III

Mirabile Visu

If Kouga wants the woman to answer him, he knows what he has to do; it is not natural to him, taking care of a human female, but curiosity and desire both compel him. She is lovely, he can see that now; her skin is faintly tanned, but smooth and perfect with all the grace youth can give. Her scent is shikon no tama and innocence, tainted with strange smokes he cannot identify – tainted by time.

He tears a strip from her torn shirt, and uses it to bind the wound at her side. It is relatively clean; the bleeding has made it so, but this is not the place to stop and bathe her and she is growing pale now, too pale; too much of her life has seeped into the dirt.

She is unconscious but she gasps and turns, flailing her arms as he ties off the bandage.

"Sorry, woman, but you'll thank me later."

He turns her on her face then; there are shards of gem embedded in her back, her thighs, her arms – one is tangled in her hair, and one has sliced her cheek, a shallow, lucky cut just below her eye. He finds one that cut her scalp stuck in the ground near her where her forehead rests in a spot of blood. There is a sparkle in her right palm, and in the heel of her left foot – but when he reaches across her body for one, the most prominent, sticking out of her left shoulder – all of them, every single one, begin to wiggle into her flesh.

He waits for the scream, for her to awake – and instead, the woman lets out a long sigh and barely winces. The wounds left behind by the vanished shards close over – even the wound on the woman's cheek, in which no shard remains. The pieces leave behind, not scars, but pale, lavender marks. They are not all the same – a stripe on her cheek, a starburst on her shoulder, patterns of lines on her back and a trio of smooth crescents on her hip, visible where her skirt is torn. Her hair was bleached of all its color and silvered to lavender shine.

There is more sighing from the woman when the shard-scars are healed, but there is still fresh blood flowing from the bandaged wound at her side, and no time to contemplate the more of this mystery. Kouga lifts her in his arms, finds her light and warm and barely breathing. Even as he is doing so, careful not to drop the shard in his fist, Ginta and Hakkaku cross the clearing to his side, and stare down at the woman he is carrying before they speak.

"Kouga-sama -"

"Kouga-sama, there's so many of these – but I think we've found them all."

Each of them opens their hands to show a glittering spectacle of power, shards of all sizes with equal gleam. For a moment, Kouga stares, his smile widening, growing, showing all his teeth -

"Good job – now let's see...the pack is waiting...and its about time we were home, isn't it?"

"Home? We haven't been home since -"

"Since the end of Spring. I know; far too long. It's Autumn already, time to begin the hunts – past time. But I've been bored, and the forest is at its best this time of year..."

Kouga tightens his grip on the woman he's holding and presses forward with her past his two companions.

"For now, this woman is my priority. I want to know what she knows – why she is different from every other human we've seen. Look at her clothes, her shoes – have you ever seen material like that? And her hair...her body...she has shards of the shikon no tama inside her. They changed her – she was not marked like this before.

"If she dies, I won't know what happened, and I want to know. You two, go back to the pack and tell them to head directly home. I am bringing the girl to the village to have her tended, and then I will follow you."

"To – the village, Kouga-sama?"
"Yes. It's nearby – can't you smell it?"
"Yes, but -"

"They won't hurt me; I'm in no danger. In fact -"

Kouga stops for a moment, and takes the shard in his hand, clenches his fist around it, pierces his palm on the sharp point. It begins to fuse with his flesh almost immediately, becomes alive with movement and then settles within his hand; he can no longer feel it, but he knows it is there.

"Kouga-sama!"

"What? Did you think I asked you to find those pieces just because they were shiny? You can feel the power in them – I know you can. Enough to enhance the strength of any youkai or human..."

And again he looks at the girl, and wonders what it was that had caused the jewel to shatter in the first place; had it been her power? Had she been attacked? Was she from the village nearby? If not...where had she come from?

Only you can answer my questions, woman. Wake up soon – soon!

He was suddenly anxious of what would happen if she died; if he was never able to answer any of those questions; if he was denied the sudden, obnoxious poetry of her scent.

There's no wisdom in this; there's no point but curiousity. I have the power – the shards – not all of them, but so many...and I know that it was broken, when nobody else does...why isn't that enough?

"Go, Ginta, Hakkakku. I should be home by tomorrow's nightfall; make sure you are there well before me. And make a room beside mine ready for this woman; she will be coming with me, unless she dies."

And then he turns away and begins to run at the steady, swift pace he can sustain for hours, eating up the distance between himself and the village before Ginta and Hakkaku have even moved.

A/N: A bit later than I planned; being out in the world is an annoying place to be sometimes. The chapter title, Mirabile Visu, means "wonderful to behold". The accumulation of strange changes begins...and continues...
One more chapter in a bit, for catch up, and then we're back on schedule!

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