Chapter Three: Oh, What Trials
Kagome
When I'd crashed back to my own plane of existence, apparently some hours later (at least, if the moon and stars outside were any indication) I'd felt like I'd been hit by a wrecking ball. Not so much in that it hurt a lot, more in the fact that it had felt like I'd been slammed so very hard into my own world. I guess that Midoriko hadn't been kidding. She had, after all, as she explained about the souls and everything else, told me that they were growing more impatient and wouldn't wait forever.
Apparently, just as she had finished telling me what all of it was, they had lost all semblance of patience. Or politeness, for that matter.
My alarm clock was dully glowing a rather sickly lime-green next to my head, showing the current time. 10:46. Boy, I really had been out of it for a long time. I felt groggy, and my chest hurt a bit, seeming to pulse with my heartbeats almost—but then, Midoriko had warned me about that too. I suppose that it didn't hurt—not really, but it felt funny. Like when something's gone numb, almost, only not the pins-and-needles type of numb. Just the kind of numb where what you can feel feels a bit detached and uniform, like if you burn yourself and it stops hurting.
I didn't stay awake for any more than this. I'd been exhausted by everything that I'd gone through this day, and my time in the jewel? Yea, it didn't rest me, and I was actually more exhausted than I had been previously.
To put it bluntly, I zonked.
I stayed awake long enough to notice my position, the fact that my wings were (sadly, yes) still there, and the time on my alarm clock before I was out cold. I would be willing to swear on anything that you like that I didn't move that night, I was too tired.
I suppose that, all things considered, I shouldn't have been surprised at my dream, but I was (a bit). I mean, I'd been thinking of these things when I fell asleep, and that aught to have been an indicator, but I really was not prepared. Still, it wasn't really a dream that I had that night, more of a memory. Strange that it had been so recent, but it had been life changing. Like I said, it's not surprising that I dreamt of my conversation with Midoriko, for all that it had only taken place a few minutes ago. It was rather difficult to think of anything else.
- - -
I felt something brush against me, seeming to want to push me somewhere, and when I looked up Mikoriko was suddenly looking pained. "I must tell you all this, and quickly. Your time here is running out. They become impatient."
"They?" I asked, confused once more.
"The souls."
I'd been (unsurprisingly) confused. "Ok," I'd said, "we mentioned this before, but could you please just backtrack a little and explain it completely? I really still don't have much of an idea as to what is going on around here, and the more that I hear, the more I want to. It seems important."
"It is important," Midoriko said, "very important. And it all ties back to the prophecy, the one that I mentioned earlier. That is the reason that your own soul was locked away, Kagome, so that you could fulfill it. And the moment that you touched the sword, you began to. You bound yourself into fate. You see, as I said earlier, there are only four whole souls contained in the jewel, but they are amazingly powerful. It is because they are elemental souls. The purest forms of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water are contained in the jewel." She smiled slightly, apparently at my expression (which somewhat resembled a fish, huge eyes and a mouth that was slowly opening and closing. Sigh. And this is the picture I give my all-time hero.) "Why did you think it was so powerful? Anything less and it would be a powerful magical trinket, but it would not have the power to rule lives and change countries."
"Wait," I croaked (all moisture in my mouth and throat seeming to have evaporated), "what was that prophecy again?"
Midoriko looked at me for a moment, her head slightly cocked, like a bird. "You have never heard the whole of it. I only told you the portions referring to you. Would you like to hear it all?"
"Yes," I said in that croaky voice.
She closed her eyes for a moment, as though remembering something that was long ago, or listening to something far away, and then began.
"Two shall come when four are weary, and so shall be divided. They who come shall be whole, for they shall be separate, and yet only together can they be as they are. One shall be as Air and Earth, the Night One, the Completion of all which must come to an end, the Rest that comes after battle, the Storm that breaks and gives peace and peace in It's fury, the Calm at the end of all, One Who burns more brightly for Their darkness. They shall be winged like the Emerald.
"The other shall be Water and Fire, they shall be the Star, the Snowfall, the Sunrise, the Beginning that brings both pain and immeasurable joy, the Battle, the Flame, the Lightning, Swift Fire, the Ice, the Frost. They shall be One Who had fallen and risen again, and One Who brings both life and death. They are calm and they are fury. And they, together, are the Guardians of the Divided Souls, parts of Eternity. For only through them can Eternity connect."
I stared, mystified. "And that means… what, exactly?"
"Kagome, you were born without a soul so that you could be a vessel for the souls of the jewel, and in more ways then one. When they were in the jewel, when I was containing them, your capacity for soul had to be large enough to be able to contain them. This is why the jewel was in you, because of the prophecy. However, you do have Kikyo's soul. This is so that you can give it back. Because, Kagome, you will now have the elemental souls of Air and of Earth instead, and they are too large for another. Carrying two souls, especially such as these, is a strain, it would be impossible to carry three. Given time, it will destroy you. That is a part of another prophecy—'Three there will be when two are needed, and all will fail in flame if the third is not returned to the earth that is it's true home.' "
Right then, I thought to myself. Midoriko smiled. "And…" I asked hesitantly, "what does the rest of it mean?"
"You and another, Kagome (I know not who) are fated to bring about the end of the jewel, by accomplishing a task so great that the very threads of time are torn and reconnected. If you do, then your true souls will be released—indeed, it will be as if they were never bound—and the elements will be free to rest. You'll be relatively normal after." She looked at me seriously for a moment. "Or as normal as you will ever be able to be. You will never lead a life like any other. You are woven into fate, Kagome, woven into time."
"Huh?" I asked intelligently.
"Everything affects everything else, no matter how small the disturbance—" she began.
"The Chaos Theory in action," I muttered under my breath before turning my attention back to her.
"—everyone is tangled in stands of destiny. No matter how small the action, they wrap themselves in strands of time and fate, and then every action that they take has greater consequences. And this is how most people are. Most are tangled in fate, affecting change without truly knowing the extent. Some, however, are more then tangled. They are woven into fate and destiny at a pivotal point, and every one of their actions has amazingly far-reaching results. Imagine a spider's web. If you touch one of the threads on the outside, then only that thread and a few connecting are vibrated. If you touch the center, then everything shifts. So it is with those woven in destiny. And great vibrations from them are just everyday actions and decisions, not the problem that such are truly for. You see, every such person has a task that can change the fates of worlds."
"Wait-a-sec," I said hurriedly, "I'm nothing that special! I'm just a normal girl who's worried about Algebra and who isn't currently passing half my classes because—"
"You're not there," Midoriko finished for me. "Kagome, how many people to you know that can move on the timeslide?"
I suddenly shut up and began twiddling my thumbs.
"How many people in history, do you suppose, have affected as great a change as you have by doing nothing more special then living your everyday life? You are moving two generations, changing everyone that you come in contact with. You are like a pebble dropped into a pond—from anywhere you touch, ripples spread and affect everything."
Ok, time for a subject change. "And what was that about me being supposed to return Kikyo's soul?"
"Just as I said. As I said before, having three souls struggling for power within you would destroy your sanity. It would be like trying to hold a burning coal in a tissue after a while, for the longer they battle, the fiercer they become. You need to return Kikyo's soul to her."
Midoriko seemed to think for a moment after saying this. "And another thing," she said, "the sword is your birthright. Remember that, and never let anyone take it from you."
"Right then," I blinked, "is that all?"
Midoriko smiled again, that small, almost secretive smile that she wore so often. "Just about. One thing remains—try to get used to your new powers quickly. And try to control your temper."
What was that about? I wondered, and was opening my mouth to ask what she meant when suddenly Midoriko's eyes had flown wide and I had felt something slam into me, pushing me backwards like a leaf in a high wind.
- - -
I woke up at home, in bed, just as I had before. Bit of a different circumstance, I suppose, but it was still at the same place. I closed my eyes to the pale false dawn that was creeping across the sky outside and just leaned back. It had been such a vivid dream that reality shouldn't, it seemed, seem quite real any more. The dream—and it had to have all just been a dream—was clear and crisp and hovering at the edge of my mind where it shone like diamonds in the sun. My bedroom—pink, leftover from a younger age when my life's ambition was to be a Disney princess—seemed almost washed-out compared to it.
I was also, I realized a few seconds later, sleeping on my stomach, which was unusual for me. I'd probably turned over in my sleep, but it had never happened before.
Then I realized that I still had wings.
Of course, that made sense then. Of course I'd be lying this way. And here I was still hoping that I'd dreamed it all. But then I knew that I hadn't.
Yesterday… it seemed so trivial in comparison to all of this. Yes, Inuyasha hadn't come running after me, but he hadn't many times before as well. And worrying about that yesterday when all of this had just come crashing down seemed, well, silly.
Reality had just been warped.
For the second time.
I sighed. Couldn't it have happened to someone else? Being woven or tangled or whatever in fate seemed to me like a lousy bargain; there was, as far as I could see, a great deal of trouble and not one perk. All it was was life throwing one curve after another at you when all that you are doing is dreaming of something straight! Why is my path constantly twisting back and forward and around on itself?
My alarm started beeping, a sickly thrumming noise, and I was half tempted to smash it into smithereens and half tempted to start laughing hysterically. It was just so ordinary, that's all. An alarm going off in contrast with all of the other things that had been happening to me seemed positively bizarre in its normality. It also sort of brought it home to me—I was awake, this was really happening to me. And then I also wanted to cry.
Laughing and crying both in brittle, hiccupping sobs, I buried my head in my pillow and just let the stupid alarm ring. It was one of the newer ones, the ones with the automatic timers, so eventually it shut itself off. I'm not sure when that was. It was before I'd managed to calm myself down—when I lifted my face from the pillow it had stopped. I went onto autopilot then, getting up and heading for the bathroom to brush my teeth just because I couldn't think of anything else to do or any reason why not to. I actually wasn't thinking much of anything—I'd been doing altogether too much thinking in the past 24 hours anyway, and needed a rest from it.
Nothing much did change either—getting through the door was more trouble then it normally was (because of the wings and all) but I figured it out soon enough and went about my normal routine as I usually did (though the shower was difficult to figure out, and in the end a lot more of the bathroom got wet then was normal). It all went normal, I should say, until I looked into the mirror. Then I almost screamed.
Oh, I knew that I'd look different of course, (having huge black wings, for example, sticking out of my back—which, besides looking weird, made my shirt look odd as well), but I'd had no idea just how abnormal I'd look.
My eyes, for example (which have always been easily my best feature—they are larger then is normal, but in a good way, and were a stunning cobalt blue that was almost unheard of)—they had changed. Now they were blue only in a ring around my pupil, and the rest of my eye was a deep, rich, forest green shot with a color that looked like old gold. I was paler then I had been before, and my hair was somehow different. It had always been blue-black, but now it was almost more of a black-blue—like, instead of black with a bluish shine, it looked like it was a blue so dark that you couldn't tell that it was blue except when the light hit it. Oh, except for the tips. The tips were a blue so pale that it was almost white, but they faded quickly into my "normal" hair.
Normal. Hah. To think that I should call anything in my life normal.
Anyway, it was actually a rather pretty affect, but it wasn't me. Yes, that image had my face—sort of—but it didn't have my eyes or my hair or my skin (I was paler then normal) or anything like that. The image looked lighter too—like the person had the body of a dancer or a gymnast, something like that. I looked thinner, and somehow almost like I was transparent. Only I wasn't, of course, but you got that affect from how the light reflected off of me—like not quite all of it did. In fact, practically the only similarities between us were our general forms and the fact that we both had wings—big, bluey-black wings with very, very pale blue tips to the pinfeathers.
Just… like… my… hair…. More like my hair, to tell the truth, then they had any right to be, as I found when I closely examined my hair that it now had feathers in it. FEATHERS! Yes, bluey-black feathers with shockingly pale tips growing at the nape of my neck.
I sank to the ground with my back to the wall and hid my face with a hand. Why was nothing ever simple, or easy? Why couldn't I have had normal problems, like what I would wear on my next date or how to do problem 12a in math? Why was the world so complicated, and, more importantly, why did I always seem to get caught in said complications?
I didn't cry (I'd certainly done enough of that recently, besides which my natural cheerfulness kept on trying to take over again), but I did sit still for a very long time. All of a sudden, I just felt monumentally tired, like the world had suddenly been dropped on my shoulders. In a way, I suppose, it had. Again. Of course me, no one else was ever handy for the universe in general to foist its problems off on. Couldn't I ever rest, though? If I managed to survive completing this, would I finally get to rest? I smiled humorlessly, sarcastically, at that thought. What, me, rest? Why never! Well, forget about it. I would just sit there on the bathroom floor, and not do any more of the stupid assignments that fate has been handing out. I have to move eventually, I finally told myself sternly, and then I sighed and stood up.
The mirror was right in front of me, so as soon as I got to that height the face that was me but not me was staring back, those piercing green eyes seeming to hold as many secrets as the sea, or an ancient forest—and the kind that they had back in the Feudal Era, the kind that whole civilizations could conceivably get lost in, not the pathetic, sad, massacred woods of today.
I don't know myself anymore—I'm not even really sure that I know who I am, what I am. How am I ever to do anything?
- - -
Right finally the next chapter. hkestal, here it is, hope you enjoyed. It took longer then usual because I have been out of town a whole lot recently, but whatever. Really, I wanted it to be a bit longer, but couldn't figure out just how to work the next part while staying in character, and so (since I figured that I owed you anyway) I updated. I hope you like it.
And, just for the record, I don't have any problems with Kagome's origional character design--I actually quite like it, and I'm not changing her because of that. I'm doing it partially because it's kind of necessary, and partailly because it's so much more fun that way... -wink- You'll see what I mean in a bit...
Happy days!
Reviewer Responses:
hkestal- I updated, I updated, don't hurt me! Oh, anda bit of advice from a fellow rabid fan--if you kill the author, you can't make them update. Besides (gulp) that would be... painful. A lot. Yea.
JediK1- Thank you! That was so... cool! It's spicy! My writing is spicy! (glitter, hearts, stars)
Isisoftheunderground- Well, I hope that this is really good. As far as I can see, I waited too long for such a short(ish) update for it to have many other redeming graces. I like it, at least.