Pain was but a distant feeling as she stared up at the star kissed sky, absolute numbness cradling her dying body as she took shuddering breaths which were muted to her defecting ears as her bodily facilities shut themselves down one by one. She blinked once and an eternity seemed to pass, her head lolling to the side to capture jade eyes with her own dulling ones.
Shippo…
Her hand flexed and she willed it to move urged it to comfort her son, to wipe the sorrow from his hunched shoulders, to wipe the guilt as it leaked forth from his eyes in the form of tears, to comfort him, to hold him, to tell him it would be alright.
It wouldn't be of course.
She was dying.
Dead really.
And she knew it.