Kaede had seen a lot in her old age.
Big sister Kikyo apparently dying at the hands of Inuyasha.
Then finding out that big sister Kikyo had reincarnated five hundred years into the future and came back to the past through a well.
Then finding out that big sister Kikyo did not actually die at the hands of Inuyasha, and that it was all a ploy by Naraku to turn Kikyo and Inuyasha against each other.
Big sister Kikyo getting resurrected by that witch Urasue and turning into a clay shell of bitterness and hatred.
"Kaede-sama," said Tajima the ceramic maker three houses away. "Did you hear the stories of your sister's new lover?"
Kaede spat out her water and drenched her freshly dried clothes. "What?"
He scratched at his head. "Well, the stories confused me too. But if Kikyo-sama is happy..."
"Could you please start from the beginning of this story, Tajima?"
This...could not be. Kikyo held a deadly grudge against Inuyasha fifty years after her demise. She tried killing Kagome. She tried killing Inuyasha. She was warped and twisted into an empty shell, an ocean apart from the kind and caring sister she knew in childhood. She wouldn't just move on.
"It looks like she moved on."
"How?"
"She was hugging someone. Or maybe kissing someone. She was definitely holding hands with him, according to Yajima, who heard it from Majima, who heard it from..."
"It seems to me that you are describing silly gossip," Kaede said. "Be reasonable. Tell me, have you even the barest description of this fantastical man?"
"He was wearing yellow. And a strange bamboo umbrella. He can destroy men and mountains with energy as black as night and as swift as lightning," Tajima said with a dreamy expression, like he was reliving a thrilling ballad by a wandering poet. "He spoke the same tongue as Kagome-sama, and defended Kikyo-sama with his life. It is said that he has a fondness for swine and can travel from city to city with his eyes closed."
None of that made any sense.
"Thank you for telling me of this, Tajima," Kaede said. "Now good night."
She shut the door on him.
Her back was acting up and her joints were sore. It had been a long day of helping the villagers with their numerous ailments and she was getting on in years. This was surely a hallucination that would come to pass at daybreak.
There was no way that her sister would suddenly take a new lover out of nowhere. No way.
Kaede drifted off into a fitful sleep and to a dream world where she was officiating a wedding between Kikyo and a shapeshifting pig-man.
Please don't let it be real, please don't let it be real, please, please, please.
A/N: I figured Kaede should make an appearance... :)