Kagome was sitting under the Goshinboku in the Sengoku Jidai, dressed in a pair of blue hakama with a grey haori over the top of her white kimono. She'd long decided that she was sick of red, and really, Japan was famous for its indigo, so she might as well wear it really, especially since the colour that was so rare everywhere else in the world was so readily available to her.

At that moment, Kagome was the only person she knew in the area apart from Shippo. InuYasha was somewhere else, most probably trailing Kikyo since he hadn't yelled for anybody else to go with him. Sango and Miroku were dealing with a minor demon a couple of villages over, and had taken Kirara. Even Kaede wasn't in the village, having been called to officiate a wedding in a different neighbouring village. Shippo was playing in the field nearby, chasing butterflies and stalking beetles while she watched over him with half an eye.

The other eye-and-a-half were paying attention to the object in her hands. Beside Kagome was a basket full of spools of silk thread, cotton thread, woollen yarn, a few of metallic thread, a needle book, a pair of scissors, and some cloth scraps. In her hands was another ball, the centre of which was made from sewn cloth scraps. The cloth couldn't be seen any more, as it was covered by threads. First was a layer of thick woollen yarn, over that was another layer of silk thread, and there were lines of cotton over the silk thread, dividing the ball up into equal sections. It had a few pins dotted over its surface as well.

Kagome was making temari.

In her own time period, they were relatively cheap to make, since all the materials were easily available at low costs. In the Sengoku Jidai, however, they were still a luxury of the noble classes. In the villages, if there was spare cloth around then it went to patching clothes. There would be no silk thread, because it was so expensive, and neither wool or cotton had made it to Japan quite yet. Kagome was fairly sure they were using something else to make their clothes with, probably hemp, though she hadn't asked and didn't particularly care for the history of fashion.

Kagome had been working at the ball in her hands for a few hours already, and the pattern was really starting to look properly pretty. She wasn't following any particular traditional pattern, or really any of the modern ones that involved certain types of beads for extra decoration either. No, she was just making it up as she went along, according to her own artistic taste and actual ability.

It was a good thing that temari were supposed to have imperfections really, because Kagome's temari had more than a few mistakes in it.

When she was done, she'd give it to Shippo to play with. He'd given the last one she'd made for him to Rin a few weeks ago. The girl had no toys, so Kagome didn't object. She'd more than half-expected Sesshoumaru to do so though, but he hadn't either.

Then again, it was a play-thing for the nobility, and Sesshoumaru was certainly that, so it was perhaps an appropriate gift for his ward.

Kagome shook the thoughts out of her head and sighed. Another mistake had been made in that moment while her thoughts had wandered. Kagome shook her head with a self-depreciating smile, looked up to check on Shippo again – he was still fine – and returned to her work.

~The End~