LXXXII

Coram Deo

He stands at the base of a Flat Slope, which is a contradiction, and impossible, and still there in front of him. He thinks, I, Sesshomaru, know this place, and then he is still for a very long time. A question comes later – How do I know it when I have never come here? – but how much later he couldn't say. This unnatural view of an Even Pass is painful to his mind. Up is not down, but neither is it up. Forward is not back, but neither is it forward. Only his eyes can follow the road that goes nowhere.

At the top of the Flat Slope is a stone wall, and he senses that it is Real Stone. He can breathe, looking at it. He can see it. In comparison, the grey wilderness of the ground gives his gaze nothing to grasp onto. Nothing grows here, nor has anything failed to grow, gone to seed or withered in the dust. The sky has neither moon nor sun, nor any stars. There are no clouds, but is it really a sky overhead?

When his eyes continue to tell him nothing, Sesshomaru listens instead. He tries to tune his ears to whatever might be in the distance, but here, distance is foreshortened. He senses murmuring, but it is both far away and just beside him, just as the act of paying attention to it is both more and less than hearing. When he tries to focus on one word, one voice, a tsunami of nonsense crushes his perception. There are a million words, a billion voices, all spoken and speaking at once.

No matter how deeply he breathes, the air has no taste and no smell. Is it air, or emptiness?

To stand here feels like falling.

Time passes, or does not.

Doesn't it?

Either way, it does not concern him. He is waiting for Someone, and knows this, but only this. Who? Why? How does he know? The lack of answers fails to trouble him. Should it?

Time passes, or does not.

Someone arrives and stands behind him, Someone he knows he cannot turn and see. Here, there is only one direction. Here, there are terrible consequences for those mortals who choose the wrong way. I, Sesshomaru, am not yet immortal. Who was it that made the mistake he refuses to commit? Who passed on the lesson? But these things he knows he must know don't come to mind. He is aware of himself, and of Someone, and nothing else.

Commanding, demanding even without a question, he speaks to Someone. "A great hole has been torn in the world." His voice is the echo of his voice.

"It is only in you, my lord. Four of such, in fact. A comfortable number."

Someone is female. Her voice is the echo of all echoes. He hears it with the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet. "Are you cursing me with death?"

"I am counting, my lord."

He looks down at himself, and sees the wounds of which she speaks. There is neither blood, nor pain, and he hears the whisper of her sleeve as she reaches out. Her fingers touch vertebrae. Rib. Scapula. He cannot suppress a shudder as it occurs to him finally to wonder if he is dead. "Will others become as brave as you, now that I am nothing to fear?"

"You are worth fearing, my lord. More now than ever." There is a pause. He waits. She hesitates. His hand rises and falls, but it lands on the hilt of a sword. It has always been there; had he forgotten? She breathes behind him, and he feels her words on the back of his neck. "This much I can say. What you have lost, you will not now regain." The echoes say can not now, should not now, must not now.

"I have lost nothing!" She laughs at him, but softly, water among the reeds. Is it a beautiful sound? But he is one who cannot stand to be laughed at. "Who are you to claim this?"

"One who wears many names at once. Do you know none of them, my lord?"

Again, more sharply, he demands a name. "Who are you?"

"What a shame to waste your time on such a question, when we can speak no longer."

"You are a poor vassal."

"So I have been told."

He takes a step away from her, then another, but he cannot approach the Stone. Her hand takes his hand, and he stops.

"Even you cannot go that way, my Lord."

"How many ways can you devise to defy me in a single encounter?" He draws the sword, and a steel light destroys the world.

Slowly, he opens his eyes. Groans. Eats the sound like prey and swallows all its siblings before they can escape his throat. Is he awake? Is this life? He thought he was awake before, but the voice he heard was from no one he knows, and in waking life he would never tolerate such an affront as being denied an answer to his question. Was it a dream? A vision? Will it matter, if the bleeding does not stop?

He thinks that dream or vision, it has lasted many days, many nights, but when he tries to recall the details, there are so few, and so brief. Was it that he saw so little, or that what he saw is only a black forgetting?

Moring, and evening. Then, morning again, and he is still, and still, and still, not daring to move when he remembers her fingertips on his spine. Perhaps the tree behind him is the only thing holding his back together – but there is strength in him yet, something boiling beneath his empty veins. He will never give Inuyasha credit for these wounds. That was his Father throwing him back, and his soul is alight with something fierce he doesn't dare to acknowledge as pride.

All the same, it consumes him.

I am still alive.

He can admit to himself that he would never have expected he was capable of surviving his father's fury, of taking a daiyōkai's blow head on and by surprise. The cost, however, is enough that he has no desire to do so again.

He is alone, and the forest is quiet, but his body is broken just like it was in his… dream? But in the waking world he sits in a pool of blood, surrounded by the consequences of its spilling.

The flowers drink up his life, brighten their blossoms with it while he watches. The richness of it greens the grass into lushness and gives the trees new life. Dead things become alive again, but life that takes root in a daiyōkai's blood is only a fading imitation of the real thing. The vivid blossoms wither and turn to ash when the rusty stains at their roots dry. The blood on tiny paws goes to dust in small footprints, and then so do the scurrying creatures that ran on them.

Time passes, and this time he is certain of it. The wounds have ceased to bleed, but he knows better than to move. Not yet. There is danger even in the thought of it; he is nowhere close to being healed. Instead he contemplates Someone, and the dream, and the sword that has never before been worth his attention. Tenseiga. It is only then that he looks to the side, and sees that it is in his hand, faintly gleaming with the steel green light that he remembers.

So, it was not a dream? But that doesn't mean that he knows what it was. Or where. Perhaps he should consider finding where.

They tell Rin not to go into the forest. They tell her because she's an orphan, and a thief, and worthless, and maybe worse than useless, but still a child. They tell Rin not to go into the forest, because there are things that no sane human will risk in a world full of hungry ghosts. They tell her not to, and then curse at her back for not accepting the kindness of their instructions when she goes anyway.

They don't know, she thinks, that she's more frightened of them than of it. More scared of the blows she knows than the fangs she hasn't experienced.

And anyway, would it be just once? She can't be concerned with suffering that could happen just once, just like she's more concerned with hunger than she is with the abuse that follows when she finally finds something to eat.

Today, the storehouse has been left open, because more prosperous villagers are cleaning out the remains of last year's old fish. It means she has a chance, and she grasps it with both hands. Busy preparing for the feast to celebrate the coming spring, no one notices the shadow of a girl slipping in and out among them, her hands full of moldy, no-longer-quite-dried mackerel as she leaves.

They tell Rin not to go into the forest, but in the forest, she can hide the fish where maybe only the squirrels will find them, and if she's lucky, she won't suffer for the theft. In the forest she can gnaw the salty skin away from the salty flesh, pretend the black spots of mold are soy sauce and suck the bones until they lose their last drop of savor. She has many such tricks for drawing out a meagre meal. If she's lucky, maybe she'll find a few mushrooms, and if she's not-

But she doesn't think about that. Slime from the fish streaks her sleeves and the front of her yukata. She's taken as many fish as she can carry at once, and Rin crosses to the edge of the village and hides herself behind a screen of trees in one sprinting dash. Yesterday's bruises don't really sting anymore, and her loose tooth fell out overnight, but she's in no hurry to add to her collection of injuries.

She pauses for only a moment, listening hard. Is it safe? But what is it safe? It's quiet, and there's no outcry from behind her.

Twenty minutes' walk from the village, where the canopy is already thick enough to cover the ground in green shadows, she thinks it might be far enough that she'll be safe settling in. As she's sitting, there's a rustling sound, and a low groan that she knows is a noise of pain. A breath, huffing and panting like an old dog, and then another groan.

Three careful steps away, hidden more deeply in the undergrowth than she, Rin finds a god on the ground, white and shining except where he's bloodstained. Huge, crimson holes show through the shimmering white fabric of his kimono, and he leans on his left side despite the gaping wound in that shoulder, because his right side… Four bloody gashes wrap over his shoulder and around his arm to his back, out of sight. It looks like the kind of gash someone might get from a wolf or a dog, but she's never seen a dog with a paw that large.

How has such a being come to be here, of all places? Is it a blessing, or a warning, or a curse that she is the one to find him? He sighs, and she stares, fascinated, as his breath dislodges a long strand of hair, and the shining white forelock falls across his face. His indrawn breath is the wheezing growl of a wounded wolf. That was the sound she'd heard, and it had drawn her ever forward.

Now she can't move, neither forward nor back, held still by his shining presence. She's never seen someone so beautiful, and it's because of that she knows he can't be human. No man in the village has features so fine, skin so pale it's almost glowing. No man of the village could have been so badly wounded and survived.

The minutes pass, and she doesn't move, and he doesn't move, but Rin can count his breaths, see the stirring of that one lock of hair, and knows that he's still alive. Is there something she should be doing? When one finds kami-sama in the forest, what's the proper etiquette? Slowly, step by step, she backs away from him, then drops to the ground before she can no longer see him, trembling as she bows. Then, she grows still, utterly still, utterly silent. From her prostrate position on the forest floor, she can see the gleam of amber far brighter than any precious stone. One of kami-sama's eyes are open.

The golden stare stabs her through, pierces her heart on its point and pins it to the ground under her knees. She bows again, and backs away, and backs away. Did she die in that moment, and her ghost is escaping? But when she pinches her arm, the pain reveals dual truths. I am alive, she thinks, and also, Kami-sama didn't scold me. And now that she thinks on it, she knows what it is she has to do. For the gods, an offering is required, isn't it? Isn't that the source of their strength and power?

Here in the deep of the woods, far from any shrine or temple, how could kami-sama receive worship? Who would light the candles and incense? Who would build the altar? Who would give first fruits and new wine, so that kami-sama could heal his terrible wounds?

There's no one but her. Perhaps she had been sent to him for just these reasons; certainly he wouldn't have been sent to her. So it would be her task, and she would do it well, no matter what it cost her. An offering is a sacrifice, and such a sacrifice is how one gains the gods' approval, isn't it?

Approval. What is that, really? She's never known it, unless in the vanished time that she no longer remembers – when she, too, had parents. Family. A future. No, she thinks, I don't really know what it means. It just feels like something she should want.

That he is finally found by a human is not really surprising. There are so many of them, these days. Too many. If there is a forest in Wa that has not yet been invaded by them, had its secrets and savors stolen by them, he will believe in it only when he has seen it for himself. But a child? Human children do not wander alone, but this girl is too small to be anything but.

The lines of her face are broken by bruises, which hold his attention more than her dirty face. With the ease of a predator and long experience he judges her motions as she approaches, seeing the invisible injuries that bind her movements. Something in her left leg is not quite right; she limps a little. The arm on the same side she holds too close to her body. Her right eye squints against swelling, and she is hunched forward with the shadow of violence laid on her scurrying movements.

She is entirely uninteresting, totally mortal, blessedly empty of spiritual powers. Does she know nothing of danger? Sesshomaru stares at her through slitted eyes, aware of everything about her before she becomes aware of his existence, aware of even the moment she first hears his breath, the hitch in it which he cannot contain and will not acknowledge even so.

Pain is only a nuisance, not a restriction. He is not vulnerable, even wounded. Even at the edge of death. To say he is vulnerable is to say that she is some kind of threat to him, when instead she is lucky that he is Sesshomaru, and not some lesser demon. A beast who would consume her, fragile morsel of flesh that she is, and use that little energy to soothe his wounds. He sighs, and the girl startles like a rat, but remains, her expression fascinated. Her mouth moves, but she says nothing, and he refuses to admit he is paying enough attention to read her lips.

Slowly, she backs away. More slowly, she presses her head to the ground, and he feels… satisfaction. Is it not good that she knows her place? But it is not his place to acknowledge her, and he will not do so, not now, not if she were to stay bowed before him until her bones decay. Human girl child, you do not belong to me, and I, Sesshomaru, will not claim you from whatever master now mistreats you. To do so would be without purpose.

She is mortal, and that is to be flesh without value, to breathe breaths without meaning. To have bones that turn to dust. To live in his sphere of influence requires one to be pitiless, or shameless. Both would be better, and she is far from either.

The girl raises her head and freezes under his gaze. Is it only now that she recognizes his attention? Perhaps she senses what it is he's thinking. Perhaps she knows the uselessness of her own existence. There is… an absolute collapse, as she bows before him again. Something undefinable, which he has never encountered before and can't bring himself to even attempt to name. One knee at a time, the girl moves backward into the brush, and as she goes the quiet of the forest returns to its usual harmony, with only Sesshomaru as a spot of silence.

Once she's out of kami-sama's sight, Rin sprints away - but not back to the village. Instead, she goes to her store of meager fish, which might have been a week's worth of supplies, with the single white, plump mushroom she had found on her way into the woods balanced carefully on top. She lays them out on a leaf, and considers their arrangement carefully, not sure of whether it makes sense to bring it as it is, or place each item before him once she's in his presence.

The villagers have never allowed her into the shrine, never taught her to perform the necessary cleansing, never explained how to approach the kami. They never taught her the difference between kami and mononoke, between mononoke and terrible beast.

Not knowing, she designs her ritual with special care, thinking about the things she has, and how they might be used, and then brings her unworthy offerings before the sleeping kami. She knows he's sleeping because he doesn't look at her again, and because his face, proud and elegant even in pain, has relaxed to an ageless, perfect smoothness, devoid of all wariness and care.

Silently, Rin sits back on her legs, offering in hand, and waits for him to wake. She knows when he has without looking, or moving, or even opening her eyes. The birds go quiet first, attuned to the presence of a greater power. The wind next, as if it doesn't dare to disturb him. Carefully, not willing to make a rustle herself, she lays out her offering on the grass, bows low over her hands, and waits.

A/N: So here we are! Ahem. After another forever. I hear the screams from the beyond. No promises, but I'm working on the next chapter, so there's that! In other facts, this chapter's title, Coram Deo, means "in the presence of God". I'll leave the interpretation of how that works on Sesshomaru's end for all you Japanese mythology buffs. Additionally, Sesshomaru's "Land of Wa" is Japan, according to the ancient name by which China knew it. I shall continue prodding Sango, who SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THIS CHAPTER but is obviously not, and hope that you

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