She watched her daughter, wondering back on the visit she'd received earlier that day, from an older version of the young girl. This girl, however, danced merrily around her room, singing like no one was listening, and dancing like no one was watching. The other girl had walked in with what seemed to be an almost regal grace learned from time and she smiled brightly, but tiredly.
"Mama?"
She snapped out of her memories, to look down at her little girl, who'd noticed her audience.
"Yes Kagome?" she asked, with a kind and warm patience that all mothers seemed to have at that age, and smiled brightly, to hide the troubling thoughts that may have come.
"I was thinking . . ." she said, wondering if she should share her innermost thoughts with her mother, or if she'd laugh at her.
"Thinking? You? Well, there's a shock!" her mother teased, causing the little girl to giggle.
"I was thinking. I feel like I've done things, before I was even born. Like I was looking for something, but when I found it, I'd lose it. Sometimes I feel like . . . like I've hurt people."
Her mama gasped, and shook her thoughts from her mind, and replied, "Maybe so Kagome. I can just see you as a little angel, going around and finding trouble, but fixing it, and wondering why it was gone, and then being born into my baby girl."
Kagome's eyes widened, "Angels hurt people?"
Her mother sighed sadly, "They can, sometimes. Maybe you were hurt Kagome, and not the other way around. Maybe an angel broke your heart."
Kagome pondered this, her six-year-old mind only getting her so far, before saying, "Well, maybe I was hurt. But sometimes I look at the other shrine maidens, and I just . . . I feel so angry. And sometimes I wonder if maybe I hurt them."
Kagome felt her mother pull her towards her, and she exhaled deeply against her daughter's hair, causing the strands to flutter up.
"Memories, from a time not yet come then," she said, "I don't want you to be hurt. I know you will be though, and I'm sorry that I couldn't stop it, but it's happened already."
Confused by her mother's almost cryptic answer, Kagome just nodded and went back to play with her toys, forgetting about it within the next few minutes.
Her mother never forgot though. And ten years later, when the girl ran into her mother's arms sobbing, telling her about the heartbreak she'd just received, her mother's eyes darkened, and remembered that day, when she received the visit that changed her perception of her daughter's life.
'Damn you Kikyou,' she thought, 'Damn you for scaring her, hurting her. For ruining her life before it even started.'
In her mind, she said all the things that escaped her that day, and she held her daughter tight, for both their sakes.
A/N: Whee. I'm uber-pissed that Kikyou may be back, and I was listening to Never Ever (one of my favorite Ayu songs), and this popped out. :o I'm stuck on Pray For Me (I know what's going to happen eventually, it's just, I have no idea how to get there), and so I've been writing short stories to fill the time (and obsessing over Trigun too! Milly rocks!). I hope you can forgive me for being lazy. :o But with Kuro Neko-Sama's site back up, maybe I'll be so happy, I'll just let my hands fly. *cough* Maybe.
And, just in case you can't tell what happened, Kikyou came to see Kagome's mother when she was six, and kind of gloated over what would happen to her daughter, because she knew that Mrs. Higurashi would be powerless to stop it. Maybe I'll write that scene out, but that'd require me actually putting Kikyou there, and not killing her. It was bad enough to insinuate that she got picked over Kagome by Inu-Yasha, I don't think I could go that far.