Author's Note: Kikyou interacting with children, living her post-reanimation half-life. PG.
Insensate
"Lady Kikyo! Lady Kikyo!" the child cries, in a high, little-girl voice whose shrillness is tempered for her by the beauty of simply being able to hear it. The youngster runs toward the Priestess, plump legs pumping, cupped hands outstretched. It is a wonder she does not fall as she scrambles forward, and Kikyo's lips stretch into a reluctant smile at this tiny miracle. "Look what I found!" the child sings as she reaches her goal, holding out an enormous yellow peony blossom for Kikyo to admire.
"It is beautiful, little one," she says. And it is, however shortlived. Being a child, the girl does not realize how easily a life can be ended.
"Smell it," the creature effuses, wriggling with excitement.
Kikyo brings her nose to the full bloom and inhales. "It is lovely." She can smell nothing. She tries to be grateful for sight. She gazes at the pale, sweet face of the child. "And what will you do with your flower now?"
"It's for Yuki," she beams, pointing to a sturdy, handsome young man working in a field nearby.
She continues the effort of a smile. "He is indeed lucky," she offers. The child nods vigorously. The Priestess believes the youth is the child's brother, but of late the villagers all seem to blur together: so many lives around her, all so vigorous and so brief. Her senses are so dull; her desire for life is little more than stubbornness now.
The child scurries off, and Kikyo watches a single yellow petal flutter to earth in her wake. She retrieves it, and rubs it gently between the pads of slender, insensate fingers. The desire to brush it against her cheek is foolish, an act of faith in the face of impossibility. It harkens to a time, long ago, when she admitted to no limits on the possible.
She closes her eyes, raises the petal, and hopes.