When she was a little girl, she had gotten lost.

It was on a normal day early in the growing season, and she was young and had been seduced by the promise of sweet smelling plants and chirping birds, of gentle streams and of crawling, living, breathing things. So she had dodged out from under her nursemaid's ever careful eyes, dropping her calligraphy in a fit of motion and hauling up the heavy silk of her skirts. She ran, her small feet thumping wildly against the wooden floors, her voice breaking into exhilarated laughter at her impending freedom.

In the forest outside of her home, there was beauty as far as her eyes could see – maples and cherry trees, bamboo, wildflowers too numerous to count – all of it felt as though it was special and made only for her. Izayoi dug her fingers into the earth until they were black and dirty, she ate berries and rolled into greenery and soaked it all in.

But as evening came, she realized she couldn't find her way home. She was frightened, hungry, listening to the howling of wild dogs in the distance and the cracks of nocturnal creatures who now woke up to feast. And still, somehow, she found light as it peeked through breaks in the trees, following it as though she was in a trance until she found a large tree to lay under, the ground beneath it carpeted in moss. There she slept until morning, safe and unbothered by the surrounding wildlife, and when morning came she realized that home was within a stone's throw. She walked out from the edge of the trees and returned to her normal life.

Her mother sobbed and gathered her into her arms, her father laughed with tears in his eyes, and her nursemaid reprimanded her until she was nearly hoarse. But Izayoi never quite forgot how those woods had protected her, how they had been full to bursting with beauty and life. Spiritual to her core and all at once imbued with a sense for magic and the mysterious, she knew quite well that the forest wanted her to return.

(edit as of 6/12/2016: this fanfic is practically my child and deserves better writing than what I could give it a year ago.

In any case, I have always loved Izayoi, despite the fact that we know next to nothing abut her. I guess I just find it pretty much endlessly fascinating that she not only 1: fell in love with and then married a LITERAL DEMON but that she also 2: had his baby and then 3: raised their little social outcast, half-breed child completely alone after his death. So yes, this fanfiction is about her and the Inu no Taisho falling in love, but really, it's an extended character analysis... or at least, my version of her character.)