayhap blood makes not a drop of difference either. After all, what is a daughter but eventually someone else's property?"

"She isn't property."

"No?...Then be it more fitting if she were? Property doth not protest. Property feels never pain. Property remains wherever set. And there content, property stays safe."

A tic jumped in Sesshomaru's jaw. "The suitor is yokai."

"Red or blue – what matters the color of a fish if it still provides a good meal? Even if only for one night it is remembered with fond satisfaction." Head lolling to one side, the old dog prepared to fall back into his slumber when an idea struck him. "What dost thou meant 'prohibited' class? Thine charge be a human?"

Ever unflappable, the Western Lord simply shrugged. "Brilliant deduction."

The snout beneath Sesshomaru's boots quaked with a snort. "How dare you wake me for this! If you're so weak as to be sundered by a simple human affair, I weep to think what has befallen our proud line. Sesshomaru, get thee gone. 'Tis past cruel to make an old hound want for sleep." That said, the dog-demon tipped to his side creating a thunderous rockslide and no doubt a shift in the geography above. Condensing his energy into one small, bright sphere, Sesshomaru took his leave before his exit was closed forever.

.

A/N: Ah, sleepy old dogs. He speaks in bold italics! This chapter is partially owed to Robot and Capone, who not only have the coolest names I've heard for dogs but also tolerated my enthusiastic petting despite being well into their later doggie years. Nice meeting you two!

Pictures for the readers' enjoyment: feral-instinct. deviantart. com/#/d3itejq and feral-instinct. deviantart. com/#/d3d8oe6

Thank you for reading! See you all in a week!