Woven in the Silver Strands by bluemoon

Chapter One: Change is Rather a Nuisance - Kagome

Woven in the Silver Strands

bluemoon

Rating: PG-13/T (Rated for angst and some awfully strange stuff. Not sex. None.)

Right then. Hello, everyone I hope that you like this strange little plot bunny–it just came hopping along, and I had to write it. I have a disclaimer roughly the size of Europe for this fic, but it was necessary–so if you see something that you recognize, please check there before all other considerations. One final note, Kagome is (yes) slightly OOC in this fic–she's too angsty, really, but it could happen in this time frame–and there are other aspects of the story that are slightly... off. I do these things on purpose, so unless you see something that seems just way out there (in which case it might be a mistake on my part) please don't comment. I all ready know.

Disclaimer: No, I do not own the InuYasha series or any character, scene, or conflict affiliated with that series that is alluded to in this story. Those all belong to Rumiko Takahashi and always will unless she goes suddenly and unexpectedly insane one day and auctions them off or something. ALSO, I borrowed some from Amelia Atwater Rhodes's Kiesha'Ra series so far as the feathers-in-the-hair goes, and I took "Winged like the Emerald" from Wizards at War by Diane Duane. ("Guardian of the Divided Soul" was inspired by "Guardian of the Divided Name," also from this book). "The Night One" came from Tamora Pierce's Alanna, the First Adventure. So, if you recognize these, I AM SO NOT TAKING CREDIT FOR THEM They are not mine, I do not claim them as such, and I am making no profit off of them. Swan Lake, written by Tchaikovsky (no, NOT The Swan Princess, though that was inspired by it), which I also mention, doesn't belong to me either. And no, sadly, I do not own any of the four elements (just think how cool that would be ) Actually, I own basically nothing. Excuse me while I go off into my corner and cry.

(A/N: Holy cow, that was long. I will add further disclaimers when and if the need appears.)

Chapter One: Change is Rather a Nuisance

Kagome

I felt the tears start to slide down my cheek, and had to bite my tongue to keep from swearing.

Stupid, idiotic, unfeeling, cold, tactless, chauvinistic, hard-hearted....

It was no good. I was crying. Crying Of all the unreasonable actions that I could have picked, this had to be the worst. I didn't even really have anything to cry about After all, I had known all along that Inuyasha liked Kikyo–that he had probably liked her better then he liked me So what was I crying for? He'd made his choice It wasn't me.

So why couldn't I stop crying, already?

"Kagome " I heard him call from behind me, but I just started running faster and crying harder and cursing myself for it even more.

I should be happy Naraku was finally defeated (I think. I hope, anyway–I don't think that he got away from the last battle, but given his history and the fact that we didn't find a body I guess we can't rule out the possibility that he got away somehow) and the jewel was finished. Inuyasha had actually stopped bugging me about said jewel as well, maybe that had something to do with Kikyo.

She had been in the final battle as well, and she had torn the chunk of the jewel that I had scraped together from me again. Now that made me mad, mainly because I thought of this as proof that she really was on Naraku's side. And maybe she was, I don't know. What I do know is that when she grabbed the jewel, something happened. She was still touching me at the time, and I was still hanging on to the jewel (I wasn't going to lose it again that easily, let me tell you) maybe that was it. But anyway, the jewel darkened and then purified and then was corrupted and purified again and again and the power kept on flowing out of me, keeping the bauble clean and sparkling until I thought that it had been years of doing nothing but that and I was stuck here and I would go mad soon....

It turned out slightly differently. What the jewel, through me, had been doing was pulling the darkness out of her heart and purifying it, more and more and more evil and hatred until I thought that I would scream, that I would faint, that I would die.... Because it hurt. Basically there was literally pure evil flowing into me, and not just a little bit. This was an ocean wave breaking over me with the force of a tsunami, the darkness clutching at me like a shadow determined to drown a spark that still hung on....

And then it was over. She collapsed, I collapsed and the world started to go dark and I couldn't move. I wondered if I was dying. I felt the jewel sitting in my palm, finally completed. The last few shards, all that there remained, had flown towards me it seemed on wings of lightning when the jewel was slamming from one end of the spectrum to the other so violently. Maybe that's what called them. In any case, it was done.... This little, pink, beautiful thing had caused so much harm in such a short span of time....

In the space somewhere between reality and fantasy, wakefulness and dreams, I heard Inuyasha scream someone's name....

And it had been Kikyo's, I learned when I woke up. He knew that I had fallen too, but apparently that wasn't as important to him as Kikyo.

When I found this out, all of a sudden I felt empty inside, like someone had just reached into me and scooped out everything. Cold, I suppose, is the best way to describe it. I felt very... very cold. Calmly I stood and began walking towards the well. My friends were scared of me in that moment, I could tell.

Well, I'm sorry, I suppose, but I don't know what came over me. It was like I was seeing the world through a shell, a darkened lens that somehow removed everything from me a few steps. Like I wasn't quite part of the world anymore, like I was something else altogether. Inuyasha had run up to me a few steps outside the hut–he hadn't been inside, he had probably been out there in the woods somewhere with his precious Kikyo–and very calmly I told him to sit. However, that familiar crash of him hitting the forest floor seemed to tear something that suddenly seemed fragile and breakable, and all of a sudden all of the anger and pain that the bubble must have been keeping back flooded in, filling me up again and spilling out and somehow still leaving me feeling empty.

How is that? How is it that you can be filled with hate, and still so empty?

I had turned around and screamed all of my feelings at Inuyasha, telling him all of the hateful things that had come pouring into my heart. Why always Kikyo? Why never me? I'd been faithful, more then faithful I'd stayed by his side for so many years–almost five years, at this point. I'd lived with and hunted with and laughed with and played with and fallen in love with this idiotic mutt that couldn't get over his dead girlfriend for long enough to give me a chance to tell him that I loved him, that maybe I always have....

All of my hurt and pain and anger and anguish and years of tortured knowing that he never returned my feelings that I had bottled up for so long seemed forever came spilling out. Well, not all of them I suppose, because I knew that I was going to start crying. Actually, I only went on for a few moments before I was reduced to a broken whisper, asking why it was always her and never me. This is when I had turned and run, because I knew that the tears would start flowing in approximately thirty seconds.

I had given up so much, so freakin' much, to keep on coming back here I'd barely graduated from High School, basically all of my future prospects in my own time period were toast, and I didn't know what I could do. I was nineteen and I had basically no friends but the shard hunting crew, I barely saw my family, and I had never been kissed. At nineteen. Even the faithful Hojo had moved on to greener pastures, as it were. No one would want an almost High School dropout with shocking health problems and a possible record of delinquency. Or, I guess there were a few types who would like that, but I wanted nothing to do with any of them.

I had literally given up almost everything that I had ever known and loved, all so that I could come back here to this stupid era and spend the time with the boy that I loved. And yet, when I fell as though dead, Inuyasha didn't even think of me, only of Kikyo.

I was only a shard detector. That's all that I ever had been. I wouldn't ever have even been that, but the all precious Kikyo was too homicidal to keep her around to fill the post.

I'd only ever be her replacement.

"Kagome " I heard Inuyasha cry, and there seemed to be a kind of pain in his voice. He would chase me to the ends of the earth and beyond if I didn't let him say whatever it was that he wanted to say, I knew from experience, so I stopped.

"What is it?" I asked in a voice harsh as a crow as I swung around to face him. My tongue felt thick and unwieldy and it seemed to flop like a dying fish in my mouth, rather than how tongues are properly supposed to work. "Why aren't you back with her?" Inuyasha laughed, but once again there was pain in it. I didn't let him speak, not to answer me and not to explain himself. I couldn't take the explanations, the apologies, the vows that were broken at the earliest convenience again. "Oh, wait, you want the jewel, don't you? Well you can't have it I'd sooner smash it again then let you have it You'd only wish to be a full demon, wouldn't you? That would splinter it anyway, and each and every one of those tiny splinters would be corrupted I'd never let that happen, do you hear? I'd never let that happen " I was half shouting by the end, a hoarse and broken sound. It was rough. It was nothing like my normal voice. It was like grief had cracked and reformed my voice, and made it into a different shape altogether.

"Kagome, please, just–"

I hated that tiny, glittering, beautiful pink ball right then. It brought nothing but misery. I wished that I could destroy it, that I could somehow shatter not only the physical but the holier aspects of it to keep it from ever being used for such evil as it had been used for again....

The jewel was in pain when it was corrupted, and that pain reverberated through my very bones whenever I purified a shard, the tiniest splinter. It had shrieked in agony when used in curses, and I could feel that ricocheting through me. It seemed to tear the muscle and bone, at the beginning I'd always been mildly surprised that I wasn't ever standing in a pool of blood at the end of it.

The Shikon no Tama, which was supposed to be so wonderful and good, brought nothing but pain in practice. There was no luck in it, no luck at all. In fact, rather the opposite of luck seemed to trail it. Grandpa, I wouldn't wish this curse on my worst enemies, and you sell replicas....

The famous Jewel of the Four Souls, which I held tightly enough that the chain left angry indents on my hands, had not brought any of the wonderful things that it was supposed to. It had caused unmeasured wars and death and pain and grief and pure misery from poor, simple people who were only trying to live free and bring in the next crop, but it had never once brought peace or hope or love....

"Kagome–" Inuyasha started again, his voice pained and pleading.

I wouldn't stay, couldn't stay. The tears, which I had tried so hard to hold back, were now beginning to flow thick and fast down my cheeks. I screamed at him to leave me alone, my voice cracking as I did so, and then turned and jumped down the well.

Normally I am slightly apprehensive when I take the plunge, even though I've done it what seems thousands of times. After all, for all that you know what will happen and you know where it's taking you, there are always the lingering doubts. What if it doesn't work this time? What if it does, but I end up in the wrong time period or place and I'm trapped there forever....

A bit stupid, I know, but I still have these little nagging doubts. And completely removed from all of that–it is a bit creepy to watch yourself slip through solid ground and have that ground catch at you like cobwebs, only a light brushing as you break through that seems to tickle and stick to your skin. When ground, after all, stops behaving like ground, it makes you nervous.

Anyway, although I normally hesitate for a second, at least, this time I positively threw myself down the well, trying to drown myself in the warm light in the place between the worlds. It brought me a moment of peace, at least. Being down there always calms me down. It feels like you're floating as you fall so quickly that you know you are going faster then anything ever has before, including light.... But even as you fall, you still float, like a dust mote. The best way to describe it is how Alice felt falling down the Rabbit Hole. How she didn't exactly know how fast she was going, as it seemed both very fast and very slow at the same time.

As soon as I got back to my own era, I fled that well and then the well house as though the Hounds of Hell were about to come pouring after me out of it. I made it exactly as far as the God Tree, and then I collapsed at the base of Goshinboku and cried and cried and cried, until a chill wind took the ash that had once been my heart and scattered it to the four winds.

Mama must have been out shopping when I got home, and Souta was probably at Soccer practice or something, while Grandpa took a nap. Not necessarily those tasks, I suppose, but everyone must have been engaged in something. I know that Mama, at least, checks whenever it sounds like I'm home, and I'd defiantly made some noise in my rather dramatic entrance. Anyway, despite all of the clanging, sobbing, running, et cetera, no one even seemed to notice that I was home. And so, of course, I had a good long time to cry and then another good long time to sit around feeling utterly empty and miserable and as though the world could just go and kick off somewhere, as much as I cared, because I was not doing any more to save it anymore. No sirree, sorry Earth, but you're going to have to find another poor shmuck to go and do all of this rescuing business, because I QUIT

I was also feeling rather unreasonable at that point, no doubt driven to the point of near delirium by too much crying and time spent in the cold. (It was February, and just after the 14th, which I considered another of the universe's most cruel bits of irony, which it always seems to reserve for me).

Still no one had come for me after what had to be at least an hour, and so I finally got up and began trudging my way on to the house. Although, I reasoned, the temperature outside fit my bleak mood better then central heating would, it wouldn't prove anything if I was to get hypothermia. Though, if I'd known what was coming, I suppose that I would just have drowned myself in the koi pond and gotten it over with quick. I mean, the jewel was done and I was supposed to be able to rest a bit. I don't ask much, but I do ask this. And yet the universe doesn't see fit even to grant this tiny wish.

Sigh.

Still, I'd gone inside and then, about a foot inside the door, I'd turned around and frozen (in the stopped dead sense, not the cold sense). Because there, in the very first room that you walk into, the reception room for the shrine, there had been sitting on the table in a special little display rack what I do declare solemnly to be the most beautiful thing I'd ever set eyes on.

It was a bow.

Funny, how those things keep on getting tied up into my life, isn't it? It wasn't quite like any other bow I'd ever seen before either, and I've seen my fair share of bows at this point, everything from antiques to magically created ones with plants growing on them. This one was shockingly pale, almost as though it were ivory (which was, of course, utter lunacy, a bow couldn't be made of ivory, but it must have been birch or some other pale wood... which was strange in and of itself, since I had never heard of such a pale wood that was good for bow-making), and had odd carvings filled with something as dark as the rest of it was light–ebony? Mahogany? Who knew.

The patterns set in it were detailed to, amazingly so. I was quite frankly at a loss as to how such detail was created, let alone retained. There were leaves and vines rustling gently in a breeze in those patterns, grass swaying back and forth, a mouse delicately nibbling a seed. There was a bird soaring, clouds scuttling across a summer sky... and the strangest thing was, even though they were all done in the almost white and almost black that was all there was, they didn't look it. Looking at it, you could see the colors dancing just below the surface of the wood, you could see shapes moving as though breezes had been trapped in it.

The entire thing had a sense of movement to it–another odd thing, as it was most decidedly not moving. Still, it seemed to shimmer as though there were part of it that were alive, alive and dancing....

I shook my head to clear it and looked at it again, trying to take in the overall view and leave all decidedly strange impressions behind.

There was no debating it, the first thought that came into your head when you saw it was pale. The center, which was where most of the pale wood was, was inevitably where your eyes were first drawn. The inlay started there and continued, growing and more and more complicated, the lines twisting back and forth all the more until finally the white seemed like it was the inlay, the pattern shifting to the almost black tips.

And again the impression of something dancing.

I felt mesmerized in a way. It was the most singular and the most beautiful weapon that I'd ever seen, and something about it seemed to call to me. I had to go and look at it a bit more closely. Grandpa, after all, had never minded me touching any of his antiques, not since just before I turned 15 and grandpa gave me long, extensive lessons on how to handle antiques (these were brought on by the kappa hand incident). Any visitors and Souta he minded quite a bit, but never me....

I would be careful. I just had to see it, that was all. See it and touch it and feel the cool, solid weight of perfection made into a weapon sitting in my hand....

It felt, as I stepped closer and closer to the bow, as if nothing but myself and the object that I was fixed on existed. It wasn't as if I were in a vampire movie and hypnotized or anything like that, but my vision seemed to narrow and me ears seemed to buzz. There was a thrumming, like my heartbeat, that pounded with regularity against my skull. So, basically, it was rather creepy. I mean, there didn't seem to be anything wrong, but when your vision narrows then I think that it's time to see a doctor, don't you?

Nothing seemed like it was wrong to me at the time though. After all, my vision wasn't narrowing, not really (I could, after all, see other things, I was just focused on the bow) and as to the thrumming and buzzing... it happens sometime when it's really quiet. And the bow just seemed so darn interesting that I had to examine it more closely

My sense of curiosity will be the death of me yet.

Anyway, I made it over to the low table that the thing was set on and settled myself into a plush cushion before settling in to examine it more closely. It was even prettier up close. Humming in pleasure as I reached out to brush my fingers against the amazing weapon, I heard someone come down the stairs.

Grandpa, I supposed.

I sighed mentally. I guess that I couldn't have the in-depth examination that I had so yearned for. Ah well. Salvage what there was, I suppose. I wanted to look at it, especially the pale wood. It looked half like it was wind, if you could see wind. With the occasional leaf in it. Funny, even closer you could all but see the breezes dancing in light and shadow across the surface of the wood.... This should have been a clue for me to run like... like Sesshoumaru was looking downright mad at me, but I've never been what most people would class "smart." After all, look at Inuyasha. Look at all I'd done for him without a scrap of gratitude in return.

Even so, I should have guessed that there was something unnatural at work. After all, deadwood didn't normally look alive. 'Dead' is part of its name, for crying out loud.

But yea, I'm slow. Think a snail cryogenically frozen in a mixture of tar and molasses and you have me.

Sigh.

"Hey," I'd said, reaching out to brush a finger along the edge of an inlayed leaf before I turned around to smile at whoever it was coming down. All right, so I was sad, that didn't mean that I had to be all psycho and throw myself at the first person I saw, crying and snorting like some sort of strange, wet, weepy monster from the abyss. At least, not unless that person was mama. I could act relatively normal, for a while at least.

Or, that was the plan. It didn't really work that way, to my chagrin. What really happened was, when my outstretched index finger was about a millimeter away from the surface, I heard Grandpa (Aha, I'd thought, so I was right ) start saying, "Wait, Kagome "

He never even got to finish his sentence. At least, not that I heard. He only got to the "go" bit of my name before I passed out as my finger brushed the wood.

Now, let me just point out that this is NOT FAIR. I mean, Sleeping Beauty had the same sort of thing happen, but at least the loving King and Queen didn't display the freakin' spindles No, they had to hunt her down and enchant her before she pricked her finger. I didn't even get any kind of warning All right, so Grandpa might have told me some story like this at some point of my life, but I never listened to them before I got shot off down the well and I was never home after, so how could anyone reasonably expect me to know? Huh? HOW I ASK YOU?

I never even got time to react. If I was a demon and had a demon's speed and reflexes, then I probably could have saved myself. Probably. But with a human's lousy timing? No way. I mean, my finger was maybe a half a millimeter away from the stupid thing and closing. How could I have stopped my finger in time, even with Grandpa gabbling his warning? After all, your brain does take a moment to process information, no matter how fast you are And I wasn't fast enough. As I said, Grandpa only made it to the "go" before my finger brushed the inlay. As soon as it did, there was a shock and a kind of pain that ran through me, some of it centering on my heart, some on my hand. My head felt rather like it was splitting. My back, however, got the worst share of all of it. There was a horrible feeling of agony–there was really no other way to describe it–that raced through me, as though the skin were literally being pulled off of me and cauterized and stretched and torn.... Then (according to Grandpa) I'd collapsed, knocked out.

This is that moment when my life, already hopelessly messed up, became a true train wreck.

Everything was hazy at first, but when it all cleared I was, to my amazement, lying in a meadow. It was a lovely place too–the grass was an almost shocking shade of green, the sky was an equally vibrant blue, there were a few aspens (which had always been my favorite trees) standing here and there, their translucent leaves fluttering in a slight breeze. Tiny white star-shaped flowers dotted the green and, when I'd woken up, there had been some sort of songbird sitting very close to me and seeming to be examining me in rather grave manner; especially for a songbird, of all things. What made it all the more startling is that, when it saw that I'd finally woken up, instead of vanishing–as any self-respecting bird would when that close to a human–it actually hopped closer and picked up a strand of my hair in it's beak.

I was wondering who was insane–me or the bird. If it was me, wouldn't I know? Does a crazy person know that they are crazy? I felt awfully sane for a crazy person. Of course, I suppose that hearing the story of my life from 15 on would make most anyone want to commit me, but they hadn't been down the well. If all of that really was just my imagination, then I have to be a masochist. And I've never noticed any special fondness for pain....

As I was lying there on my stomach, contemplating all of these things, I heard someone laugh from behind me. That rather made me mad. After all, even if I was just imagining all of this and whoever it was laughing was only another fragment of my personality or something, they had no right. And if it was real–well, laughing at others is just plain old rude. I could never stand for it. Not for myself, not for anyone I knew. In fact, one day when Souta had been in fourth grade and had come home trying with all his might (but still rather failing) not to cry because there was a gang of kids beating up on and teasing him I had gone and threatened all of them in one of the scariest voices that I have ever heard, horror movies included.

It had stopped after that.

Anyway, laughing at someone was just... oh. And so I had sat up, swinging around with murder glinting in my eye... and then frozen.

It's like those dreams that you always have, the ones that involve you getting up and getting ready and heading off to school happily, but feeling as though there is something slightly different.... And then, when you get there, you realize that you forgot your pants.

It was like that, only about a million times worse. Because, when I sat up and turned around, there was a sort of rustle, like rough silk would make when you rub two pieces together. It was more then the sound though, there was a soft drag as something would make through long grass. Like the kind that I was sitting in. And it was more then even that. There was a pull at my back–very slight, but still there–right by my shoulder blades, just inside. Then I started to sense something altogether new, a pressure, slight, but it felt rather like I'd suddenly grown an extra pair of arms or something. Slowly and rather apprehensively I tried to spread out whatever it was that was apparently now attached to my back. There was that silken rasp again, and then out of the corners of my eyes I saw a pair of simply enormous black wings slowly unfolding.

All thoughts of people laughing went straight out of my head as I felt the color drain from my face.

The bird hopped onto my shoulder.

To my front I saw someone moving, someone with very long black hair that the wind was blowing, but I didn't much care. I had wings Would you care about that much when suddenly and for no reason that you could comprehend, you had wings?

"Kagome," whoever it was said, and at that I had to look at them. I might not have, but the voice was so warm and kind and full of a quiet sort of knowledge that I couldn't seem to help it.... Perhaps I shouldn't have–I'd already had more then enough shocks for the next few centuries, what with the whole "I-just-woke-up-and-I-have-wings" thing. Still, it seemed like reflex. I'd looked up, and then had my breath knocked out again.

Because, funny as it was, I recognized this person standing in front of me.

I shouldn't have by all rights. After all, I had only ever seen her corpse–which had appeared to have become a very large piece of jerky over the years–and she wasn't even wearing the armor.

And yet, somehow, I knew her. I knew her as well as I knew myself, my very soul seemed to sing as I saw her. Rejoice was the best way for me to describe the reaction that seemed to shiver through me when I saw her.

Midoriko looked very pretty, standing there in a simply elegant kimono. It was, I noted, crossed the wrong way, but I suppose that is to be expected. The crane and cherry blossoms weren't hidden, so it took me a moment to figure out what it was that was wrong. It was a simple white, and her obi and the crane were the palest gold almost imaginable.

I was instantly stuck with envy upon seeing that outfit. I'd never really been one for traditionalism, but I tell you, that kimono could have changed my mind any day.... Her eyes were such a deep brown that they seemed black unless the sun hit them just right, and they were dancing with something like merriment, like there was some new and wonderful joke or delightful piece of good news that only she was privy to. It rather made me wonder what it was.

And then her eyes had grown slightly more formal and her mouth (which had been sporting a tiny smile) also grew more solemn. And she did an amazing thing. She, Midoriko, the greatest miko ever to have lived, the emblem of everything that had to do with shrine maidens, bowed to me. Me, Higurashi Kagome, 19 year old time traveler and serious candidate for the asylum

Well, I suppose that if I needed evidence of my own insanity then this was as good as any....

Needless to say, I'd freaked out. "O-that-I- Midoriko Please, please get up " I was fluttering (both literally and figuratively, my wings were making these tiny nervous gestures as my hands danced from one place to another, trying to pull Midoriko up, not sure if that would be disrespectful, trying to control myself, feeling like just jumping into the air like a startled bird, and not so sure that I couldn't do that anymore....)

She, however, seemingly ignored me. Just like that. Ignored all of my nervous dashes, my tugs, my pleading.... She simply bowed to me and then, slowly, of her own accord, sat back on her heels and gazed up at me, her eyes still warm and bright yet still filled with a kind of sorrow. "Please, sit down, daughter."

"Daughter?" I asked in complete shock. After all, it wasn't like we were Catholics over here....

"We are not related by blood, but by the spirit Kagome, and by the jewel. You were born with the jewel, which is my heart."

Slowly I sank down, overcome by it all. "Literally?"

"Yes. My heart and my soul. You see Kagome, they call this the Jewel of the Four souls, but that is not precisely true. It is the Jewel of the Five Souls–four souls are contained in it, true, but it was my heart and my spirit that made the container. And I bow to you, my dear, for you have begun to set me free."

"Huh?"

"You know what I mean. I created the jewel with two different functions. One was the granting of a wish and one... well, you will learn that in a moment. Still, the granting of a wish. I created the jewel so that any at all might use it for immortality, for speed, for strength, for transformation, or to solve the problems of someone else. I was hoping that someone would make an uncorrupted wish and I would be at last at peace...."

I fidgeted uncomfortably. Maybe I would have gotten on with the wish if I had known that Midoriko was still trapped in there, waiting for release.... Midoriko, as though sensing what I was thinking, only smiled rather sadly. "I made a mistake hoping for that," she said sadly and I fidgeted harder. I knew it, I just knew it, it was all my fault– "You see," she continued, "there is no such thing as an unselfish wish."

I started at that. "Wha- but... but there must be What if you make the wish not for yourself but for another?"

"Always, always at the core of a wish there is a selfish desire. No matter how noble it seems, the pursuit is always self interest. It is, after all, a wish. Wishes are selfish things. I was foolish to try to redefine that, but I was tired and I was in so much pain...."

I looked down, rather ashamed that I, I who had never really had a great trial in her life, had been complaining so bitterly when Midoriko had gone what she had gone through, and for the same thing as me. The jewel. Really, I had gotten off easy....

"There is no reason to feel sorry for me, Kagome, or as if you should have been there. The world needs you. You are the fulfilment of a prophecy. But back to the wishes. There is always a desire for gain, whatever sort, at the bottom of a wish. All of them would shatter the jewel, all of them would corrupt it. There was to be no escape that way. And that is where you come in, Higurashi Kagome, last of the guardians of the sacred Shikon no Tama." I'd started at that. Last? What did she mean, last?

"You are the Night One, the Completion of all which must come to an end, the Rest that comes after battle, the Storm that breaks and gives peace in It's fury, the Calm at the end of all, One Who burns the more brightly for Their darkness. You are Air and you are Earth. You are Winged like the Emerald, a Guardian of the Divided Soul."

I stared. "What," I finally managed to croak. "are you even talking about?"

"You are the End and the Beginning, you are the Completion of the Cycle, you are a part of Eternity."

"I don't understand. What does any of this have to do with the jewel?"

Midoriko sighed, a long and heavy sigh, and that sorrowful look in her eyes swelled. "I'm afraid that I have cursed you child, no matter how unintentional it was on my part. After all, I did create the jewel, and only with you can it pass out of time and into rest again...."

"Wait a second. Does this have anything to do with the wings?"

Midoriko smiled faintly again. "Yes, that it does. Kagome, you know that there are four souls in the jewel–did you ever wonder which four souls precisely?"

"Wait-a-sec. It's literal? You mean, the whole four-souls thing isn't just a part of the name?"

Midoriko smiled again, a fond smile full of wisdom. That smile made me feel very, very young. It is the kind of smile that you only ever get off of someone like your grandma when they are explaining universal truths, ones that you just can't understand. "Yes, Kagome, it's literal."

"Good grief " I felt like shouting, I really did. "So for all these years I've been looking for the souls of some demons who you locked away and–"

"Not youkai, Kagome. Their souls would corrupt the jewel, make it a hateful object always seeking out blood.... But it is true that demon's blood as well as my heart and soul, and scraps of their spirits went into making the case. That is why it can be corrupted."

"Holy... just how many souls are there in this..." I began, pushing my hand into my pocket to fish out the little pink thing and then froze. This was the last straw. I was going mad, and I would get there presently. Get the straitjacket.

It was gone.

I broke down.

"No, not again, I can't do it again, I can't go looking for it now that it's finally been found," I was muttering as the tears began to flow. This time I let them come. After all, I had walked through every level of Hell and beyond for that stupid, stupid thing, and now, it was gone.

"Kagome " Midoriko said quickly, kindly but somewhat alarmed. "Oh, don't worry so, please You haven't lost it "

"Yes I have," I hiccuped and began sobbing. "I lost it and I can't do that again, I just can't, and what will I tell Inuyasha–"

"You haven't lost it, Kagome, you're in it."

I stared, blank faced, the tears gradually stopping; not so much because I wasn't upset anymore as because I was back inside that little protective bubble of mine. The bird pulled lightly on my hair, which seemed to pop the bubble. And then I threw back my head and screamed.