Kagome sat on a stump in the clearing, watching Shin dash about through the falling leaves. His gusts of youki sent them swirling in all directions—riotous confetti-bursts of crimson and gold. He darted and leapt, snapped and spun. At times he gathered enough ethereal steam beneath his paws to go briefly airborne, but even Kagome

Kagome stared down at where Inuyasha lay sprawled, too stunned at first to do anything else. He was out cold. Shin inched toward him, bristled and sniffing. Even when he nudged Inuyasha with his snowy crackling muzzle, even when his miasmic purple tongue licked Inuyasha full and fuming across the face, the hanyou barely stirred. 

In the wake of Inuyasha’s departure the silence was deafening. Crushing. Shoulders hunched beneath the oppressive weight of it, Kagome stood there in the middle of the hut, staring after him long after he’d gone. Her own brash words had left her reeling. She had fired them off without thinking. Only now was she registering

It was wishful thinking, looking back, for Kagome to hope that this moment would never come. To hope that it could be delayed indefinitely. That she could continue to avoid it forever. Because until she was put to the point, she could pretend that it wouldn’t come to this. That she wouldn’t have to look

Kagome and Shin returned home. The first thing her eyes fell upon when she entered the hut was the laundry basket, which was heaped to overflowing. As usual, she’d pushed this loathsome chore to the limit. If she waited until tomorrow to do her laundry with Sango, Inuyasha would have something to say about it,

A few days later, as Kagome paced the length of the hut, her preoccupation with Shin’s transformations was temporarily placed on hold. She glanced to the window, noting the position of the sun through the shutters. Pushing himself up as best he could against the bars of his crib, Shin watched her inquisitively. His stormy

Though Kagome found herself waiting on pins and needles for Shin to transform again, he seldom did. It seemed totally random to her when he morphed into his beast form. Sometimes it was at night when he was sleeping deeply. Sometimes it was when he was wide awake in the broad light of day. He

The question of how Shin had killed the snake continued to preoccupy Kagome. Though he seemed exceptionally capable for his age, as far as she could tell, he possessed neither the coordination to remove himself from the crib nor the fangs necessary to perform the bloody task. Kagome wasn’t the only one preoccupied by this

Kagome cleaned up the spattered blood and bits of scale. But the dead snake she kept, removing it carefully from the house to the yard. Its fanged maw yawned, rigidly askew—frozen in what looked like a final scream of terror. Kagome’s stomach turned as she dropped it to the grass. Back inside, Shin was nestled