Disclaimer: Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi, Viz, and anyone else who happens to have a piece of it. I am not one of those people. How sad.

Author's Note: To anyone wondering about my other stories, they are not dead. My computer crashed (this story is written on my mother's) and has yet to be fixed. As a result, it will be a while before anything is updated. Anything meaning Bound, Glimmer, Terms and Conditions, and Raveled. Everything else is pretty much a one-shot, right?

For anyone who read the old old OLD version of Human Nature--involving a metal teapot, two funny villager girls and very little of the hanyou Inuyasha--be warned: this one is much darker, much grittier, than the first. And a lot more detailed. It is rated PG13 for violence and gore, as well as Inuyasha’s potty mouth. This rating may go up, but only due to increased violence and/or language. Nothing else, I promise.

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Human Nature, The Tale of an Ensorcelled Youkai

Prologue: Shattered Porcelain

“You were a priestess, weren’t you?”

The woman nodded hesitantly, eyes downcast, but said nothing. She made a faint high-pitched sound of surprise as a cold hand touched her face. She shied away ever so slightly, only to find the movement blocked by another icy touch on the opposite cheek. Long, pale fingers stroked her ebon hair and chilly palms rested on either cheek; thumbs hooked under her chin and gently tilted her head upward to face him.

The man was lovely, the elegance of his features took her breath away and she felt a faint heat--very faint--flush her cheeks as she realized that he was touching her. Dark hair, kept up in a topknot, fell past his waist in waves and curls; skin so flawless and pale it seemed to give off an ethereal glow all its own; a smile so slight it was almost imperceptible, but still so there it made her heart skip a beat. His entire stance denoted that smile, the way his skin brushed hers and the tilt of his head to look down at her proved that she wasn’t just imagining it.

It was his eyes, however, that kept her attention, even more than that not-quite-absent smile. At first they seemed simply black, but the more she looked into them the more she realized that they were not. Rather, his eyes were the deepest shade of azure she had ever seen, deeper and bluer than the night sky and yet twice--even three times as bright. They glowed with and crimson light in their core, burning brightly the color of bloodstained cherry blossoms.

“Would you like to live long enough to complete your ministry?” he inquired further. “Long enough to complete what you have started?”

Once again the woman nodded.

That smile broadened, perceptible now, and the man let his porcelain hands drop from her face to her chest, running those long cold fingers along the edges of the great gash that tore her breast asunder. Her skin stung where he touched her, but there was greater pain where his hands had rested against her skin; the sudden onslaught of warm air was enough to singe the flesh, leaving dark hand-shaped burns on both her cheeks. He didn’t seem to notice, surveying the wound almost thoughtfully, the glow in his eyes brightening with each hesitant whine or hiss of pain the woman gave.

Peeling back the white fabric of her haori was almost too much for her to bear, but the chill of his fingers against her curled flesh was enough to dull the pain. Nevertheless, her eyes filled with painful tears, tracking down her cheeks and making the burns on her cheeks scream in agony when the salty liquid contacted the broken skin.

The beautiful man took a deep breath, the kind a predator would take just before devouring a kill, and bared sharp teeth; all the woman saw through the haze of hot tears in her brown eyes was the flash of white denoting a smile. He prodded one broken rib, visible through the tear in her chest, and then went still as he thought. His hands withdrew, disappearing into the sleeves of his deep blue haori, and the rosy glow in his eyes dulled as he searched within the cobalt folds. After a second or two his pale hands reemerged, each one clutching a pale shining shard of pink; the glow of the shards was even greater than the light in his eyes, and the woman felt herself drawn to their light. Her hands itched to hold, to feel them, to taste their glow...

The dark-haired man took one between two fingers, almost like one would hold a Go stone, and held it out toward her. “Kneel properly,” he said, his voice a velvet timbre so heavenly she was certain this strange and beautiful man with skin like porcelain and eyes like stars was a god. “Lift your head.”

She painfully complied, noticing for the first time that her wounds, as much as they hurt, did not hurt nearly as much as they should have. She had been overwhelmed with pain before and found herself unable to feel anything, but this was so different from that time that she knew something else was at work here. Perhaps its was the man’s presence that kept her agony at bay.

He took the shard he held between two fingers and pressed it to her forehead, pushing so hard it buried its back in her skin. The glow of that shard intensified and she had to close her eyes to block the light, to protect her vision; with her eyes closed she did not see what happened next. The shard sent a wave of pale pink light over her body, concentrated around the massive wound in her chest. The torn flesh uncurled, blood drying and flaking off like painting power, and the wound slowly began to mesh back together. Cords of flesh shot across the gap in an attempt to join the two halves together again, but the man held out his free hand and ran his slender fingers over them, reducing them to ash in an instant.

“Not yet,” he said, taking the other shard between his thumb and forefinger. “Just a moment more, my beautiful jewel...” He smiled, eyes narrowing, and placed a hand on the priestess’ shoulder, noting that she tensed at the contact, and pulled back his other hand, tensing the muscles for a thrust. The glint in his eyes turned from godly to manic as they flashed scarlet; his hand shot out, plunging deep into her chest, breaking ribs and tearing organs as it went.

She screamed, brown eyes snapping open, and the man shoved the jewel chard into her erratically-beating heart. He drew his bloody hand from her chest, lifting it to his mouth to clean, and cords of flesh and muscle shot across the gash and pulled it together before he was even halfway done.

All the while she continued to scream, and the man gave a single chuckle at the intoxicating aura of her pain. He watched as those brown eyes of hers, so mortal and so frantic, clenched tightly shut and she wrapped her arms about herself, shivering violently. The light reached a crescendo and he lifted one arm, using his sleeve to block the scathing glow. The woman gasped and fell forward, breathing heavily on her hands at knees for several seconds as he finished licking her pure blood off his hand. That would be the last of that--she would never be so pure again, not so long as she lived in any case. Perhaps after death there would be freedom from the taint, but at that moment she lost her purity in so many ways. He wanted to savor the little bit there was left.

“Now, who are you?” he inquired, letting his hand drop, speaking quietly. “Tell me your name.”

“Tsukiyami,” she replied. The woman lifted her head, the gem set into her brow shining brightly in the dimness of her desecrated shrine, letting her eyes meet his. They matched in color now, a color deeper and darker than the night sky; tarnished sapphires set into twin porcelain masks. “Your servant, Tsukiyami, my Lord Naraku.”

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Author’s Note: So, what did you think?I’m sure it was confusing, but the prolgues to my stories always are. Be aware, this is a Sesshoumaru-centric story. It does have the others in it, but it is his story. If you don’t like him (how can you not like him?) then don’t read it. Thank you.

For your learning pleasure, a quick vocabulary explanation.

haori--a kind of Japanese kimono shirt and/or much like ahanten.