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“InuYasha, have you ever had “The Talk?”
“What do you mean, “The Talk”? We talk all the time.”
Kagome chuckled and straightened the folds of her skirt after readjusting her legs. Of course she hadn't been very surprised by his response, given his sentences to not understand her modern explanations. She took a deep breath and delved in.
“Yes. We do. I mean……do you know how babies are made?”
The Hanyou laying beside her cracked one eye open to look at her, then closed it again.
“Sure I do,” he said nonchalantly. He didn't see her shocked expression. “Sesshomaru told me before. I think it was more a warning for me though. Ya know, what could happen if I did?”
Her face fell. “You mean like making a baby?”
“Making a Hanyou baby.”
It was stated as simple fact, the way he said it. She ‘tsk’d her tongue and sighed. It was quiet for a while save for the gentle wind that chased its way over the heads of the grass around them. With their tall stalks surrounding them, they were hidden from the rest of the world. After a time her curiosity got the better of her and she just had to know what the Feudal Era version of the sex talk consisted of. So she asked him.
“What did he tell you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious,” she tried to ignore the giddiness the crept into her stomach. InuYasha blew out a sigh.
“Nosey wench. Don't they teach you these things in your time?” he deigned to finally open his eyes and shift his body to lay on his side, facing her.
Kagome giggled, “Yes, I just want to hear the Feudal version.”
Another long-suffering sigh.
“The way Sesshomaru explained it, he said that when a man and a woman spend the night together, little spirits enter a woman and join together to make a baby.”
Not entirely improbable, she supposed. “How do the spirits….enter….the woman?”
“Sweat.”
“Sweat?”
“Yeah like, through the skin. When you sweat it makes little holes in the body and also attracts the spirits. If a man and woman are close enough then the spirits take something from the man and put it into the woman. Then she has a baby “
He said it so matter-of-factly that Kagome was rendered speechless for several minutes as he mind processed the information.
“Soooooo…..when we’re, say, fighting demons and we start to sweat-”
He shook his head and held up a finger. “No, it has to be night time. The spirits are only active for a few hours after the sun goes down.”
“Uh-huh. So there's no chance I could have a baby then.”
His face turned red and he sputtered out “N-no! Stupid! Never! That's why I don't touch you after any night time battles!”
Oh now things made sense. Slightly. Why he always kept his distance from not just her, but everyone, after particularly grueling activity with things that go bump in the night. A devious thought crossed her mind and she asked airily.
“Who said anything about you? Miroku could just as easily-’
“THAT LETCH!” Suddenly InuYasha was on his feet, seemingly ready to fight the absent monk. “If I see him touch you, I'll rip his arm off!” Apparently the thought hadn't crossed his mind that perhaps other men could accomplish the same thing. His hackles were raised and he perhaps would have disappeared in the direction of the target of his ire had Kagome not reached up to grab his hand in an attempt to pull him back down.
“Relax, InuYasha! I was only joking! Jeeze. That's not……not entirely how it happens, anyway. It's a lot more complicated than that. Sit-”
WHAM
“......down. oops, sorry about that.”
InuYasha glared at her from his prone position but she saw him take a large breath and when the spell wore off he sat up facing her, still glowering. And a tad suspicious.
“What d’ya mean, ‘not entirely’?”
Hoo boy.
Kagome cleared her throat. “Well he wasn't….entirely wrong,” she started. Then paused to take a fortifying breath. “When….two people have feelings for each other, there are certain things that happen and may result in a baby.”
“Like spirits.”
She smiled softly. “Like spirits.”
~*~
In the distance, behind a tree that dreamed of being a ninja, the great Lord Sesshomaru stood and listened to the young couple as the girl explained to his half brother a concept he had firmly grasped years ago. He rolled his yellow eyes when she explained about “hormones”, a “penis entering a woman's vagina” (whatever that is), and eventually “the little fish fighting their way to an egg” to impregnate a woman.
He nodded his head as he absently stroked the smooth trunk of the tree. So he hadn't been entirely off when he first told InuYasha about conception. Something from a man does indeed enter a woman. Of course he has been mostly correct.
And who's to say that the little fish aren't spirits themselves?
He harrumphed and turned away to resume the search for where he had left Jaken this time. There was something he wanted to try.