InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mating Season ❯ New Challenges ( Chapter 68 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: SplendentGoddess 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 11.15.2006 | Updated On: 08.12.2008 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 10.2K | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai / Drama / Adventure | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 11.15.2006 | Updated On: 08.12.2008 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 10.2K | Status: Completed
Blanket Disclaimer:
Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.
========================
Chapter 68 - New Challenges
Everything was a learning experience for the first few days, as Kagome and Inuyasha took turns with everything but feeding, considering Kagome was doing that the natural way. But Inuyasha said he wished to be a good husband in the way she had grown up thinking a good husband would be, as opposed to the men of his area, knowing how much his wife had sacrificed to live in that time period with him, and so as a result, he offered (almost) no protests to helping with things like diapers, burping, bathing…
“Ow!”
~Puppy Yelp~
“Inuyasha!” Kagome scolded. “Do not pull Kazuki’s ear!”
“He pulled mine first! Whelp has to learn!”
Soothing her crying infant, she glared at her mate, but with the way his ears lowered in guilt, Kagome found herself stifling a chuckle, reminding herself that her husband, as well as her son, were in fact both half dog.
Dog ‘demon’ she corrected mentally, in a teasing mockery of Inuyasha’s voice, as whenever she’d dared to voice such things out loud, as far as him being half inu, adding the ‘youkai’ tag at the end had quickly become his catch phrase.
Deciding then to let the ear incident go, as she gently rubbed the abused appendage atop her son’s head, she hummed herself a happy song, as she prepared lunch.
Generally speaking, Kazuki was an exceptional child, never fussy, and always relatively easy to calm down during the few times that he was upset. But that changed, however, one fairly chilly evening, when the pup began wailing at the top of his lungs.
“What’s the matter with him?!” Kagome cried frantically, as she attempted to soothe the baby who would simply not stop crying.
My gods…she panicked as she rocked him, Please don’t let him have colic.
Inuyasha was no better, yipping and barking at his son, which had always seemed to work up until now. He couldn’t for the life of him get the boy to respond back in inu whatsoever, he just kept on crying and crying in the human fashion…until realization fell upon Inuyasha like a ton of bricks.
The most recent new moon had already come and gone, and it was the first one Inuyasha had ever experienced in his hanyou form. So overwhelmed was he in the notion that he would never again be faced with his previous weakness, that he had completely forgotten that his son would also share such a time.
“Shippo!” he called, “Get out here!”
The kitsune, who up until that point had been busily stuffing his pillows into his ears, burst out of his room at the call of his name.
“Yes Otousan?” he asked loudly over his brother’s cries.
“This is gonna be a long, miserable night…” Inuyasha breathed, his exasperation and aggravation clear, as he rubbed his palm down across his face, suddenly growing a new sympathy toward his mother. Flattening his ears as far down into his hair as they’d go, he told Shippo “I know your ears gotta be even more sensitive than mine, so if you want to, you can stay the night at Sango’s.”
“It’s his human night, isn’t it?” the kitsune asked understandingly, as Kagome walked off towards their master bedroom, hoping to keep the noise down for the others, at least a little bit. She too had realized what was troubling their son, and while sympathizing, she honestly had no idea how to soothe the child.
“Yeah…” Inuyasha nodded, gazing towards the setting sun via their western facing window, “It is.”
“I’ll stay.”
“You sure?”
Shrugging, Shippo answered “You whined like a baby during your human nights, and I always stayed, didn’t I?”
“Why you little…!”
“Ahhhhhhh!!!”
“An d the chase is on.” Kagome mused quietly to herself, still cradling her wailing infant. A few cries of “Kagome, help!” could be heard from somewhere outside, and she just laughed. She hadn’t sat Inuyasha once for tormenting Shippo since they had become mates; you’d think the child would have learned by now…she had to take Inuyasha’s side. Then again, that was before Shippo became her son… “Sit…” she mumbled quietly to herself, knowing the spell would not activate without the joined second word. “…Nah…” she decided aloud, shaking her head. Shippo was Inuyasha’s son too, after all, and she knew better than to interfere with a father disciplining his son.
A few minutes later, just before the sun slipped itself completely from sight, two exhausted males trudged their way back indoors.
“You two have fun?” she asked sarcastically, spotting the bumps lining Shippo’s head, and the small bite marks across Inuyasha’s arms.
“Feh.” her mate answered, shrugging, “Figured if he got tired enough, he might sleep through it.” he answered, gesturing towards Shippo, who proceeded to stick his tongue out at him. Inuyasha snapped his jaws in his direction then, silently threatening that if he didn’t learn to control that tongue of his, he’d bite it clear off. Shippo promptly shut his mouth at that.
“What about you?” Kagome asked accusingly, “I don’t want you falling asleep on me, I need your help.” All of this was said over the screaming cries of panic coming from their youngest son.
“Takes more than that to wear me out.” Her mate answered suggestively, wagging his eyebrows in a fashion that Kagome could not help but to find amusing. He always did manage to make her laugh, even during the most trying of times.
The sun disappeared, and in an instant, Kazuki’s cries got louder, if you could even fathom. He had absolutely no idea what was happening to him, and his parents had absolutely no way of explaining it to him. All at once his silver locks darkened to midnight black, his majestic eyes, reddened and puffy from so many tears, darkening their hue to match his mother. Not yet having teeth spared him from the sensation of having his fangs recede within his gum line, and with his infant claws already a little on the small side, that particular change more or less went unnoticed, as well. No, Inuyasha cringed, he knew the worst sensation, by far, was that of having his ears morph and shift, crawling down the sides of his head, like a parasite just under the skin. It wasn’t necessarily ‘painful’ per se, but definitely disturbing. It was the sort of thing you could eventually get used to, once you understood it, but for the two-week-old, all he understood was that there was an extremely uncomfortable sensation happening within his body, and he wanted it to stop.
Once the transformation was complete his cries did not cease, however, not that Inuyasha had suspected they would. Kagome was trying her absolute best to soothe the infant, but Inuyasha assured her that all she could do was simply be there for him. He had lost his youkai senses along with his youkai appearance, and now, in the darkness of the expanding night, little Kazuki had likely feared he’d gone blind. The rising full moon did offer some minuscule light through the windows, by which a normal human could likely stumble through finding their lamp, but with Inuyasha’s enhanced eyesight still intact, he instantly went straight for the device. A quick spark from Shippo ignited the candle’s wick, and before long, Inuyasha had several lamps and candles lit throughout the entire hut, commenting that the darkness was sure to only frighten the baby further.
“See? Aren’t you glad I stayed?” Shippo asked sarcastically, but deciding to let it go, Inuyasha offered him a sincere smile and nod in answer.
Kagome had a giant horde of matchsticks, more than enough to last them well into the next century, but they were also sealed away in plastic containers, to protect against moisture. Not a problem when you wish to casually retrieve one at your leisure for starting a cooking fire, but when you needed a blaze at moment’s notice, having a fire-youkai in the family certainly came in handy.
Aside from sight, even more important than hearing, was smell. Kazuki had lost his inu sense of smell, and on an instinctive level, he had trouble understanding that his parents were still right there with him, because he couldn’t smell them. To an inu pup, scent was everything. If he could smell his parents near by, he knew he was safe, but if he could not smell his parents, then that meant danger. Though Kagome was fairly decent at sniffing out emotions those days, the strongest one coming from Kazuki had struck her as unfamiliar. She cringed when Inuyasha reluctantly told her it was “abandonment”. It’d get easier with time, he assured his mate, recalling times his mother had told him of himself, as a small boy. Of the troubles he had been for her during his first few transformations, before he grew in his infancy. She had recalled the tales to him with a chuckle in her voice, often telling him the memories like stories, during yet another new moon, when he was finally old enough to understand. Hearing how much of a fuss he had made when he was even younger still, had made young Inuyasha want to be brave and tough for his mother, like the strong youkai he was. He had also felt bad that he had cried for so long, not understanding what was happening, and had promised his mother that he would not cry, as she rubbed his human ears, telling him to always remember that it was only for one night, and that she would be right there with him, and that everything would be all right again in the morning.
He shook his head free from the sudden wave of sadness that he felt sneak up on him, at the reminder that his mother was in fact not always there for him during his nights of weakness. But he had always remembered her words, and kept her memory safely in his heart, and even though she was no longer with him, she had still helped him, still helped him to be brave, and to understand that in the morning, everything would be all right again.
He assured Kagome then, that hopefully in only a month or two, once Kazuki learned to invest more trust in his vision and hearing, he would come to recognize his parents’ appearances, and voices, like a human infant did, like he had eventually learned. Then, during the nights of the full moon, while still upset and thoroughly confused, he would at least recognize that his parents were still with him, unlike tonight.
After two or three hours, Kagome was surprised Kazuki still had his voice, as his cries - though they had finally softened a little - did not cease. It was around what they guessed to be one or two in the morning when the infant finally cried himself to sleep, softly whining in his unconsciousness, as he was clearly disturbed even in his dreams. Watching breathlessly as Kagome placed his sleeping body down within the bassinet, Inuyasha stared in wonder at how she’d managed such a task without disturbing the slumbering youth. Logic dictated that the boy was simply too exhausted by that point to rouse, his body also naturally feeling a general lose of energy, at losing the strength of his youkai blood. As soon as their son was old enough, Inuyasha vowed to explain to him the traits of his youkai half, and what it meant to be hanyou, but for the first year or two, he grimaced, realizing that they had nights like that one to look forward to.
Coming up behind Kagome, he wrapped his arms around her lovingly, pulling her into him until she relaxed in his hold, allowing her body to fall backward fully into his protective embrace. Swooping her up, Inuyasha gently carried her to bed, whispering at a level too soft for their temporarily human child to hear, that they’d better all take advantage of what few hours of sleep were allotted to them. Kazuki would undoubtedly be waking just before dawn, as the foreign sensations he’d just experienced reversed themselves, returning his body to normal. Shippo took up his old sleeping position for the night, falling into slumber quickly, as Kagome wrapped her arms around him, Inuyasha’s arms wrapped securely around her in turn. Offering one last glance at the raven-haired infant that rested wearily not four feet away, Kagome smiled, and snuggled into the comfort of her family.
`````````````````````````````````````
As days turned into weeks, little Kazuki was quickly becoming not so little. At only six weeks he matched the appearance of a human infant of around three months. It wouldn’t be long at all, Inuyasha warned, before he’d be up and about, crawling throughout the hut. He’d possessed the ability to squirm and roll over from day one - inu thing, Inuyasha had shrugged - but being half-human had put limitations on his earliest achievements.
Kagome was never so thankful that she’d taken the time to learn the inu language, as her pup naturally possessed the instinctive tongue, and now, as a result, she could communicate with her baby several months in advance, to a point. At first, whenever he was upset, he always seemed to cry like a human infant, initially, but when she yipped at him in inu the equivalent to “pup be calm” he would start to intermingle whimpering in with his cries, and eventually yip back an explanation of whatever it was that was bothering him. Kagome learned to instantly differentiate between his “hungry” whine or “tummy hurts” whimper. The difference between “too hot” and “too cold” took a couple of weeks to figure out, but now she’d gotten it. The easiest to figure out was his “I want attention!” yips, which were, by far, his most common. Inu were social creatures, after all. After only a few weeks, he pretty much only used his human cry to first alert his parents to the fact that something was wrong, and then they would quickly bark in question “What’s the matter?” to which he would answer them. It was the best damn infant/parent relationship Kagome could have ever hoped for.
By the time the second night of the full moon rolled around, they managed to calm him…a little…during the earlier part of the evening, when he felt his powers fading and didn’t know why. He constantly yelped that he didn’t feel right, and they constantly barked in return that he was fine, and that mom and dad were right there, and that he was safe. It was all they could do. As Inuyasha had explained to Kagome before, the inu tongue was not a complex language with distinctive words, and although they could communicate with their son to a point, they could not yet explain to him what was happening. All they could do was attempt to reassure him that he was safe when he whined that something was bothering him. As soon as the sun slipped out of sight, he screamed more dramatically than he ever had the first time, partially due to the simple fact that his lungs were stronger, but also because while he had merely been confused the first time, he now recalled what was happening to him, and knew that he didn’t like it. The difference was comparable to taking a small child to get their first ever vaccination shot, and then taking them back later to get the second one. Until his canine voice left him, he was shouting the equivalent to “Make it stop!” and Kagome wanted to cry. It wouldn’t be until after he had learned the human tongue that she could explain to him fully…truly offer her comfort to him…but at least he already seemed to recognize his mother’s face, as Inuyasha clearly stated he did not detect the ‘abandonment’ fear in him that time around. That was a very specific type of fear, Kagome had learned. It was imbedded into the subconscious of all koinu, and poor little Kazuki had reeked of it four weeks prior. But not on that night, and at least for that, Kagome was grateful.
It had absolutely broken her heart last month, when her baby had thought that they’d left him all alone. Now, at least, instead of crying for mommy, he was crying for mommy to make it go away. She rocked him, and sung to him, and did everything and anything she could think of, until eventually, just like last time, he cried himself to sleep. Dawn came as a surprise, though, when he did not wail at the top of his lungs, but merely whimpered and whined his physical discomfort. Apparently, he already remembered that morning light meant he’d feel normal again, and while still complaining about the sensations running through him during his change, he was not scared of what was happening, but rather, seemed to merely wish to get it over with. Inuyasha explained that his mother had told him that he’d also behaved in the same way, his youkai instincts giving him, even in infancy, a higher comprehension rate than that of a mortal whelp. As soon as Kazuki returned to normal, canine ears swiveling upon a downy head of silver waves, giggles of happiness escaped him.
Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.
========================
Chapter 68 - New Challenges
Everything was a learning experience for the first few days, as Kagome and Inuyasha took turns with everything but feeding, considering Kagome was doing that the natural way. But Inuyasha said he wished to be a good husband in the way she had grown up thinking a good husband would be, as opposed to the men of his area, knowing how much his wife had sacrificed to live in that time period with him, and so as a result, he offered (almost) no protests to helping with things like diapers, burping, bathing…
“Ow!”
~Puppy Yelp~
“Inuyasha!” Kagome scolded. “Do not pull Kazuki’s ear!”
“He pulled mine first! Whelp has to learn!”
Soothing her crying infant, she glared at her mate, but with the way his ears lowered in guilt, Kagome found herself stifling a chuckle, reminding herself that her husband, as well as her son, were in fact both half dog.
Dog ‘demon’ she corrected mentally, in a teasing mockery of Inuyasha’s voice, as whenever she’d dared to voice such things out loud, as far as him being half inu, adding the ‘youkai’ tag at the end had quickly become his catch phrase.
Deciding then to let the ear incident go, as she gently rubbed the abused appendage atop her son’s head, she hummed herself a happy song, as she prepared lunch.
Generally speaking, Kazuki was an exceptional child, never fussy, and always relatively easy to calm down during the few times that he was upset. But that changed, however, one fairly chilly evening, when the pup began wailing at the top of his lungs.
“What’s the matter with him?!” Kagome cried frantically, as she attempted to soothe the baby who would simply not stop crying.
My gods…she panicked as she rocked him, Please don’t let him have colic.
Inuyasha was no better, yipping and barking at his son, which had always seemed to work up until now. He couldn’t for the life of him get the boy to respond back in inu whatsoever, he just kept on crying and crying in the human fashion…until realization fell upon Inuyasha like a ton of bricks.
The most recent new moon had already come and gone, and it was the first one Inuyasha had ever experienced in his hanyou form. So overwhelmed was he in the notion that he would never again be faced with his previous weakness, that he had completely forgotten that his son would also share such a time.
“Shippo!” he called, “Get out here!”
The kitsune, who up until that point had been busily stuffing his pillows into his ears, burst out of his room at the call of his name.
“Yes Otousan?” he asked loudly over his brother’s cries.
“This is gonna be a long, miserable night…” Inuyasha breathed, his exasperation and aggravation clear, as he rubbed his palm down across his face, suddenly growing a new sympathy toward his mother. Flattening his ears as far down into his hair as they’d go, he told Shippo “I know your ears gotta be even more sensitive than mine, so if you want to, you can stay the night at Sango’s.”
“It’s his human night, isn’t it?” the kitsune asked understandingly, as Kagome walked off towards their master bedroom, hoping to keep the noise down for the others, at least a little bit. She too had realized what was troubling their son, and while sympathizing, she honestly had no idea how to soothe the child.
“Yeah…” Inuyasha nodded, gazing towards the setting sun via their western facing window, “It is.”
“I’ll stay.”
“You sure?”
Shrugging, Shippo answered “You whined like a baby during your human nights, and I always stayed, didn’t I?”
“Why you little…!”
“Ahhhhhhh!!!”
“An d the chase is on.” Kagome mused quietly to herself, still cradling her wailing infant. A few cries of “Kagome, help!” could be heard from somewhere outside, and she just laughed. She hadn’t sat Inuyasha once for tormenting Shippo since they had become mates; you’d think the child would have learned by now…she had to take Inuyasha’s side. Then again, that was before Shippo became her son… “Sit…” she mumbled quietly to herself, knowing the spell would not activate without the joined second word. “…Nah…” she decided aloud, shaking her head. Shippo was Inuyasha’s son too, after all, and she knew better than to interfere with a father disciplining his son.
A few minutes later, just before the sun slipped itself completely from sight, two exhausted males trudged their way back indoors.
“You two have fun?” she asked sarcastically, spotting the bumps lining Shippo’s head, and the small bite marks across Inuyasha’s arms.
“Feh.” her mate answered, shrugging, “Figured if he got tired enough, he might sleep through it.” he answered, gesturing towards Shippo, who proceeded to stick his tongue out at him. Inuyasha snapped his jaws in his direction then, silently threatening that if he didn’t learn to control that tongue of his, he’d bite it clear off. Shippo promptly shut his mouth at that.
“What about you?” Kagome asked accusingly, “I don’t want you falling asleep on me, I need your help.” All of this was said over the screaming cries of panic coming from their youngest son.
“Takes more than that to wear me out.” Her mate answered suggestively, wagging his eyebrows in a fashion that Kagome could not help but to find amusing. He always did manage to make her laugh, even during the most trying of times.
The sun disappeared, and in an instant, Kazuki’s cries got louder, if you could even fathom. He had absolutely no idea what was happening to him, and his parents had absolutely no way of explaining it to him. All at once his silver locks darkened to midnight black, his majestic eyes, reddened and puffy from so many tears, darkening their hue to match his mother. Not yet having teeth spared him from the sensation of having his fangs recede within his gum line, and with his infant claws already a little on the small side, that particular change more or less went unnoticed, as well. No, Inuyasha cringed, he knew the worst sensation, by far, was that of having his ears morph and shift, crawling down the sides of his head, like a parasite just under the skin. It wasn’t necessarily ‘painful’ per se, but definitely disturbing. It was the sort of thing you could eventually get used to, once you understood it, but for the two-week-old, all he understood was that there was an extremely uncomfortable sensation happening within his body, and he wanted it to stop.
Once the transformation was complete his cries did not cease, however, not that Inuyasha had suspected they would. Kagome was trying her absolute best to soothe the infant, but Inuyasha assured her that all she could do was simply be there for him. He had lost his youkai senses along with his youkai appearance, and now, in the darkness of the expanding night, little Kazuki had likely feared he’d gone blind. The rising full moon did offer some minuscule light through the windows, by which a normal human could likely stumble through finding their lamp, but with Inuyasha’s enhanced eyesight still intact, he instantly went straight for the device. A quick spark from Shippo ignited the candle’s wick, and before long, Inuyasha had several lamps and candles lit throughout the entire hut, commenting that the darkness was sure to only frighten the baby further.
“See? Aren’t you glad I stayed?” Shippo asked sarcastically, but deciding to let it go, Inuyasha offered him a sincere smile and nod in answer.
Kagome had a giant horde of matchsticks, more than enough to last them well into the next century, but they were also sealed away in plastic containers, to protect against moisture. Not a problem when you wish to casually retrieve one at your leisure for starting a cooking fire, but when you needed a blaze at moment’s notice, having a fire-youkai in the family certainly came in handy.
Aside from sight, even more important than hearing, was smell. Kazuki had lost his inu sense of smell, and on an instinctive level, he had trouble understanding that his parents were still right there with him, because he couldn’t smell them. To an inu pup, scent was everything. If he could smell his parents near by, he knew he was safe, but if he could not smell his parents, then that meant danger. Though Kagome was fairly decent at sniffing out emotions those days, the strongest one coming from Kazuki had struck her as unfamiliar. She cringed when Inuyasha reluctantly told her it was “abandonment”. It’d get easier with time, he assured his mate, recalling times his mother had told him of himself, as a small boy. Of the troubles he had been for her during his first few transformations, before he grew in his infancy. She had recalled the tales to him with a chuckle in her voice, often telling him the memories like stories, during yet another new moon, when he was finally old enough to understand. Hearing how much of a fuss he had made when he was even younger still, had made young Inuyasha want to be brave and tough for his mother, like the strong youkai he was. He had also felt bad that he had cried for so long, not understanding what was happening, and had promised his mother that he would not cry, as she rubbed his human ears, telling him to always remember that it was only for one night, and that she would be right there with him, and that everything would be all right again in the morning.
He shook his head free from the sudden wave of sadness that he felt sneak up on him, at the reminder that his mother was in fact not always there for him during his nights of weakness. But he had always remembered her words, and kept her memory safely in his heart, and even though she was no longer with him, she had still helped him, still helped him to be brave, and to understand that in the morning, everything would be all right again.
He assured Kagome then, that hopefully in only a month or two, once Kazuki learned to invest more trust in his vision and hearing, he would come to recognize his parents’ appearances, and voices, like a human infant did, like he had eventually learned. Then, during the nights of the full moon, while still upset and thoroughly confused, he would at least recognize that his parents were still with him, unlike tonight.
After two or three hours, Kagome was surprised Kazuki still had his voice, as his cries - though they had finally softened a little - did not cease. It was around what they guessed to be one or two in the morning when the infant finally cried himself to sleep, softly whining in his unconsciousness, as he was clearly disturbed even in his dreams. Watching breathlessly as Kagome placed his sleeping body down within the bassinet, Inuyasha stared in wonder at how she’d managed such a task without disturbing the slumbering youth. Logic dictated that the boy was simply too exhausted by that point to rouse, his body also naturally feeling a general lose of energy, at losing the strength of his youkai blood. As soon as their son was old enough, Inuyasha vowed to explain to him the traits of his youkai half, and what it meant to be hanyou, but for the first year or two, he grimaced, realizing that they had nights like that one to look forward to.
Coming up behind Kagome, he wrapped his arms around her lovingly, pulling her into him until she relaxed in his hold, allowing her body to fall backward fully into his protective embrace. Swooping her up, Inuyasha gently carried her to bed, whispering at a level too soft for their temporarily human child to hear, that they’d better all take advantage of what few hours of sleep were allotted to them. Kazuki would undoubtedly be waking just before dawn, as the foreign sensations he’d just experienced reversed themselves, returning his body to normal. Shippo took up his old sleeping position for the night, falling into slumber quickly, as Kagome wrapped her arms around him, Inuyasha’s arms wrapped securely around her in turn. Offering one last glance at the raven-haired infant that rested wearily not four feet away, Kagome smiled, and snuggled into the comfort of her family.
`````````````````````````````````````
As days turned into weeks, little Kazuki was quickly becoming not so little. At only six weeks he matched the appearance of a human infant of around three months. It wouldn’t be long at all, Inuyasha warned, before he’d be up and about, crawling throughout the hut. He’d possessed the ability to squirm and roll over from day one - inu thing, Inuyasha had shrugged - but being half-human had put limitations on his earliest achievements.
Kagome was never so thankful that she’d taken the time to learn the inu language, as her pup naturally possessed the instinctive tongue, and now, as a result, she could communicate with her baby several months in advance, to a point. At first, whenever he was upset, he always seemed to cry like a human infant, initially, but when she yipped at him in inu the equivalent to “pup be calm” he would start to intermingle whimpering in with his cries, and eventually yip back an explanation of whatever it was that was bothering him. Kagome learned to instantly differentiate between his “hungry” whine or “tummy hurts” whimper. The difference between “too hot” and “too cold” took a couple of weeks to figure out, but now she’d gotten it. The easiest to figure out was his “I want attention!” yips, which were, by far, his most common. Inu were social creatures, after all. After only a few weeks, he pretty much only used his human cry to first alert his parents to the fact that something was wrong, and then they would quickly bark in question “What’s the matter?” to which he would answer them. It was the best damn infant/parent relationship Kagome could have ever hoped for.
By the time the second night of the full moon rolled around, they managed to calm him…a little…during the earlier part of the evening, when he felt his powers fading and didn’t know why. He constantly yelped that he didn’t feel right, and they constantly barked in return that he was fine, and that mom and dad were right there, and that he was safe. It was all they could do. As Inuyasha had explained to Kagome before, the inu tongue was not a complex language with distinctive words, and although they could communicate with their son to a point, they could not yet explain to him what was happening. All they could do was attempt to reassure him that he was safe when he whined that something was bothering him. As soon as the sun slipped out of sight, he screamed more dramatically than he ever had the first time, partially due to the simple fact that his lungs were stronger, but also because while he had merely been confused the first time, he now recalled what was happening to him, and knew that he didn’t like it. The difference was comparable to taking a small child to get their first ever vaccination shot, and then taking them back later to get the second one. Until his canine voice left him, he was shouting the equivalent to “Make it stop!” and Kagome wanted to cry. It wouldn’t be until after he had learned the human tongue that she could explain to him fully…truly offer her comfort to him…but at least he already seemed to recognize his mother’s face, as Inuyasha clearly stated he did not detect the ‘abandonment’ fear in him that time around. That was a very specific type of fear, Kagome had learned. It was imbedded into the subconscious of all koinu, and poor little Kazuki had reeked of it four weeks prior. But not on that night, and at least for that, Kagome was grateful.
It had absolutely broken her heart last month, when her baby had thought that they’d left him all alone. Now, at least, instead of crying for mommy, he was crying for mommy to make it go away. She rocked him, and sung to him, and did everything and anything she could think of, until eventually, just like last time, he cried himself to sleep. Dawn came as a surprise, though, when he did not wail at the top of his lungs, but merely whimpered and whined his physical discomfort. Apparently, he already remembered that morning light meant he’d feel normal again, and while still complaining about the sensations running through him during his change, he was not scared of what was happening, but rather, seemed to merely wish to get it over with. Inuyasha explained that his mother had told him that he’d also behaved in the same way, his youkai instincts giving him, even in infancy, a higher comprehension rate than that of a mortal whelp. As soon as Kazuki returned to normal, canine ears swiveling upon a downy head of silver waves, giggles of happiness escaped him.