A Single Wish
By: OtakuSailorV
-Prologue-
It was over. A single arrow had finished it all again, along with a wish upon the completed jewel. It was free of Naraku's evil taint - from any demon's taint. It had appeared almost pure white, translucent and swirling in her palm at that moment.
She had been so calm, so collected; she had almost truly felt like her un-dead predecessor in that moment. She had not realized it at first, but later on, when she looked back on it, she found she did feel it.
But it had been so simple, well, maybe not quite that simple. There were battle wounds of course, plenty of those, for they had been fighting Naraku after all. But still, compared to how she had envisioned it in her head, death and destruction everywhere, it was quite simple.
Just a single arrow, and, while he lay, tormented near the tree, a quick thought had grasped her. It would solve all their problems if she simply locked him away inside the tree. Ironic that he should be trapped inside the same Good Tree that Inuyasha had once been pinned to.
The thought had also struck her that if she did not, there might not be any other assurance that they had totally defeated him. She knew him to be resourceful and wily, his deep scarlet vision saw the entire world opened before him, and he dominated over it all. The only thing that stood between him and complete dominance was she.
It was not a proud, conceited thought, but rather a confirmation. Inuyasha was indeed a challenge with his blade, but it was evident that the reason he fought so hard was because she was beside him. Her friends, though also strong fighters, were only human and stood even less a chance than Inuyasha with Tetsusaiga. The real threat, the thread that held them all together, was the young miko, Kagome. She, the raven-haired reincarnation of the priestess Kikyou.
Now, with her bow over one shoulder, the jewel in her hand, she decided. It was the only chance. Closing her eyes, she reached with her subconscious into the jewel. It took but a second, though the journey into the jewel seemed to take lifetimes. Sadness and regret, happiness and elation all crushed in on her. Emotions, memories, everything waged a war around a single pair of solitary figures inside of the pure white jewel.
At first she had thought she was seeing the embodiment of Yin and Yang staring each other down from opposite sides of the jewel. As she drew closer though, their figures were not so distorted, and she could see that they did not appear quite as angry as she thought, but that both had deep regret and sorrow in their vision.
One was female, and a bit taller than Kagome. Kagome immediately recognized her clothes as those that belonged to Midoriko. The deceased priestess that was the created of the Shikon no Tama. And the man across from her must have been her secret demon lover.
'How sad.' Kagome had thought as she came upon them. 'Midoriko fell in love with a demon, but both of them were too proud to admit that they had feelings for one another, and ended up killing each other.'
They never once took their eyes off each other, even as she stood right before them. As she came to a halt before them, she proclaimed in a rather triumphant tone: "I have a wish."
The next thing she knew, she had been standing in front of the tree, the hand that contained the jewel now felt empty. Opening it, she saw just a brief shimmer in the air around the place where the Jewel had been. Looking about, she saw that her friends were watching with stunned looks. Miroku's hand was uncovered, revealing that the Kazanna was gone. Sealed.
Kagome had turned her large eyes on Inuyasha, whose mouth was open in shock, Tetsusaiga was still transformed in his hands. "Wha-what just happened?"
"You sealed Naraku inside of the God Tree."
Usually such a thing would have been impossible with a regular tree, but given the profound holiness and power within the God Tree, Naraku would eternally be contained within it. Keade had even soothed Kagome's inner worries about him being in the future by assuring her that the tree would exorcise his evil by the time it reached her era, and if he did manage to break free, he would be no more than a regular human like her. Though if he were ever reduced to that, the tree would swallow him up, and he would become one with it. Her thoughts had then moved to whether she was harming the great God Tree that she knew her Jii-chan loved so much, but Keade soothed her on that too. The tree was quite strong, it would never be broken.
Everyone had been relieved and there was much praise for Kagome's quick thinking.
She had been quite tired that night, and decided to go home to rest up, and return the next day for a party thrown by the village on the band of warriors behalf. Her friends had wanted her to stay, and Inuyasha himself had seemed quite insistent that she stay the night in the village instead of going home. But she had been determined, maybe too much, to go back and give the good news to her mother.
They had understood and let her go; though they had made her promise she would return first thing. She promised she would return early with a huge grin at their forcefulness and waved goodbye before disappearing into the dark forest.
Mrs. Higurashi had been overjoyed at the news and had called Kagome's Jii-chan and Ototo in to hear the story. Kagome explained and had promptly gone to sleep, feeling very tired and strained from using the Shikon.
Her dreams were weird, filled with vapors and strange voices. It frightened her, and in a way, she felt as if she had heard the voices before. They were familiar and she groped toward them, despite her anxiety, trying to find out whom they belonged to. When she got close enough though, she was greeted with a single phrase that froze her blood in her sleep and seemed to make time stand still.
"Every wish has a yin and yang."
She had woken with a start, not quite sure why and saw that she had slept in. Inuyasha was gonna kill her for being late again! Rolling her eyes, she dressed hurriedly and grabbed up a camera and a few other knick-knacks and ran from the house, forgetting about breakfast.
Bursting into the shrine, she took no notice of the fact that the room seemed particularly still this morning. The usual blue glow that wound around the wooden frame of the well when she got close did not appear. And the feeling of there being two or even three of her instead of one – like she was being split – did not come either.
She overlooked all this, in too much a hurry to take any notice or even care.
Jumping in, Kagome felt elation run through her briefly as she fell down. . .
She hissed suddenly as she landed squarely in the dirt, her knees buckled under the sudden pressure, and she fell forward, grabbing at the air for some sort of support. There was none though, she continued to plummet till she was completely covered in dirt on her front.
Looking up, she discovered that she was still in her world, for no blue sky rolled by lazily overhead, only the dark roof of the well house. A form of worry filled her and she climbed out. Looking back into the depths of the well, she gulped, finally noticing the things she had not before. It felt like she was staring down into an ordinary well again, like she had when she was six, and seven. Just a regular well. . .
Jumping back in, she found that the same thing happened again, and again, and again. Until there were scrapes on her legs and bruises on her arms.
Kagome looked up the dark roof, smelled the dry earth beneath her and the moldy smell of the wood and felt a sob choke her. Tears flowed from her eyes and down her burning cheeks, sobs wracked her body so hard she thought she might shake apart, and all she wanted was someone to hold onto in that moment. More than anyone she wanted Inuyasha to come through the well and pull her to her feet and tell her how idiotic she was for crying.
But it was no use, the well was sealed. . .
Whew, I finally posted it. This is just the prologue though, so I'm not too sure about the rest of the story. Please feel free to review and let me know what you think. I've never done a NarakuKagome story before, so I'm feeling a little uneasy about this as I write it. Heh.
I'm sorry about the long wait to those of you that I have been promising the unveiling of this to for some time now.
I do hope that this will be a good fiction and look forward to posting more later. Thank you for reading this far, minna-san and please take five minutes to review as well. Heh heh.
Now that I've got that out of my system, I'll take my leave. Ja'ne!
Review Please.