Sesskag Week: Day Six
The Curtain Draw
Sesskag Week 2018 | Day Six: Florals, Deep, Poetry, Sentimentalities
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Kagome’s eyes opened slowly, everything hurt in small surges of pain that rushed through her arms and legs. Her hands scraped against loose dirt, and she felt it chafe against the skin of her hands and the back of her legs. Telling herself to take small breaths, she sat up slowly—every muscle in her back creaking in protest.
“Sesshomaru?” She asked out, realizing that the world around her was swallowed in darkness. “Sesshomaru, where are you?”
Her voice sounded so strained, as if it had been dried, and flakes of skin blocked her throat from speaking coherently. Was that the effect of the battle with Naraku? She hoped she hadn’t been asleep for very long, but she was worried when no one answered her growing frantic calls. The miko reached out for purchase on anything, and her fingers brushed up against solid stone walls. She knew the feeling of this stone. The familiar cool touch, the reassuring of its steady structure.
The Bone Eater’s Well.
She groped around in the dark for a moment, trying to find the vines that crawled up the sides. However she couldn’t feel any sort of vegetation at all. It was odd. She looked up, hoping to catch glimpses of the sky, presumably night, but instead, she was met with the tiring sight of darkness. Her hand finally smashed into a wooden structure, and her heart sunk. It was the ladder that lead into the well. She was in her time.
After making her wish on the Jewel, she couldn’t remember what had happened. It didn’t make sense that she would travel back to her time. Not when so many things had to be addressed back in the past.
She crawled up the ladder, casting a quick glance to the well before hopping in again. It wouldn’t hurt to go see what had happened. Her feet landed squarely on the floor.
Nausea overwhelmed her as she stood straight up. She was still in the wellhouse. What had gone wrong? An uneasy laugh escaped her lips and she gave a light hop. Time did not grab her. Its hold did not overcome her. Kagome rushed up the ladder again before throwing herself into the well, she landed in a heap, begging for the powers of time to come and take her. She had to go back to everyone. Inuyasha, Sango, Miroku, Shippo…
Sesshomaru.
“Sesshomaru!”
In her mind, she lost track of the numbers of times she jumped into the well. She lost track of the numbers of times she screamed his name. Her eyes were flooded with tears, and her hands and knees were grazed raw from landing too many times in the dirt.
That’s how Mrs. Higurashi and Jii-jii found her. Prone and weeping in the bottom of the well, her body curled up in a fetal position as she was lost in the deepness of her waling. A priestess held captive by time.
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The book felt feather light in her hands, and her English teacher’s voice droned on. Something about poetry. How many days had it been since she had last tried to pass through the well? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember how many endless attempts she’d made.
“Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.”
She felt inclined to agree. Late. Everything was too late. Her friends…all of them were gone now. Maybe the ones with youkai blood were able to survive till now, but she doubted it. The poem was mocking her.
“Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet?
O, let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet!
No, no, too late! ye cannot enter now.”
“Teacher!” She raised her hand quickly, standing up in her seat, skin burning as if branded.
The instructor looked more surprised than upset. “Ms. Higurashi? Is something the matter?”
“Please, I have to use the bathroom. It’s an emergency.” Kagome begged, not paying attention to the few snickers that flitted through the room.
“Go on,” the teacher shooed her off, a bit of concern in their eyes.
It didn’t take any other prompting other than that for Kagome to dash out of the room. Her heart was failing, and the minute she rushed into the bathroom, her legs collapsed beneath her. She could hear Sango and Miroku calling out for her, worry in their tone. Shippo was frantic and upset, wondering where she had gone. The branches of a tree drooped as Inuyasha stayed in a silent perch, his normally bright and fierce eyes forlorn and desolate. And Sesshomaru…Sesshomaru never wandered out of his Western Lands again.
“Everyone, I’m so sorry,” she covered her face, her body trembling as she willed herself not to cry. If she cried, that would be it, she would lose herself again to the sadness. “I’m so sorry.”
With the Shikon Jewel’s demise, the powers of time had no need for a Shikon Miko. Her very sole purpose for existence disappeared when the Jewel did. Now she was left alone in a time without her very dear friends, and without a way.
The minutes passed in slow ticks of the clock. She didn’t pay any mind to the time. Surely someone would come fetch her to return her to class if she didn’t go herself soon. In her mind she decided that she would not stay in the bathroom. She would not stay at the school. Her destination was home.
She slipped out of the bathroom, and made a beeline for the front doors of the school. Quiet and drawing no attention to herself, she walked out, hoping that one of her friends would grab her school things for her…or that the office would hold them. She knew that a rather nasty call from the vice principal awaited her and her family once she returned home. But in all honesty, she didn’t care. There had been times that Naraku or other fiends had trapped her in false realities where the well didn’t exist, where she had never traveled in time to the Inuyasha forest. She had always been able to detect the ruse. To figure out the truth in the midst of a made-up lie. So there was always joy at the end, because she was always reunited with everyone in the end. But this time, it wasn’t a lie. There was no ruse. This wasn’t some vision of another life.
This was reality.
Kagome stumbled towards the front gates of the school.
Reality was killing her.
She fell, her feet catching on one another and causing her to lurch forward. A surprised yelp flew past her lips and she flung her hands out in front to catch herself. Talk about insult to injury.
Instead the miko collided with a warm, solid surface. In an instant a flood of blossoming warm youki flared out around her, enveloping and hiding her away. She should have been scared. Terrified even, given that a youkai had found her in the modern time where demons did not encounter hums. But she was not afraid.
Kagome looked up, only to have gentle but hungry lips crash into hers. The kiss was sudden and she did not have time to recover any senses. But she knew their soft touch. She knew their feeling by heart. Squeezing her eyes shut, she returned the kiss with as much fervor as it was gifted to her. It was by no means delicate, but it was filled with desperation and hope and love and every emotion that she had found herself lacking for the past several weeks.
Lightheadedness engulfed her and she had to break away from the contact. Her breath came out in pants, and she trembled. Her hands shook as they reached up to cup a familiar face.
Sesshomaru appeared different. His hair was more silver than white—it was cut cropped and short—and his eyes had been dulled to look more like the color of meade than gold. His face lacked any markings of his household, and he bore no sign of fangs or Inu-like eyes. Moreover he seemed rather silly, wearing a floral patterned tie with a plain white button down and black trousers. His look seemed disheveled, as if he had been running—clothes rumpled and hair wind-tossed. He seemed almost human. But she knew him.
“Pardon me,” he murmured, his voice hitched as if he were afraid that she would disappear from him. “I know that the Sesshomaru you’d grown accustomed with did not spend much time on sentimentalities but—”
She cut him off, her hands pulling his face back to hers. He needed no other prompting, lifting her up into his arms as he once had so long ago, and he brought her close so that he may kiss her again.
Kagome’s lips brushed against his, tears staining both of their skin. She was so tired of crying, but this she could not control.
“It took so long to find you,” he whispered, pressing soft and gentle butterfly kisses between each word. “Tokyo is so large, and the city’s stench makes my senses less than what they were. But that would not hinder this Sesshomaru.”
She laughed and rested her forehead against his. “I missed hearing you say your name like that.”
“What an odd thing to say, miko,” he chuckled, hefting her up a bit higher so that the sun filtered behind her. He wanted to see her in the light of day. Glittering among the rays of sunlight and the glow of his youkai power, she was beautiful. “I take ages to find you because every school in Japan decided to have a uniform like yours, and the first thing you say to me is, you missed the way this one says his own name?”
Her teardrops trickled like liquid diamonds.
“I missed you,” Kagome laughed, her voice cracking and breaking as she thought her heart might explode with relief and mirth. “I missed you so much.”
He said nothing else. There was nothing more that needed to be said on his part. He closed the distance between them, holding Kagome comfortably against his chest like a bride.
Sesshomaru leaned in and breathed in the real and comforting scent of her, before relishing the softness of her lips.
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Sesskag 2018 Days One, Two, Three, Four, Five, x
