Chapter 2-
There's a sorrow that cripples, one that seems to suck the life from one's lips, conjures images of skin dripping from bones like wax, blood falling into an eternal fire to cloak the stars with a coppery, foul smelling smoke, and bones sinking through oceans of tears to a silt of silence, waiting.
Kagome stared listlessly at the tree beyond her window, 'Grandfather Tree', and tried to ignore everything but its imperfect visage. It was spring; the tree let a rain of delicate blossoms whose scent clung to anything it touched, an indescribable light scent that enveloped the senses, made the world seem but a passing place. Eternal, any who smelled it sighed as a way to identify it; creepy she would say and duck away.
She had begged for its removal, "Cut it down! Anything!" She had wept, bled at his feet but the old man had only muttered and enlisted the aid of Mother to help move her to her room.
They had installed blinds as a way of compromise but they had always crept up by the end of the day, exposing her to its impenetrable, accusatory gaze.
Then she started hearing voices.
They started as incoherent whispers, and she dismissed them as malicious wanderings of her mind. She had been spending far too much time by herself.
But then they began to take on form, words she could understand; words that awoke within her something that had been sleeping; she began to pity, feel compassion…understanding and empathy. She almost wept.
There was a silence at the table that night, as if all that had been left unsaid now weighed heavily upon everyone's minds. Kagome grimaced into her food, her eyes coals rather than fire.
She toyed with some steamed vegetables, and her mother gently offered her some Ramen with a careful expression on her face.
At once there was a flash, but then it was gone.
"Thanks," She said, ignoring their disappointed stares as she spooned some onto her plate.
Mother sighed and Souta rocked back and forth.
"Why don't you remember them?" He spoke suddenly, fixing her with a glare "Inuyasha came everyday you know; everyday to see if you had been found, to go out hunting for you, and never once said that we weren't going to find you! What's wrong with your head?" He hurled a spoon at her and raced up the stairs.
A silence reigned at the table and a steel seemed to enter Kagome's eyes. "What's wrong with him? I may not be sure of many things, but I know I've never heard of Inuyasha before!"
Mother politely excused herself and walked stiffly up the stairs. Dismayed, Grandfather beat a hasty retreat into the recesses of his study and only then did Kagome allow her head to sink into her hands.
The whispers were growing coherent. She would wake to them dancing across her lips, wake to a coldness on her side as if something should have been cradled there.
Look outside to the God Tree and, almost by instinct, squint to see if there was an ominous figure watching her from there.
Raise her hand to her face, and wonder, absently, why she had such odd calluses striping across her fingers, touch a hand to her neck as if some familiar weight had been taken from it, or pass a hand across her eyes as if to clear them. She began to think that perhaps there was more to this old Kagome than a school girl.
I don't want to remember.
Reviewer Response Corner:
Agent-doo: You're my first reviewer! Yay! Well, anyways, it is dark, and, sadly, I'm not entirely sure what is to happen. Rest assured, there'll be a happy ending...but not before I put them through hell and back! lol. Thank you!