Chapter Three

Perception

Try as she might, Kagome could not seem to take her mind off of that urn; not as she'd brought the flowers back in, not as she'd trimmed them at old Aunt Kaede's insistence and replaced the wilting bunch with them, not as she'd neatly fallen into sitting in one of the plush arm chairs scattered throughout the expansive parlor. She feared that she was making her preoccupation obvious because every few moments that passed as she sat in the same room with it, a handful of sharply elongated seconds would tick by before she could pull her eyes away from that vibrant pattern of red and black paint against the white porcelain.

She was oblivious to the murmured conversation around her—even still to the instant ceasing of voices, followed closely by the shuffling sounds of people moving around. It wasn't truly the urn itself that had her transfixed- though, try as she might, she couldn't completely stave off the oppressing fear and confusion she'd felt when she'd glimpsed her mother coming down from Kikyou's room with it, no matter how she told herself she'd already thought of a perfectly logical reason for that. No, it was that looking at it, at that small, innocent-seeming object, reminded her of the sensations that had washed over her soon afterwards. Really, it could not have been more than ten or fifteen minutes ago, but it felt so very far away right at this second . . . as though she were remembering something glimpsed in a dream.

"Kagome!"

She started, tearing her eyes away from the urn to see her mother staring down at her with a confused frown. "Are you okay, honey?"

Kagome shook her head as she gave a slow, dramatic blink, "Um, yeah, sorry, mom."

"Well good, please take the urn—it's time."

The girl nodded stiffly, not wishing to appear as though anything was out of the ordinary, and rose from her seat. Despite how she wished it to appear, she couldn't shake how she felt—like every step that took her closer to that little porcelain jar dragged on forever when, really, it was only half way across the parlor floor. As she reached down, sliding her fingertips along the cool, painted surface she wondered briefly what would happen if she slipped . . . if she pretended to lose her grip on it and sent the little jar crashing against the floor.

If she did that . . . would she see anything spill out onto the polished hardwood surface from inside it?

"Kagome, please," Aiko said in a gentle, yet insistent voice.

She could only guess that she really had been moving just as sluggishly as she felt like she'd been. "Right, sorry, mom," she murmured with a small, falsely bright grin and turned on her heel, urn clutched lightly between her hands, as she followed the rest of the family members that had already begun to file their way down the stairs and into the basement to begin the ceremonial tasks.

Kagome kept her eyes ahead of her as she moved, the cool, smooth ridges of the paint and porcelain against her fingers almost making her skin itch with the simple awareness of its presence. She feared that if she did not keep her mind focused on just getting through this stupid ceremony—which she'd done so many times since childhood, but had somehow recently taken on such a bizarre and ominous feeling—then she would slip; she would find herself lifting the urn's lid to peek inside nearly before she even realized what she was doing.

As she numbly and automatically picked her way down the always-so-ancient-seeming stone steps of the cellar it felt nearly as though she was entering a separate world entirely. The candlelight rippling off the roughhewn gray walls from thick red wax pillars placed in a circle, the wafting of thick plumes of incense of varying, mixed-together scents and dull, muddled sound of the family elders humming prayers no longer felt like benign tradition.

A chill whispered its way across her skin even as she tried to get a grip on herself, but there was no explaining it. Kagome was unreasonably, acutely aware as she'd never been before of how archaic this all was.

Kagome managed to make it down the stairs, but by the time she set her heeled shoes on the rough stone floor she wasn't exactly certain how she'd managed—not when there'd seemed to be a tiny voice in the back of her mind with every step she'd taken telling her that if she pretended to trip she could easily push the lid off of the urn accidentally and peer inside and no one would be the wiser. But the idea that with her luck her imaginary spill down the steps would turn into a real one and she'd be too preoccupied with trying to stop herself from getting injured to be worried about the urn—or its possibly non-existent mystery contents—was a sobering thought.

She drew in a deep, steadying breath between pursed lips and let it out slowly, watching as the elders parted, making way as she approached the door where they left the offering. Unlike all of those previous offerings, however, as she was about to lower herself to her knees and place the urn on the floor her grandfather stepped up beside the door and pulled it open.

Uncertainly flooded her expression—the emotion somehow both tempered and sharpened by the anxiety curling in the pit of her stomach—as she looked at the shriveled old man expecting an answer. "A special moon approaches us shortly," he murmured softly, so as to not interrupt the faint chanting, "minor alterations to the ceremony are to be expected."

Kagome nodded slowly, trying not to let this bit of cryptic news add to her building unease. "Wh- what am I supposed to do?"

Her grandfather swept his arm outward, toward the little room. "Set the offering in the center of the altar, that's all."

Again she nodded, having to force legs that felt rooted to the spot into motion. She stepped into that little room and the incense-induced haze that her nervousness had been keeping at bay finally washed over her, despite there being no incense burning in here. The dark, damp-smelling space was bare, save for the illumination of two red pillar candles set in stands on either side of the altar.

The haze was muffling her thoughts a bit. When she knew she should have been focused on simply setting down the urn and leaving so that she could retreat to the imagined safety of her bedroom, she instead found her mind puzzling over the altar. It was not that she'd never noticed it before, simply that she'd never thought of it as an altar—just some bizarre, glorified platform in the middle of the room that served no real purpose—so it was nearly the same as if she'd not noticed.

Frowning lightly as she shook her head, trying to banish the dull fuzziness settling over her brain, Kagome placed the urn, but . . . try as she might, for a long moment she couldn't take her hands from it. Such a strange thing—she was telling her body to move, to drop her arms to her sides and turn on her heel to walk out of here and yet not an inch of her seemed willing to comply.

She let out a heavy sigh, allowing her eyes to drift closed as she tried to center herself, to focus her thoughts. Slowly the fog began to lift, but it was replaced quickly with a different sensation entirely. There was a warmth at her back . . . as though someone had silently crept up to stand closely behind her, but that wasn't possible- with her acute spacial awareness, she would have felt their energy before now. A person could not have sneaked up on her, could not have appeared suddenly behind her this way.

Her eyes remained closed and it was a long moment before Kagome realized she was not breathing. It took a conscious effort to inhale as she struggled with herself as to whether or not to look over her shoulder. The warmth drew closer then, feeling like the body of a flesh and blood being was pressing softly against her back. There was an odd though faint familiarity that this energy brought with it, the sheer sense of it causing a mild blush to flare in her cheeks.

She found herself almost wanting to lean back against it—this was a jarring contrast to how this room had made her feel just a short time ago when she'd been peering in from the outside. That knowledge didn't change the perception one little bit. She wondered vaguely what it would be like to let herself be cradled by it . . . .

The whispered feel of skin moving against skin rippled down along her bare forearms; hands that weren't there rested ever so delicately over hers as her fingers continued to cling unconsciously to the urn.

"Kagome," she heard in a gentle, urgent murmur.

Just like that the energy had vanished and she was snapped, roughly, back into the moment. Eyes opening, she dropped her hands at last from the offering and looked over her shoulder to see her grandfather peering curiously into the room.

How long have I been standing here? She wondered, choosing to diligently ignore that for a brief, flickering moment she'd welcomed the presence of that mysterious entity—that she was for once oddly reluctant to leave the cellar.

She gave her grandfather a nod and a wan smile as she forced herself to exit the room and began following her relatives though the cloudy, candlelit space and up the stairs. The sound of the door to that little room slamming shut from below rang through her, leaving behind a hollow, forlorn feeling . . . . For a second, that room had seemed to take on a life of its own to her.

And that life was heartbreakingly lonely.