Aljan Moonfire Does Not Own Inuyasha.

"Speaking."

'Thinking.'

Chapter 6 - Toriasha

Kagome inwardly raised an eyebrow as she felt the girl's yoki brush against her own energies, surprised. She had never before met a hanyou that had such control over their own demonic abilities – well, without the help of some sort of medium like the Tetsuaiga, or the barrier orb of the bat-youkai. She had thought it impossible. Well, it seems that this girl had proven her wrong.

She gasped in concern as she felt the child abruptly lose her concentration – not that that was at all surprising considering her injuries – and collapse back into unconsciousness. She rapidly covered what distance was left between them to hover over the still gravely injured hanyou and sighed softly in relief when she discovered that she'd simply fainted.

"Well, at least you won't be able to put up any resistance to the bath or healing now," Kagome murmured softly to herself. Seeing no need to delay any longer, she quickly removed the too large pants, careful of aggravating any further injuries. She winced at the bruises and cuts that covered the girl's legs, but was thankful that at least they weren't broken.

While carefully moving the younger female to the nearby hot spring, Kagome suddenly realized that she didn't even know her patient's name. As she did her best to seat the pre-teen comfortably on a convenient rock shelf on the edge of the closest pool, she made a mental note to ask for it once she woke up.

Kagome then quickly removed her own miko garments before entering the pool. Turning, she gently guided the hanyou in after her. She then turned to her bag, having placed it close to the edge of the spring even before the village women had left, and pulled the last of her 'future' cleaning supplies from it.

'Seems I'll have to rely on more feudal methods of hygiene from now on.' she thought mournfully. She was really going to miss the shampoo and conditioner especially. Lining up the products and bathing utensils within an arms reach, she grabbed her softest scrubber and began to carefully clean the wounds of any infection. She was especially careful when she reached the cuts on the badly broken arm, or the obviously fractured ribs. What the hell had happened to the poor girl?

Her patient made soft, unconscious sounds of discomfort whenever Kagome came across an injury that was more painful than the others, but other than that, she was silent, her head resting against the miko in her sleep. Eventually the inevitable came. Kagome had finished washing down everything else, even taking the time to wash and rinse the girl's almost green hair, and had nothing left but her wings to clean up.

"I'm sorry, but it has to be done," she murmured to the unconscious child.

Furrowing her brows slightly in concentration, Kagome carefully gripped the finely feathered wing in her hands and raised it from under the water. Ever so gently, she began to preen it, letting her fingers run through the feathers, pushing out the dirt and blood, and scrubbing as lightly as possible on any wounds.

Despite the odd shift of discomfort the girl made in her sleep when Kagome's fingers met a particularly bad scratch, she also noticed the girl relaxing into her shoulder even more. The tense, instinctively defensive manner the pre-teen had adopted even while unaware had finally dissolved.

She smiled softly; no doubt only her parents had been as kind as to preen her small wings for her. Kagome wasn't stupid; she knew how people felt about hanyou. As her fingers ran through the gradually cleaner feathers, she felt the place where the wing had snapped. Expertly feeling around the break she nodded to herself; it was a clean break, so it would be easy to heal. Tilting her head thoughtfully, she realized that like most birds bones, these bones were hollow - because they weighed less it allowed them to fly easier. If she set the wing properly, it would be extremely easy to heal.

She winced ever so slightly in sympathy though; she would feel the pain of it even through her exhausted slumber. It would be easier to do out of the water though. Careful not to make any sudden movements, she splashed some water over the rock shelf she had set the girl down on earlier, cleaning it of any dirt and blood that had been left behind. She then slowly raised the child to lay on the rock and then followed her out of the water with a soft splash.

On kneeling beside the pre-teen, she carefully rested her hands on the girl's legs and then gently sent her power out towards her injuries. Her power pushed at her control, wanting to purify the demonic energies of the hanyou, but she held it firmly in check – her intentions here were only to heal, not kill.

Very swiftly, the wounds on the girl's lower half healed over, and once those were mended the miko turned her attention to the hanyou's much more badly injured torso and face. The external wounds of the girl's torso soon proved to be relatively easy to heal, but she just as quickly discovered internal bleeding around the lungs and abdominal area. Thankfully, it was healed just as quickly. She was grateful for the advanced anatomy course she had taken through home-schooling; she doubted that a miko of this era would have been able to make much sense of the injury.

She then turned her attention to the wings. Straightening out the more badly injured wing, she cringed at the scraping sounds coming from the bones and when they were in line placed a few fingers directly over the break. Kagome then sent out her powers to examine the fracture from the inside.

Kagome brow scrunched in thought as she felt out the bones, she soon began to knit the two halves back together, healing the veins in and around the bone as well. She smiled at the comparatively simple healing; the hollow bones made everything so much simpler and she didn't have to recreate marrow or nerves or anything, just blood veins and bone.

Once the wings were once again whole Kagome turned her attention to the badly bruised face of the girl and quickly began to reduce the swelling, healing a severely split lip, a broken nose, and a black eye just as quickly. Soon enough the hanyou was good as new as Kagome to a moment to admire her own handiwork.

Dark green hair, still damp from the bath, fanned around a finely boned face and almost abnormally narrow eyes. Closed as they were in sleep the thinness wasn't as noticeable, but the slightly parted lips echoed the thinness. Her body was just as delicately boned as her face, all thin wrists and ankles and long limbs. Topping the ends of slender hands and feet, talons were apparent, though probably almost unnoticeable from a distance.

All in all, Kagome could tell that the half-youkai would grow up to be an attractive, though not traditionally beautiful, woman – if she survived that long. She knew all too well the kind of fate that would await an unprotected hanyou. For now though, she was safe, and she'd protect the reality of what she was from the villagers. She knew they probably wouldn't react all that well.

After redressing herself in the previously discarded miko uniform, Kagome ever so gently wrapped the soft red kimono one of the women had left behind around the girl and after securing the obi, lifted her into her arms and stood. It was time to go back. This child needed rest – and some good food if the fact that Kagome could still feel the indents of her ribs was any hint.

And maybe – just maybe, mind you – Kagome's journey wouldn't be quite as silent anymore. She glanced down at the girl resting against her shoulder.

Just maybe.

.-.

Kagome made sure to keep her hands as steady as possible as she cut another lock of green hair from the head of the kneeling girl before her. As the wispy strands floated to the ground to join its fellows, she fluffed the now shorter green curtain of hair around the child's shoulders.

"There you are, Toriasha-chan." She said, rather proud of herself. "That's much better."

The girl was quiet, but at the pronouncement she turned to look at herself in a nearby bowl of water. Kagome couldn't help but be even prouder as she caught the slight and swiftly fading smile that had crossed the girl's lips.

It had been a few days since the hanyou had been found so horribly injured in the forest, and just about the only thing she had managed to coax out of her was her name, and the kind of hanyou she was. She hadn't been able to get any of the details out of her yet, but she'd said that her mother had been a Tengu – a crow demon.

That had distinctly surprised her. From what she could remember of what Sango had told her of the different kinds of demons, Tengu were just as rare these days as the White Inu – that is, the royal family of the West. The only Tengu that Sango had ever heard of ruled the Northern Lands, as the Wolves ruled the East, and the Dragons, the South. That this girl-child could be half Tengu really made her wonder at the life the girl must have had, and how she'd ended up in the state she'd found her in.

Shaking aside her ponderings on the puzzle that was her newest charge, Kagome bent down to collect the hairs from the hut's floor and throw them into the small fire that continued to smolder in the center of the room. "Toriasha-chan," she then began, "I'm going to have to move on soon."

The girl turned to her with a startled expression, her normally nearly closed eyes opening in startlement as the miko continued, "I am a traveling miko, and I'd originally only stopped here for some supplies. The only reason I've even stayed this long was to make sure that you were alright." Seeing how the girl's face had fallen almost imperceptibly and the slight hunching of the hanyou's shoulders, she quickly continued. "However, you yourself aren't going to be able to stay all that long either, um, considering, so…I was wondering if you'd like to travel with me for a while…" she trailed off, unsure of what to say next that might convince the hanyou to come with her.

As she'd spoken, the soul stealers in the cottage with them – Emerald and the twins at the moment– had noticed her anxiousness and moved closer, feelings of reassurance and comfort emanating from their consciousnesses.

Toriasha's eyes had widened further at the offer, her mouth dropping in shock. No one had ever given even the slightest hint of ever even being inclined to travel with her, let alone the implied offer of protection the strange miko was offering. Shaking off the shock after a moment the girl looked carefully into the miko's eyes, searching desperately for any sign of deceit. On seeing nothing but warmth and a slightly nervous welcome, the hanyou teared up a bit, but quickly wiped away the evidence and began to nod, slowly and empathically.

Kagome sighed in relief, having been afraid that the skittish half-youkai would refuse. No matter how kind she'd tried to be to the nervous girl, she was still a miko, and a rather powerful one at that. As much as she dislikes it, most miko were practically raised to hate youkai and normally killed them on sight.

"Well then, I was planning on leaving tomorrow morning, if that's alright with you?" Toriasha nodded again, relaxing, and moved to look at her new haircut in the water again. Kagome relaxed herself as the half-tengu calmed down and moved to check on their lunch.

.-.

They set out just after dawn the next morning, before the sun had burned away the early morning fog. Soon after leaving the small town that they'd inhabited for the past few days Kagome led her new charge off the road and once again into the woods, now heading slightly to the north. The soul stealers flew around the two in intricate patterns the whole way, excited to be on the road once again.

Toriasha easily kept pace with the older woman, her bare feet tapping gently on the forest floor with each quick step she took. As they moved further away from any human habitation she became more and more comfortable in the presence of the miko and her soul stealers.

She had been terrified when she'd first woken a few days ago; the last thing she remembered before that was being in the presence of a very strange miko with pretty eyes.

Despite the seemingly gentle eyes, she had long since come to learn that mikos of any sort meant usually meant some kind of pain. Even dark mikos – though she herself had only ever met one – saw hanyou as abominations; the merging of what they saw as pure and good (humans) with darkness and evil (demons). She still didn't entirely trust the dark-haired miko she was currently traveling with, but there was something about her that made her want to stay close to her

She still couldn't really describe it, even to herself, but there was something very…warm about her. It was like her very aura engulfed everyone she met in comfort and compassion - as if just being in her presence healed something within her; something she didn't know had been broken. She had never met anyone like her before. Right now there was a large part of her that was very intrigued by the kind human, and that part was much larger than the part that didn't want to trust her.

The girl soon returned her attention to her surroundings though as she realized that the atmosphere of the forest was steadily becoming darker. The trees had begun to get taller and taller; their trunks closer together and their roots springing higher from the ground. It almost seemed as if they might wrench their more grounded parts from the earth and walk at any moment.

She was quickly jolted to an abrupt stop when she felt the pure aura of her priestess companion pulse. Turning swiftly, her eyes widened when they landed on the miko. She had stopped some ways back, though still clearly in sight, and her eyes were closed. A focused frown had overtaken her face, as if she were listening very intently to something, and as Toriasha made her way back to the woman her face furrowed into a similar frown of confusion.

'What is she doing?'

.-.

Before they had left the village, actually before her new traveling companion had even woken up, Kagome had woken herself and soon sat down to meditate in an attempt to get a more accurate fix on the location of the closest jewel shard. The general direction she discovered was mainly to the Northwest.

Remembering the lessons Kikyo and Sango had given her periodically over the past few years on the general locations of certain types of demons, and what those demons were; she realized that the direction she would soon be traveling in lead towards the dense forest of the tree demons

From what she had been told she knew that tree youkai were generally a gentle, peaceful people lived out most of their very, very long lives as simple trees. It was very rare to find one willing to interact with the world around them outside of that. Most even preferred to dream away entire centuries, their conscious spreading out across the land in their seeds. In this was in this way that it was said that every great forest in Japan had a nest of tree youkai in its center; and that every tree that takes root around them was their children, protecting them from the troubles of the rest of the world.

Thus, most human knowledge of tree demons has long since been lost, and only the most general information about them was known, even to demon hunters and miko – and most of that information wasn't solid at all, more a product of rumor and myth. The Great Forest of the Western Lands was one of the only places where a tree youkai's presence might be more than just a rumor, and become something much more like fact.

Throughout the beginning of this trip into the forest she divided her attention between the child she had asked to accompany her and the tugging of the jewel shard. She was glad to see the girl's spirits rise as they left the beaten path of the main road and turned off into the woods. Though the girl didn't chose to chatter the way her former companions had often had, she was glad for the company all the same.

They had been traveling for quite a few hours when she began to sense a certain change in atmosphere that signaled to her the beginning of the tree youkai forest.

They entered it at a steady pace, and beside her she could almost feel it as the half-tengu also sensed the suddenly more menacing atmosphere of the forest.

Kagome's eyes then widened and she almost stumbled to a halt as the call of the jewel shard was suddenly muffled; as if someone was trying to hide it from her senses. If that didn't tell her they had been noticed, nothing would.

She quickly closed her eyes and concentrated, her hands linking before her as she once again searched for her connection to the shard. With a swift pulse of power she strengthened the connection once again. Carefully visualizing it, she opened her eyes to see string of almost violet power disappearing into the forest to her right.

She frowned again at the sight. Whenever she'd done this before sealing the well, her power had shone in her inner eye a bright pink. It seemed the blue energy of the well really had merged completely with her own; changing even the more physical color of her power. She didn't know what this meant at all…

Kagome took a deep breath and pushed the confusion to the side. She'd deal with it later – right now she had to focus on the jewel shard. Glancing at the quietly worried hanyou, she hesitated before saying, "Don't worry. I just temporarily lost the aura of… what I'm searching for. Let's continue."

Toriasha just frowned deeper at the pause. 'But then the question is; what is she searching for, especially if it's powerful enough to for her to be able to sense it from so far away? And why?'

Pretending to ignore the questioning gaze of her companion, Kagome turned to her right and once again began to follow the call of the shard. Seeing that the miko wasn't about to answer the unspoken question, Toriasha let out a soft sigh and followed suit.

Author's Note

So, I suppose a sorry is owed to all the faithful readers of this story for taking so long to get this chapter out. I took a long time for me to decide where I wanted to have this story go next, because I wanted Kagome to have another little adventure before she ran into Sesshoumaru again, as well as a chance to get to know her new friend better. This is what I came up with.

To those of you who can see where this might be going: Congratulations. Review and I'll tell you whether or not you've got it right. To those who can't… well, you'll just have to wait 'till the next update then, won't you?

R&R…

~ Aljan Moonfire ~