Prompt: "And in his eyes I see the words I'm afraid to hear."

Setting: somewhen before the group met Sango.

Firefly

Life in the Feudal era was very peaceful, when there weren't any battles to be fought. Kagome breathed in peacefully, cuddling the sleeping fox child closer to herself. Sunsets were magical- ruby suns drowning in silver clouds, the moon rising – big, sad and pale. I sometimes don't want to return home.

She felt someone approaching her. "Kagome-sama," the priest said in a warm voice. "May I sit next to you?"

The girl smiled at him. "Of course, Miroku-sama."

"Do you know where Inuyasha is?"

Kagome shook her head. "I think he went hunting." But he might have gone after Kikyou. Again. She stubbornly turned to look back at the horizon. Damn.

Soon the priest spoke again. "It must feel very strange for you, to be so far away from your home."

"I'm not that far from home actually. I live just a few meters away from the well, which is also in our family shrine."

"In the future, there are still priests and demons?"

"I actually haven't seen many demons in my time. But priests, yes. They still exist, although people don't believe so much in anything anymore. Nothing magical happens there."

Kagome turned to look at Miroku, who had gone pensive. "You live five hundred years into the future, here, in this village?" Confused, Kagome nodded slowly. "Does the village still exist?"

"No, there is a very big city, and in it, millions of people live."

"So many?" Miroku said, incredulous. Kagome murmured a yes.

"And there are these really high buildings, some are tall like mountains. And there are things like electricity, which provides superficial light in the dark. And there are all kinds of food that are imported by very distant countries. And fashion is different too – the clothes, although not as pretty as the ones from this time period, can get put on and off more easily and are more dispensable. You would have liked that, wouldn't you?" Kagome laughed as she watched Shippo stir in her arms a bit. Then she noticed the priest grow silent again. "What is it, Miroku-sama?"

"Nothing," he said, looking to the horizon – the sun had set already. Nighttime had fallen. "I'm just trying to imagine all that you describe to me. Inuyasha has been to your time but he never told me anything about it and I gathered that he is too self-centered to notice anything out of him and the things that concern him."

Kagome scratched her forehead and laughed. "That sounds like him, doesn't it?"

Miroku shifted closer to her, and she felt the warmness of his skin through the fabric of their clothes. Before the girl had the chance to get nervous though, she realized that he was just trying to brush away a bang that had fallen in the child's eyes. Kagome looked at him softly. "You really want to have children one day, don't you?"

"Very much," he admitted openly, looking at the smile on Shippo's face as he sleepily murmured a 'daddy' to him.

"You're more serious than usual tonight, Miroku-sama," Kagome observed.

"Well," the priest said. "If my somberness upsets you, we can always get more light-hearted!"

And his hand was promptly slapped. "I don't actually have anything against your seriousness," Kagome said, a dangerous aura surrounding her. "Perverse monk."

And so, he remained at her side in the darkness, quiet and obedient, beneath the starry night sky full of fireflies. Which were the stars and which were the fireflies, they weren't sure. Soon, Kagome began to doze off – Inuyasha still hasn't returned.

A week later, when she returned from modern Tokyo, Kagome, with a bright smile and a soft gaze meant only for Miroku, brought dozens of pictures of the city and showed them to him and to Shippo. "What is this?" Inuyasha asked as he passed them by. "Oh," he said as he saw the pictures. "Why did you bring pictures of your home, Kagome?"

Kagome raised an eyebrow in irritation. "Idiot- you may have seen the future but Shippo and Miroku-sama haven't and they're curious."

"Okay, okay. No need to be so aggressive." And then he climbed on his favorite tree and minded his own business.

The look on Miroku's and Shippo's faces was worth every yen she had spent for those pictures, but as nighttime fell, Miroku grew quiet again. "What is it, Miroku-sama?" she asked.

"We must be all ghosts to you," Miroku suddenly said. Kagome froze. She had never thought of her time-traveling ventures in this light. She had never thought, not even once in all the times she had returned home to eat her favorite home-cooked meals or to go to school, that somewhere beneath the ground she was walking on was Inuyasha's grave, or Shippo's. "To you, I've been dead for hundreds of years."

And something in Kagome soared like an arrow shot, and promptly fell when it had nothing to pierce. She reached to touch the warmness of his cheek and let her hand trail down to where his beating heart was. "To me, you have never been more alive."

That night, when Inuyasha was away again, Kagome stole into the darkness and into the priest's warm arms and beating heart and used his hot breath against her mouth and the liveliness of his eyes to prove to herself that he was alive. That they were both alive. Maybe, in my world, while I'm going on my way to school, I walk over my own grave too.

And he walked her to the well on the next day and kissed the palm of her hand and told her that she was the oddest and the loveliest woman he had ever seen. And then, when she returned one hour later, he was waiting for her with Shippo in his arms and Kagome decided right there and then that when all of this was over, she wouldn't let herself be parted from those two.

And she promised it to them, right at that moment.