A/N: Written disregarding the most current chapters of the manga, etc.
Dream
Kagome lived in a dream.
"What's wrong with you, Kagome?" asks Yuka. Kagome looks at her hazily, wondering when Yuka had grown into a young woman.
"There's nothing wrong with me," Kagome answers, a second too late, because the world is a daze around her and words often fade too quickly for her senses to pick up.
Eri helps Kagome from her seat, concern on her honest face. Ayumi puts a small hand on Kagome's shoulder, and Kagome looks at her until she pulls it back cautiously, almost frightened.
"Ever since you came back to school, you've been walking around like you're half dead," Ayumi says, her hand still slightly outstretched, as if to guard herself.
A woman walks, though her body decomposes around her... A man destroys himself in destroying his own hell... A woman buries herself in bone, flesh and bone...
Am I? Kagome wonders. Or am I half alive?
"I think," Kagome says, staring at the great tide of humanity that passes by her, "that I want to go home."
Ayumi, Eri, and Yuka agree easily. Too easily, and with false eagerness that does nothing to hide their fear and concern.
As they walk, Eri awkwardly begins an attempt on conversation. "Whatever happened to Inu-Yasha?" she asks, cheery with an effort.
"Yeah!" Ayumi says, too quickly. She tries to pick up the broken shards of the comaraderie that once existed among them, but they only shatter into a thousand more pieces because Kagome has stiffened, and her face is frozen.
Tiny beads of light glimmer and dance into a beacon of purity and uncleanliness... the holy and the wicked..
"Kagome?" Yuka says, hesitating, uncertain.
"Inu-Yasha left," Kagome says.
.. A beacon of light breaking through the blood, the red, destroying the flesh and bone...
The rush of humanity sweeps past Kagome, mindless in the great unity of purpose.
.. The demon and the angel... the unsullied soil...
A long white scarf flickers and gambles in the wind, black hair entwined with it.
the holy and the wicked, the holy and the wicked, the holy and the wicked
Kagome dreams but does not wake, and she has nothing more to say.
end