InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 13

I do not own InuYasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi


Chapter 13


InuYasha sat under a sakura tree that grew near his house, shading the area where he chopped wood.  As he leaned back against the tree trunk, he flicked his ear as he watched Kagome walk past him and the wood pile as she made yet another circuit around the house. Stopping for a moment, she bent down and ran her fingers over the ground, and picked up a pinch of dirt. She looked up at the sky, and the trees overhanging the spot. Shaking her head, she began walking again.

Intrigued, he got up, and began to follow her silently. She stopped at a different place, one not far from the clothes line he had made for her, looked up at the sky, and again repeated her  bending down and sampling the soil. She turned around and suddenly found herself bumping into a smiling but curious hanyou.

“This is the fourth time you've walked around the house,” InuYasha said.  He slid a finger under her chin and tipped her head up a little.

“I know,” she said sheepishly, then chewed on her bottom lip.

“Is this some miko thing from your time?” he asked. “Are you doing a spell?  Is this how you would pick out where to put a garden back in your time? I’ll go back and let you finish if you are.”

Kagome shook her head. “No, it's not miko anything.” She looked up at the sky, and then back at the ground again. “I'm just not sure what we should do. ”

“I'm sure of one thing. I don’t really understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.” InuYasha lightly wrapped his arms around her waist, and then pulled her close so he could rest his cheek on the top of her head. “You wanna tell me about it? I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours.”

With a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a small, nervous chuckle, Kagome pulled back from his hold and turned around, chewing on her lip again. “It’s hard trying to decide where everything should go. We need a vegetable garden,” she said, rubbing her toe against the soil where she stood. “Everybody’s made it clear that having our own garden’s really important. And I need to figure out where I want to put the laundry tub and where to hang the laundry out to dry, but I’m not sure if where we made the line for the futon is the right place.  I think it’s too far from the stream.  And we're going to want a storage building, too, unless you want to smell the pickles and miso fermenting  in the house all the time, and . . .”

“We don't have to decide it all right this minute,” InuYasha said, pulling her close against her chest again. He rested his chin on her shoulder. “If you’re not sure about the right place for the garden, we can ask Kaede and Sango’s opinion.  If we need to make a place for the clothes, that’s no problem. I know this isn’t how you lived back at your place. But you have friends. They know you lived differently, too.  They’ll help.  I’ll help, but I think they know more.”

After a moment, Kagome relaxed in his arms, and he kissed the top of her head.  But then she stood straighter and pointed to the area near the clothes line. “I'd like to put the garden there, but part of it gets too much shade, I think.”

“So we'll take a tree or three down if you really want it there,” he said, nuzzling the side of her neck. “We can use the wood for the shed, and we’ll burn what’s left.”

“That might work,” she said, turning to lean her face in his chest. “I’m sorry. I just realized how much I have to learn, how much I don’t know how to do.  I don’t want to be a useless woman.  I want to make your life happy, not filled with worrying about a girl who can’t do anything.”

“Feh,” he said, just holding her.  “You already make me happy.  And I know you, Kagome.  Anybody that can go through a year of chasing youkai, destroying the Shikon no Tama and still get home to take all those stupid test things can do anything.” He lifted her chin up and gently kissed her.

She returned his kiss, then stepped back a little. “One thing at a time. Let’s just see if I can cook dinner first.”

InuYasha gave her a big smile.  “I know you.  You’ll do fine.  But I’ll stay out here a bit longer and chop some wood.  Let me know if you need anything.”

She nodded.  “I’ll do that,” she said, and headed back into the house.

InuYasha watched her, then slipped out of his jacket, laid it on the wood pile and picked up his axe.  Grabbing a length of wood, he placed it on the stump he split wood on, and began to work.

After a while, Kagome stepped out on the porch.  “Could you fill the water bucket up?” she asked, holding it out.  

InuYasha, having gotten lost in his work, looked up and realized it was almost twilight.  Wedging his ax in the stump he grabbed his jacket.  “Sure.  Dinner almost ready?”

“Almost,” she replied. “It should be by the time you get the water.”  

She was smiling, which he took as a good sign.  As he walked into the house and put the now full bucket in its corner, he took a deep breath. The air was rich with the smells of food.

“It smells good in here. I think I’m hungry,” he said, sitting down at his place by the fire pit.

“Good,” Kagome replied, slicing some pickled daikon.  “It’s almost ready.  We need to get some trays.  It’d be easier to serve if we had trays to eat off of.”

“Put that on the list of things we need to get.  I’ll pick some up next week when Miroku and I go to market day. I just never used all that stuff for just me.” He looked at her apologetically.  “I never thought about it.”

“That’s all right,” Kagome said, nodding, and handed him a small dish with pickle slices.  Next she opened up one pot she had set away from the fire.  Steam lifted from it.  

“Rice?” he said.

“Yeah.  I hope it came out right,” she said.  “At my mother’s, we had a special cooker for rice.  Sango told me how I can make it this way.” She spooned some into his bowl and put it in front of him.  Next she knocked the coals away from under the lidded soup pot, and opened it.  It smelled of onions and fish and miso.  She dipped up a bowl, and sat that in front of him, as well.

Chewing on her bottom lip, she waited for him to taste the stew.  He raised the bowl to his lips, and took a sip of the broth.  It was rich with the taste of miso, and slid easily over his palate.  It was a recipe Sango had made a lot over the winter, hearty with winter vegetables. “It’s good,” he said, pulling out his chopsticks and fishing bits of vegetables and fish out. “I like it.”

She gave him a smile like the sun, and dipped her food out as well.

They ate mostly in a companionable silence, but Kagome was pleased when he asked for seconds.

After the meal, he sat by the fire, watching her every move as she washed and put away their supper things. She was humming a little tune to herself, wordlessly, and moved with an easy grace.  Part of him felt like he ought to say something to break the silence, but couldn’t think of what to say. Still, he was too content to worry too much about it.

She came back and sat down by him, and rested her head against his shoulders.  “I don’t know the last time we got to spend so much time together, with nobody else popping in, or teasing, or trying to do this or that. Just you and me.”

“Yeah,” he said, wrapping his arm around her.  “You like it?”

“I do,” she said. “It feels like home.”

“Yeah.”

They sat there for a while, Kagome again humming her tune as they watched the fire burn.  After a while, she stood up, smiled at him, then walked to where she stored the bedding.  He got up and prepared the fire in the fire pit for the night, looking up at her as he worked as she laid out the futon, taking care to smooth it out, and spread  the cover.

“Our bed,” he said, too soft to be overheard. “Our house. Our life.  Ours.”  It seemed an amazing thing to say.

He watched her do her homely little chore with a flood of emotion. Somehow, in only two days, she had managed to turn what had started out as being just a shack he had built to escape once in a while from the noise and eyes of well-meaning friends into a clean and inviting place that was whispering the idea of home, a place that was uniquely theirs, a place where they belonged and where people came to them as visitors.  InuYasha was overcome with the need to let her know, somehow, of all the feelings welling up inside of him at the wonder of it all.

“I wish . . . “ he said, slightly louder. In the quiet of the room the soft words sounded very loud.

Kagome turned around and looked at him. She smiled, but there was some uncertainty in her eyes. “You wish?”

InuYasha moved next to her where she was sitting next to the bed and  took one of her hands in his. He looked down at how it looked in his, slight and delicate, fine and soft, so much smaller than his. Hands that worked magic.  “I wish . . . I wish I was one of those guys who was good with words.” He wrapped his fingers around her hand, looked up at her with a wry smile. “Dammit. I wish I could say everything that's here,” he said, moving her hand over his heart, “so that you could hear it.”

Her blue-gray eyes glittered, and her smile lit up her face like a sunrise. “But I do hear it, InuYasha. I could hear it from five hundred years away.”

She leaned towards him, brushed her lips across his. His arms wrapped around her, and pulled her into his lap. He kissed her back with hunger that surprised him.

“Does my heart tell you how much I want you?” he said, his voice low and husky.

“Of course,” Her eyes had gone from housewifely to wanton, but  amusement touched her lips. “Why do you think I made the bed?”

His fingers found the tie to her wrap skirt. “Will it always be like this?”  He pulled the garment loose from her body.

He found her mouth again, and trailed a hungry line down her throat, even as she began to unfasten his suikan.  “What does your heart tell you?”

InuYasha lifted her out of his lap and laid her on the futon. “That I will never ever have enough.”

Kagome watched him as he stood up and pulled off his clothes.  She finished pulling off her own, then slipped under the covers.

“Mine says the same thing,” she said.

He slipped in next to her, pulling her tightly to him.  “Let’s see if those hearts of ours are telling the truth.”