So after quite an adventure involving flow charts and lots of squiggles on paper that were supposed to represent a linear explanation of multiple people making knots in time, I have finally managed to complete this beast. I am well pleased with it, and I have already started generating an outline for the second book, one more closely matching the Yu Yu Hakusho story line versus the Inuyasha. Poor Koenma... the paperwork just might kill him.
From here on out: If you see anything familiar in here, then it probably isn't mine, because if it was mine, then it would have gone like this instead, now wouldn't it? Also, I apologize. I read a lot and don't necessarily remember where all of my inspirations come from, so if you write, thank you for feeding my addiction for that nebulous intoxicating phrase, What if?..
The Prologue: The End
"Shikon!" Fiercely, so much sorrow for such a tiny jewel
"Disappear!"Resolutely, Kami let it be done.
"FOREVER!" Desperately, no one else needs to die for this!
And so, it was done. The miko would go on to be bound to the future, while her beloved remained in the past. She would miss him so much! Every time she passed the well house on her way to high school, a sharp pain would cut at her heart. But the melancholy was always brief, as her eyes would quickly pass over her hand, gripped tightly to her chest. The red string of fate had bound the two of them together so strongly that their paths had crossed in not one lifetime but two. And so she would smile; in the end the two were destined to meet again, it was only a matter of time.
And indeed it was; the well had never truly worked at the behest of the jewel. Too many times had something or someone passed through the well without the aid of the jewel. Mistress centipede, Kagome, Inuyasha, Yura, Saya, Sō'unga the voices of the past; and the voices of the present; a handful of objects and a graveyard of bones, and no one ever questioned why, so desperate for it to work one last time.
The miko, finally secure in the arms of her beloved, would live out the conclusion of her feudal fairytale. Upon her passing those people who had been touched by her light would build a shrine to her around the well which had brought her into their lives. Higurashi they would call it for her light had finally passed and the world was darker for it. A message left inside to her future family "Time sets the caged bird free."
Truly, in the end, time sets everything free, even if it takes the end of time to do so.
