The Dream Demon

Summary

Kagome has these awful dreams spawned by a new demon, the Dream Demon. These dreams have made her ill once, and Inuyasha and Kaede suspect they will make her ill again, or maybe even kill her.

Chapter 1

Modern Day Japan

My alarm clock falls off my desk, the final alert I need to get me out of bed. I throw my legs over the side of the mattress, pulling my coverlet away from its crumpled position between my body imprint and the wall. I set my feet on the floor and nearly fall. All week I'd been sick, still attending school and still sick.

I lean against my bed for support, then catch a slight chill and wrap my coverlet around me. The long train of the material follows me from my bed to my desk, where I stoop to pick up my fallen clock. I collect my clothes and head down the hall to the bathroom, only to get stopped by my mother.

"Kagome, you look like death!"

I look at my mom through bleary eyes. "It's those dreams again, Mom. They kept me up all night last week, and I got sick, and they come and go with the fever now."

"Fever!" Mom rushes up to me and lays her hand against my forehead. I always wondered what good that did. I mean, what if your hand was already hot and you take that into too much consideration and you let a fever go unnoticed? Or say your hand was too cold and you couldn't feel . . .

"You're burning up, child. Go," she says, shoo-ing me back to my bedroom. "Back to bed with you. Sota!" she calls to my younger brother. "I'm taking you to school today. Kagome's ill so she can't walk you."

"Okay, Mom!" the boy answers from the kitchen.

I hear my grandfather's voice from the same place. "Kagome, go out to the well later and pray. The fresh air and faith will cure you."

Mom rolls her eyes in the way that most of her jaded generation do when faith is brought up. "You may go if you feel up to it, Kagome, but get dressed first before you go out. Rest a little while before also, okay, girl?" She brushes her hand against my flushed cheek. "Maybe faith will do you some good, at least until I can get to the pharmacy after work."

I am sweating by the time I reach the well. The exertion I used nearly zaps my strength, but I cling to the well's opening with tumultuous fingers. I raise myself up and begin chanting a prayer. My hands shake uncontrollably then slip from the edge, tumbling me forward into the deep abyss of the well. "Inuyasha!" I scream as I fall, hoping he hears me in time to catch me before I land on the feudal era ground on the other side of the well.

Feudal Era Japan

"Inuyasha!"

The owner of the name turns sharply toward the direction of the well, his little inu-ears trying to rotate toward the sound. "Kagome," he whispers, and runs to the edge. He hops down into the well in time to catch her as she falls up then down again.

"You're so hot, Kagome. Is there something wrong?" Inuyasha sniffs down my length as he cradles me in his arms.

"I'm sick," I tell him.

"Sick?"

"Ill? Ailing? You know, unhealthy?"

Comprehension dawns on the hanyou's face like a rising sun. "Oh. Well, then, we'd better get you to Kaede's as fast as possible." He bounds out of the well in one leap and runs across the distance, covering it in a short timespan thanks to his half-demon parentage.

"Kagome!" Kaede calls as she runs out of her hut. "Are you injured? What did you do now, Inuyasha?"

"I did nothing," he defends curtly, and a bit snappishly if I do say so myself. "And she is not injured, per se. She's ailing."

"Oh well, I can cure that faster than any injury. Bring her in," Kaede invites, opening the flap of canvas that serves as the door to her and her deceased sister Kikyo's hut. Inuyasha sets me down gently on the matt spread across Kaede's sitting area. Kaede brings a little ceramic dish with a grinding tool. She adds hot water to the herbal mixture, making it smell a little like Green Tea. She holds the crucible to my lips and I drink the mixture, expecting it to vile like the tea I likened it to, but instead it tastes pleasant. I thank her just before my eyes roll to the back of my head.

"What's wrong with her, Kaede?" Inuyasha asks the old woman, the sister of his past lover. "Why is she sleeping?"

"She needs to sleep. That's the only reason why she was sick."

"Stupid girl," the hanyou mutters as he brushes a long lock of black hair off Kagome's cheek. "You didn't get enough sleep in your time. How do manage in this time?"

Kaede turns from collecting herbs in the garden right beyond the canvas door. "You have a lot of down-time between battles, Inuyasha. In her time she probably has no down-time and she must adjust to the different schedules. It is very hard to accomplish, and this practice of hers will eventually force her to choose the future or the past."

Inuyasha glances up from the sleeping girl. "She's going to have to choose?"

"Like I said, eventually. It could be in fifty years or it could be when she wakes up. I do not know. I do know that she will have to chose or kill herself trying to live a double life."