You and Me After All
Chapter 29: Throat
Minutes Prior
Exhausted, Kagome sat down inside the circle. The feel of Sesshōmaru's yōki enveloped her. Strangely, as much as she despised the daiyōkai for what he had done to her, his energy made her feel better. Her nausea lessened, and the aches and pains — including the cramp she felt in her belly — began to dissipate.
A little movement from the other side of her spot had Kagome craning her neck to see better.
Beneath the shadows of the trees, she saw the lone figure of… a woman? A human woman, from the looks of it. She was bare-feet, and wore nothing aside from a white nagajuban, though dirt and soil had marred the undergarment. Her feet were just as dirty, caked with mud. Her long, knee-length pitch black hair blended with the shadows around her. Her face appeared starkly pale amidst the darkness; her expression distressed.
Alarmed, Kagome rose to her feet.
"Hello," she said tentatively. "Are you… okay? Do you need help?"
The female began to weep. Though she did not say a word, a keening sound of anguish came from her. Kagome's chest tightened. Had this woman been kidnapped by bandits, and perhaps somehow managed to run away into the woods?
An uneasy coil wrapped around her heart. Had she been raped?
Kagome stepped outside of the barrier.
"I am a healer," she said. "Perhaps I could help you, if you are injured or feeling unwell."
The female did not move, though she had ceased her weeping the moment Kagome had crossed the barrier. Suddenly, the pair of eyes that were mournful and filled with tears were now beady, gleaming with… hunger?
It was not until Kagome was mere steps away from the woman that she sensed something terribly wrong emanating from this woman. A malicious aura unlike she had never felt before. Suddenly, she noticed: the female had a line across her throat, as though it had nearly been drawn with a finely tipped brush.
The cracking noise – like bones breaking, but infinitely more terrible – were loud in the deathly silence of the forest. Her head broke loose from her body, lifting itself in the air until it floated in a terrible mass of head, hair and internal organs. Her trachea was grotesquely elongated, and at the end of that bone white column, her heart and entrails were still attached.
Kagome was struck with such fear that she could not move. Barrier? Forgotten. The bow and arrows strapped to her back? Also forgotten. The flying head floated, its mouth yawning open into a black abyss. The coil of intestines trailed upon the forest floor; the congealed blood wet and slimy as it dragged its own heart and entrails across the way. Towards her.
Kagome opened her mouth and screamed.