Heartbroken

Kagome gets over her anger fairly quickly. It was silly to be that angry at Inuyasha, because...well, he was the way he was. Nothing would ever change that, and she wouldn't even if she could.

So she gets over it, and she returns to the well, her bag on her back, waving to her mother and brother over her shoulder.

She closes the door of the little wellhouse behind her, and jumping into the well.

And hitting the bottom.

She just sits there for a long moment, frowning, then pulls the completed Shikon Jewel out from under her blouse. It just sits in the palm of her hand and glows serenely as she worries this new problem over and over in her mind.

Why won't it let me through? I don't understand!

She climbs back up, sits on the edge, and jumps down again.

Nothing.

She tries it repeatedly, over and over again, until her knee twists painfully on the last jump and she simply lays there on the cold dirt ground, curled around herself and sobbing.

The door of the wellhouse opens, and her mother hurries in. "Kagome? Dear? What's wrong? Are you all right?"

Kagome has a moment to think that, really, her mother has no sense of self-preservation, who was to say it was Kagome down there and not some misplaced demon? before she sits up and cries out for her mother and scrambles for the side, hauling herself up and flinging herself into her mother's arms.

"Oh, Mom! It won't let me through! It won't let me go back!"

Her mother's eyes soften, and fill with tears, and she wraps her arms around her daughter. "Sh, dear, sh. Come inside, I'll make you some tea," she says, and really, she knows it's nonsense, tea won't help, but what else can she do?

Mrs. Higurashi is an excellent mother, but not even the best mother can cure a broken heart.

End