#kikyo

Inuyasha lay within it, his long silver hair spilled across the green stalks of wild rye like a split silk banner.

To a creature born of two worlds and welcomed by neither, the earth was rarely a bed. It was a surface to flee across, a floor to bleed upon, or a grave to be dug. Yet here, the ground had a surprising, yielding density.

It smelled of sun-baked loam, crushed clover, and a cool scent of the precious woman beside him, a scent that was less like perfume and more like river stones dried in the afternoon heat.

He did not move. He scarcely breathed, conscious of the way his chest rised and fell against the perimeter of her space. His ears, large and covered in fur the color of winter foxes, twitched at the erratic drone of a solitary bumblebee navigating the clover. But his eyes—amber, clear, and uncharacteristically still—were fixed on the horizon where the blue was beginning to fray into ribbons of pale orange and bruised violet.

"You’re being quiet," Kikyo said.

Her voice did not shatter the silence; it slid into it, a smooth pebble dropped into deep, dark water.

Inuyasha grunted, a low vibration in his throat that was more defensive than dismissive. He shifted his weight, his claws digging slightly into the dirt beneath the grass, anchoring himself. "Nothing to say. The sun’s going down. It does that every day."

"Not like this," she murmured.

He turned his head slightly, the coarse silk of his hair rustling against her sleeve. Kikyo was sitting with her legs tucked beneath her white skirt, her posture as straight, neat, and elegant as it was when she stood before the altar in her village, yet there was a softness in the slope of her shoulders that the villagers never saw.

Her red hakama was a bright, clean wound against the green meadow. In her lap lay a small pile of wild chrysanthemums and white aster, their stems long and pliable, freshly harvested from the ditch near the tree line.

Her fingers were moving with a small, rhythmic economy. She picked up a stalk, split the stem with her thumbnail, a clean, sharp sound, and threaded another through the eye.

She was making a crown. It was an occupation for children, for girls who had nothing to guard but their own laughter, yet she handled the fragile blossoms with the same precise, reverent touch she used when stringing her bow or binding a wound.

"What's the point of that thing?" Inuyasha asked, his voice dropping into that rough, husky register that always surfaced when he tried to hide his curiosity. "It’s just gonna die by tomorrow."

Kikyo did not look up from her work. A small, faint line appeared between her brows, not of anger, but of concentration. "Everything dies by tomorrow, Inuyasha. That doesn't mean it isn't beautiful while it holds the form it was given."

"Feh." He crossed his arms over his chest, the heavy scarlet wool of his Sushidama shifting around him. "Sounds like something an old priest would say before he starves himself to death in a hole. You're too young to talk like that."

"Am I?" She stopped, her fingers resting on the half-finished braid of stems. Her eyes, dark and reflective as obsidian, turned toward the horizon where the sun was now a swollen, bleeding orange eye pressing against the rim of the world. "Some days I feel as old as the mountain. Some days I feel as though I haven't even been born yet. I think... when you carry something that everyone wants to steal, you lose the right to have an age."

Inuyasha’s gaze dropped to her throat, where the collar of her white robe met her skin. Beneath that fabric, hidden against her breast, lay the Shikon no Tama. He could feel it even now, not as a physical weight, but as a low, persistent thrumming in the air, like the sound of distant bees or the vibration of a bowstring just after the arrow has flown.

It was a cold power, a hard power, but between them, in this circle of crushed grass, it was silent. He had come to hate that jewel, not because he no longer wanted it, for his blood still burned with the desire to be whole, to be strong, to be feared, but because it was the iron fence that kept her from him, even when they sat so close that their sleeves brushed.

"You don't have to carry it forever," he muttered, his fingers twitching against his elbows. "You could just... drop it in the lake. Let the fish worry about it."

A small, genuine smile touched the corners of her mouth, a rare thing, like a flower blooming on a stone cliff. "The fish would become dragons, Inuyasha, and they would tear the sky apart. We cannot undo what has been given to us. We can only choose how we bear it."

She resumed her weaving. The pale stems twisted between her slender fingers, turning over and over, binding blossom to blossom.

The sun sank lower, and the light changed from gold to something more ancient, a deep, thick amber that turned the white of Kikyo’s robes into the color of old parchment. The shadows stretched out across the valley, long and thin, like fingers reaching for the mountains in the east.

Inuyasha watched her hands. They were small hands, smaller than his own, which were broad and tipped with five curved, ivory-colored claws that could tear the throat from a wild boar. Her skin was smooth, pale as the meat of a peeled chestnut, but there were calluses on the inside of her index finger and thumb from the rough hemp of her bowstring.

They were the hands of a killer, he reminded himself. She had laid low demons three times his size; she had purified waters that would have dissolved his flesh to bone.

Yet, as she tucked a blue cornflower into the braid, her touch was so light that the pollen remained undisturbed on the stamen.

"Hey," he said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"Does it hurt?"

She paused, her thumb pressing against a green stem. "What?"

"Being you." He turned fully onto his side now, propping his head up with one hand, his elbow sinking deep into the clover. His long silver ears leaned forward, catching the wind. "The villagers look at you like you're some kind of god, but they're afraid of you. I've seen 'em. They don't touch you unless they're dying or unless they want you to kill something. It’s like... they think you're made of clay instead of blood."

Kikyo’s gaze remained on her lap, but the movement of her fingers slowed until they were perfectly still. The wind came up from the south, carrying the scent of damp earth from the rice paddies miles away, lifting the dark, straight strands of her hair so that they floated across her face like ink lines drawn on silk.

"They need me to be clay," she said softly. "If I am blood, I can bleed. If I can bleed, I can die. And if I die, who protects the border? Who keeps the night from swallowing their children?"

"I could," Inuyasha said before he could stop the words from forming in his throat.

The silence that followed was different from the one before. It was heavy, thick with things that had no names yet, things that belonged to a language neither of them had been taught to speak.

Inuyasha felt the heat rise into his face, turning the tops of his cheekbones a dull, dark red. He looked away, his gaze darting toward a crow that was circling high above the trees.

"I mean," he mumbled, his claws tearing a clump of grass out by its roots. "I'm strong. I'm stronger than any of those human soldiers with their rusty spears. If some demon comes snooping around, I can rip 'em to pieces before they even smell the well."

"You would protect the village?" Kikyo asked. Her tone was not mocking; it was light, almost curious, as if she were imagining a world where the sun rose in the west.

"Not for them," he growled, his amber eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp intensity as he looked back at her. "For you. So you could... I don't know. Stop doing this. Stop walking through the woods until your feet bleed. Stop looking like you're about to vanish every time the fog comes in."

Kikyo looked at him then. Truly looked at him. Her eyes were large, dark, and deep enough to drown in. There was no judgment in them, no malice, only a profound, aching weariness that seemed to melt away at the edges where her gaze met his.

She reached out, her hand hovering for a fraction of a second in the space between them, before her fingers brushed against his hair.

Inuyasha stiffened. His natural instinct, the old, wild animal instinct that had kept him alive through two centuries of cold winters and hostile forests, was to pull back, to snarl, to guard the throat.

But the touch of her skin against his hair was not a weapon. It was cool, steady, and incredibly light.

Her fingers slid through the silver strands, untangling a small piece of dry leaf that had lodged near his ear. Her knuckles grazed the soft, white fur at the base of his ear, and a involuntary shudder ran down his spine, his ear twitching violently under her touch.

"You have soft hair," she remarked, her voice dropping an octave, becoming something meant only for the two of them and the grass. "Like the wool they bring from the western capital."

"Don't say weird things," he muttered, though he didn't move away. In fact, without realizing it, he leaned his head slightly into her palm, his eyes narrowing like a cat that had found a patch of winter sun. "It’s just hair. It protects me from the rain."

"It is beautiful," she corrected him gently. "Everything about you is... distinct, Inuyasha. You do not blend into the background. You do not hide. Even when you are trying to be silent, the world knows where you stand."

"That's because everything’s always trying to kill me," he said, though there was no anger in it now. The heat of the sunset was washing over them, a great wave of crimson and amber that turned the white clover into small coals of light. "You have to be loud if you want to stay alive."

"Perhaps," she said. She withdrew her hand, and Inuyasha felt the coldness of the air return to the spot where her palm had been. She picked up the flower crown again.

It was nearly finished now, a thick, circular braid of white and blue, the stems woven so tightly together that they looked like a single, continuous vine. "But here, you don't have to be loud. The sky doesn't care how strong you are."

They stayed like that as the sun touched the edge of the mountains. It was the hour of twilight—omokatoki—the time when the border between the world of men and the world of monsters grew thin, when shadows lengthened into strange shapes and the eyes could no longer trust what they saw.

It was a dangerous hour for humans, and a hungry hour for demons.

Yet, in this field, the twilight felt like a heavy, velvet cloak being drawn over their shoulders, separating them from the rest of Musashi.

Kikyo lifted the flower crown. She held it up between her hands, looking through the center of the circle at the dying light. The white petals were stained pink by the sunset, looking like drops of wine on snow.

"Come here," she said.

Inuyasha looked at her suspiciously. "Why?"

"Just come closer."

He grumbled, shifting his weight on his knees until he was sitting directly in front of her. He was broader than she was, his shoulders wide beneath the red robe, his chest thick with the muscle of a runner. Beside her, he looked like a wild thing that had been coaxed out of the brush by the promise of salt, still tense, still ready to spring if the wind changed.

Kikyo raised her arms. Her wide sleeves fell back, revealing the pale, slender length of her forearms. With a slow, deliberate movement, she lowered the ring of flowers onto his head.

Inuyasha froze. His ears flattened against his skull, the white fur disappearing beneath the white and blue petals. One of the long stems tickled the tip of his nose, and he wrinkled it, his upper lip pulling back slightly to show the white gleam of a fang.

"What the hell are you doing?" he barked, though he didn't reach up to take it off. "I'm a demon! I'm not a... a garden!"

Kikyo let her hands fall back to her lap. She looked at him, and for the first time, a soft, breathless laugh escaped her lips. It was a small sound, like the chiming of a bronze bell in a high wind, but it made Inuyasha’s heart skip a beat, a strange, thumping thud against his ribs that had nothing to do with fear.

"It suits you," she said, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "The white of the aster matches your hair. The blue of the cornflower matches nothing, but it looks... peaceful."

"I don't want to look peaceful," he grumbled, though his ears slowly rose again, lifting the crown slightly so that it sat askew over one eye. "Peaceful means you're dead or you're about to be."

"No," Kikyo said, her face softening until the last remnants of her priestess-persona seemed to dissolve into the twilight. "Peaceful means you are alive enough to notice that the world isn't fighting you. Look at the sun, Inuyasha."

He turned his head toward the west. The sun was nearly gone now.

Only a thin, brilliant sliver of gold remained, a spark on the dark blue ridge of the distant hills. The sky above it was a magnificent, bruised expanse of violet, indigo, and deep, smoky rose. The stars were not yet out, but the air felt clear and empty, as if the world had taken a deep breath and was holding it before the night began.

Inuyasha looked at the light, and then he looked back at her. The sunset was reflected in her eyes, two small, burning embers in the darkness of her iris. Her skin looked warmer now, less like clay and more like the living, breathing thing he knew her to be.

Without thinking, he reached out. His broad hand, dark from the sun and rough from stone, settled over her small fingers where they rested in her lap.

Kikyo didn't pull away. Her fingers turned beneath his palm, her skin sliding against his until their fingers interlocked, his long, clawed hand wrapping around her narrow, smooth one. Her grip was surprisingly firm, a small anchor holding onto him with a desperate, quiet strength that she never allowed her voice to show.

"Kikyo," he said. His voice was very quiet now, barely louder than the rustle of the dry grass.

"Yes?"

"If we... if I use the jewel to become human..." He stopped. The words felt heavy in his mouth, like stones he had pulled from the riverbed. He had never said them aloud to anyone before. He had barely dared to say them to himself in the dark of the forest. "If I'm human... we could just be like this. Every day. We wouldn't have to look out for demons. We wouldn't have to care about the village. We could just... live."

Kikyo’s hand tightened around his until his claws pressed slightly into the back of her hand, not enough to break the skin, but enough to leave small, white crescents. She looked down at their joined hands, her dark hair falling forward like a curtain, hiding her expression from the dying light.

"A human life is short, Inuyasha," she whispered. "It passes like the breath of a deer on a winter morning. You would grow old. You would become weak. Your hair would turn gray from age, not because it is your nature."

"I don't care," he said, and for the first time in his life, he meant it completely.

He didn't care about the power of his father; he didn't care about the insults of the full-blooded demons who called him a stray dog; he didn't care about the endless, lonely centuries stretching out behind him like a trackless waste. "I'd rather have twenty years with you than a thousand years of... whatever this is. Running around in the woods by myself."

Kikyo did not answer immediately. A single tear, clear and bright as river water, slipped from her eye and fell onto their joined hands, disappearing into the red fabric of his sleeve. She lifted her head, and though her face was wet, her eyes were clearer than he had ever seen them.

"Then we will find a way," she whispered, softly.

But they did not know.

They did not know of the shadow that was even then gathering in the deep valley to the north, a shadow born of a broken man's jealousy and the small, crawling things that live in the dark places of the earth.

They did not know of the spider's mark that would soon stain the back of a man who looked like an innocent.

They did not know of the blood that would spill upon the sacred stairs, of the arrow that would fly through the cold morning air, or of the fifty years of frozen silence that waited for him beneath the bark of the Goshinboku.

They did not know that the flowers woven into his hair would be dust by morning, or that the woman who wove them would be ashes before the next new moon.

They only knew the field.

Inuyasha shifted closer until his shoulder was pressed against hers, the rough scarlet wool of his garment mingling with the fine white linen of her robe.

He closed his eyes, letting his head drop back against the earth, the flower crown shifting slightly but remaining in place. The scent of the aster was strong now, a clean, bitter smell that filled his nose and chased away the lingering tang of old iron and ironwood.

Kikyo leaned against him. It was a slight movement, a surrender to the gravity of the moment that she allowed herself only when the sky was too dark for anyone else to see. Her head rested against his shoulder, her dark hair spreading over his chest like an ink stain on a battlefield.

"Listen," she said.

"To what?"

"The earth. It’s quiet."

He listened. With his demon ears, he could hear the tiny movements of the beetles in the dirt, the slow draw of water through the roots of the grass, the distant, rhythmic thrumming of the lake miles away.

But closer than that louder than any of it, was the steady, regular sound of her heart beating against his side. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was a slow rhythm, a human rhythm, fragile and precise.

He closed his hand tighter around hers, his claws catching the hem of her sleeve.

"Yeah," he murmured, his eyes opening to watch the last line of gold vanish from the hills. "It’s quiet."

The night came on, blue and vast and filled with stars that had no names.

They lay together in the center of the Musashi plain, two small figures lost in the sea of grass, holding onto each other as if the earth were spinning too fast and they were the only things keeping each other from falling into the sky.

Stayed until the dew began to form on the petals of the crown, cold and bright as tears, under a sky that promised nothing but the morning arrives and take them away.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

© Copyright Protection Notice:

All works belongs exclusively to the author. Do not reupload, translate, rewrite, or alter my creations without permission. It's officially shared only via Tumblr and AO3.