Hello again!

It feels so good to be posting again. Thank you everyone for your patience with me as I try and get back on track. Im looking forward to getting into the story together with you all.

General boring plugs for other Inuyasha stories I've written. Yadda yadda yada. If you wanna read any of my other stories, you have a few to choose from: An InuYasha fic, a Bankotsu fic and a Koga fic.

Onwards!

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin.
-Jean Racine

"A trip?" I repeated in confusion, grasping the pack being held out to me. "Naraku, what-?"

Naraku was dressed not in the usual wear he'd donned as life had readjusted to a new state of normal, but in his old pelts and mask. I'd almost forgotten the greasy smell of them. It was a smell I was glad I had nearly forgotten and was unimpressed to be smelling again.

He held up a sheathed sword, once again for me to take.

This time, I didn't. "I don't think now is the time for us to be leaving the castle, do you?"

There was still too much we needed to be doing here. Too many meetings. Too much upset we needed to smooth over. Just today we had two meetings with locals to discuss more repairs we had to do in the wake of the Tsuchigumo. It wouldn't look good on our household if we chose now to leave. Especially both of us together. Naraku was smart enough to know this himself. The man took to politics like he was born to take control.

"Worry not, Masanori. We have plans in place. No one shall even know we have left."

My brow quirked incredulously. "How does that work? It's not like we're unimportant here, Naraku." I swept my arm out to gesture to the castle beyond the room we were in. "Someone'll be coming to fetch us for that meeting about the stables in like an hour. I think they'll know we're gone then, don't you?"

One hand let go of the sword and disappeared back into the pelts. Something came flying through the air between us.

I ducked and fumbled to catch whatever was hurdling towards me. "Damn it, Naraku, what the Hell?"

I turned the little object over in my hand, brows drawing together in confusion. It was a little wooden… doll? It looked kind of like a kokeshi doll. I recognised it, too. Naraku had set one of these out on a low table against the outside wall a few days ago. I hadn't asked about it. Kagewaki was a very minimalistic man. I appreciated any small amount of decoration in our rooms.

It still didn't explain why Naraku had tossed it to me.

"What's this?"

"The answer to your worries."

I turned it over in my hand again. "Well, I'm not seeing any answers written on it, so are you going to put me out of my misery or leave me hanging?"

I wasn't in the mood for games. Too much was happening for me to let myself get distracted by games. Already I was trying to decide how we were going to finance the new builds we had on our list. I was going to have to make my own meetings with the castle treasurer as soon as I can.

"It's a demon puppet, a golem."

"And how's a puppet going to help us?"

Naraku bowed to set the sword in his hand down and tread forwards until we were toe-to-toe, kept only a short distance from me by the pack between us. He reached up behind my head and worked the glowing pin from my bun, fingers combing through my hair to let it loose.

He dropped the pin into my hand and plucked up the doll. He plucked a strand of hair that had wound around his fingers when he combed out my hair and wound it around the doll. Then he tossed it on the floor beside us.

"What…" I stepped forwards, head tilting in curiosity as I circled the image of myself stood calm and silent. I couldn't see anything that would tell the puppet apart from myself. It had everything. The highly embroidered yukata I was currently wearing, the loose waves flowing down my back, down to the little acne scars on the apples of my cheeks.

"How?" I turned back to Naraku, confused and impressed.

"A simple bit of demon magic. They shall take our place while we take our trip."

My eyes turned between Naraku and my copy. "And it'll be like… me? Make the same decisions I would?"

It was made with just a strand of my hair. How could it possibly have the full range of thoughts and choices I had? How could I trust that it would do what I needed it to do? I wasn't leaving it to sit and look pretty while I was away. it was going to make important decisions about my… about my home. This castle was my home now. I couldn't leave it to go to ruin in my absence, because I trusted a strand of hair to look after it.

"It will do as you would. Human hair will leave it weaker than demon hair. We won't leave it for long. Seven days, eight. Perhaps a week."

I chewed on my lower lip in thought.

I didn't want to leave it, but Naraku was a man that decided what was happening and made it happen. If he'd decided that we were going on a jolly camping trip, then it would bring far less strife to my life if I just gave in and went on the damn trip.

"Alright," I sighed. "When are we leaving?"

Naraku gestured to the chest of clothing that he'd had brought in. My clothing. "When you change. We have much ground to make today."

"Ground to make? We're going somewhere specific?" I questioned as I made my way to the chest. It was easy enough to find my training clothes amongst the neatly folded piles within the chest. They would do. They gave me a good range of movement and were comfortable. I wanted that sort of comfort while I travelled. I certainly wouldn't be walking the countryside in the decorative kimonos I had been wearing recently. They'd only gotten more decorative as time went on.

"We shall know where we're going when we're on the road."

I wasn't going to engage with vague bullshit today. I was too agitated.

I closed the chest and set my training clothes down atop it. Then I stood and began working on the many ties and layers of clothing I was wearing. I was actually excited to be able to get out of these clothes and into something a little more free and familiar. It had been a while since I'd gotten to. I hadn't really had the time to train the way I wanted to.

I hoped that I hadn't lost my stamina with the more sedentary life I'd been living. That would be pretty embarrassing. I had been a fit and active woman. I wanted to get back to that.

We'd slipped out of the castle without meeting another soul, taking a horse from the still half-damaged stables with us.

Then we'd been on the road for hours. Silent for the most part, bar the few times we came across travellers on the road, and the once I had conceded to needing to rest, mid afternoon.

Now it was well and truly dark. We'd stopped for the night to let the horse rest. With some embarrassment, Naraku had had to help me off the horse's back. He hadn't mocked me too hard for it. But it had been a good long while since I'd last been on the back of a horse, and I couldn't recall ever being on one for as long as I had been today.

I fucking ached.

I wasn't so sure the horse and I would become fast friends at this rate. I was already dreading tomorrow.

Naraku bustled around me as I leaned against a tree trunk, trying to make my poor sore thighs at least a little comfortable. He'd gathered together some twigs and slightly larger bits of wood and made a simple fire, then rid himself of his horrific monkey hood. Now he was sat at the edge of the fire, red eyes on me.

"Can I help you?"

While it wasn't uncommon for Naraku to have his eyes on me, it still felt unnerving. They were just so red. It felt similar to the way striking blue eyes glared. I had met a few Westerners in my college years, and treated a few in the hospital. Those bright blue eyes that some had truly stared right through you. Red eyes had a very similar effect, I decided.

"This trip is for you to train."

"Train?" What was wrong with me training at home? I'd done plenty well going through katas and training when I could at home. I knew I wouldn't be competition ready, but I wasn't exactly rusty.

He withdrew a pouch from under the pelts and shook out the little glowing shards of the Shikon jewel into an upturned palm. "You can see them. You can learn to find them from great distances. That is what you will train in."

I followed the movement of the jewels as he tipped them from one palm into the other, then back again. The sound of them clinking together could barely be heard over the crackling of the fire. It was a pretty sound. One I could probably listen to for hours without getting bored of it.

"How?"

I wasn't… opposed. It was something new to learn, and I wasn't against learning something new, especially if it gave me something to do besides training and playing the koto. Making sure Kagewaki was as healthy as he could be had been replaced with making sure the workings of the castle were as healthy as they could be. It was a gruelling job, undoubtedly, but it gave me more time than the former job had. I could use that time to train a new skill. Especially if having a golem was a possibility.

I had occasionally wished there were two of me to get everything I needed done. Now I got my wish.

Naraku gestured for me to come closer and I shifted, wincing as my muscles protested, but crawled closer to him, so I was knelt in front of him.

He took my hand and tipped a few of the pretty deep purple shards into my palm. "Tonight, sit with them. Meditate on them. Become familiar with the feeling of them. Tomorrow we shall play a game."

"A game?" I deadpanned. We were out here playing a game?

Amusement quirked his lips. "You shall try to catch me in the woods, using only the sense of the shards."

"You want me to play Blindfolded Demon?" I didn't know whether I found the idea repulsive or interesting. I was getting on for thirty. Playing kids games wasn't something I thought I would be doing, but it was kinda smart. Relating training to something that I knew relatively well would bridge a gap in my mind.

"Of a sort.'

I sucked on my teeth noisily. "Well, alright."

I closed my fingers around the shards and held them in my lap, looking down at my closed fist. The shards felt so warm in my grasp. There was a heat deep within them, hotter than the heat Naraku's hands could have transferred to them. They gave off their own heat. I could feel it filling me, rolling through me.

My fingers opened up and the glow of purple spilled out from between them.

The purple filled my vision, and the warmth of them filled me.

Info Dump Time!

Kokeshi doll - Kokeshi dolls are small wooden dolls, that do look a little bit like the wooden figures Naraku uses for his golems. They're usually used as children's toys nowadays, but they're also used to symbolise good luck, prosperity, bountiful harvests. Interestingly, they were really famous in a town called Naruko, which sounds close enough to Naraku for me to get a little smile from me. Naruko has since been dissolved as a town, alongside many other close villages and towns to create a city called Osaki. That also kinda made me smile, too.

A week - At this time in Japan, a year had 360 days, or 390 days in some cases, with twelve or thirteen months made up of three ten-day weeks each. So seven or eight days would be less than the week that Naraku is suggesting they be gone for. The more familiar to us Georgian calendar, with seven day weeks, was introduced to Japan in the 1800's

Blindfolded Demon - Mekakushi Oni, or blindfolded demon, is the Japanese name for the old kids game Blind Man's Buff. One person is blindfolded, disorientated, then has to chase around the other players, trying to catch them. Ancient Japan actually had its own version of the game, where girls would dress up in big kimonos, one would be blindfolded, be given a cup of tea to hold, and have to touch two of the other players at the same time to win.

Review Corner

Crystal Tsukino - I'm back, baby! And hopefully here to stay! I have a handful of chapters written, at least. Thank you so much for the well-wishes. I really appreciate your care. Im so glad you enjoyed this last chapter. It felt so good to get back into Nori's head and story again. Shes a very complex character and its very fun exploring that. Naraku and Nori's relationship is about to get really tested in the next couple of chapters. It's gonna be rough for them, but they'll prevail. Im really enjoying your fic! Its good so far and I cant wait to read more of it. I hope you had a good weekend, too! And Ill see you again next week with the next chapter!

I'm really enjoying getting back into some meaty story plot, even if we're not really working through the anime plot now. We'll get back to it. I know we will. I'm very ready for the Inuyasha plot to move onwards. Naraku's direct involvement in the whole Inuyasha plot is actually rather minimal, so Ill be doing a lot more original plot and character development - and hell, if we're lucky, maybe even some good romance. Im hyped for it.

And I stole my partners ipad keyboard, so I can type wayyyy easier while Im laid up in bed recovering away from my computer. Let's see if I can whack out a good few chapters while I'm here.

I'm also flip-flopping back and forth between rewatching Inuyasha (again) and watching Yashahime. I keep getting mocked for speaking the lines alongside the VA's. My partner thinks I've watched Inuyasha too much and doesn't understand why I keep watching it if I know so much of the plot and dialogue just off the top of my head. There's no such thing as watching it too much, is there? I certainly don't think so.