Chapter Text
Moroha is born at sunrise.
She takes her first breath as the sun’s rays gently trickle between the slats bisecting the birthing hut windows, drawing diffuse rectangles on the floor which steadily grow bolder and more defined. The moment passes in a frenzy, delivered first from the womb to a basin of warm water then wrapped in a waiting towel. It’s a harrowing journey, and Moroha wails. Following the sound of the baby’s cries, her mother rises on her elbows, desperate to soothe and hold and be reunited.
Kaede lays the squirming infant upon Kagome’s chest.
“Hi,” Kagome says. “Hi.” In the womb, Moroha could hear her mother’s voice. Irrationally, Kagome fears Moroha might not recognize her. To someone more accustomed to the sensation of a vibration passing from one body to another, a voice choked with emotion might sound strange and unfamiliar. A silly thought. They just met. They are in the process of meeting. “I’m so glad to meet you.”
Moroha rolls her head towards the sound. Big, dark eyes stare at Kagome. Moroha does recognize this voice. Lying on her mother’s chest, Moroha knows the heartbeat beneath her is the same steady thump that used to hang suspended above. Those eyes seem fathomless, knowing, and wise. With time, they will almost certainly become brown but today they are black.
“You have my eyes,” whispers her mother. Like it’s a secret. Like it’s an old habit already, sharing an aside, knowing they are of one mind. Their eyes, that’s the first thing Kagome and Moroha share as mother and daughter. The dark hair that crowns her head, the round shell of her ears -- those are from her mother, too.
Moroha’s response is to nuzzle her face against Kagome’s chest.
“She wants to nurse,” Kaede supplies. She’s attended far too many births to attribute secret intentions to a newborn. Moroha acts in accordance with her own immediate needs, nothing more. With Kaede’s assistance, Kagome rustles her juban open wide enough for Moroha to find a nipple.
It’s incredible that mere moments after being born, after everything she knew of life was torn away in a flash, Moroha somehow knows what to do, where to seek. It’s a miracle. It’s astounding. Moroha is incredible. The single greatest person to have ever lived.
Kagome strokes Moroha’s downy hair, cups a protective hand around her delicate head, supports that precious neck still so weak, engulfs the tiny fist that flails unknowingly against her chest. Moroha is everything.
And, Kagome registers, somehow, through the haze of adoration and devotion to the little creature in her arms, that she is the last of her peers to become a mother, that Rin who held her hand and Sango who wiped her brow are both the mothers of twins.
How did their hearts fall so irrevocably in love with two people at once without bursting?
“How did you do this twice?”
“The same way you do anything,” Sango says. “You soldier on.”
Kagome only half-listens, unable to spare the requisite attention from Moroha to engage with Sango. Probably, she assumed Kagome meant delivering two babies or filling two bellies.
Moroha drinks. Even as she falls asleep, her tiny mouth keeps suckling. Eventually, the movement ceases, and her lips go slack.
Feebly, Kagome protests when Kaede scoops up her daughter to swaddle her in a fresh hankimono. She lays Moroha on the futon beside her mother, and Kagome is appeased. Like a sunflower stretching for warmth, Kagome looks down at her baby. “She’s so perfect.”
“She’s asleep,” Sango says. “They’re all perfect when they sleep.”
The collected women pause in recognition of that universal truth.
Then Sango adds, “She’s going to sleep a lot for the first few days, and then never again. Speaking of, Kagome, I had better go home before my brood wakes up.”
“Mm, me, too,” Rin says. “She’s beautiful, Kagome. I hope you and Inuyasha can decide on a name soon.”
“Her name is Moroha.”
Rin gasps. “You didn’t tell us you’d picked! I want to know everything! Whose idea and when you decided and why you let us keep thinking you hadn’t agreed on a name yet!” Dropping her voice to a whisper, she hurriedly adds, “But not right now, because Lord Sesshoumaru and Master Jaken have had Towa and Setsuna all night and I miss them.”
The two veteran mothers leave their newest compatriot to the care of Kaede. As they step out of the birthing hut and into the morning, they usher Inuyasha inside.
“A daughter!” Rin sings. “She’s beautiful! And they are both doing well!”
Understandably, he doesn’t stop to chat, too eager to see his wife and daughter for himself.
“Her eyes,” Rin says, gaily swinging her arms as she walks, “gosh, they’re so big and expressive. Towa and Setsuna didn’t open their eyes until they were a week old!”
Sango slows. “Isn’t it strange to remember there was time we didn’t know things like their eye colors? I’ve only had KinGyo for six years, but it’s so hard to imagine life without them that it feels much longer. My life before them feels far away. Hisui, too.”
Four months after the birth of Towa and Setsuna, Rin’s body still frequently reminds her that she recently delivered twins. In some ways, the days feel long. The girls don’t sleep well, so their mother doesn’t either. Time runs together. But they also grow so fast! They could already roll from their tummies to their backs, and Towa had cut her first tooth.
Rin and Sango part ways. It’s an easy walk from the birthing hut to Rin’s house. Farmers emerge from their own homes and head towards the fields. The smoke from breakfast fires wafts merrily along the road. Rin slips in her quiet house.
It is not the nature of youkai children to wail as humans do. Vulnerability is a thing to hide, not advertise. With their eyes closed, their serene demeanors, and the tight swaddle that comforted them and kept them still, Rin had struggled to know when her daughters were awake. She had expected to learn the minute differences in her children’s cries that signaled hunger, loneliness, or soiled diapers, but the twins were so quiet.
To tell anyone her children almost never cried felt like a boast, so she hated to say so, but the truth was Rin felt lost. Mothers were supposed to hear the precise plea in every sniffle and fuss. To wonder at their needs had been a constant misery. Rin had been so happy to be pregnant, so excited to start a family of her own, and once she had babies in her arms, she feared she made a terrible mother.
The adjustment is not meant to be easy. Once her puppies opened their eyes, Rin knew when they were awake and when they slept. With time enough for trial and error, she learned how often they liked to nurse. There is no concealing a soiled diaper from Lord Sesshoumaru’s nose. Parenthood would always be difficult and half-youkai children present unique challenges, but together, Rin and Lord Sesshoumaru are finding their new normal.
Other homes in the village are busy as people hurry to complete morning chores and begin the day’s work, but Rin’s house is dark and quiet. There is no grueling manual labor awaiting her aristocratic husband. Setsuna sleeps alone on the large futon the family shares. Lord Sesshoumaru sits nearby, Towa nestled in the crook of his arm. His index finger is in her mouth.
Rin surveys the scene. “Is she hungry?”
Before his daughters were born, Lord Sesshoumaru spoke of youkai parenthood as though it were diametrically opposed to that of humans. Rather than nurture, the job of the youkai parent was to design trials to prepare their children for lives of strife and violence. The hanyou children of a daiyoukai must be especially ready. To be known as the killer of the great Lord Sesshoumaru’s child would be a crowning achievement for any youkai. Though few would test their mettle against a purebred dog of the west, a hanyou would make enticing prey.
However, from the first moment he held the twins in his arms, Lord Sesshoumaru seemingly abandoned all pretense of harsh parenting. He dotes on them. Fatherhood has made him sentimental, Rin concludes. She always loved Lord Sesshoumaru, never asked him to be anything but the person he was, but lately Rin finds herself constantly delighted and surprised by the attention and affection Lord Sesshoumaru shows the twins. He never wanders off on his ineffable journeys anymore. It’s as though he cannot bear to miss a moment of their lives.
“Teething.”
Humming, Rin settles herself beside her husband and their eldest. Towa seeks relief from the pain of her incoming teeth by chewing anything she can manage to get into her mouth. Her father likes to stroke those chubby baby cheeks, which means his fingers frequently get noshed on.
“Kagome had a daughter.”
Lord Sesshoumaru does not appear interested, but he probably already knew everything from the scent.
“They are calling her Moroha.” Rin lays her head against Lord Sesshoumaru’s prodigious fluff. “She’s adorable. I’m so glad Towa and Setsuna will be friends with her.” Her eyes slowly shut. “It’s daytime, but I’m so sleepy.”
“You were attending a birth all night,” Lord Sesshoumaru replies.
“And you had the twins all night! It’s my turn to watch them now! And they should be hungry.”
“Setsuna is asleep.”
Words stretching around her yawn, Rin mutters, “Towa, then.”
Lord Sesshoumaru does not relinquish his daughter. His fur is so warm.
Drowsy and knowing his answer won’t hold much sway over whether she drifts off or not, Rin says, “You don’t mind if I sleep a little?”
The silence that greets her question could well be Lord Sesshoumaru’s acknowledgement that an answer is irrelevant. She is tired, and unlike her husband, Rin’s body cannot sustain itself on willpower alone. But then he speaks, and Rin knows Lord Sesshoumaru gave the question serious consideration. “Towa will still be here when you wake up.”
“Ah, good night.”