Kagome realized with a start that the thrumming sound was not her heart– for one thing, it was too slow to be her heart, which was hammering faster than the drums had, and for another, it was getting louder.
Hojo stepped out onto the opposite pier, which had been specially decorated with his family’s insignia and paper lanterns, and turned to beam at her across the choppy water. Kagome felt herself frown. What was that strange noise?
The first person began to scream as he stepped forward to accept the cloak bearing the Chief’s family insignia, offered by her beaming step-mother. Her father’s wife stopped to look towards the sound, and there was some murmuring in the crowd, irritation that someone was interrupting the show, then another voice rose, high and thready with terror– “Dragon!”
The crowd moved like a tide, shouts of shock, disbelief, cries of fear came instantly, a waterfall of sound, and the tightly-packed bodies turned as one, moving towards the direction of the shout– and, Kagome realized, the direction of the strange thrumming sound. Not her heartbeat. Wings.