InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Kagome! Where are you?! ❯ blanket scenario part 1 ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter two: Blanket Scenario part 1

Speech in the {English} language.

Oh . . . something medical . . . extreme cold can cause the brain to act in strange ways, like you were drunk, makes you forgetful, etc. So . . . if Kagome seems a bit off . . . please take that into consideration . . .

corrected byAngelica Birmingham. thank you

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A cold wind, a freezing cold howling wind, is Sesshomaru's instantaneous impression of his new location.

The howling wind is blowing blinding snow around him as he shifts his feet, setting them against the wind. His feet slide on the ice-covered ground, only his superior reflexes keep him upright. He glances at the ground, below his feet is smooth, white ice. Something instinctive is telling him that the ice below his feet is many body lengths thick.

A glance around shows that the blowing snow prevents him from seeing more than a bow's length around. Anything beyond that is lost in the snow. He is in whiteout conditions.

His instincts are screaming at him and he feels wrong, somehow lighter than normal. His mystical senses are sending him very confusing signals.

Somehow he knows he is not on the world he was born to.

Someone grabs him and he finds that Inu-yasha's woman is hanging onto his side.

She looks up at him and yells over the screaming winds...

{"Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas, anymore!"} she screams in a language that he's never heard before.

He glares at her.

"Give me that cube, woman." he yells over the winds.

The cube, Sesshomaru's hand, and Kagome's hand touch . . but nothing happens.
'Why didn't it work?' He thinks.

"I feel weak, Sesshomaru. I think the cube has drained my energy." The woman shouts. "I wonder if it is out of power."

Sesshomaru thinks, 'Yes, I feel weakened myself.' he looks at the cube and notices something different about it. The light is now glowing a deep red, not the previous purple color. He places it inside his robes.

"We need some shelter fast Sesshomaru, I'm freezing already!" she yells.

He looks at her. The blowing snow has already dusted her hair and clothes. The large, strangely colored and shaped sack of hers, is also gathering snow. He can hear her teeth chatter. Her almost obscene clothes are not designed for sub-freezing temperatures and her bare knees are shaking.

'I am feeling the cold myself.' Sesshomaru thinks as he suppresses a shiver. 'Even that time on top of Mt. Fuji was warmer than this.'

"Why should this Sesshomaru help you, human?"

"Because," Kagome pauses, she is obviously suppressing calling Sesshomaru some demeaning names, "it took both of us to activate that thing. If I die, what will you do to activate it? We need each other, Sesshomaru!"

Sesshomaru looks around again, "I can see no shelter." he says.

"Blast a hole in the ground, at least, please. So, we can get out of the wind, please Sesshomaru!" she yells.

He nods. A pause while he thinks, 'Do I use my claws, the sword, or my acid whip? The sword, I'm not my brother and I will not use my claws for such a base thing. The acid might pool or cause other problems, too.'

He draws his sword, Tokijin.

With a casual wave, a huge crevasse forms before Kagome and Sesshomaru. It is more than ten body lengths long, up to two body lengths wide, and up to five body lengths deep. He starts to walk down it.

"Sesshomaru, please help me!" Inu-yasha's woman yells behind him. He turns around. She is attempting to drag her huge bag behind her. "I'm too weak to carry it!"

"Then leave it. As a weak human you should realize that you need to get out of the wind as fast as possible." He says.

"It has things we can burn and some other useful things in it!"
Sesshomaru pauses, then returns to the edge and picks up the bag. He and Kagome scramble down the crevasse. The wind follows them . . .

"We need to make a cave in the ice, something to get of the wind and somewhere we can set up a fire." Kagome says."Stop babbling, human. I've killed enough humans to know what you need to survive."

"Then hurry, please! My feet are killing me!" A glance at her feet shows her odd shoes being covered in snow and ice.

'This has to be done with precision.' He thinks. He replaces his sword and flexes the claws of his remaining hand. "Step back, human. The ice might hit and kill you."

Kagome retreats to the far end of the crevasse

Sesshomaru uses his claws to rip an opening about halfway down the crevasse.

"Why there? Wouldn't deeper down be more out of the wind?" Kagome asks.

Sesshomaru glances at her. He doesn't need to a say a thing to tell Kagome that he considers that question to be stupid.

He digs into the side of the ice. The ice, as it is thrown behind him, bounces off the other side of the crevasse and falls into the deep part of the crease.

"Oh . . . I see." Kagome says. "I'm sorry, Sesshomaru. I wasn't thinking."

Sesshomaru vanishes into the side of the crevasse. The ice piles up behind him and in the crevasse. The loose ice fills up the bottom of the crevasse.

A minute or so later, He emerges from the opening he made. "Enter."

"My bag?" Kagome says as scrambles to him and the opening.

He grabs it. He shakes it free of the ice chips that covered it and he follows Kagome into the opening.

Sesshomaru had dug a body length tunnel into the ice. It's only big enough from them to crawl through so he has to widen it for the bag.

Then he created a chamber in the ice, hemispherical in shape. It is about two body lengths in diameter, but it is less than a body length high, so he and Kagome have to bend over inside it.

"Why so small?" Kagome asks as she presses herself against the far edge of the chamber.

Sesshomaru uses that same look that informs Kagome of his low opinion of that question, but this time he does answer it. "To conserve body heat, the chamber needs to be as small as possible."

"Yes. Sorry." she says.

"Find something to start a fire." He shoves her bag toward her, "I'll refill the tunnel, and since you are evidently stupider than I thought, the reason this Sesshomaru is doing that is to decrease the amount of wind that can enter here."

"Thank you, Sesshomaru. I am sorry. This. . ." Kagome waves her free hand, "this isn't something that I was expecting. And I was asking you stupid questions, sorry."

Sesshomaru nods his head accepting the apology. He goes to the tunnel entrance and using the loose ice to block the entrance, he leaves a small opening for air to circulate. He frowns, 'She's supposed to start a fire. We'll need something to let the smoke out, but that leaves an opening for the heat to escape as well. Hmmm. We'll just have to accept the smoke. I'm not going to make a bigger opening.'

He returns to the main chamber.

Kagome has opened her bag and is throwing things all over the chamber. 'Humans and their messes. I had thought that females were neater than men but, she's not apparently.' He thinks as he watches her go through her entire bag.

She has already pulled out a couple of towels, spread one of the towels on the ice, and has wrapped the other around her legs and feet. A few books, a white box with a red cross on it and other items litter the floor.

She pulls out a handful of red sticks, "Aha! Found them." she exclaims, as she places them on the ground next to her. "These are flares, Sesshomaru. They'll burn, even on ice." a pause as she wrinkles her face in thought, "But they'll melt the ice, so how?"

"Do you have anything in there that will not burn?"

She shakes her head, "I don't think . . . Yes, I do. The metal pot we use for cooking." She rummages through the bag and pulls out a metal pot with a wire handle.

"But . . . it'll get hot and melt the ice so . how do we stop that?"

"Your bow."

"Huh?"

Sesshomaru snatches her bow. He goes over to one side of the chamber, makes a hole in the ice and shoves the end of the bow in it. This causes the bow to stick out, the curved side down. He grabs the pot from Kagome and slides the handle over the end. The pot slides down the bow until it reaches the bottom of the curve.
"There. We will start the fire in it and since it is off the ground, the ice will not melt." he says to Kagome.

"Oh . . . I have a tripod which we use to hang it over a fire, will that work better?" She asks.
Sesshomaru glares at her. She blushes, "You didn't give me time." she whispers.
"Get it." he growls out.
Kagome pulls out the metal expandable tripod and places it off to one side of the chamber. She quickly, with the experience of many meals prepared using it, sets it up and hangs the pot from the tripod.

"Hurry with that flare stick." Sesshomaru says.

Kagome's hands are shaking as she tries to start the flare.

"The light above is fading." he states, half to himself.

Kagome looks up. Since they are only a body length or so beneath the surface ice, light has been coming through the ice. It is getting dark on the surface. Nightfall is fast approaching.

She swallows, "Got it!" she yells as the flare starts. She drops it into the pot and the bright red light from the flare reflects off the ceiling, making the chamber very bright.

"You did not mention anything about the bright light, woman."

"Didn't have time." She says as she tries to warm her hands over the pot.

"How long?"

"The flare?"

Sesshomaru rises as eyebrow, nonverbally saying, of course, you idiot.

"It should last about half an hour."

"How many of them do you have?"

"Not enough." a pause, "There are only three left."

'When I get back home, I'll have to thank mom. I told her to get me some flares. I meant some distress signal flares, but she got these road emergency ones.' a small smile appears on Kagome's lips.

Kagome thinks, 'I pretended that these were fine, but that I needed some signal flares as well. She got them, too. But... we've never taken these old flares out of the bag. Now I'm very glad to have them... I just wish I had more.'
Sesshomaru looks around and says, "What else in there can be burned."

"Let me warm up a little, please." Kagome asks. She is rubbing her legs now, trying to warm them up. "Could you hand me that white box, please?"Sesshomaru glances at her and shoves the box across the chamber. "Thank you." She opens the box and takes out a small pamphlet. She quickly and folds it open. "Here, Sesshomaru, please read this." she reaches out to him with the pamphlet.

He raises his eyebrow, "Why, human?"

"Because . . . this tells you how to deal with people who have hypothermia." At Sesshomaru's confused look, she expands on that term, "People who are freezing to death." she swallows, "I have a feeling we're going to need it, tonight."

He takes the pamphlet and starts to read it.

After a couple of minutes he stops. 'Where did this come from? This is like no other writing I've seen. All writing has minor flaws every time a scribe draws the same symbol. He'll change it, if only minutely, but every time a symbol is used here, it is the same.' He glances at Kagome who has taken out a strangely shaped futon from the backpack and she is continuing to go through the bag.

'Also . . . there are words on this that make no sense. They are not Japanese or Chinese. What language are they?' He glares at Kagome.

"Woman. This paper is partially written in a strange language." He says. "Is it the same language as one you used earlier?"

"Hmm . . Yes, somewhat. Some of the terms on that are in English and some are in Latin, Sesshomaru. If you tell me what you're confused about, I'll tell you what they mean." she replies in a distracted tone as she continues to go through her bag.

Sesshomaru glares at Kagome. "This Sesshomaru expects to be looked at when spoken to." he growls at her.

Kagome looks up. She blushes, "Ohh. I am sorry, Sesshomaru." she shakes her head. "I was just. . "

He growls cutting her off, pauses, and then asks, "What does {Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas, anymore!} mean?" Sesshomaru slowly states somewhat brokenly, in the foreign language.

'Toto! How am I going to explain that?' Kagome thinks in a panic.

Kagome's eyes do not meet his as she replies, "Oh, that . . . It's a line from a, I suppose you could call it a play. It's just an _expression saying that I did not think we were in Japan anymore." pause, "That's it."
He grunts.

Kagome goes back to pulling things out of her bag.
She glares at one of her text books, then glances at the pot where the flare is still going strong. 'I don't know how many times I've threatened to throw this into the campfire.' She thinks, then she smiles, 'but . . . I've finally got the right excuse.'

She puts the math textbook next to the tripod.

End chapter 2.

Authors' note:

I had a review mention my other story "A Shard in Kyoto." Sigh, yes, I will continue it. But . . . the last chapter received 1 public review and only a couple of private comments. Sigh . . . Since there is so limited a response to the story, I decided to do this one. (It's a much less complex storyline and I make smaller chapters, which makes it easier on me.) I do plan on continuing "Shard" but ch 10 probably won't come out until sometime in December.

Thank you for reading.

jeff shelton