The happy, relaxed conversation of my traveling companions washed over me like warm sunlight. But even as I joined in their easy banter, the day seemed slightly surreal. I wasn't able to focus on my friends, instead my mind kept wandering back to Sesshomaru. To this morning, when I woke up in his arms.

It was warm there, wrapped up in him. I was the most relaxed I had been in months. It was if when he curled his body around mine to shelter me from the cold, he had also shielded me from the hundred constant worries that vexed me.

I wondered at that, as I watched him sleep next to me. I began to really think about what had happened between us. I suppose that's why I didn't wake him. I wasn't sure what would happen... how would the demon react to me in the light of day? And he looked so peaceful there, sleeping. I had pressed a soft kiss to his forehead before I left, then slipped out of his embrace and into my clothes, to steal back to our camp.

They noticed the fact that I had been gone of course, but it wasn't the first time I'd gone mysteriously missing overnight. Shippo and Inu-Yasha made some sly comments, Sango and Kagome gave me nearly identical looks of mistrust and exasperation. My absence was all but forgotten by midday.

In fact, their relatively calm acceptance of my activities bothered me slightly. Perhaps it was because I hadn't quite gotten used to the thought that I had spent the night tumbling Inu-Yasha's evil brother. Perhaps it was because they honestly didn't worry about me. They knew I would be alright on my own.

It had been very quiet lately. Few battles to speak of, no near-death experiences for any of the gang. We had only collected one Shikon shard in the last month, and we hadn't seen Naraku in longer than that. It was eerie. I had the slight, niggling certainty that something was brewing, that this was, to be completely cliché, the calm before one hell of a storm.

My hand was aching. How strange is that? Right in the center of my hand, the spot of absolute nothing that was my birthright. Was it some kind of bizarre phantom pain, a physical manifestation of my fear? Was it a symptom of it growing and becoming stronger? I rubbed it through the cloth that bound it's power, feeling the slight indent where the hellhole was located. It was noticeably larger than it had been only a few months ago. If Naraku didn't show himself, if we couldn't defeat him soon, I'd have to put some serious effort into having a child.

Which, of course, wouldn't happen by my late-night activities with a certain beautiful youkai lord. Not that I was obsessing about it or anything.

I was jarred out of my thoughts by the cold. And the mist, so thick that it breathing it was uncomfortably like breathing underwater.

I was alone. The realization hit me as I came to an abrupt stop. Somehow, I had gotten distracted enough to not realize that I had drifted away from the rest of the group. Or been lead away.

The fear seeped into me with the mist and the cold. Was that the humming of wasps I heard, or was it my imagination? I frantically searched what I could make out of my surroundings, fearing that my earlier suspicions were being proven correct, that we had gotten too comfortable, and that everything was about to come crashing down in some horrific battle of the ages.

I'm not sure how long I stumbled around in the fog, first trying to be silent, then after time had passed and no attack had come, giving up on that and screaming the names of my companions until my throat was raw. Time seemed to stretch and distort around me as I wandered aimlessly.

As much as I tried to stay vigilant, to wait out whatever was happening, eventually, I couldn't go any farther. I sunk down into the cold embrace of a tree's roots, exhausted and frustrated and dead sure that something evil was lurking just beyond my field of vision.