O.K. folks! This is hot off the press, un-edited, so if there are some
really funky mistakes, ignore them or point them out...

Windlily

*******************************************************************************


	The people winked out, leaving only one tall, lean, figure, his
brown hair and beard streaked with silver. He was dressed simply in a rough
spun brown fabric robe. Ice grey eyes stared at him and he knew this was
the owner of the bass voice that the others had obeyed. Then that figure
also blinked out of existence. He sat up, breathing hard, released from the
dream and fully awake. There was that same strange rei in the room. He
shook his hair over his shoulders and laid back down. Something very
strange was going on in this house and he WAS going to find out what it was.

* * *

	Kurama's classes let out at two the next afternoon and he found
himself back at his new residence alone. His roommates had exchanged
schedules with him this morning over breakfast. Haiku wouldn't be back
until six tonight and Shubata went and played Mah-jongg with his cronies in
the little park at the end of the street until four every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday, weather permitting. It would give him plenty of time to find
out where that strange rei was coming from. He stood in the center of the
living room and opened up his senses, hunting. There was a faint trace. He
turned and followed it straight to the closed door of Haiku's room. He
hesitated for a moment, remembering the House rules, yet this was too
important. It was a mystery he wanted solved and he knew it would drive him
to distraction until he figured it out. He slid the door open and leaned to
peer in, not yet stepping over the threshold.

	There was a king-sized bed against the wall across from him. Most
of the wall to the left of it was taken up by a huge freestanding wardrobe.
Next to that was the doubled set of french doors that led onto the balcony.
The wall across from the bed was taken up by two tall bookcases flanking a
desk. His eyes hunted for the location of the soft tinkle of water, found
the fountain nestled in the group of large potted plants in the far right
corner. There was a low dresser that ran the rest of the length of the
right wall until the open arch to his immediate right that led into a
bathroom.

	He stepped into the room following the rei trace to the desk and
blinked in surprise at the weaponry hung on the wall that the bookcases had
hidden. The central piece was a long sword, a good four and a half feet
tall. There were two rapiers, a curved scimitar, a bronze short sword and
on top of the raised part of the desk that held the 'pigeon-holes', a
katana and wakizashi in a formal display stand. Yet the rei was not coming
from any of those, as he had first expected. It was coming from the clutter
piled on Haiku's desk. He held his hand over the desk and moved it slowly
until he found the source.

	It was one of those blank journals with a plain, dark green cover.
Nothing remarkable on the outside. Kurama rested his fingertips on it and
raised his eyebrows as they tingled. He opened it and frowned at the
unfamiliar writing on the first page. It was some kind of pictograph he had
never seen. The next page was in Latin. It was a love sonnet. A very
beautiful one. He discovered as he went that all the pages he could read
were love poetry of some sort as he quickly scanned through it, getting
more uneasy by the minute. There was an incredible grab bag of languages
represented. A few of the pages were in something he was pretty sure was
Cuneiform and twenty of them were in Egyptian hieroglyphics. There was no
order to the way they were entered and each one was obviously written by a
different hand. The languages he did recognized were archaic versions of
their modern counterparts, all except the third to last entry about half
way through the book. It held his attention longest, being totally atypical
to all the rest. It was in modern Nihongo, not the same hand that had done
the other Japanese pieces. The characters not well formed but done with
care.

		'I love you.
		 Please stop crying.'

	He flipped through the rest of the blank pages, just in case there
was something more. Between the last page and the back was a photograph. It
was of that young man that hadn't been in his room yesterday. He was
leaning against one of the large stone lanterns Kurama had seen in the back
yard. Kurama turned the photo over. 'Ryoga' was printed in neat characters
on the back. *Ryoga.* Well, now he had a name to work with. He put the
photo back carefully, then closed the book and hurried out of the room
trying to ignore the twinge of guilt he felt at having violated Haiku's
privacy. He stopped in the living room and scanned again, but there was no
other trace of the rei in the house. He frowned slightly, his clear emerald
eyes narrowing. It was something that was coming and going from the house
then. And whatever this something was, it appeared to be writing love
poetry to Haiku.

	He headed for the den, wanting to take a better look at those
paintings of the people who had been in his dream last night as the bits
and pieces started to try to mesh together in his mind. This door was open,
giving him permission to enter. He flicked on the overhead to augment the
muted sunshine that poured in from the window as he went straight to them
and studied each painting carefully. The first one was the Roman Lady. This
was the one who had been missing from his dream.

	The next four were men. The first one young, maybe a year or two
older than his human form, dressed in chain mail covered with a white
tabard that had a large red cross emblazoned on it. He was watering one of
those huge war horses, it's hide just a shade darker than his brown/blond
hair. The knight was leaning against the shoulder of the horse, his sharp
featured face etched with weariness, yet there was gentle humor in his
smile.

	The next was in the prime of his life, hard muscled and tanned deep
brown, dressed as an ancient Egyptian king. There was a terrible scar that
ran in a curve across the right side of his face from temple to jaw,
drawing the flesh and features on that side and marring what would have
otherwise have been a very handsome face. He stood in front of a throne on
a raised bias, his hands on his hips with the un-scared eyebrow raised, a
look of amused inquiry on his face.

	The one after that was dressing in a kilt and standing on a
windswept plain of heather. Hair as red as Kurama's own blew in the wind.
The curve of a harp was visible above his left shoulder and he had one hand
resting on the cross piece of a long sword almost as tall as himself, the
point on the ground between his feet, the forearm of the other balanced
across the pommel. Kurama recognized it as the same long sword in Haiku's
room. The man had his chin resting on his arm, his lips quirked in a
mischievous smile and there was an amused gleam sparkling in his robin-egg
blue eyes.

	The last man was Samurai in full armor in the saddle of a nervous
and prancing horse in the midst of the bustle of a marketplace. The dress
of the people in the background made him place the scene in the late
1700's. The face that stared back at him from under the ornate helmet was
stern and fierce. He recognized another set of swords. The Samurai's katana
and wakizashi were the one's sitting on Haiku's desk. Those swords nagged
at him as he went to stand in front of the last one. They were probably
just museum replica's that she used for props.

	This was a woman, a dark skinned beauty in a plain blue, sleeveless
dress sitting sedately on the stairs of an ornately decorated mud-brick
temple, head tipped up to look serenely into a hard, cloudless tourquoise
sky. Kurama tried to place the reliefs on the walls behind her, stepped up
so his nose was almost touching the canvas as he studied the minuscule
characters on one of the stone pillars. It was Cuneiform. He stepped back
as it all came together. Latin, Hieroglyphics, archaic French, the Nihongo
was from the right period...these were the writers of that book. But why?
Perhaps Haiku's line was haunted? The ghosts of lovers and husbands or
wives from each generation following the heir into the next? Yes, that had
to be the answer. It would also explain the swords. Family heirlooms passed
from one child to the next.

	Anger flared into his eyes. Ryoga must have been her lover and had
died recently and now was haunting her too. It made sense of that one
recent entry in the book. No wonder she was so troubled and unhappy! Well,
this was something that he could take care of. And then maybe he would get
to see her really smile. He glanced over at the painting that was on the
easel, wanting to check his memory of it against the photo of Ryoga. A
blank white canvas was there now. He wondered why she had taken the one she
was working on down. Perhaps Ryoga's ghost had told her that he had seen
him and she wanted to keep the matter private and not make him suspicious.

	He turned quickly and hurried down to the back garden, shifting his
awareness and calling for Botan on the ethereal plane as he went,
determined to get rid of Haiku's ghosts as quickly as possible.  Botan came
zooming up on her oar seconds after he had made the garden and greeted him
with a chirped, "Good afternoon, Kurama!" as she hovered.

	"Botan, I need a lift. I've got to talk to Koenma!"

	Botan giggled and nodded, scooted up a little as Kurama gingerly
straddled the oar behind her. He felt the little quiver of power go through
it and wrapped his arms around her waist quickly and held on for dear life
as his head was jerked back as Botan took off. He clenched his eyes closed
tightly and struggled to ignore the lurches his stomach made. He hated
flying with Botan. It was like being on an insane roller coaster designed
by some demented god.

	"We're here, Kurama. You can let go now," Botan informed him.

	He got off slowly and commanded his knees to stop shaking as she
handed him a brush out of one of the sleeves of her kimono. That was
another thing he hated. He always ended up with his hair windblown into
tangled knots and she was always immaculate and unruffled. He gritted his
teeth as he brushed the knots out, then handed it back to her.

	"Just call if you need a ride baaaaacccck..." echoed after her as
she zoomed off again.

	Kurama weaved his way through the chaos of the offices of the Court
of Judgement and smiled as he spied a familiar youkai staggering along on
the same general course with a pile of files that were stacked up to his
forehead and swayed and threatened to fall with each step. He hurried to
catch up with the youkai and took the top quarter of the stack into his own
arms.

	"Hello, George."

	George smiled at him. "Thanks, Kurama."

	"So, how is he today?"

	George rolled his eyes as they came to the door that separated
Koenma's office from the others. The two guards nodded at them and opened
the doors.

	"If you put those down on my desk, George, I will put you on
clean-up detail for the execution grounds for the next two thousand years!"
Koenma's voice snapped from somewhere behind the stacks of files that were
piled on his desk and was punctuated by the whack of his seal pounding
against paper after paper.

	George put the pile down on the floor in front of the desk instead,
then ran. Kurama put his much smaller pile down next to it and cleared his
throat.

	"WHAT!"

	"I think I've found some missing souls, Koenma-sama," Kurama
answered in a soothing and deferential tone.

	The thunk of the seal stopped and Koenma regarded him from over the
stacks sucking furiously on his Fuumakan. Kurama knew that he was standing
on his tip-toes on the desk behind them and it was hard to keep from
smiling.

	"What souls?"

	Kurama went to the wall and put his hand on the gold panel next to
the screen there. The images from Haiku's paintings, then Ryoga and that
man from the end of his dream came up, then the vaguer images from his
dream. There were 17 of them in all.

	"Matches?" Koenma snapped at the Reikai machine.

	The information came up, bouncing from image to image giving names
and the amount of time the soul had been unclaimed. It started with 'Ryoga
Hibiki. Human. Unfound-2 yrs' and ended with the man from his dream.
'Darius. Human. Unfound-4,022 yrs.'

	Kurama looked at Koenma, stunned by the amount of time some of
these souls had been missing. Koenma narrowed his eyes at the images on the
wall, then turned his gaze on Kurama. He was actually smiling around his
Fuumakan. The first smile Kurama had seen on his face since the team had
split up.

	"What's the story?"

	"They are haunting a young woman in the Ningenkai."

	Koenma disappeared and Kurama heard him muttering and rummaging,
then his boss came around his desk and handed him a palm sized, clear
crystal, it's facets catching and prisiming the light and throwing rainbows
on the walls.

	"This should contain them all. Touch the woman and the souls will
be drawn in. Bring it back to me for processing."

	Kurama bowed as Koenma disappeared back behind his desk and the
thump of his seal resumed. Kurama shook his head with a sigh and started
back for the door.

* * *

	Another mad-capped flight with Botan brought him back to the
garden.. She darted off again, waving so hard that the oar zigzagged from
side to side making her wobble and grab it with both hands as she
disappeared from sight. Kurama chuckled as he checked his watch. It was
almost five. He went to one of the sad and struggling rose bushes that was
under the balcony and out of sight of the windows and coaxed ten beautiful
multicolored blossoms from them and pinched them off before he headed in.