:: Sapphire / Shikon no Tama :: part 4 -- "Lives Is Funny Sometimes"

written by J. Anne of Trista's Timely Tales

the charachter Sapphire was created by Shelley Dream

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"What do you mean I'm 'Kikyo'? Who's Kikyo?" Sapphire asked an increasingly impatient InuYasha.

"You're not fooling me!" He challenged, grabbing her by the shoulders insistently. "Kagome can see right though you! You've got the jewel inside you, and that's where Kikyo's soul is! I should have known it right away, there was just something about you that..." InuYasha turned away. "I know it's you Kikyo, so, just tell me what's going on, okay?" he pleaded.

"I... I really don't know," Sapphire admitted helplessly. "I told you the truth." She said, looking between the faces around her. Kagome, Sango, and Kaede flanking her along with InuYasha, plus Kirara who had been growling softly at InuYasha in warning ever sense he had unexpectedly grabbed Sapphire. "I was flying over the forest, I saw a light and it called to me, it started to fall, I caught it, then I was here... I... the light, you said... I have a jewel inside me?"

"Yes, it's called the Shikon jewel... or the Jewel of Four Souls." Sango interjected, while also trying to calm Kirara down. "It's very powerful. My family was trusted to keep it safe. Until today, though, I'd thought it was broken and scattered."

"When I was diving for the light... I thought for a moment, that it was a jewel... but... when I woke up, it was gone, so I thought.... It's inside me? Is that why I feel so different? Why I can do all of these things?" She asked Sango.

"It must be," Sango confirmed. "The jewel makes the one who holds it a lot more powerful than they normally would be... it heals them and... but, you can't use it very well unless you are a demon or you have strong spiritual powers... like Kikyo had."

"Are you seriously telling us that you don't know?" InuYasha asked and Sapphire backed up a step. "Kikyo! Please I..." But Kirara growled and pounced on him before he could continue. "Hey! Stupid fire cat, get off me already!" He demanded.

"Kirara!? Kirara, what's gotten into you?" Sango asked a little panicked as she tried to get her friend to stop grappling with InuYasha, which Kirara eventually did. Much to all their relief. "I wonder why she..."

"She's gone!" InuYasha exclaimed, quickly getting to his feet again, the scuffle with the fire cat now completely forgotten. "Kikyo!" he called out, trying to catch her scent but then looking up into the sky with a kind of lost look on his face. "...she flew away..."

From there, the day just seemed to go by as it would.

InuYasha had simply walked off and had been quiet and pensive, keeping to himself and rebuffing any offers of company. He'd ended up taking up residence in an out of the way tree that overlooked a field not far away.

As for Kagome, she had become increasingly irritable and annoyed at her boyfriend for still being this hung up about Kikyo after all this time. It was a very unique kind of frustration she had, one she thought she'd finally seen the last of: being jealous of a part of yourself. Sango had been trying to cheer her up though, and a half hour ago the two of them, plus Kirara, had gone for a walk down by the river to talk about things.

"Do you think this could all be some kind of trick?" Kagome asked thoughtfully as they walked along the river's edge at a leisurely pace.

Sango looked over at her and considered her words. "What kind of trick could it be?" she asked.

"Well, it's kind of a lame story, don't you think?" Kagome asked her friend plaintively. "A girl from another world shows up on angel's wings and falls out of the sky. She says the right things, makes us all feel sorry for her. It seems kinda unlikely, don't you think so?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Sango admitted. "But if it is a trick, what's the point of it? What's she trying to get?/" she pondered and they were both quiet for a moment. "...and what's an 'angel'? Is that something they have in your time? People with bird wings?" she asked.

"Huh? Bird wings?" Kagome laughed at that. "Oh, no, it's like, a religious thing. In America and a lot of other parts of the world, people believe that the world was made by a god, one they just call 'God', and that this God made a race called angels that do things for him. I don't know much about it really, but some of my friends at school believe it." Kagome answered.

"Oh, so maybe that's it then." Sango wondered. "Maybe she's from the future like you, maybe even a different time? It would certainly make more sense than a different world all together that's also named Earth."

"No, I don't think that's it... At least I don't think it is. As far as I know, angels and God are just stories or something. Or if they're not, no one's ever seen them." Kagome explained.

"Well, legends usually have some truth behind them at least," Sango said. "So who knows?"

"Well, I guess that's true," Kagome admitted. "In my time, most people think demons and magic and stuff are all imaginary too. So who's to say angels aren't real too?"

"We can ask her about it anyway," Sango reasoned. "If she ever comes back I mean."

"You think she might not?" Kagome questioned.

Sango shrugged. "Maybe. If she didn't though, with how fast she is and her being able to fly..."

"Yeah, we'd never see her again I guess... I'd be stuck here!" Kagome realized. "Without the jewel, there would be no way back!" She was honestly not sure what she thought about that idea.

Sango looked over at her, surprised. "I hadn't thought about that, but I guess you're right... You've been stuck here sense when our jewel shards went missing before Sapphire arrived. I assumed we'd get them back again... but, would it be so bad, if you were trapped here I mean?" she asked looking over at her friend questioningly.

"No, I guess not," Kagome replied. "I mean, I'd miss my family of course, but..."

Sango looked down. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked that." She admitted getting a far off look. "Family is... really important..." she said, a sad quality entering her voice at the memories of her own family whom she had not even the hope of seeing again.

"Sango, I..." Kagome tried.

"No, it's okay," Sango interrupted with a cheerful smile. "And you don't have to worry, I'm sure Sapphire will be back. I still think she's a good person, and so does Kirara. I'm sure she'll help you to get home." She assured solicitously.

"You're probably right." She said, smiling a little over at Sango as they continued to walk. "I still think this might all be some kind of trap though." She looked over at Sango. "Naraku could be behind it and using Sapphire somehow, or... I mean, how was she able to gather the jewel shards together like that in the first place?"

Meanwhile, back in the village, Kaede set in the yard behind her home on a wooden bench by the well and looked out at the forest beyond. At first, she had tried to keep busy doing a few mundane tasks around her home, but as the time went on, it got to feeling a sort of hollow. Just doing things like that. It made her feel alone. More than usual, that's what she was feeling now... As the years had gone by, she had found a great deal of fulfillment in her role as village priestess. Helping others with their problems, doing what she could to protect her village. But it had been more than a village, to her, over the years, the people there had become her family. She'd done it at first, wanting to follow in her sister's footsteps. Kikyo had been her hero as a child after all, and she had been her only real blood family too. After she had died, it had been hard for her. She'd felt she had to live up to her sister's ghost - an ironic thing as things turned out - and not only that but she was also mourning the loss of that very same sister all the while. No, her life had many times not been easy, nor kind, but it had been good, she thought. A worth-while life, if nothing else. And she had gotten to see her sister again after all, wasn't that more than most people could hope for after the loss of a relative? Even for how painful it had been at times, and how much she had felt Kikyo's suffering in her own heart, it had still been a wonderful thing to be able to see her again.

But that had not lasted of course. Kikyo had died again, given her life to stop Naraku from being able to use the Jewel of Four Souls. It had been a noble death, one anyone would be proud of. And her sister's suffering had been at an end, Kikyo's soul had finally found peace. And she was happy for that, she wanted her sister to be happy. Still though, a part of her that was selfish was still grieving over her sister's loss a second time when all this business with the girl from the sky started. She had felt it from the start she now realized. A part of her had. Whoever else the girl named Sapphire was or had been, her sister's soul had been within her all along. Maybe she'd just been afraid to admit what her heart had been telling her...

She looked up, startled from her musings by a warm breeze and some small feeling in her mind that let her know that she was not alone anymore. There, in the sky above her was Sapphire, descending to the ground not but a few paces away from where she sat. The girl landed, her feet touching the ground and making not a sound. So quiet was she that Kaede thought for a moment she might be seeing things.

"Kaede?" the girl's soft voice asked.

"...Yes chi... Sapphire?" Kaede stood as Sapphire walked over next to her and offered her her hand.

"Can we talk for a while?" Sapphire asked hopefully as the two sat down.

"Yes, of course. I would like that," Kaede agreed, feeling altogether strange and unsteady in the girl's presence now. Her eyes watched the girl carefully, imagining seeing her sister in many of her movements.

"I know you," Sapphire said, looking over at Kaede. "And I know the others," She looked down. "InuYasha, a part of me feels like I am so in love with him, even after he yelled at me." She admitted helplessly. "But... that's only part of me. I guess... the part that is Kikyo... She was your sister, right?" she looked back over at Kaede.

"Yes, she was. A long time ago." Kaede got a far away look on her face. "She used to be priestess here, much as I be now. Then, she was charged to watch over the Shikon jewel, for such was her power that she was the only one who could tame it's increasingly darkening spirit then. She was an amazing person. Her heart was so big. And she was so strong, much stronger than I. Though I wished dearly that I had been her match, if only so that I could have protected her when she needed it." Kaede said.

"How... how did she die?" Sapphire asked, covering the older woman's had with her own in comfort.

"We had thought that it was InuYasha's doing... That he had betrayed her. They were in love you see. But it was not so. A demon named Naraku, born of a man named Onigumo to whom my sister had shown kindness and gotten... He was a vile man. His dark desires birthed a demon from within him, and that demon deceived my sister and InuYasha, turned their love sour... It is not a happy tale. But, neither she nor InuYasha met their final end that dark day all those years gone by... I..."

Sapphire was looking down to the ground again. "Please stop..."

"Ye do not wish me to continue?" Kaede asked.

"No I just, how about... Can you tell me about her before she died? A happier memory maybe?"

Kaede smiled. "I would be glad to..." she said comfortingly, and thought for a moment. "Let me see. I know. It would have been, my thirteenth birthday. Our mother and father had passed away two years before, so it was just the two of us, and the people of the village of course. They had always been very kind to us, and my birthday was not an exception to that. I had been worried though... My sister's relationship with InuYasha was still largely quite new, and she spent more and more of her time with him and so less with me. The last week leading up to that day had been especially so, and I feared she had forgotten sense she had not once mentioned it to me. As it turned out though, I need not have worried. For when one of my friends, a young boy named Noboru, came over to me and insisted I follow him, I was very happy to find that my sister had organized a gathering in my honor at one of the village elder's homes. So that I would not know and would be surprised. Many of those who attended presented me with gifts, but my sister, she saved her gift for the last. It was a painting on a small flat stone, about two thirds the height of your forearm. It was a picture of me with her and our parents in a forest clearing. She had used fine tools to shape the edges of things and so you could not only see the painting, but feel it with your fingers as well. It must have taken her months of work to complete it." She paused for a moment. "I felt ashamed of myself a little then, for thinking she would have forgotten, when in fact she had worked so hard... We stayed up late that night and talked about things. Remembered our mother and father mostly. She told me many stories about them, many I had never heard before... That day was..."

"Kaede are you out here? I thought I heard..." InuYasha's voice cut in as he stepped through the back door of Kaede's house. "I..." but he was struck speechless.

There, sitting before him not fifteen paces away, was something from a far off memory. He felt like he was a person out of time, or like we was seeing the spirits of the past. He wondered if he might have fallen asleep in his tree and now be dreaming, because before him sat the girl who said her name was Sapphire, and along side her was a 13 year old girl with black hair. One he would recognize anywhere as Kikyo's little sister... the 'brat' as he had called her once upon a time. And she was sitting there as though she hadn't aged a day.

"InuYasha?" Sapphire turned to look at him and in that moment, she wasn't Sapphire anymore, but Kikyo, just as he remembered her.

"Kikyo?" InuYasha spoke in a small voice.

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to be continued