A disclaimer : I do not own Inuyasha
A note of gratitude : None of this would be possible without my fantastic beta (the lovely and talented Deathangel113) and viewers like you.
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"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end…"
-The Odyssey
Kagome looked over the damage with tired eyes from where she sat on the floor. Beautiful fountains had crumbled into debris and the jagged pieces of marble were scattered across the once-elegant mosaic floors. The smooth formations painstakingly cut and placed by artisans long ago lay shattered and broken. Now, the small pieces of glass captured patches of sunlight pouring through the broken ceiling, throwing colored reflections scornfully into the empty spaces.
The destruction was evident in every corner of the room Kagome could see – nothing had been spared, not even shoots of the young, green plants she had placed in the bathhouse over a year ago. Sad leaves had been viscously torn from their stalks and left to wilt with the memories of the stonework. Even as she watched, the only flower remaining of the Rose Mallow plants Kagome had clumsily attempted to transplant swayed precariously on the few strands securing it to the stalk.
Kagome turned her eyes away quickly, unwilling to watch the light purple head fall. She focused instead on the spraying water of the broken fountains. Rainbows had sprung mockingly into the air where beams of sunlight cut through the cool shade to release them. Kagome watched water drops fall from a broken piece of marble near her right foot, unconcerned that the pool surrounding her legs was getting larger.
A drop that had mildly captured her attention fell noiselessly to the ground, all sound of its flight and impact drowned out by the more impressive sprays of water of the larger fountains and the quiet sniffling in a corner. The ripples across the pool reached Kagome's bare leg, inspiring her to motion as though passed through kinetic energy. She lifted her hand out toward the dark and sniffling corner. The sounds rose in volume only slightly as a reaction to her expenditure.
No…..hush….Kagome thought. She stretched her fingers out further, as though the strain and tension of her hand might convey her message across the room. Instead, the sniffling became sobs – great heaving sounds, only hushed by the silence immediately following their cresting as if the perpetrator couldn't gather enough air to convey the depths of their despair.
They cut off abruptly. Kagome dropped her hand. It landed with a splash and she felt a warm wave wash over the side of her hip, sending the more adventurous drops to land from her ankle to almost the top of her shoulder. In response to the loss of another audible source, the fountains broke the palpable stillness of the room with a more pressing fissure that echoed through Kagome's ears to ring inside of her mind. She could hear every drop of water now. But a foreign sound was beginning to intrude on the portrait of destruction.
Muffled footsteps were coming from outside the bathhouse, with each football becoming louder and more distinct. Kagome moved her field of vision to the cracked and broken doorway where a long stretch of hallway was just visible through the piles of rubble. A shadow appeared from around the corner, indistinct and far away. But Kagome knew better. She closed her eyes, unwilling to see anymore and she let the serenade of the erratically spouting fountain and the sporadic warmth of the beams of sunlight take her away to a happier time.