A/N: Many apologies for not getting this out on time; I ran out of my atap last Saturday and have had a rough week with hallucinations and nightmares and exhaustion galore, and am only just recovering from withdrawal and being off my meds. Thank you so much for all the feedback! 3


Pain shot through Kagome's body and she shuddered, clutching at her chest as she tried to clear her mind. Tried to meditate. It was so hard though! Even though most of the time it was only a dull ache by now, Kagome still could not get past the occasionally sharp spikes of pain that came from the grievous injury to her soul. Damn that Inuyasha, anyway. If only he'd been fucking silent and not said Kikyō's name then maybe Kagome would not have gone through the unbelievably excruciating experience of losing her soul – and damn that past-miko for binding her soul to the Shikon somehow, because Kagome sure as shit is not her reincarnation – into that clay doll. Now Kikyō is a golem walking around and Kagome wishes she was dead. She doesn't care about Inuyasha chasing after Kikyō and abandoning her, she just cares that it hurts. Maybe drawing will help.

Pulling out her sketchbook, she brought the focus of her overwhelming pain to the forefront of her mind, and began sketching Urasue. First was the wide head, sharp cheekbones, and elongated, rounded chin. Then came flowing hair, a headband with a feather in it and a slight pattern matching the kimono to be drawn later on it, and bulging eyes with small irises. Then the pointed, slightly hooked nose and painted lips. Next, the wrinkles covering her face and the bulges on her throat.

Her chest shot with pain again and she inhaled sharply, before shaking her head and focusing harder on the picture she was drawing. Next came the hanjuban, then the strange bulging fabric over her shoulders, and then the kimono proper, drawing the cross hatch pattern on the top of the shoulders and the small multi-limbed designs reminiscent of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy on the body. Such an odd pattern. Those were only drawn lightly and then erased, however, because their colour meant that she had to have the impressions, but not them sketched in pencil. Then came the obi. Next came one hand outstretched, holding a jar of clay, long nails tapping against the round sides, and the other hand holding onto her large scythe.

Now it was time to colour the picture. First came the hair, a dull, slate grey colour that had nothing on Sesshōmaru-sama's brilliant silver or Inuyasha's stark white. Then came the feather, a simple, spare black. Next came the headband, a deep teal colour, then a coral strip with black cross-hatching, and then light grey of those weird little patterns. Then came the skin, which was a very pale tan. Eyes; dried-blood red, while her lips were a brighter, more vivid red. Her hanjuban was an odd, pale, almost-white purple, then the bulging fabric on her shoulder was the same dried-blood red as her eyes. Then came the kimono which was mostly teal, with coral cross hatch stripes on the shoulders and light grey patterning again. The obi was a dull medium purple shade, and the nails were a darker purple, just as dull in tone. Then came the light grey of the clay jar, the brown shaft of the scythe, and the dull iron metal and Kagome was done!

Should she draw Kikyō on the next page? It would be fitting, to draw the one causing her such pain so directly, but… If Sesshōmaru-sama were to ask her about being a reincarnation she would surely scream…

Then again, Sesshōmaru-sama had more tact than that.

Actually, she wanted to stay away from that for now. Kagome now had an idea of why she hadn't really looked much like either of her parents, and it would be really creepy to draw some feudal-era version of her features – which would surely be changing now that Kikyō's soul wasn't influencing her any more – in a clay body that was torturing her. Especially since she hadn't actually seen Kikyō.

She'd draw the kumogashira they encountered at Nazuna's temple instead. Two of them, one to show off what the spider yōkai looked like from the front, and another to showcase the patterns on their backs.

First she drew a standard ningen head, bald at the top with hair falling down to frame the face along the sides. Then came blank-looking eyes with small irises, a standard nose, thin lips, and a broad chin. Defined cheekbones and frown-wrinkles completed the picture along with the ears.

Next came the body, slightly obscured by the head but still somewhat visible; egg-shaped abdomen and eight thick, fuzzy legs. She drew a slight semblance of the pattern on the visible part of the abdomen and thick stripes on the legs.

Then she started on a version from the back – she would colour them both at the same time. First she drew the outline of the head, bald on top with hair reaching around to curve behind the scalp, then falling down the sides. Next came the egg-shaped abdomen with the pointed end at the bottom and the wide, rounded end at the top. Then she drew the pattern – first a straight line going to a few inches before the middle of the back, then from that a large curved line that went in to the same position on the back – only lower, and then joining in a long U-shaped curve at the bottom, which joined in another large curved line, followed by another straight line. Then in the middle of the back, a dark spot filled the space between about an inch on each side of the pattern, giving it a mirror-like resemblance.

Then she brought out her colours. Black for the hair, a pale brown for the ningen skin. Black for the eyes. A soft, fawn brown for the main colour of the bodies, and then a dark brown – almost black – for the patterns and half of the stripes.

Simple, but evil and creepy as all fuck. Seriously – Kagome had never liked spiders much, but she didn't hate them too horribly either, however those kumogashira were just some of the creepiest things in existence!

That reminded her; eventually she needed to draw a picture of Inuyasha in his ningen form… and she had yet to draw Shippō either, but she had a feeling of tense waiting for that one; like it was just waiting for the right time to be drawn. Her instincts were telling her to wait, that something would happen that would decide on the proper time for drawing her precious Shippō. So she would wait on it.

With a sigh, Kagome noticed that the dull ache hadn't spiked into sharp pain for a while, and was less intense than before.

Hopefully she would get used to this soon…