Chapter 338: Demarcation

n. the action of fixing the boundary or limits of something.

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"Home?" murmured all three siblings, exchanging confused glances with one another before settling on Kagome. Kagome stood still, her knuckles white from gripping her skirt, eyes lifting from the well to trace an invisible path of power that only she could see.

"It's how I got here," explained Kagome, her shoulders hitching up towards her ears, "before I came to Suna I had been traveling back and forth through the well for about a year."

"Why?" solemnly asked Gaara. The only one of them brave enough to seek answers to the torrent of confusion rising in them due to the information Kagome unleashed. Kagome had never talked about her time before they found her in the desert. She had alluded to a few experiences, but nothing that was very detailed. She never mentioned past friends or family, no hint of where she had come from or how she had found herself in the desert.

Gaara's one question unlocked the door that hid all of Kagome's secrets, because she started talking. Telling them about her family, her mama, grandpa, and brother, and her friends on the other side of her well, on a quest to save the past and her present.

Kagome's words ran dry at the conclusion of her story. Cautiously she glanced at the shell-shocked siblings, their mouths gawping open. Even Gaara's mask of indifference cracked as he gazed unblinkingly at Kagome.

"So, this well, it's the portal that'll take you home?" asked Temari, gulping past a riot of emotions that tangled in her throat.

"It could," agreed Kagome as she slowly crept towards the edge of the well. In a swoosh of motion Kankuro was standing beside her, his hands fisted into the back of her shirt, holding her in place, stopping her advance to the well.

"You want to jump in there?!" angrily demanded Kankuro, his gaze narrowing into a harsh glare defiantly turning his attention between Kagome and the well.

"I… don't know," answered Kagome, "I don't know if it'll even send me back home, but there is enough magic here to open the portal, and… and I think I need to at least try. If I don't, I'll always wonder."

Kankuro rubbed the moisture from his eyes as he released Kagome's shirt. Temari sniffled, not even hiding her tears. Gaara frowned, a fissure in his stoic mask. Kagome sobbed, gathering them in a group hug.

The sun was rising in the air, and with its return, oppressive heat began to beat down on the hugging group. Reluctantly Temari began the arduous process of untangling the group. With difficulty she managed to separate her brothers from Kagome, collecting them in a line in front of their friend. Kagome looked back at them with tears streaming down her face. Blubbering, Kagome drew a clean edge of her sweat soaked shirt across her face to wipe off her tears.

"Kagome, we would have kept you forever," declared Temari solemnly. An invisible line drawn in the sand keeping her distance from Kagome, knowing that should any of them cross it, they would not be letting their friend go into the great abyss of the well.

"I love you three," sobbed Kagome, "I would have been happy to stay."

Kankuro scoffed, his sleeve swiping across his nose, tear trails imprinted in the dirt on his cheeks.

"Go Kagome," Kankuro said, "go before we change our minds about letting you go."

Kagome gave a last watery smile. Her eyes trailing over the brave faces of each sibling, pausing on the frozen look on Gaara's face, his eyes locked on the ground.

"Gaara," called Kagome, her voice trailing off as Gaara's intense teal eyes flicked up towards her, "You're going to do amazing things."

Still frozen by the jumble of unnamed emotions in his gut, Gaara gave a shaky nod acknowledging Kagome, his eyes locking on to her.

Kagome slowly backed up, not turning to the well until the back of her legs hit the stone of the well's lip. Reluctantly Kagome tore her gaze from the siblings to climb onto the ledge of the well, swinging her legs over the void. With one last glance over her shoulder, she pushed off the edge and dissolved into the inky chasm below the surface.

All three siblings surged forward as one. They reached the edge of the well at the exact same moment, and all glanced down, waiting to hear a body crumpling at the bottom of the well. All three looked up at each other as silence plucked through the moment with only the sound of the sand swirling around them.

Time continued onward, each sibling frozen as they investigated the well's depths.

"We… we should keep going," whispered Temari hoarsely, valiantly peeling her brothers from the well and into the desert.

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