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Edge of Paradise	By : QueenoftheDream Category: InuYasha > Het - Male/Female > Sessh?maru/Kagome > Sessh?maru/Kagome Views: 5324 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, nor the characters from it. I made no money in writing this fiction.

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
- 14
Kagome awoke to the sound of heavy rainfall and the feeling of damp and cold permeating her bones. The back of her head was pressed against the rough trunk of the tree, and the exposed roots that she lay upon promised a back ache once she got up. She shivered and tried to turn over over only to be met with an obstacle. Rin was snuggled up to her with little fists curled in the small of her back, sleeping deeply. Kagome sighed and cracked open her eyes, taking a deep breath and inhaling the crisp, piney scent of the tree that sheltered them from the storm. While remaining upon the ground, she looked up through her eyelashes to see none other than the shadowed figure of Sesshomaru sitting cross-legged with his back up against the tree and his pelt curled up behind his head. His left knee was naught but a hair's breadth away from the top of her head.
He apparently picked up on her change in breathing, for he looked down at her impassively. "It is not yet dawn, miko. Go back to sleep," his voice lowly hummed, nearly blending with the faint rumble of distant thunder.
Kagome carefully propped herself up onto one elbow, shaking her head as she slowly scooted herself away from the sleeping child. Ever-mindful of her dangerous proximity to Sesshomaru, she turned around and began to unravel her furoshiki in order to cover Rin. However, without speaking, Sesshomaru unwound his pelt from behind his head and handed the furry mass to the priestess. With a small grateful smile that made her bruised cheeks ache, she gently laid the warm fur upon Rin, who sleepily reached out to grab at the sudden introduction of warmth.
"Arigatou, Sesshomaru-sama," Kagome murmured. She drew her knees up to her chest and draped her arms over her legs, resting her chin upon her bony knees. She flitted her eyes over to gaze at the demon, who unsurprisingly did not respond to her.
She felt her pulse tap out a nervous staccato when she realized just how close she was sitting to this demon. This very powerful, very cold, very male demon… And then she realized: she was nervous because she had no idea how to proceed. She didn't know where they were going or even what they were looking for in terms of the cure to Sesshomaru's curse. She knew almost nothing of this demon and his past, and hadn't even the slightest inkling of what thoughts lived in his head. Yet, here she was, crouching under a tree with the man, waiting for a storm to blow through.
"Ne, Sesshomaru-sama…" she trailed off, unsure of how to proceed. She rolled her tightly bandaged shoulder around, grateful for the sharp stinging that masked the hard ache from sleeping upon the uneven ground.
He turned his head toward the small woman curled into herself beside him.
"Do you ever feel… do you ever feel like you don't make a difference in this world?" She stared straight ahead, focusing on the tiny specks of dark blue filtering through the black, shadowed boughs of the pine. The place near where the needled branches touched the ground was beginning to become saturated with the heavy downpour. All that was audible was the steady breathing of Rin and the rain lashing against the world outside.
"Hn."
She allowed herself a small chuckle. Why she ever expected to get anything out of him other than a, "hn," was beyond her. She reached up to brush her bangs out of her eyes, and her fingertips touched something rough and sticky upon her skin. Pulling her hand away with a jerk, she tentatively brought her hand up under her nose.
With a mixture of relief and dread, Kagome discovered that the right side of her face was full of splotches of tacky pine sap, to which stuck any dirt, pine needles, or dry leaves it touched. With a defeated sigh, she let her head fall back to smack against the hard trunk of the tree. She had no lard or tallow she could use to coax the fragrant sap away from its hold upon her skin and hair. A strong gale rustled the branches in front of her, and she was able to barely peek at the cloudy sky. It was indeed a while until dawn.
She sat in the darkness next to the yokai lord, absently picking at the loose, fraying threads poking out at the ends of her sleeves. He remained still as a stone, his eyes dull and unfocused as they stared straight ahead of him.
A few hours later, shortly after dawn, Rin awoke and began shuffling around. Before Kagome could even gather up the pelt to return it to Sesshomaru, the demon shook his head.
"We will stay here this day and this night as well. Tomorrow morning, the rain should be stopped sufficiently enough to allow travel." He spoke without moving, and Kagome simply nodded while slipping a small wooden bowl under a drooping bough to collect water for drinking. Within a few moments, of course, the vessel was filled, and Kagome leaned forward to collect it.
"Rin, you need to wash your hands and face before eati-" Kagome stopped mid-turn, sloshing water upon her lap. Rin was nowhere to be seen in their small shelter. She scrambled around the trunk of the tree, desperately hoping the child was crouched back there. Nothing greeted her gaze but a bed of brown needles and a few daring green vines sprouting between them. All caution thrown aside, Kagome leapt up and crashed through the branches, into the instantly drenching downpour. The wind nearly blew her over, and she held a hand up to her brow to protect her eyes from the stinging rain.
"Rin-chan," she yelled out. She felt her heart begin to palpitate in her chest, and she turned upon her heel. The storm crashed around her ears and howled past her, whipping her loose clothing around.
Faintly, however, she heard a small noise grow progressively louder. After a few seconds, she determined that it was, "Kagome-miko-sama," and shortly thereafter, she saw a small rain-drenched Rin crashing through some underbrush, holding the bottom of her yukata in her hands, resulting in an uncouth display of her legs. Kagome dashed over to lift up a branch while Rin scurried underneath, leaving Kagome to follow suit.
Under the tree's shelter, Rin stood proudly with a heap of peaches at her feet, her clothes dripping and saturating the floor of their small haven.
"Rin-chan, you'll catch a cold in those clothes," Kagome admonished, kneeling in front of the child.
"But-"
"No buts. Turn around." Rin sullenly complied, and Kagome untied the small green obi. Ushering the child to the other side of the tree for propriety's sake, she quickly stripped the child of her soaked yukata and wrapped Sesshomaru's pelt around her little body. When she reemerged to plop down next to Sesshomaru, the look upon his face was anything but warming. Judging by his expression, Kagome deduced that having a naked child bundled up with his heirloom pelt was approximately as irking to him as trying to convince him that he was a purple dancing mule, give or take a few degrees of idiocy.
After hanging Rin's orange yukata upon a high branch to dry, Kagome sat down next to the girl and slipped her tanto blade out of her sleeve while grabbing a soft peach. At the moment she positioned the edge of the blade upon the fruit's fuzzy skin, Sesshomaru's voice cut through the din of the rain.
"Miko, your clothes are wet. If you fall ill, you will be left behind." He was glaring at her as if she was the village idiot, and she gaped back at him.
"Well, I suppose you're right…" she responded, her eyebrows furrowing. She grabbed her knapsack and stepped over to the other side of the tree trunk. When she peeked back around the trunk, her face was red as a ripe cherry. She quickly withdrew behind the trunk, squeaking in protest. "This is certainly not decent, Sesshomaru-sama." Sesshomaru almost pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation, as he saw in the fraction of the second in which she was visible that she was clad in nothing but her slightly damp, thin white kosode that only reached to the middle of her thigh. He rolled his eyes as he jerked his armor fastenings apart, careful not to let them fall upon Rin and gore her with a pauldron. He somehow just didn't fancy the idea of picking fillet of child out of all those pesky nooks and crannies; let alone the horrific stains it would likely incur.
When his armor was satisfactorily set aside, he wrenched off his outer shirt and tossed the warm fabric at the grimacing priestess. She shot him an apologetic look and wrapped herself in his large hankimono before taking her place on the other side of Rin. She was practically swimming in the garment and radiated embarrassment, but remained nonetheless.
She once more palmed a peach and used the tanto to cut into it carefully. She offered the sliced fruit to Sesshomaru, but he held up his hand to decline. Undeterred at this point by his dismissals, Kagome cheerily gave Rin the peach. The girl accepted with wide eyes and an even wider smile, and she stuck her arms out of the enormous pelt coiled around her body to take the treat. She made short work of the skin and was soon holding a dripping mass of fruit.
As the girl bit into the sweet flesh, orange-tinted juice dripped down her chin and onto the near-immaculate pelt. Kagome thought she saw Sesshomaru sigh in resignation. The wind violently lashed at the tree which sheltered the trio and the air quickly became stifling and humid as they sampled the first peaches of the year.
The rest of the day was spent slouched under the tree in the stifling heat, and the torrential rain finally waned around sunset. Kagome stood and reached to turn her and Rin's drying clothing on the boughs upon which they were draped when Sesshomaru wordlessly exited the shelter. Kagome didn't even bother to look over her shoulder after him as she dug some salted fish out of her knapsack. She tried not to rub at her sap-covered face, but the sweat-inducing humidity was testing the limits of her patience and sanity.
Rin was attempting to weave together pine needles in a small sheet of thatching when the boughs of the tree noisily parted, and Sesshomaru strode inside, his left hand dripping a viscous liquid into the water bowl Kagome had left outside.
"Miko." Kagome looked up at him with curiosity. Sesshomaru resumed his place at the base of the tree, still holding his hand over the wooden bowl. She shuffled over and saw, with impressed astonishment, that he held in his hand a large fragment of honeycomb, from which honey was steadily dripping. The thought of Sesshomaru walking over to a beehive, stony deadpan and all, and smiting it to the ground with one mighty blow, silently daring the bees to fight back, almost made her giggle.
"It's not as good as lard, but I doubt you or the child would appreciate it if I killed a pig and poured its fat drippings onto your face," he drawled. With a small smile, Kagome mixed the honey into the water with her fingers and dabbed it onto her face with the corner of her furoshiki. While indeed not as effective as tallow or lard, the honey tincture did remove the pine sap from her skin after a few minutes of rubbing.
She gave him a grateful smile, and he narrowed his eyes at her. He continued to hold the draining honeycomb over the bowl, and as Kagome turned to once more flip over the drying clothing, Rin shoved a peeled peach which she held in her hands under the drizzling honey. Sesshomaru looked down at her without changing his expression, and she gave him a shy smile as she brought the honeyed fruit to her lips.
After spending another night under the tree, the trio left just before dawn. Not five minutes after leaving, they came upon an orchard of peach trees. Kagome's heart sank.
"Rin-chan, did you take the peaches from this orchard?" Kagome saw Rin purposefully avoid eye contact. Without warning, she plodded off the road and walked through the dew-covered foliage between the rows of trees. She came upon a small hut, the inhabitants of which were apparently still sleeping. When she came to the doorway, she quietly crouched down and reached inside of her sleeve to retrieve the small string of coins housed there. She placed the whole string there and marched back up to the road, where Rin and Sesshomaru were waiting for her. Without saying anything, they resumed walking.
A few minutes later, Rin sidled up to Kagome, shyly tugging upon the sleeve of her hakui.
"Ne, Kagome-sama?" Kagome looked down at the child.
"Why did you give them your money? He won't notice the missing peaches."
Before Kagome could respond, Sesshomaru cut in, staring straight ahead into the darkness still lingering in the west.
"Every action one performs, every deed done, has consequences that echo forever. Everything makes a difference." Kagome saw through her misty eyes that his shoulders had a stiff set to them, and he walked briskly ahead. Rin followed him pensively and left Kagome to walk behind, reveling in the small wonder that was Sesshomaru's reassuring comment.
- 12
- 13
- 14
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Edge of Paradise