Generation Skips

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It had been gift, he overheard. A gift from the gods, which had bestowed the voice of an angel to his mother. And he had believed it so. She would hum and then her hums would soon be manipulated into fragments and sayings that at times meant too much to understand but too beautiful to ignore altogether. She would find a way to sing almost everything to him, and Inuyasha had found it to be second nature to flutter about in the castle's gardens and then catch a tune his mother would be singing softly to herself. The birds would stop and listen, the guards would suddenly relax. Inuyasha had never been one to feel fear as long as the sweet sound of her voice flitted in and out of the triangle lobes atop his head. There was a certain type of avian creature that appeared, right in the middle of her songs and it would perch there, not far from her vision and crane its neck to catch the sound of his mother's singing. It was his favorite type of bird, and he never saw it unless his mother's voice was nearby, filling its red breast with the calm of her song.

He had been told stories, in tabs and snippets here and there about how it was his mother's voice that had lured a great demon into the outskirts of the castle and put a hanyou in her belly.

"Leave it to Izayoi to turn a heavenly voice into the curse of the family." Said one.

"I was told a witch had condemned her to sing to demons…" Said another.

Inuyasha would cut the corners of the castles to pad his way back to his mother, demanding explanations. But she would only look down to him and grin in a most maternal way, softly tweaking his ears and saying, "My mother was a songstress and she taught me how. It's all in the blood-lines, Inu-chan."

"But they say it's a curse. That you're ill." Inuyasha wrung his wrists and scuffed his barefoot on the bamboo flooring.

"Inuyasha, do you think it's a curse?"

His golden orbs which always seemed too big for his cherub face looked calculative before quickly replying, "No."

"Then what are we still talking about, my son?"

He would sigh and turn back around to pace his steps once more in an attempt to lull the boredom, but before he could walk away his mother caught his red sleeve and ushered him back, "I think it's time we taught you how to sing as well."

"Perhaps it has skipped a generation," She sighed remorsefully.

Inuyasha merely shrugged and jumped down from the stool facing the removed princess after poorly offering a few voice strings of his own. "S'ok, I would rather hear you sing anyway, Mama."

"It is okay." The woman emphasized, scrunching up her nose. "You have to stop hanging about the kitchens, that slang talk will only spoil your teachings."

Inuyasha was already running off, humming softly to himself the three tone tune his mother had been so desperately trying to teach him.

Izayoi looked towards the horizon and smiled. "He can't sing, he can't speak properly…what a son you have given me, Inu no Taisho."

The day she died, the song birds flew the coops created for them on the palace grounds.

The day she died, Inuyasha dashed into the forest and broke apart bark with his tiny claws, marring his hands as he shifted from trunk to trunk. The birds would sing their songs and chirp obscenities into his wilted ears, reminding him, mocking him, of her lack of existence in this world.

The sun was melting on the line of the horizon and he cried out feeling the loneliness cling to his form like a soaked rag. There was no vigil held, and nobody was left to mourn her except he.

A priest had passed by but at the word of a jealous maid, he was told not to waste his time on a demon's whore and he had left the room. But not before glancing at the half-demon child and murmuring,

"Perhaps you can chant a few words to save her soul in the after-life."

"Chant…" Inuyasha's ear fell to the side, feeling out the word and trying to decipher its meaning. The priest cleared his throat uneasily and as he exited the room voiced, "Sing."

Inuyasha threw himself onto the floor once more out in the forest, tasting soil and earth, mumbling loudly to himself in a fit of hysteria.

"I can't sing, I can't sing…"

Inuyasha would come to miss the sweet music from his mother, and the fearless glance of the red bird that perched upon her shoulder, for he was never to pay his listening to it ever again.

Years would roll by, and Inuyasha would later forget the lines in a song that felt like a yesterday that had never passed. He wouldn't let his mind wander to those memories, and he felt indifferent to it after he had concerned himself with larger things. Like Kikyo, like Kagome. Like Kotomi.

Inuyasha felt a sense of pride around the village as neighbors and friends passed him a curt nod while he made his way through the town square, weaving his way to the outer perimeters to catch up with his lost partner.

She wasn't hard to miss, with dark, midnight locks that glittered in the sunlight, like an ancient mist from a forgotten world. He felt a gentle grip at his heart when the color drowned out all inferior thought and reminded him of Kagome. His partner in question, was however, hard to locate, as she tended to not stay in one spot for too long, occasionally finding new places to flutter by and then take leave once more. And so Inuyasha put his nose to work as he snuffed out the exact coordinates. It wasn't too far into the day as the sun was silently making its way over to the other side of the world that he found himself in the meadow south of the river that ran by the village square.

Suddenly he caught sight of it.

The small beast landed steadily on a neighboring branch and the inu-hanyou felt his heart skip a beat as he starred at the lost memory of his mother, reaching up into the surface of his brain.

The red bird, there it was, sitting casually, perched candidly, as if nothing had ever transpired between the two.

Then Inuyasha, smiled for he knew all too well why the bird had come to him once more.

"The butterflies dance, brilliant colors of rainbows- rippling like water~."

Her voice did not catch him off guard as the bird had, but he made his way down the slope of a hill to stand vigil to the young girl, singing softly to herself and all others who cared to listen.

He had long forgotten his mother's gentle tune, as he had forgotten the importance of the red bird, but as he closed his eyes for a moment, tilting his ears to hone in on the sweet sound, the memories filled him with great delight.

Inuyasha never heard his mother sing again, but he heard her voice regenerated in the heart of his daughter.

It pained him to interrupt her, but the sudden feeling of his wife's pressing glare dug into his back.

"Kotomi, time to go."

The girl turned sharply then, twitching her hypertensive nose and perking her small triangular black-tipped ears at the sound of her father ushering her to the house. "Daddy." She groaned with a smile falsely acting as if he had truly bothered her.

"Mama's orders," He clarified, never wishing ill intent from daddy's little girl. Getting up on her little legs and making a dash into Inuyasha's arms, he took the time to appreciate her giggle full of mirth, tucking her legs under his swiftly before rocking her back onto his hip and jostling her a bit.

As they made their way back to the village, Kotomi twirled a piece of her father's silver hair around her clawed finger and hummed to a song, and soon enough she was piecing words to it, carelessly singing into the orange dappled sky. Her father held his daughter tight against his body as a thought crawled lazily into his mind, laying there to ponder on.

'Perhaps it did skip a generation, Mother.'

Inuyasha listened as the birds fell silent.

A/N: I may not be a great writer, or even a good one, but when a scene for fanficion gets stuck in my head and I start replaying the scene over and over again, I really can't help but write it down, so sorry if I wasted your time, haha. I should be working on my other stories, but I stumbled on Inuyasha, again, and I couldn't help myself.

Time to disappear again! Till next time!

Princess Lali