For: iyficcontest week 54 "darkfic" – 2nd place!
Written – 6-16-06
Characters: Kagome
Genre: Angst/Drama
Rating: PG
Word count: 473
Summary: There's a trick to drinking tea.
In a Teacup
It starts with a cup of steaming, wispy tea and an upbeat attitude, thinking uplifting thoughts, such as: this is not the end of the world. You can get through this. You will succeed without hims and hers and the little ones and that shiny, despairingly powerful stone. Maybe it's better that it turned out this way, because now you actually stand a chance at getting into high school.
After that comes a period of, shall we call it, inner turmoil, in which your brain knows that there's life afterward, but your heart still firmly roots itself in the past, claiming to be unable to let go, or perhaps just plain unwilling.
Kagome, personally, can't tell if it's really her heart that clings to him (them, then, that), because it's not him per se, but the memory of him. It's an image that will forever remain in her tertiary memory, following her where she goes. So maybe it's her brain that despairs the most, and her heart that wants to move on.
Beyond these two states of minds, however, Kagome has no idea. She reaches the point where tea does nothing but warm her face, but it doesn't maintain the attitude, nor does it keep her mind on the positive road.
But, Kagome is pretty sure that she's found the trick.
Which is to say, she's figured out that concentrating on the rim of her teacup is much more fulfilling than wondering about the health of people living centuries ago. It's a lovely cup, actually. She didn't know Mama had a set like this.
Maybe, Kagome ponders, she'll become a tea set expert. She'll travel the world to tea set conventions and tell people, no, I'm sorry ma'am. Your tea pot is a fake antique and only worth about ten American dollars. Question your antique dealer more carefully next time. Next? Oh my, is this a spider decoration? How perfectly rare! Did you know? There's a legend behind this design in which a girl fell down a well and…
But a small, black spider, unnoticed and outside Kagome's daydreams, crawls up her wrist. She starts at the multitude of legs pattering on her skin, and jerks her arm, sending the unfortunate spider into her tea cup.
It's a fascinating sight to Kagome, watching the spider tumble into the murky, greenish liquid. It hits the cup bottom and becomes almost indistinguishable from the tea leaves, or it would have been if it didn't flail its legs around. Somehow, it moves enough to jerk itself into the correct position, but it slips against the wet surface of the cup.
When the spider stops moving, Kagome pushes the cup away from her and leaves it for somebody else to put away. Reaching up to wipe her eyes, she decides that she'll never drink tea again.