Juggling

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an Inuyasha fanfiction

by

mkh2

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Disclaimer: Inuyasha doesn't belong to me… but he should.

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            Juggling. I was juggling. All was dark and all I had was the vague sensation of waving my hands through the air in practiced motions, juggling… something. Balls. It was probably balls, heavy ones, very heavy, round forms dropping into and then quickly leaving my hands. The balls were first almost too big to hold then small… small like a glass bead, and could easily fit in the palm of my hand, and yet somehow heavier in that miniscule form… and then back to big.

            My hands went through the motions faster and faster and then I was (again) vaguely aware of the sound of glass breaking and then… pain. Indescribable pain. Pieces of – what was it? – glass? – entering the flesh of my hands… I kept juggling, more and more pieces slicing into and embedding themselves deeper and deeper into my hands. I never heard the sound of glass falling on the floor so I could only suppose that somehow I managed to keep juggling all the shards of glass – I think it was glass – and in each turn collecting more pieces into the soft flesh of my palm. Soon enough all the pieces were trapped in my hands, fingers and wrist, and yet my hands didn't stop going through the motions in that great, dark void.

            I think that all I was, was a pair of hands, floating through the air, juggling.

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            I woke up, covered in sweat, panting. I could still feel pain in my hands, yet another physical manifestation of the pain I felt in my dreams. The last time that happened, I had dreamt that I was running to save someone, only to land in a pit of sand and my left leg sinking in, my knee-high cowboy boot filing with sand and scorpions that were sleeping in it, waiting for prey to feast on. When I had woken up I had to clamp my hands over my mouth to drown out my tortured screams and buried my face into my pillow, willing the pain to go away. My left leg was sore for weeks.

            I groaned softly and turned on the lights painfully, my fingers aching with every tiny movement and observed them. They were covered with tiny scratches that were fading away, not too unlike the scorpion dream with the unusual puncture wounds that were long gone before the sun kissed the skyline in the false dawn.*

            All I was were two hands, huh? I fingered the necklace lying on my nightstand, a pouch with a small glass bottle in it and in the glass bottle three shards all we had managed to collect of the ever-elusive shikon no tama. I grit my teeth. Hands. The poor man's tool. All I was… all I'd ever be… to them… a tool to collect the accursed jewel.

            I'm so tired. I blink my eyes and lie back down, turning of the light. Buyo's sleeping on my feet again.

            I'll think about it in the morning…

            …if I remember.

            ~Owari~

In case you were wondering, it's Kagome who is having the dream. In fact, the deal with the scorpion dream is that it's a dream I had and, yes, the pain really happened to me… (I didn't have puncture wounds, though, only little red bruises all over my left leg from the knee down… weird.)

*False dawn – yes, there's such a thing. It happens each night, the sky getting lighter then darker before the real dawn approaches. I watched it last week, Thursday the 23rd… I couldn't sleep and took a nap for three hours the next day and still had a hard time sleeping Friday night. Feh.