My muse has been dead for years, and I've grieved her bitterly, and moved on, I thought. Then tonight, she wouldn't let me sleep until I posted this tiny, tiny drabble.

Hope you and yours are well!

.

.

.

Kaoru lay, warm and content in the moonless dark, her fingers tracing paths across her husband's chest, mapping warm, smooth skin and the ridges and ropes of scars alike.

"Kenshin," her voice dropped into the silence "... your ear. How did you loose the hearing in your left ear?"

There was a pause before his answer, and it was too dark to see his face at all -

"In the Forest of Barriers," he said, and his words were bright with sorrow.