Chapter One, Down the Rabbit Hole

Aurelia's life, as you can see, had never been an easy one. Eventually well paid for, but never easy, especially considering the price that was paid for it. Her move to Tokyo had agreed more with her tastes, with the Otaku anime scene that flooded almost every street in the downtown district. Life was expensive, but luckily her days of art school hadn't gone to waste.

Never without something to do, she worked her way up apprenticing in the small parlor downtown, making what money she could to pay for her studio apartment four blocks away. After working her hardest for almost 3 years, the shop burned to the ground, leaving her without a job, and without money (by her sense of things). Desperate for a place to stay; she scanned the ads in the newspaper for work, only to find occupations that either could not pay her bills, or she lacked the qualifications for. After hunting through paper after paper, she finally settled on one opening in particular, at a small Shinto shrine just on the outskirts of the city. "Help Wanted" it said, "Live in grounds keeper. Must be able to cook, clean, and maintain property. Amenities included. If interested, call (***) (****)" and so she did. As read in the prologue, it was unnecessary, but Aurelia's father had always taught her to work for what she had, so she stuck to it, as he would have. She was determined not to waste any more of her money unless necessary.

She hadn't been the first to inquire for the position; apparently the grandfather, who maintained the place, in his old age, had chased several of the previous help away with his dementia fueled ranting about "demons". It didn't scare her. After everything she went through with her drug addled mother, a crazy old man was nothing. She only hoped that her appearance wouldn't negatively impact the chances of her getting the job. Working as a costume maker, none of her tattoos or piercings mattered, but many other places would hold no tolerance for it. Above all appearances, though, she was a hard worker and didn't complain. Hopefully they would see that underneath the surface.

Surprisingly, when she went into her interview, Mrs. Rei Higurashi never took lengthy notice of the elfin ears, the piercings, or the tattoos. She looked like a woman who had seen her fair share of strange things, and her only question about her looks was to ask if it hurt when she had her ears pierced. After an hour long interview, she shook Aurelia's hand, and congratulated her on her new job, to which she was more than grateful.

"My daughter moved out ten years ago, so her room upstairs will be your new living space," she said with a heavy smile as she gave a tour of the main house, "The bathroom is right next door to it, and if you have any other questions just come to me. Also, my father has borderline Alzheimer's so if he starts spouting about demons or starts throwing paper sutras at you, please try to ignore it. He means well." With that, Aurelia left to her old apartment to pack her things.

The first few weeks things had gone well, she had eventually calmed Mr. Higurashi down to where he would stop chanting behind her everywhere she went. She even assisted in the grocery shopping, despite the looks she was given, and helped around the house as was her job. She finally got to meet Souta, Mrs. Higurashi's son, who had been away at college, and was even asked to make his costume for his upcoming college Halloween party.

Mrs. Higurashi enjoyed Aurelia's company. Since her daughter Kagome left and Souta had gone to college, she felt it was nice to have another person around besides her aging father.

In all honesty Aurelia reminded her much of her baby girl, in kindness and in strange tastes. After all, she'd left in 2004 to be with her odd but amiable boyfriend, the half demon, InuYasha. After the well had sealed itself, she didn't know if she would ever see Kagome again. By now she probably had a family of her own, grandchildren that she would never get to know, and no matter how much time had passed, the thought of it still brought tears to her eyes. Aurelia made it easier.

Anyways, summer turned to fall, and after tirelessly working on Souta's Joker suit, and her own World of Warcraft Sylvanas Windrunner costume, Halloween was at hand. Finally, all her countless late night hours working with that accursed Worbla material had been put to its use; showing off. Souta had invited every college friend he had to their home, hell bent on having a good time and flashing his new custom fit costume at everyone and anyone he could. Aurelia, however, was having a ball in her revealing but wonderfully crafted armor set. She and Souta were little over a year apart in age, but his birthday was still a few months off, so she made it her job to buy the party's alcohol supply.

After a few hours of "Battleshots" with the college kids, she found herself sufficiently trashed out of her mind, and feeling adventurous. Stumbling outside into the chilly autumn breeze, she wandered over to the seemingly forgotten well house.

When she was hired, on her first day of maintaining the grounds, Mr. Higurashi told her to stay out; and that no one was allowed in there. "Not since the demons took my little girl!" He would rant as he followed her around the grounds. However, seeing as how she was drunk enough to almost forget her own name, it was a well ignored warning. So, against what inhibitions she may have still had, she slid open the door, and walked inside.

It was a dirty room, filled with cobwebs and debris, smelling of dampness and age. She stumbled around, feeling the jars of "holy" pickled animal relics and stacks of worn paper sutras, only to stop when she reached the well itself. It was dirty, and uncovered, only adorned with paper banners and the occasional worn sutra. Before she could turn to walk out, her curiosity sated, she spied something shiny at the bottom of the well. Overly inebriated and clumsy, she leaned closer, standing on her tip toes to reach farther and trying to get a closer look, and fell in.

She could only scream. Clutching her bottle of Patrón Silver for dear life, eyes wide open and watering as she fell, she saw a soft light surround her body. "What the hell?" she wondered aloud as she slowly drifted amongst the light and landed lightly on her ass.

"Hello?!" she shouted, hoping someone at the party would hear. "Can anybody hear me? Souta? …TIMMY FELL DOWN THE WELL!" She shouted louder in slurred Japanese, rubbing her sore bottom. She could no longer hear the music from the house.

"How drunk am I?" she wondered quietly to herself, as she began her climb towards the opening of the well. Her faux armor was getting clammy as she exerted the last of her drunken strength pulling herself out.

"What in the hell?" she wondered loudly. Where had the well house gone? Where had the actual house gone? And WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL THESE TREES COME FROM?

She wandered for a while, her adorned compression hunting bow and quiver packed with arrows hanging loosely on her back. She had driven the arrowheads deep into a block of foam anchored inside the bottom of the quiver to make them safe, knowing full well once she and her buddy Patrón were friendly enough he would convince her to take them out and show them off. Since she now had no idea what was going on or where she was, she figured it might be a good time to loosen a few of them.

After travelling on the barely beaten path for what seemed like forever, she spotted a light shining the distance. Not knowing what it may lead to, but not really caring either, she darted, still very much intoxicated, towards the light. "Hello?" She shouted ahead in her second language. "Can someone help me? I'm kind of lost!" Running against the crisp autumn air, bottle hooked to her side, she took off sprinting as fast as she could, only to trip over what felt to her like the only rock in the open field and face plant into the dirt; skidding to a painful halt. "Damn" she cursed under her breath as she pulled herself up, brushing off the dirt from her armor and extremities, and continued jogging towards her destination.

Her shouting had stirred some of the occupants from their homes, and as they saw the strange girl running their way, the people began to panic. "Demon!" they shouted, "Protect the women and children!" Aurelia slowed to a halt. "Demon...wait, Demon?" she wondered, looking behind her, yet nothing was there. 'What the hell are they talking about?' she thought. As they started to gather spears and bows and arrows, she froze. 'Oh god…they mean ME!'

She yelled again, hoping they would hear her plea and not try to kill her. "Please I just need to know where I am! I'm just lost!" Then they ran towards her.

"What the fuck is all this yammering about?!" she heard from one of the huts. Out stepped a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties with long, platinum silver hair. "…The hell?" Aurelia wondered under her breath, as the people retreated behind him. The next thing she knew, his face was inches from hers, though they had been half a field apart only moments before.

"Who the hell are you?" He asked, his eyebrows twitching, hand firmly gripping the hilt of the sword at his side. Her head was spinning. "M-my name is Aurelia. I have no idea what's going on here, I just want to go home." He smelled her for a moment. "Why do you smell like-? No, that doesn't make sense…" He looked her up and down, roughly and awkwardly lifting her arms to inspect her clothes. "What are you?" he asked; a serious look in his eyes. "A-a girl?" she slurred sheepishly.

"InuYasha what's going on over there?" a young woman asked out towards them. "You…I know your face." Aurelia muttered, looking hard at the approaching woman. "Oh my god, you're Kagome!" She shrieked, pointing at the approaching woman. Her face was a little older, but she was definitely the girl from the family photos she had seen over her time at the shrine. "How do you know Kagome?!" the man, InuYasha barked, grabbing Aurelia by the collar of her cloak. "I know her mom!" InuYasha froze, and then looked back at his wife "H-How do you know my mother?" Kagome stammered, dumbfounded.

"Where am I?" Aurelia asked, frantically trying to escape InuYasha's hold "WHEN am I?" She corrected, looking at the approaching villagers, still armed with their farming tools. "So many topknots-" she thought aloud. "No way in hell I'm in 2014, Halloween or not." She looked as if she was losing her mind, squirming in InuYasha's grasp, eyes shifting quickly to everyone and everything around her. "What the hell is going on, I just wanted to see what the big deal about that stupid well house was!?" She squealed, desperate to gain freedom from InuYasha's grasp. He dropped her with a rough thud. "Ouch!" Aurelia yelped as her ass roughly hit the ground. InuYasha paid her no mind.

"You can go back inside, it's just a girl." He casually snorted to the people behind him. "A-are you sure? Just look at her-her clothes and markings, and ears!" a villager exclaimed, skeptical. "She doesn't have any demonic aura as far as I can tell, and she smells human enough. You'll be fine. Now go back into your homes, I'll keep an eye on the runt." "Hey!" Aurelia shouted defiantly, pouting. "Who are you calling runt?!" InuYasha smirked, "You of course, kid." Aurelia's face turned a ghastly shade of red in fury, rivaling InuYasha's hakama's. Sure, she was only 22, but she had about had it with being mocked her whole life, that, and she was still drunk enough to forget to think her actions through. Sober, she would have known she was completely overreacting.

InuYasha's face was cocked backwards from the force of the blow. She reared her fist back an unleashed as much fury as she could in one swing, breaking the hanyou's nose. "The FUCK?!" he exclaimed, rubbing his newly broken/bleeding nose. "That'll teach you to talk shit to people you don't know!" She shouted, storming clumsily past Kagome towards the village. She sat herself next to the watch fire, trying to inconspicuously nurse the quite possibly broken knuckles of her right hand, silently pouting to herself. Why had she done that? She didn't even know the guy, yet she broke his nose…and possibly her hand. At the moment it felt right, necessary almost. Though…now it just hurt, but she wasn't going to give that asshat InuYasha the satisfaction.

"Hey, Aurelia…" Kagome said warmly, sitting beside her, "I've been where you are. I didn't understand it either when I first fell down…or was rather pulled down the well the first time 14 years ago… It's a process really. I'm still getting used to it even now." Aurelia buried her face in her arms sullenly, pulling her knees to her chest with a long sigh. "Is there any way I can get back? I really don't know what the heck is going on and I just want to get back home." Kagome sighed, looking back towards the bone eaters well. "I'm not sure, but you should probably finish sobering up before you try." Aurelia stifled a laugh "Yeah, you're probably right. Knowing me I'll probably break my leg or something trying to do it now." Kagome laughed, "Its ok, I know I would; total klutz myself honestly. I'm not sure how I never managed to break anything when I was jumping back and forth."

Aurelia cocked her head sideways, confused. "You mean it's totally a normal thing for you? I mean, falling down a well and landing in the past?" Kagome smiled, "Not at first, but when it happened to me I had a purpose. You see…" Then she began her long-winded story about her birthday, the sacred jewel, InuYasha and the gang, Sesshoumaru, the wolf tribe, Kikyo, Naraku, and the wish she made on the jewel. She then rambled on about the three year gap after she was forced back to her own time, and how one day, for only that day until now, the well had sealed itself off. Aurelia slowly attempted to process the information, still relatively tipsy.

"It's a lot to take in I know, but imagine how I felt. I was 15 dealing with this stuff. In the end though everything was worth it; I married InuYasha, and we now have 2 beautiful kids that I wouldn't trade for the world. Fate works in mysterious ways, Aurelia. Maybe you have some kind of destiny tied here as well." "Maybe I do." She silently wondered.

Aurelia stared into the fire and sighed. "You know, I never even asked anything about you" Kagome said buoyantly, to which Aurelia responded with another sigh, "Well, I should start from the beginning I guess…" As she told her story, they cried for the equal loss of their fathers, compared high school experiences, cried some more, fumed about difficult relationships, and both went on about how it all ended up okay.

InuYasha only sat in the doorway of the hut halfway listening while still nursing his broken nose. "Can you grab the extra mat from the basket?" Kagome requested. "She's going to need a place to sleep tonight." InuYasha feh'd, but did as she asked, knowing there was no arguing with Kagome when she'd made up her mind. Nursing his wounded pride, he decided to sleep in his favorite tree overlooking the rice field rather than face the girl that managed to injure him. Tomorrow would be a long and interesting day, especially if the well was working again.