I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
(Sonnet XLIII) Edna St. Vincent Millay
Prompt: I know
She shouldn't be the one sitting here. Of course, Kagome knew that. If anything, she should be the one in the urn, existing only as a pile of soft ashes left after several years of long, happy life. Yet, here she was, in her mourning clothes, before two small graves near the Sacred Tree, with a hole in her heart the size of a galaxy. What else was she to feel when she had lost the one she loved?
If Kagome were being quite honest with herself, and she wasn't- not about this- he had never been hers. She knew that, too. Inuyasha belonged solely to Kikyo and no one else. Unfortunately, it had taken their deaths to make her realize this.
There were too many years wasted on loving him that she could never get back. There were too many feelings that she would never have returned by someone who deserved them. There would perhaps be many more years wasted on mourning her loss. All of these things were also known deep in Kagome's heart, even if she didn't wish to admit to them.
What she hadn't known, and wished she had, was that Inuyasha would be ambushed by demons on the night of the new moon. She wished she knew that Kikyo would waste away with the loss of her mate until nothing remained but the same soulless husk that had risen from the dead during Naraku's time.
If she had, maybe she could have prevented what happened. Maybe she could have helped Kikyo learn to grieve instead of insisting on focusing on her own grief. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Life was full of maybes, Kagome was quickly learning. She was also learning that she seemed to be the only one who didn't know these things.
She wiped the tears from her lashes before they spilled down her cheeks, and rose to walk away. As she turned, she found a rare visitor sitting beneath a tree, with a quiet look of contemplation on his face.
"Lord Sesshoumaru," Kagome nodded respectfully before she brushed past him on her way to the village.
"Priestess," he returned.
She knew he visited almost as much as she did, and stayed for just as long to gaze over their graves. Sesshoumaru swore, in that irritatingly arrogant way of his, that he only visited out of the honor dictated by tradition, but this time, Kagome could also swear something of her own. She knew something no one else did: Sesshoumaru visited out of love, not just an overwhelming sense of duty. If it had been duty, she knew his visits would be neither so long, nor so frequent.
She heard his voice once more, "Priestess, my brother was a blind fool."
Kagome stopped, and she grew very still, "I know."
Words: 500