Memoria by LeiTung

Prologue - The Discovery

Disclaimer -- InuYasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

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However disputed, it had become a fact that travelling with demons had heightened her senses. They were, by no means, supernatural, but the difference was significant.

It was how she could smell the blood. Years later, she would still be able to remember the scene.

She was wandering through the forest surrounding Sesshômaru-sama's fortress, when the smell slammed into her nostrils.

The sickly-sweet scent of rot, of blood-- human blood-- clogged her senses. Tears sprang into her eyes as she located the source.

Rin remembered crying and fleeing the scene. Her memory went hazy at this point, but others said that she had ran screaming through the halls for Lord Sesshômaru. He followed her, dispassionately as ever, to the body. Rin clung to his thigh, pleading for him to do something, anything to rid her of the pain she felt in her heart at the sight.

He had hesitated. She could recall that as well.

Eventually, he slid the Tenseiga from its scabbard and sliced at the invisible Hell-Sent fiends. But the girl did not wake up from death. Sesshômaru-sama had murmured that she was breathing, that her heart was beating. But she did not wake up. His face had been a mask of ice as he lifted her from the ground into a fireman's carry.

Rin followed at his heels, silent in her tears. When they had arrived, Jaken burst into questions and exclamations. Their Lord ignored him. The demon found an empty room and laid his new charge on the bed. He ignored the blood pooling onto the sheets.

He stared at the woman-child's face, emotionless, calculating. Rin scuttled to his side. Her expression was expectant. His expressed changed to a glare of distaste. "The esteemed miko, Higurashi Kagome."