Chapter 1
Eighty years in this prison.
Eighty years of watching the world pass her by.
Eighty years of watching her family grow old and live life without her influence.
Eighty years of watching her sisters and brother discover love and give birth to families she couldn't have.
Eighty years of hopeless wishes and painful deaths.
Eighty years of hell.
Kagome leaned against one of the stone walls of the cell she had been forced to inhabit. Her hand found one of the yellow ribbon draperies that hung throughout the circular room. The entire space was cluttered by the fabric, right down to the simple yet elegant yellow dress she wore. Gray and yellow. How she loathed those colors. Staring at them for years had long since lost her interest in what once had been her favorite color.
An all too familiar sigh escaped the girl as she glanced at the only translucent wall within the space. It was her window to the outside world, but now it only held a reminder of the life she couldn't have.
When she had been first confined to the small space dimension of the mirror, her parents had been angry but grateful. Why, she didn't know. She couldn't recall anything that happened the few hours before her confinement, but she would never forget her father's rage. Every time he looked at her from then on had been a look of barely contained rage and sorrow. It slowly ate away at her to think of why her father gave her such a look. After a few years, she blocked it out entirely.
At least her mother was happy. No, happy wasn't the word. Cheerful described the woman's behavior that lasted ten years. Cheeriness that Kagome was positive hid the unimaginable sorrow that her mother felt every time she thought of her youngest daughter's fate.
On Kagome's twentieth birthday, her family realized she didn't age within the mirror. That brought about a whole new wave of rage from her father and fake cheerfulness from her mother. She would live on as they died. And died they did, while Kagome lived on as a fifteen-year-old doll within a mirror world.
After her parents' death, Kagome hid herself. She refused to watch her sisters and brother share the same fate as her parents, and since she couldn't leave them she blocked them out. So many years passed that her siblings and their children forgot about her.It is better this way, Kagome forced herself to believe. No one can get hurt more that what is necessary to feel about death.
That had been around thirty years ago. Now Kagome lay in waiting for her mirror to be shipped to a country across the sea. Her great nephew had been left the mirror and, in need of money, sold it overseas to a diplomat in France.
Well, I've always wanted to travel, Kagome thought humorlessly as the mirror's contents shifted a bit due to the rocking of the ship it was being carried on. Hopefully my nephew's no fool and sold the mirror to someone worthy of keeping it safe.
Distant commands and orders alerted Kagome that the ship had docked and was being unloaded. The various sounds and shifting of the mirror soothed Kagome as she drifted into a restful slumber. After all, what else did she have to look forward to in this cage? Sleep was her only true reprieve.
"Place it over there." The two weary shippers placed the crate down gently on the floor, opened it and set up the contents before dragging their feet out and back into the busy of the city to finish their jobs.
A man, standing at six-feet-five-inches with hip-length silver hair, examined the gift that had been delivered. It was an old gothic-style mirror that stood a good five feet from its base to the top of the glass. Very weighted, very decorative, and very expensive.
"This is what that old cow was praising?" The man scowled at his son's ungrateful tone as he entered the family study.
"Totosai means well, son," the man huffed. "Such a gift from him means a lot. Plus, he wanted a gift befitting the year you're celebrating."
The man's son gave a rather ungentlemanly snort, his unusual golden eyes gleaming in irritation. "I'm turning twenty, father, not sixty. Such an old fashioned gift should be reserved for an old fashioned age."
"Sesshomaru!" The man growled, "surely your mother has taught you better. Such thinking must be kept to one's thoughts!"
Sesshomaru bowed to his father, the tail of his navy blue suit swaying with the motion, "forgive me. I forgot my place."
"Surely you have," his father reprimanded, "Even more so, you have yet to fulfill the one request I ask of you—"
"I see no point in it," Sesshomaru said as he walked over to the mirror, examining its structure. An expressionless mask covered his face as he ran a hand along the intricate frame. "An arrangement like that does not benefit me, despite your constant appraisal."
"An appraisal that must be kept," his father hissed, "no son of mine shall lose sight of tradition while we are in this Western world!"
A look of boredom adorned Sesshomaru's face as he leaned gracefully against the frame of the mirror, his waist-length silver locks cascading around him almost femininely. "Are we not upholders of western tradition of our homelands? I see no difference when you speak of conformity to these lands' customs when it is these very customs we have tried to instill upon our own people."
"Indifference brings about the birth of fools, Sesshomaru." The elder of the two sighed warily. "We must not to lose sight of who we are in these changing times."
"And yet, by moving here, we study these barbarians so as to instill the very change upon our people that you wish to protect ourselves from," Sesshomaru countered blandly. "Such thinking cannot be viewed as anything short of hypocrisy."
"Just as such crass speaking is nothing short of dishonor." Golden eyes narrowed on its junior, demanding the younger submit to the elder. And submit he did, for now.
"Forgive me, father," Sesshomaru pushed himself away from the mirror. "I forget my place."
"See to it you remember it in the future," Sesshomaru's father warned. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to check on your brother. I have a feeling he lost himself in the sea of suitors that had come for you."
"Turn them away," Sesshomaru said, "tell InuYasha he is free to pick from them, if that is what he wishes. As I have stated before, I have no intent to marry one of these western women."
His father gave him one last look before turning to leave, muttering, "You will reap what you sow, son."
Kagome stirred as a pair of voices became more prominent in her conscious mind. Male voices, to be precise. Now fully awake, Kagome approached the window of the mirror to peer out into the time-based world. Her breath caught at the sight of the two men in her view. Obviously father and son, but easily mistaken for brothers, the two had to be the most beautiful men to walk the continent.
The elder of the two, Kagome figured based off the slight laugh lines around his eyes whenever he talked, carried himself like someone with such exuberant power that he had no idea what to do with it all. Silver tresses that fell to his hip and gold eyes that were warm like the morning sun, Kagome had never seen a man like him before. Surely, this man couldn't be any younger than thirty, but he could easily pass off as one just entering their knowing years. But what caught her attention more so than the father, was the son.
As the son stepped away from the mirror, she used what she knew of her prison to guess he stood at about six-feet-two-inches, barely shorter than his elder. Almond shaped eyes incased amber irises framed by long dark lashes he had to have inherited from his mother, for it was a trait his father lacked. Feminine lips and an aristocratic nose stood out on a painstakingly obvious male face, framed by silver hair gifted from his father that fell to mid-thigh.
Kagome watched the calm but very tense conversation between the two men, an awestruck look on her face the entire time. Once the father left, the son turned to the mirror and stopped. Kagome's eyes widened in realization: he'd seen her.
A/N: This will probably be the last fast update, sadly. It IS the holidays, after all. Then after that comes final projects for school. I will try to push out two more chapters before Thanksgiving is over, then most updates will have to wait until the Christmas holiday. But I always love feedback! I'd like to know what my readers liked, hated, or think I need to improve on. ^^;