Winter grinned again, and then looked over at Shippo.

"So what's your story?" she asked, more to stir conversation again. "Why hang around a shrine?"

Shippo shrugged. "Kagome's here," he said, as if that explained everything.

Which it did, and Winter wasn't sure if she should play dumb about it or not.

"Even though you're grown?" she asked cautiously. "I mean, more or less, anyways."

Shippo shrugged, looking over at Kagome. "I mean, sure, I'm grown. I could go find someone else and settle down. Could have done that a couple centuries ago. But..." He shrugged. "I like it here."

"Understandable," Winter said, nodding. "It's nice here."

"It is." Shippo grinned. "And we're close enough to still get visitors, or go up to the hide-out."

"Hide-out?" Winter asked, interested. "You mean that place from before? Where we kind of fell in on things?"

"Yeah, that one." Shippo grinned. "I call it the hide-out. It's really more like a manor. Sesshomaru stays there full-time."

"Really?" Winter asked, mentally filing that information away. "So it's not really a hide-out, it's an actual home."

"Yeah, it is," Shippo agreed. "People live there all the time. It's not just for meetings." He shrugged.

"Interesting," Winter said. She lapsed into silence again after that, not sure what else to say that wouldn't dig her into a hole she couldn't talk her way out of.

Shippo grinned a bit. "We could go visit sometime," he offered. "I'm sure you guys didn't see much the first time around."

“What?” Winter asked, blinking. “Really? That’s allowed?”

"We can arrange it," Shippo agreed with a sly grin. "Kagome visits, after all. I'm sure we can get permission for the two of you to go explore."

Winter eyed him warily, noting how sly he looked.

"I'm not a hundred percent sure I should trust what you say when your face is doing that," she said. "Not that I don't believe you, I definitely believe that Kagome visits all the time and we could probably get permission, but it makes me think you're up to something."

"Me?" Shippo held onto innocent protestations for a minute before he shrugged and grinned. "Yeah, alright, fair. I can promise it's nothing bad, at least."

“What are you scheming?” Winter asked. She looked at him a bit sideways. “I know you are, so you might as well tell me.”

Shippo gave her a brief grin. "Just thought Sesshomaru might enjoy a chance to play chase again," he told her, one tail flicking. "Besides, then I'll probably get to see Inuyasha freak out, too."

Winter blinked.

“What?” she said. The thought that Sesshomaru might want to play, of all things, was something she couldn’t picture.

Shippo grinned. "He'll say he's testing your abilities, or helping you train, or something," he told her. "But really he's playing."

“But he doesn’t just... play,” Winter said, bewildered. She looked over at Peggy and Kagome.

"He kind of was the other day with you," Peggy said with a shrug.

"Even Inuyasha commented on it," Kagome added.

"What?" Winter said. "No. That was--" She stopped, not sure how to finish that sentence. "I don't know what that was. But it wasn't playing."

"Uh huh." Shippo grinned. "Of course it wasn't."

"Just think of all the mischief we could get into up there, though," Peggy pointed out reasonably. "Middle of nowhere, away from civilization..."

"You have spent entirely too much time around foxes, if the first point you jump to is causing mischief," Winter teased, looking at Peggy with a grin.