Word Count: 299
Reflection
The four girls in their green and white school uniforms stopped and stared into the shop window. Three looking past their reflections at the merchandise, the fourth stared at the reflection of herself that stared back.
A lyric from a song floated through her mind bringing with it a question – "Who was Higurashi Kagome?"
On this side of the well, she was a fifteen-year-old student, struggling to be just one of the girls, pass her exams, and spend weekends with her girlfriends. When she jumped through an ancient dried well she was a powerful miko fighting in an epic battle.
Was she truly Higurashi Kagome or merely a pale reflection of Kikyou? Would she ever be here-now what she was there-then? Would she ever be there-then who she was here-now?
A ghostly hand rose to touch the clear glass of the window. Beneath her palm, the biting cold of the glass showed the ghost of things of the past. Next to the ghostly apparition of herself appeared first a kitsune child who leaped to her shoulder, followed by a monk with a slightly lecherous grin, a taijiya in armor a sister found, an elderly miko with an eye patch. For a moment they smiled at her then faded away to be replaced by a figure of red, white and gold. The pain in the golden eyes called to her.
"I've got to go," She gasped snatching her hand back. Kagome ran. She ran as if all Naraku's minion chased her. Past the buildings of the here-now, the friends of the era left behind, up the long flight of shrine stairs, books dropped outside the small shrine, shoji thrown back and with a last silent good-bye she leapt to capture the true version of herself waiting on the other side.