Winds of Change
jodyle1
Chapter Eight
The ancient forrest was forebodingly silent under the watchful gaze of the scarlet sky. Stars glittered in the night, distant markers in an otherwise empty expanse, and the beautiful moon shone gloriously among them, casting the world below into alien shades of silver and ebony. Kagome's slight body stirred, her closed eye's fluttering faintly as her soul was returned to her body, which was re-animating with each passing second. Her heart hammered loudly in her chest and her breath leaving her in short pants and grunts of pain. Inside her mind, chaos reigned.
Despite her current state of unconsciousness, Kagome still registered the agony that wracked every cell in her body, tearing through her being and breaking her over and over again. Never had she experienced this pain, this torture, nothing had even come close. Naraku melting her body was but a pleasant shower in comparison, Inuyasha betraying her love was merely a gentle tug on her heart.
She wished it would stop, for it would surely consume her, body and mind. Occasionally, her body would fail and her soul would pass into the abyss from whence she came, darkness pressing in heavily on every side, but somehow, she would always be called back, back into the endless suffering and torment. Was she in hell? She couldn't be sure, but she imagined that it felt somewhat like this. These were her last thoughts before the pain increased ten-fold, scrambling any coherent thoughts she had managed to put together and throwing her body into fits of uncontrollable convulsions.
Kagome wasn't sure how long had passed -Seconds? Hours? Weeks? - before the pain began to subside, only fractionally, but subside none-the-less. Her body was still thrashing furiously, not under her control, but the shadowy edges of her mind were lifted from the mayhem, free of the chaotic agony. This became her refuge, her escape from the onslaught in the, what felt like, hours and days. Gradually, the pain receded from her mind and her body ceased it's movement, giving her the freedom of thought, which she appreciated greatly.
By the time the pain had completely left her body, Kagome had deduced many reasons for the ferocious assault to her person. Before she had passed into the beyond, Kagome's body had been utterly destroyed; shattered and disintegrated into bits and pieces to the point where she doubted that her remains were recognizable as human. In order for her to return to this world, her body would have to be reconstructed and mended, which must have been the source of her pain. During that time, her soul must have passed, but the Shikon Jewel had called it forth into her body repeatedly, which would explain the expanse of darkness she was cast into. Now, she was waiting. Waiting for her mind to return to consciousness.