"I'm sorry, Shippo, I would if I could take you through the well."

"I guess Kaede would probably watch him for a few days."

He shrugs with performative indifference.

Oh. Right. Talking to people is her job. 

Mrrgh.

Well, she can at least pretend not to be dying inside about how late it is and how much she wants to go to bed and not deal with ANYTHING ELSE.

"C'mon, Shippo. Kaede's nice. But you have to be polite to her, or Inuyasha will have to watch you after all, okay?"

Is Kaede even awake, at this hour?

No.

At least, not until Inuyasha wanders over and says "HEY, OLD LADY, GET UP!"

That's sort of almost like trying to be helpful. She was probably also going to wake Kaede up. But, you know, quietly. Like a civilized person.

"Sorry for waking you," she'll say, and bow, when Kaede does appear. "Uh, we were wondering if you could watch our friend Shippo for a few days. His parents were killed by the last jewel shard demons we ran into."

GRUMP GRUMP GRUMP GRUMP GRUMP...

... He's a fox.

"Will you behave yourself?"

"I guess so."

"He saved our lives," she says quietly. (Also sort of endangered them, but she hasn't been keeping a count of that.)

She bends down and sticks some bandaids covered in smiley faces over the couple scrapes he has that haven't fully healed yet.

"Now, Shippo, we all know that you're smart enough to play all sorts of tricks on all of us. But if you want to be allowed to stay with Kaede, you have to be respectful and listen to her while I replace the stuff the Thunder Brothers destroyed. Can you do that until I get back?"

"As long as she doesn't deserve it."

"I'm sure we'll get on perfectly well," says Kaede drily.

(She is NOT, but, also, small child.)

"Great, problem solved."

She thanks Kaede again. And then she will stumble her way towards the well, jump down, get stuck at the bottom for several minutes, finally summon the strength to climb, stumble her way into her house -

" - hi, Ayako. I didn't think you were awake."

"I heard you rummaging through the fridge a few minutes ago."

Ayako consciously notes to herself that while, yes, there is bright purple bruising around her little sister's neck in the shape of what looks like a handprint, she does not appear to have any bites taken out of her. So, you know, it isn't necessarily worse than the first time she came back through the well, even if it's really unsettling.

"...do you need anything?"

"Yeah. But first I want to go to sleep, okay?"

"Of course. But in the morning I want to talk about the injuries, okay?"

"Okay," she mumbles, and then stumbles into her room and is out like a light.

September 30th, 1996 / Autumn 1548

Saved Inuyasha count: 1 + 1 (Hiten's wheel, though it was kind of my fault he was so strong in the first place)

Saved by Inuyasha count: 7 +1 (Manten)

I should write about what happened, but I don't want to.

Ayako scheduled a doctor's appointment for Thursday. I don't think there's anything seriously wrong with me, but I guess I have been racking up kind of a lot of injuries lately. I guess everything kind of hurts, but it's not so bad as long as I remember to keep taking pain meds for it. I hate to say it, but the heating pad that Hojo left with grandpa is actually kind of nice. The therapeutic sandals are totally useless, though. Tomorrow I'm gonna ask Ayako to show me how to wear makeup over all the bruising. I think everybody who asked about it bought the line that it was a rare side effect of juvenile arthritis, but the staring is getting really uncomfortable. School is hard enough to focus on when I don't have to worry that people think I'm being abused or something.

I could always give up and go be a medieval rice farmer. I'd only have to give up TV, modern medicine, hot baths, all processed food, and ever seeing my friends again. And video games. And most novels. And having multiple outfits. Also, the only person in the past who I'm pretty sure actually likes me instead of just tolerating me out of necessity is a flea who's mostly interested in me because I'm from the future, so he probably wouldn't like me anymore if I gave up.

I think for now I'll keep trying. I'm actually only a few days behind at school, it's only been two weeks since the well opened. It feels like longer.

October 1st, 1996

Saw a girl - maybe eight or nine - wandering around outside with no shoes on and a down winter coat, after school. She set off some fireworks that some kids were playing with, and almost burned them. I tried to go after her and tell her to apologize, but she acted surprised that I could see her at all. Then she started yelling, and disappeared into - I don't even know how to describe it. It was like everything around us was on fire, for a moment, and when the flames faded, she was gone, too. Eri and Yuka were there at the time, but they didn't see anything, like Inuyasha couldn't see Yura's hair. They said that I'd been talking to myself.

I've been wondering where all the demons in the future are. Maybe they're invisible to most people? But she didn't really look like a demon. She looked like a scared little human girl.

October 2nd, 1996

Grandpa says that Hiten's spear will be worth more with a story attached to it, so:

This spear was taken from the demon warrior Hiten in 1548. It's said that  Hiten was the elder of the so-called Thunder Brothers, who used it to shoot lightning at his enemies. 

In autumn of 1548, Hiten and his  Hiten's younger brother Manten kidnapped an associate of the half-demon warrior Inuyasha, a young miko associa  woman associated with Higurashi shrine, whose name has otherwise been lost to history. Manten intended to The girl convinced the brothers that they could trade her to Inuyasha in exchange for Inuyasha's shards of the Shikon jewel 

---

A spear that once belonged to the demon warrior Hiten. Hiten was the elder of the so-called Thunder Brothers, a pair of demons known for laying waste to whole armies and carrying off beautiful young women, who they were said to eat or to boil down into concoctions meant to keep  make the younger brother more handsome. The magic spear was said to shoot lightning at their enemies.

In Autumn of 1548, the brothers kidnapped an associate of the half demon warrior Inuyasha, who the brothers began collecting shards of the newly shattered Shikon Jewel, increasing their own power. The son of one of the slain demons, a kitsune named Shippo, tried to steal the shards of the half demon warrior Inuyasha, in order to gain the power to fight avenge fight the brothers and avenge his father. He momentarily sealed Inuyasha under a statue, and ran off with the jewel shards.

Inuyasha was traveling with a young woman associated with Higurashi shrine, whose name has otherwise been lost to history. This young woman set off to retrieve the jewel shards from the kitsune. Unfortunately, However, both of them  just as she caught up to the kitsune, Manten appeared and tried to take the jewel shards. The woman told the kitsune to run, so The kitsune got away, but the woman was carried off to be boiled into a beauty potion.

Shippo returned to Inuyasha and informed him that his associate was in danger, and they set off to kill the Thunder Brothers together. The kitsune used his trickery to get the woman away from Manten, and Inuyasha slew both brothers and took their jewel shards. During the fight, he snapped Hiten's spear in half with his own sword, Tetsusaiga.

After the battle, Inuyasha gifted the remains of Hiten's lightning spear to his associate, who carried them back to her shrine and passed them down through the Higurashi family.

(fix again after homework)

(She doesn't, actually, fix it again after her homework. She passes out over her textbooks around one in the morning.)

As dawn breaks, Inuyasha sits idly on a mountainside, and watches the soul piper play.

There's a village below the mountain, he notices; he'd had more important things in mind, really, when he landed in the middle of the warlord's baggage train, but there's wild dogs and foxes feeding in the village as well as among the tumbled wagons and broken-legged pack mules up the mountain trail where some of the bandits had tried to fight back, and it's in the village below that the children's spirits rise to the soul piper's tune. It's not bad music, really - kind of eerie? - but he's a demon, he's used to eerie. It's what he does. And as its notes wake the children for their final dance and sends the cries of the wounded into a faded background, Inuyasha just chills.

After all, he got what he wanted. Kagome's got a bow now!

It's an hour or so after that he jimmies her window open and climbs through. She up yet?

Nope, asleep at her desk with her head resting on an open textbook.

Aww.

... Looks more like Kikyo when she's asleep, really nah, he'll just leave this bow here and these arrows there and those coins here (the rattle of the coins on her desk is actually pretty loud) and pretty soon she and her magic book can get to work, right?

She does wake up at the coins, blinking groggily.

"What're - what? Did something happen?"

"Nah. I just thought I'd drop your new bow off so you could practice with it."