White wispy clouds surrounded her. A chill rang in the air and through her body. Everything was blurry, as if she were seeing it in a sort of haze.
"Kagome…" Her name whispered through her ear. She looked around trying to find the source of the voice. There was no one.
"Who's there?" she asked quietly, her voice barely audible.
"Kagome…" the voice whispered her name again. She turned around quickly hoping to see the owner before they disappeared again.
A dark figure stood just beyond the mist. She could only see the outline of it but oddly, it seemed quite familiar. She tried to run towards it, yet however fast she ran, she just couldn't reach it. The figure stood still as she fruitlessly tried to get to it. It was as if the world around her was stuck in place.
Unexpectedly, she tripped and lost her footing, falling into the haze.
Kagome woke up on the cold hospital floor beside her bed. Her blanket was tangled around her feet and her hair hung tousled over her face. She brushed it back with her hand and took a deep breath. She pulled the blanket up off the floor and sat down on the bed. She had been having that same dream night after night for the past week. She had a feeling as to what it meant but tried her hardest not to think about it. She had tried to wipe that entire section of occurrences from her mind. Yet she knew every night would be the same. As soon as she fell asleep she'd find herself surrounded by haze. She had tried staying awake but due to the strenuous tests the doctors made her do, by evening she was wiped out.
Kagome rubbed her eyes. "Maybe I need therapy," she said jokingly to herself. She hadn't told anyone about the dreams. They all were so happy that she was getting better, why shatter their hopes by telling them she was having weird dreams. They'd think she had gone nuts, her mind warped by the coma. She sighed despairingly.
She looked up when she heard footsteps. "Kagome," her mother said as she opened the door, "what are you doing still in bed dear? It's nearly noon! Let's go sweetheart, it's your last day here! You might as well make the most out of it!"
Two weeks had passed since Kagome had first awakened from her coma and since then, she had steadily improved her condition, despite her secret dreams. The doctors spent every day testing her physical and mental ability. They showed her images of her brain and explained to her how her lucid visions of another time were created due to an increase in melatonin present in her brain during her coma. She hadn't mentioned anything about Sengoku Jidai or Inuyasha since first awakening, although she thought of them quite often despite herself. Scientifically, it would seem that she really had just dreamt it all. Time travel and demons? What an imagination.
After Kagome had finished her testing the day before, her doctors had announced that they felt she was ready to leave. Her final assessment took less than an hour to complete and the doctors allowed her to leave the place that had apparently been her home for far longer than she realized.
The drive home from the hospital made Kagome feel like she had never been away. She was squashed in between her mother and father in the front seat while her brother and grandfather sat in the back. Her parents frequently glanced over at her, always smiling, so happy to be bringing her home finally. It was like old times. Her brother argued with her in vain as her parents sided with her each and every time due to what the doctors called her "stable condition". To her, life couldn't get any more perfect.
They pulled into the shrine around dinnertime. The sun was just setting into the east making the sky an orange, pink colour. Kagome climbed out of the car and breathed in the cool spring air. She was home.
"Kagome honey," her mother said, putting her arm around her shoulders. "C'mon dear let's get you inside before you catch a cold."
Kagome nodded, allowing her mother to steer her towards the house. But before going inside, she looked over towards the tiny well house. It was boarded up, a caution sign placed on the door. Suddenly a figure dressed in red snapped into her vision as if someone had just flashed a picture in front of her eyes and took it away before she was given a chance to see it clearly. Stop it Kagome. She blinked a few times and looked at the well house for a moment longer before shaking her head and following everyone inside.
Kagome woke up in the middle of the night to feel her stomach growling. She hadn't eaten a lot at dinner after just recently been nursed off of the support of tubes. She slipped her feet into her slippers and gracefully walked out of her room and down the stairs.
When in the kitchen, she got herself a bowl down from the cupboard and reached towards the refrigerator to get the milk. As she stretched her hand out, the room suddenly began to spin, blurring all the colours into one mass blob. Kagome found herself getting very dizzy and shut her eyes tightly, trying to remain focused. The doctors had warned her that she might suffer from certain hallucinations since she was now off most of the drugs they had used to keep her stable with in her coma. She tried to reach out for the kitchen counter to brace herself. This would all go away momentarily. At least, that's what the doctors said…
A warm breeze blew past her face. The sound of birds twittering off in the distance and trees swishing in the wind could be heard. Kagome slowly opened her eyes and they immediately went wide. She was in a forest. The moon shone down in beams across the ground, cut into slices by the looming trees above her. Kagome felt a chill creep over her bare legs. She looked down only to see she was no longer dressed in her pajamas but was now in her school uniform. Something weird was certainly going on. She tried to reassure herself. Maybe she was just dreaming…? That seemed to be the most prominent answer to her predicament. She was probably still in her bed. Either that or her hallucinations had taken a turn for the worst.
A twig cracked somewhere behind her. She turned around quickly. She attempted to peer into the trees to see what the noise had been but it was too dark. Something brushed across the back of her ankle making her turn around the other way just as fast. Once again, she saw nothing.
She rubbed her arms, trying to calm her nerves. "It was probably j-just a squirrel," she stuttered as she tried to reassure herself.
An owl hooted loudly from somewhere above her. The trees began to rustle more roughly and frequently, as if something were moving through them and towards her. She watched the trees in fear, her hands covering her mouth shakily.
"W-who's there?" she asked in the most confident voice she could muster under the circumstances.
Suddenly something quick and fairly large sprung out from the dark trees and towards her. She tried to scream but a rough, callused hand muffled it. She fell backwards on to the hard ground in her panic, bringing the owner of the hand down with her.
"Unless you want a fight," a familiar voice said, inches from her ear. "Don't scream."
She nodded quickly and the hand disappeared from her mouth. She could only see the silhouette of the person but on the top of his head she could have sworn she saw what looked like little triangles, which was odd considering the only person she had ever known to have something like that was…
"Now," the person still on top of her cut her train of thought short. He leaned down starring straight into her eyes. She found herself wide-eyed as she gazed into bright amber eyes. His long white hair curtained around his face. "What's the big idea of being out here in the forest this late at night? You know how dangerous it is for someone like you to be out here alone even in the day time. It's practically suicide at night. Why didn't you come to the village? If I hadn't smelled your scent, anything could've happened to you out here."
Kagome swallowed hard. "I-Inuyasha?"
"Yeah…?" he said hesitantly, noticing the uncertainty in her voice.
"It's you!" she said excitedly, throwing her arms around his neck and making him topple back the other way so that she was now on top of him. "I can't believe it's really you!"
"What's gotten into you?" Inuyasha said in a slightly nervous tone as she buried her head into his shoulder. "Are you… Are you smelling me?!"
She lifted her head up smiling. "I missed you so much!"
"Gees if I knew I'd get this much recognition, I'd let you go back home for three days more often," he said nonchalantly.
"They said you were a dream. I knew they were wrong! I just – wait, three days?" She looked at him strangely. "Inuyasha, I was gone longer than that. It's been two weeks since I last was here!"
Inuyasha raised his eyebrow at her. He sat up, taking her up with him, and grabbed her head gently in his clawed hands. He turned it from side to side examining her with squinted eyes.
"Inuyasha? What are you doing?" she asked with confusion, peering at him from the corner of her eye.
"I'm trying to see where it was you bumped your head and if it's really bad." At that, she pulled her head out of his hands and looked at him with a frustration. "Kagome you were only gone for three days. I counted."
"You counted?"
"Well – that is to say it's not like I spent this whole time waiting for you. I mean I do have other things to do other than wait all week for some wench to come back – but that's besides the point! Stop trying to change the subject!"
"I wasn't trying to," she said simply. Inuyasha looked at her angrily before he sighed, his eyes softening slightly.
"Look, it's late. We should probably get back to Kaede's hut. I think you need some rest and –" He stopped in mid-sentence as he looked beyond her into the trees. He gave a sniff into the air. He slowly stood up, leaving her sitting on the ground. "Stay here," he said quietly as he moved towards the forest.
"Inuyasha?" Kagome asked uncertainly as she watched him disappear into the woods. She was jerked forward as everything around her began to spin. "Inuyasha…" she repeated with a little more force as she tried to focus. Still her surroundings continued to spin. "Inuyasha!" she screamed with all her might just as everything jerked to a halt.
Kagome found herself panting and sweating on her kitchen floor. The refrigerator door was swung wide open and shards of her shattered bowl lay beside her on the ground. The sound of footsteps pounding down the stairs meekly reached her ears. Her mother and father appeared at the doorframe.
Her mother looked at her in shock. "Kagome…?"