As children we are taught if you fight for what you believe in you can accomplish anything. Choose humility over pride and reap the benefits of virtue, take a stand against your enemy and experience inner grace that will help you succeed, have blind faith that everything will be okay as long as you carry hope in your heart. Hope … this four-letter word can charge the most despaired with so much emotional optimism they continue to live each day to fight the good fight regardless of the outcome.

Even now I have hope. It's the reason I see him twice a day; once in the morning and once at night, and why I place his favorite flowers where he sleeps.

Rin put the pen down so that she could hold her face as she sobbed. Naraku had been destroyed nearly twenty years ago, life should have been different, safer, easier to breathe. Yet it seemed Naraku's death started the demise of the entire world around her. She could feel the vein in her head throb and the back of her throat begin to itch from dryness. Clearing her eyes with her hand and using the sleeves of her kimono to wipe her nose she walked outside.

Fall had always been her favorite time of year. The sun turned tree leaves into beautiful hues of red, yellow, and orange while grass became moist and cool to the touch. Hot summer days became warm afternoons with refreshing breezes, and nights lead to family and friends huddling close to a burning fire. It was the perfect Fall night for a fire and family, but Rin settled for the nights wind cooling her heated face and drying what was left of her tears.

"I miss you all so much, why did you have to leave me?"

Everything changed six years after Naraku's defeat, but during that time she attending Inuyasha and Kagome's wedding, the birth of Miroku and Sango's son, and Lady Kaede's funeral. There was celebration with each birth and death without fear, no one could have asked for anything other.

A chill seized Rin's spine silently forcing her back into the hut. She grabbed a blanket from her bed and returned to the table with her papers. Taking a deep breath she picked up the pen and continued.

Lord Sesshoumaru was the last of the demons to fall ill from the disease, the first being his fathers oldest friend, Myouga.