Inspired by a celestial image by ElevenHarbor


The advance of time was bothersome. The light of day replaced by the inky black night, on and on in an endless cycle. It was the monotonous regularity of change.

That was, until the dark one came and swallowed up the Sun. But even then, Sesshōmaru remained at the house of his celestial mother, for the dark one could not touch the Moon.

The Earth would be left to its own affairs. Doom was yet another stage of life, after all, and humans were weak and pointless beings. They lived and they bred and they died, somehow believing that there was meaning to the endless routine of change, when there was no such thing.

But then, her.
Singular, a beacon.

One who did not live by the predictability of day and night, one who… Sesshōmaru was arrested watching.

It was not overnight, but gradual. The midnight hopelessness burning away, back into light. As more beacons lit, following the first one. Everywhere she walked, everywhere she touched… day by day, the Sun and the Stars battled to grab back onto the Earth, and slowly, persistently, they found their holds.

Because she did not relent. Because she would not relent until she returned light to the Earth.

Sesshōmaru could remember the day that the light advanced instead of retreated.
She did not just bring light; she helped others find the light within themselves.

And the nets of light, brought by bravery and compassion and love, had burned away all but the dark one's lair.

Sesshōmaru knew: the dark one was not so weak as humans might imagine.

Hopeless, he scoffed, from his lunar seat. Utterly hopeless.

But he did not turn away. Not as the beacons advanced, like a river of fireflies set on their singular goal: snuffed but unrelenting. The dark one was strong, and the dark one was cunning, but she too was strong, and she would not be tricked.

Sesshōmaru wondered if she knew the price of her battle. If she understood and was willing to give it all. After all, humans considered their own lives sacred: flashes of light and color against the monotony of immortality.

Then, with an explosion of will and a cry, it became clear that yes, she did understand. And that to her, bringing light back to the Earth was worth her own pointless flash of light and color.

The dark one, so close to defeat, desperately clawed for the sky, back to the places that humans could not touch, but she followed them there too, not letting go as they soared away from the world. Not letting go as oxygen left her lungs and blackened tendrils thrashed at her soul. Not letting go until she had given away every last bit of her own light.

Not letting go until…
the dark one was defeated completely.

Then she was falling, lifeless, back to the Earth that she had saved. Back to the place full of the lights that she had ignited.

Lifeless…
Lifeless…

Sesshōmaru shot from his seat. The one he had sat in for an age of the world, toward her.
For the first time, his heart began beating and his mind raced with desperate need.

What was this?
This fear, this longing?

To save her.
To save her.

It was no longer enough to sit idly and watch the cycle of the Earth. It was no longer enough to wait.

Because he had been waiting for her.

And if he let her fall, then perhaps his heart would never become a beacon of her light.

So he would chase her through the sky and he would bring her his light, so that she would go on shining.

"No." How long had it been since he heard the sound of his own voice? "Please."

He was immortal: a god, by all standards. A denizen of the Moon, who touched not the affairs of the Earth. But he needed to touch her.

"No." It was no longer a plea: it was a command, that he would not let her die.

And his body listened. Beams of his own light streamed from him, accelerating his advance, pushing him to his own edge of survival, but… but…

It would be enough.
As the Sun's rays began to shine back on the Earth, he made it to her.
Her skin was pale and luminous. Her hair was obsidian black yet threaded with starlight. And her eyes—her eyes—carried the golden light of the rising Sun ringed with the green of the Earth.

"I will not let you fall!" Sesshōmaru declared, and he stretched his hand toward her.

For a moment, she simply gazed at him, her eyes wide, the resolution of what her choices cost wavering. Then, a rekindling of the flame in her eyes, and then, her outstretched hand.

She, too, did not wish to fall.
She, too, did not wish for death, only for the end of the great darkness.

Sesshōmaru took her hand and he pulled her to him, closer than any being had ever been. He listened to the rapid beat of her heart and the shallowness of her breaths. She, who brought light back into the world. She, who in this embrace bathed his heart in light. She, who would break Sesshōmaru from his prison of indifference, igniting his beacon of light by the feathered touch of her presence.

"Why did you save me?" she asked.

"Because…" Sesshōmaru said, and he realized that was the only answer he could provide.

Kagome was her name, and together they walked the Earth, for the following age, hand-in-hand, lighting as many beacons as the monotonous return of day and night would allow them.