InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 320

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

Chapter 320

Under the watchful eye of the three kami, Haname and Tsuneo, followed by  Daitaro and Chime walked into the yard where Hiroki stood next to the stack of firewood.  Hiroki gave his relatives a polite bow.  “Ojisan, Obasan. Welcome to my little place of work.” He stood up.  “You are looking really well, Obasan.”

“Watch how Hiroki behaves,” Hitoshi told the others with him on the roof.  “Haname likes her nephew better than either of her children.  And he knows it.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Yoshio said, nodding.  “Chiya complains about him to Michio all the time.”

Down on the ground, her fondness for the young man was visible as she nodded at her nephew.  “So much better than yesterday.”  She looked around the grounds and what he had been doing. “It looks like you’ve been busy while I  was ill.”

The young man nodded. “Ojisan sent me here to chop wood and run errands.  There’s not been very many errands, so...” Hiroki gave his aunt a cheeky grin.  “It fills the time.”

Chime and Daitaro, moving a bit slower, finally caught up with the others.  Daitaro, with a grunt, took off his pack and rested it on the ground, and looked at the pile of cut wood, the scattering of wood chips on the ground and the lengths of wood waiting to be chopped with an appreciative eye. “I see someone’s been busy,” Daitaro said. “It didn’t look anything like this the last time I was here.”

“He has, indeed,” Tsuneo said. He nodded approvingly.  “Nobody can complain about my nephew being afraid of working.  That’s a good trait in a young person.”

“It is.  Seems to be missing in some young folks.” Daitaro rubbed the top of his shoulders where the pack had rested. “Hey, Hiroki-kun, let me know if you ever want to come work for me splitting wood.  I can always use a good hand around the place,” he said.

Hiroki chuckled, then bent down to pick up his splitting maul.  He walked over to lean it against the chopping block. “I’ll remember that, Daitaro-ojisan.  Do you pay in sake?” he asked.  “I might think about it for that.  Everybody knows how good your sake is.”

“Hmmm,” said the old farmer.  He lifted up his hat and rubbed the top of his head.  “Now that’s an interesting idea.  Wonder how many farm hands I could get if that’s how I paid them?”

Chime snickered and play-shoved her husband in the arm.  “But you’d have to make enough.  You barely make enough for yourself, old man.”

“I imagine I could handle that,” Daitaro said. “Nothing like quality sake.”

Chime laughed again.

Tsuneo rubbed his chin, as if he were considering it seriously. “I bet you could get more than a few, knowing the young men in this village,” he said.  “But I don’t know what shape they’d be in to work after you paid them.”

“You may be right.  Payment after the work is complete, no advance,” Daitaro said. “I know those sots.”

The women rolled their eyes at the men’s banter.  

Above their heads, on the roof of the building, the kami were amused by the discussion.

“Well,” Kazuo said.  “It looks like they’re all in pleasant moods.  Even Haname.”

“For the moment,” Hitoshi said.  “But when Chiya and Haname get together in the same space, they can be like water and oil.  They don’t mix together well.”

Yoshio turned to Hitoshi. “You said you had an idea?” He shook out the sleeves of his hitoe. “Let’s here it. I hope your ideas will work better than the ones I’ve tried on Michio.”

“Michio’s a hard case,” Kazuo said, nodding.

“Well, oil and water don’t mix together on their own,” Hitoshi said.  He pushed his rush hat further up on his forehead.  “But you can mix oil, water and flour well enough to make something out of it.  Like noodle dough.  Everybody loves noodles.  Maybe we can get something happening almost as pleasant.”

“I would say Chiya’s the oil in this case,” Kazuo said.  “She’s slippery and her actions keep floating up to gum up the works.”

“That sounds about right,” Yoshio said.  “And she smears herself all over the place.”

“So, who’s supposed to be the flour in this patch of dough?” Kazuo asked.  

“Why Chime-chan of course.” Hitoshi said.  “If we can get her in to talk with Chiya first, that’d be like adding oil and flour together.  It won’t be the solution to Chiya’s attitude, or totally protect her from the embarrassment and pain that her mother might hand her, but when the water Haname brings hits what Chime and Chiya had started, it could make a strong dough, able to handle the hot broth that Michio is cooking up.”

“Interesting idea,” Yoshio said.  “It can’t make things any worse.”

“You liked to cook when you were still human, didn’t you?” Kazuo said, scratching his head.

“I did indeed,” Hitoshi replied.  “However could you tell?”





Near the center of the village, Koume walked through her house.  It currently was empty, except for herself. Her daughter, who she had hoped had remembered to make lunch was elsewhere, but for the moment that wasn’t too much of a problem since her husband and Sukeo were not home, either.

“I wonder how many places Fumio had to drag that boy to this morning?” she asked aloud.  The sound echoed through the quiet building.

It was a nice house, as homes in the village went.  It had three rooms,  which some of the villagers thought of as the sign of a rich man.  To the right was the room she shared with her husband, and to the left, a room which was originally for the eldest son, but currently slept her daughter Nahoi.  Fumio had been adamant about giving her her own space after they had to bring her home and help her heal when her former husband had beaten her almost to the point of death. The main room was big, able to seat nearly as many people as Hisa’s, but part of it was full of the usual supplies, barrels and chests to one wall,  a spinning wheel, but no loom.  Neat mats were placed around the fire pit.  The wooden floor echoed a little as she walked.  She looked at the space thoughtfully.  “I believe we could do it. There would be plenty of room for it. At least for a day or two.”

Nodding her head, she stepped outside, past the shed she used for her dyeing work, with its pots and smells and drying racks filled with brightly colored threads and past her husband’s currently quiet smithy to a small shed in the back, where she could hear the clicking of a loom as she grew nearer.  The door to the building was open, both because it was a pleasant day and because of the extra light that streamed in.  

Her daughter Nahoi was busy sitting at the loom, weaving a plaid fabric, a cream-colored ground with stripes of red and grey.  For a moment, the weaver stopped what she was doing to change shuttles, and then the clacking of the heddles and the beater recommenced.

Koume watched her at work for a few minutes.  Nahoi was a skilled and practiced weaver, and the shuttle passed and the thread was beaten down with a grace that was almost a dance. Her daughter was dressed drably in a plain blue kosode with her sleeves tied back and a light blue scarf around her head, a contrast to the beauty she regularly produced. Koume looked around the room.  There was a small stack of fabric lengths, and lengths of thread wound on their bobbins all neatly on shelves in the room.  The tools for working the loom and measuring the threads were neatly in their places.  Few other women in the village had a weaving space so well provided for.  Some of it was Fumio’s doing; with the smithy, he knew how important being able to get one’s supplies organized was, and he saw no reason why weavers shouldn’t be given the same consideration.  Beyond that, it was perhaps their giving their wounded and damaged daughter something to make up for what life had taken from her – after what had happened to her, weaving was the only thing that kept away the nightmares and gave her some security.

Thinking about the past made Koume sad, and she shook her head to clear out the dark thoughts.  Besides, she hadn’t come out to the weaving shed just to watch Nahoi work.  She had a plan.

“Nahoi-chan, reach a stopping point,” Koume said.

The younger woman took her hand off the beater and turned around. She frowned a moment, but then smiled.  “Haha-ue, I didn’t hear you come in.”

Koume smiled at her daughter.  “That’s all right.  I know how you get when you’re weaving.  Just reach a stopping point.  I have an idea, and want to ask you about it.”

“Let me get this stripe woven in.  I’m afraid I’ll lose count of the pattern.” Nahoi shifted the heddles with her feet.  “It’ll only take a moment.”

“That’s fine,” Koume said, nodding.  “Then you and I will go visit your sister.  I want her opinion, too.”

The loom began its clicking as Nahoi went back to work.  



Up on the hill, a bemused hanyou stood in the doorway of his house.

InuYasha wasn’t sure if he was really ready to leave Kagome alone, but at the same time he knew Kagome was right.  He needed to get out of the house, and do something.  Anything.  Taking one last look at the Kagome and Rin.  Already the girl had pulled something she was sewing out of her basket to show to his wife.

In their minds, they had already left him behind as their talk turned to needles and threads and sewing stitches. “Woman things,” he muttered under his breath.  There was no room for him there in that private space they shared.  His time with his mother and her ladies had taught him all he needed to know about that side of life.

He stepped out of his house, and as the doormat rattled behind him, Rin giggled at something Kagome said.

“If there are woman things, well, there are men things, too,” he muttered.  He looked at his wood pile longingly.  That was a man thing he liked to do, but he didn’t want the noise to disturb Kagome.  She may have said she felt better, but her scent had still been off, and he expected she still hurt more than she wanted to let on.

“So what am I supposed to do?” he asked.  

To start with, he patrolled the area around his house and grounds.  There was the wood pile area, with its branches and lengths waiting to be chopped.  Some small creatures were using it as a haven at times; he could smell their scent markings, but it wasn’t many and a mouse or a chipmunk wasn’t going to bother anything.

The garden was starting to grow, but he didn’t know anything about gardening except tasty things came out of it.  So far the local deer and rabbits were staying away.  He didn’t know if it was his own scent keeping them off or the fact he had hunted enough in the general area that they associated his house with danger.  But it was all to the good as far as he was concerned.

Choujiro’s pile of boards was growing.  It wouldn’t be long before he started building the shed.

InuYasha leaped into a tree on the border of the clearing, looked and took in the scents.  There was nothing near that could be a threat.  The only other youkai that lived anywhere near here was an old tanuki who knew well enough to skirt the hanyou and the village and lived a peaceable life on the other side of the village boundary.  There was no sign of bandits trying to sneak in over the top of the ridge, where the land was flat and easy to cross.  Everything was as it should be.  Kagome was safe.  He could  head away from the house in peace.

With a sigh, he leapt down from the tree and  began to move not down the usual trail to the bottom of the hill, but the cross country one that led to the back pasture of Daitaro’s land.  It was a good way to get down the hill without accidentally bumping into Miroku or any of the village folk who had been coming up to check on Maeme.  The one thing he didn’t want right now was to bump into the wrong people. He just wasn’t sure  he’d say or do the right thing.