Beta: Cstorm86

The Girl Who Gets a Shrine

Kagome had this one dream, that seemed to plague her since she was fifteen. She dreamed it often enough to notice it, despite the fact that she usually didn't remember her dreams and never paid much attention to them.

But this one was different. In that dream she was running, often on all fours, following a more or less accurate road that led from her home to the old shrine on the mountainside, where her grandfather lived. There were various alternations to the dream - it was night or day, sometimes there was the moon shining overhead. Sometimes the road was fuzzy, other times she could find all the noticeable landmarks along the way. Very rarely she was going from the shrine to the city.

She liked to think about the dream as her subconsciousness reminiscing on how much she liked the shrine with its calm atmosphere and lovely landscape. And her grandfather was pretty cool, even if he liked to tell folk stories all day long. Whatever the reason she was never reached her destination in her dreams. Still, she always felt relaxed and well-rested after them, so she was pretty fond of them. After all, she had a connection to that place, maybe her knowledge what was going to happen in near future was influencing her dreams?

Kagome lived with her mother and brother in the city located under the foot of the mountain, while her grandfather's shrine was located high on the mountainside. They often visited to make sure that he was fine, besides it was already known that Kagome was going to inherit the shrine, so she spent a lot of her vacation days there, learning from the old shrine keeper. The place was in a remote area, but there still were visitors and tourists that wanted to see the shrine. Her family took care of that place for generations.

She never felt bound by the knowledge she'd end up on the mountainside. It wasn't that far from the city and her friends. And since she wanted to be a writer she supposed living in a peaceful place, close to the nature, would be very inspiring for her. Already she was writing little stories, which sometimes got to be published in the local newspaper. Nothing much, but it was a good practice and some extra cash was always welcome.

And her grandfather wasn't an annoying old person who would be very hard to take care of. He just had a tendency to forget things like meals or taking his pills if he was left unchecked. Kagome wasn't the best cook in the area, but supposed he'd be glad to have a hot thing to eat regularly, even if wasn't a five star meal. Besides his sight wasn't the same anymore and he had problems driving his car, so Kagome would be the one driving him to see doctors or whenever

Now, as a high school graduate, she was going to move to the shrine to watch over their ancestral home and her grandfather, in her free time writing the novel she was dying to start to work on. She hoped it'd be her big book debut.

She was packing her things into boxes to be added to the already packed pile by their flat door. Souta and her mother were working with her, carefully folding or wrapping all her things, talking about visiting and bringing her three high school friends with them.

"Just make sure they don't bring Hojo," she warned them and made them laugh. The trio had tried countless times to set Kagome with that boy on a date for the whole high school. Kagome even once had went for a date with him, but they had found out a relationship between them wouldn't work. They were friends and there was nothing more between them, but the trio never accepted the fact that there could be a friendship between a boy and a girl and nothing more. So they tried, despite being told multiple times it wouldn't work, and now their quest was more of a joke to Kagome, her family and Hojo than anything else. Kagome suspected that maybe it was also for the trio, but whenever she asked they were claiming that they were serious and insisted she should go with Hojo to see the latest movie.

"I'll double check the trunk before we leave," Souta promised.

"Don't worry, honey," Mama H. folded her daughter's jacket and put it in her old yellow back pack. "There won't be much space in the trunk to fit a human anyway, we'll be bringing your winter clothing and all the stuff that doesn't get to the shrine with us this time. If you remember anything..."

"I'll call," Kagome grinned and picked up a photo of her family to put it carefully in her laptop bag pocket. The laptop bag was the safest place for delicate things, because Kagome paid extra attention to the safety of her writing gear. "I'm a big girl and the shrine isn't that far, we'll manage."

"I know," Mama sighed. "Still, a mother's heart worries when her daughter leaves the nest to start a new one."

"Mom..." Kagome rolled her eyes in exasperation, but smiled at her. "I've spent almost all my summer breaks up there since I was a kid, I'm not going abroad. Think about people who move to really far places to start living."

"I know, I know," the older woman sighed and went for a first aid kit to add it to the bag, just in case. Kagome raised a brow at her while Souta just giggled.