Notes: Yanno, Sara isn't a very powerful character. It's a shame, since while she is very definitely a full demon, she's maybe on Yura of the Hair levels at best. About the only thing besides turning invisible that she can do is origami, and she has access to Hammer Space. Then again, we know she's very young (I actually think she's really younger than Gabriel) for a demon. Maybe she just hasn't matured into her full strength yet? Who knows.

Neither Sesh nor Sara are mine, and neither are their respective series (Inuyasha and Tenshi ni Narumon.)

She woke up to find the curious face of a human girl peering at her.

Sara stirred sleepily, blinking in shock, until the events of the day before returned to her. She was somehow in the Old World, in the lair of what was evidently a very powerful demon.

"Good morning, Rin," she said to the curious little girl.

"Good morning!" Rin replied with a sunny smile. "Sesshoumaru-sama sent me here to wake you. He wants us to visit a town outside Kyoto today."

"Oh, Kyoto! I've been there," Sara said, sitting up. "My family visited there once last year."

"You have a family?" Rin asked, a little surprised. "Where are they?"

"I'm pretty sure they're all safe, where I came from. I have two little sisters, just like you." Sara grinned to herself -- while Rin was closer in age to Ruka, she was far closer in personality to Noelle. Although she appeared to be a bit brighter than the pinkly blonde angel whose brains had, unfortunately, been divided along with personality to her two spirit siblings. Noelle had gotten all the optimism but not much of the intelligence.

"I haven't a family, anymore," Rin said sadly. "But as long as I have Sesshoumaru-sama, I'll be happy!"

Sara smiled back at the girl, and rose from the futon. Her back ached from sleeping against the hard floor, and she missed her soft, soft bed in the daemon pocket she'd crafted at their house.

Her room, which was covered in misty red drapes and soft cushions everywhere, had been designed to look like a secret, forbidden chamber in the castle of an Arabian prince. As a child, she had loved the idea of being whisked away to such a place, across the burning desert or the raging ocean, to be with her true love for eternity.

Unfortunately, her naive dreams had ended abrubtly when she'd fallen, hard, for an angel, and then learned that not only was he trying to hurt her little sister, he was taken by someone else already. She wished him happiness, but she could never go back to the naive demon she'd been before..

"Why are you said, Sara-onee-chan?" Rin asked, calling Sara "big sister" in just the way that Noelle would have. She placed her small, pale human hand in Sara's pinker, demon one, and Sara gave it a friendly squeeze.

"I just hope that someday I can be as happy as you, Rin-chan," Sara answered. "Now, come on. We don't want to keep Sesshoumaru waiting, do we?"

"No!" Rin cried, and sprang out of the room. "Sesshoumaru-sama, she's awake! We can go now!"

Ah-Un, the double-headed dragon named by Rin, was already harnessed to the chariot. Sesshoumaru stood beside it, and Sara caught her breath at how magnificent the demons in the old world looked. She wondered idly what his true form was; hers was invisibility, a strange form that marked her as probably coming from someplace in Ireland originally. Most of the citizens of the Demon World had dropped their human nationalities, leaving a great deal of confusion as to where everyone fit into the scheme of the world.

Sesshoumaru was definitely a Japanese demon; no other demons in the world bore distinctive markings on their cheeks and arms like he did. For the first time she realized one arm didn't match; he must have lost it sometime. That saddened her. Youkai in the Demon World didn't fight for territory anymore, either.

"I take it you are not an early riser," Sesshoumaru chided softly. "The sun has been up for quite some time."

Sara fought off a yawn. "I usually don't get up at the crack of dawn. There isn't any need in my time."

He gave her a hand into the carriage. "So you sleep in, wasting the daylight hours?"

"We have means of making artificial daylight. It's called electricity," Sara said as he tucked her in and then set Rin next to her. The little girl instantly snuggled up to Sara, causing an unreadable yet somehow soft expression to flash over Sesshoumaru's face.

"Rin, it is not polite to invade someone's personal space," Sesshoumaru said firmly. Rin reluctantly unglued herself from Sara, but the demon held the girl's hand instead.

"I don't know why I have to be polite," Rin grumbled.

"It's because someday you'll be a young lady, and not being polite means you'll be rude. You'll never catch a man if you're not polite," Sara teased gently.

Like any father, Sesshoumaru nearly winced at the idea of Rin ever "catching a man," but still kept himself composed, betraying only the faintest flicker of his eyes. Sara noticed his discomfort and giggled softly to herself. So proud! Not even Papa was that stoic, even though he tried so hard to be the ideal husband and father, as much for Noelle's sake as for the rest of his slap-dash family. Hard working, kind Papa loved Mama dearly, perhaps more than he loved the little angel child that he had given his very way of life for.

"We are going to small village outside Kyoto today," Sesshoumaru said as they took off, the chariot flying through the air with some sort of levitation spell.

"For what purpose?" Sara asked, genuinely curious. "That's a long journey from Toky- er, where we are."

Sesshoumaru said nothing for a while, simply staring at the dragons in front of them. When he spoke, it was with a note of near sadness in his voice. "There once lived a powerful visionary, who had made her home outside Kyoto. She and her apprentice both saw far, far into the future, and I am curious as to whether they ever predicted the world that you described."

Sara felt slightly hurt. "So you don't trust me?" she asked, pouting to herself.

"No." Sesshoumaru glanced over at her. "I haven't much of a reason to. More importantly, however, the predictions of the Seer might contain clues as to how to return you to your own world."

"I've only met one seer in my life," Sara said conversationally, still miffed that he didn't believe her story. "My grandmother, or at least the old demon who acts as the grandmother for our family."

"They are very rare," Sesshoumaru agreed. They continued the journey in silence the rest of the way.

Short chapter, but I've once again got a clear direction of where this fic was meant to go (which I didn't have when I started writing it.) The Seer and her apprentice in question are, of course, Makoto and Tomiko . . . both now long gone. cry