Disclaimer: If I owned Inuyasha, my family and I wouldn't be dirt-poor, and I'd have steady health insurance. But I don't! (I'd also make Sess the star. Sigh).
Anyway, please forgive the monster length of this chapter – hopefully it'll be entertaining enough to make up for it – and enjoy!
Dry leaves and pine needles crackled under Kagome's feet. The sun sluiced through the trees in flashes, raining light, and it was so familiar her heart ached. She could smell the wind as it rose along the mountainside, and it tasted ancient, and wild, and alive. It hummed with long ago summers.
"Hurry up, Kagome," her grandfather cackled, skipping along the path ahead, "you're not going to let this old man outdo you, are you?"
She ducked under a low branch. "Grampa, are you sure you're up to this?"
"Pah," he sniffed. "This is hardly more than a stroll. Come, come, we're almost there."
Souta grinned back at her. "You're gonna love this, Kagome."
Kagome tried to keep up but soon found herself hanging back again. They'd left the mountain trail a while ago, following signs and landmarks that only her grandfather seemed to know, and it was so untouched, so perfect and painfully beautiful that she wanted to savor it.
It had been too long since she had been to a place like this. When her grandfather had called her at school, demanding she take the day off to come home for her birthday - and threatening to tell the university she had meningitis if she even thought about going to class first - Kagome had been rather alarmed. Her grandfather was…an imaginative man.
Imagine her surprise when her mother ushered her to the car and drove into the low mountains that fringed the outskirts of Tokyo, announcing a hike.
Kagome did not like to make a big fuss about birthdays. Truth be told, she didn't really like them. The universe was funny with her and birthdays. But this, she had to admit, was something she needed.
Here, in this wild place, the past was so heavy that she breathed it in, clean and old and deep and lovely, and she yearned. She wanted to laugh and cry, bleed and heal, remember and remember and remember.
They'd meandered over the low, rolling slopes all day. Now, with the light beginning to turn a hazy afternoon gold, her grandfather had suddenly up and took them in a totally different direction, announcing that the best part was yet to come.
"Yes, yes," Grampa chuckled, peering through the trees up at the rocky outcropping before them, craggy boulders sunk in the grass, "your old man has really outdone himself this time, Kagome."
She picked her way through the rocks after him, half-climbing up the last part of the incline, pushing branches out of her way with both hands. Light slanted around her, and -
Two ancient statues towered above her.
"Oh," she breathed.
It was a pair of temple dogs, like the kind that guarded Shinto shrines - Koma inu, or shishi. The mouth of the left statue was open, roaring in endless defiance; the right had its mouth shut, silent, watchful. They were magnificent. Sun-baked stone appeared in flashes beneath the moss and ivy that spread across the massive bases and twisted up their legs.
"Happy Birthday, Kagome," her brother said quietly.
Kagome reached out and ran her fingertips along the worn stone. They were done in the classic style, with fearsome faces and great elaborate curls of fur, almost lion-like. They were carved exquisitely, from the flowing tails to the regal manes.
She let a small smile tug at her lips when her grandfather began to lecture her brother. "Koma inu have been guarding temple gates for centuries," he said to Souta, "and are unique to Japan." He waved a hand at the statues. "But, since there's no dog alive today that even resembles the Koma inu, historians are certain it is a borrowed style, inspired by the famous Chinese lion statues. The style was simply stuck on a dog for lack of a better native animal."
At Kagome's snort he glanced back at her, laughter in his eyes
They all knew Kagome's secret theory - that centuries ago, an artist had sat down to carve something real. Something they had seen. That Koma inu had started out as statues of the Great youkai dogs, like the Inu no Taisho.
There was no mistaking it for anything else; she knew a youkai dog when she saw it. After all, she had met the real thing.
Seeing a youkai dog in their true form wasn't like seeing an animal, she reflected as she fingered the jewel around her neck, it was like seeing…a phenomenon. In fact, that described Sesshoumaru pretty well overall: a phenomenon, like a thunderstorm, or an earthquake, or a monsoon. When Hurricane Sesshoumaru rolled through - fur crackling with sheer youki, venom raining from his jaws - you didn't forget it.
As her family chatted and settled down in the grass, she found herself suddenly wondering what had happened to the icy demon prince. She hadn't thought of him for some time, but now that she had, the question of his ultimate fate flared up her curiosity. Had he died of old age, or been killed in some great battle? Could he even still be alive? For some reason the idea had never even occurred to her before. But it was rather unlikely, she decided; he was not the inconspicuous sort.
People would've noticed all the wanton killing, she thought ruefully. Plus, in the past two years she hadn't sensed enough youki to fill a teacup.
No, time had taken him, one way or another, as time was so fond of doing.
"A house once stood here," Grampa then said, pulling her from her thoughts, "but it burned down centuries ago, leaving only these."
"A house?" Kagome frowned slightly. "I thought shishi were only used for temples and graves."
Her grandfather shrugged. "The writings state it was a house. Very little really is known about the story behind these statues," he said, and she hid a grin at the touch of sulk in his voice. Everything was supposed to have a story in his eyes. "They say the house belonged to a kind and beautiful princess. The house burned down not long after she passed away, and no one ever tried to rebuild it."
Kagome found herself only half-listening; something else was niggling at the back of her mind. "Grampa," she said, frowning again, "why are they on the wrong sides?"
"Hm?" He peered up at them. "Why, so they are. I can't imagine why."
"Huh?" Souta said.
"They're switched. The male is supposed to be on the right." She shook her head at his blank face and waved a hand at the statues. "It's all symbolism. They represent Ah and Un, life and death. One always has its mouth open, to frighten away bad spirits. That's the male, and he goes on the right. The other always has its mouth shut, to hold in good spirits. That's usually the female, and she goes on the left. These are reversed."
"I dunno," he said, "they both look like guys to me."
Kagome swatted him and he ran off, laughing; in fact her whole family was getting ready to leave.
"Thank you for bringing me here, you guys. They're beautiful." Kagome ran her hands along its leg again, wanting to sink them into the sun-warmed stone.
"Oh, we're not just showing them to you," her mother said. "They're being delivered next month."
"What?" Suddenly all her ephemeral nostalgia formed a hard lump in her stomach. She didn't want them moved - she wanted this one piece of the past to be perfect forever. Besides, move them? They were massive! If she stood on her toes and stretched she could pat their chins.
Her grandfather seemed to see through her pasted smile and understand. "Let me explain. The other side of this mountain is a natural preserve - but this side is not." He let out a deep sigh. "They're building a mine here in the spring. A team of archeologists found the statues while they were scouting the site and the company is most desperate to get rid of them."
Grampa eased himself down on a rock carefully, and her mother continued for him. "They cannot stay here. The Society for the Preservation of Historical Artifacts decided that they should go to a local shrine."
"I daresay every shrine in the city has been petitioning for them," Grampa interrupted again with a laugh. "However," he grinned with a wink, "Higurashi shrine was the only one that could boast about having a real young miko to carry on the traditions."
"I'm not a real miko," she protested. She'd met the real deal there, too. "But," she said, looking up at the sun-kissed statue, "I won't look a gift dog in the mouth."
And for a brief moment, she almost felt like magic had come back into her life.
She could hear her mother let out a breath when they saw her smile, a real one. Mama was always telling her to smile more, like she used to.
And it was real. If she could not save this sacred place, she thought, then she would just have to take joy in the fact that they were saving these. They were a piece of the past, just like her, and it was only fitting that they be guarded by someone who knew what it was to be a lost relic in a modern world.
As they finally started back down the trail and she looked over her shoulders at the two stone dogs, she had a very strange thought. Inuyasha would have called her crazy, but in that moment, seeing the two dogs silhouetted against the sun, she felt bizarrely sad for Sesshoumaru. It was stupid, really, mourning the long-ago death of a demon lord who hadn't been particularly nice to her. But then, she mourned people who died a long time ago a lot.
Sometimes she thought that maybe that was all her role had ever really been.
- - -
About four weeks later, while perched soaking wet on the head of a slippery stone dog, she found herself thinking about Sesshoumaru again.
She had not thought about him much since that first day, except in the context of everything else in the past, which she thought about a great deal. She had found all kinds of excuses to go visit the statues over the last few weeks. On weekends she would drive up to the mountains and spend her afternoons there, reading books or doing homework in the grass. Sometimes she would just lie there for hours.
Sometimes she would cry.
She had started to take care of the statues. She cleaned off all the ivy, and without it she could see that the hundreds of winters they'd endured had left a network of cracks and gouges, some of them deep. The silent right statue was the worst hit, though it looked like someone had tried to repair the crack that went across its right eye. But they didn't finish, and it looked to be one of the deeper cracks, which saddened her a bit. She could empathize with the statue. The years had been hard on her too.
It was really a bad idea to spend so much time there, what with her schoolwork and her job, but the place drew her, and it was cathartic in a somewhat self-destructive way. It was almost as though time felt thin here, and if she tried hard enough maybe she could reach out and -
But that was a foolish thought, and a dangerous one, and her wishful heart needed to just shut up about it.
It went on like that until a week before the stone dogs were due to be moved and the first trucks and construction vehicles had started to move in, looming alien among the trees. It had then rained for a straight three days, keeping both Kagome and the workers away.
When the sun finally broke free she drove up to see them in their true home one last time. The storm had covered the statues with branches and wet leaves and Kagome spent nearly two hours clearing them off. The trees around were huge and ancient, so the branches were too. Most she could just drag off, but some required real lifting, and some she had to clamber up on their backs to reach.
This was how she had found herself sopping wet, covered in soggy leaves, sitting on the shoulders of the female Koma inu and slowly, carefully, climbing onto its head. Praying to whatever god would favor her that she didn't break anything - be it the statue or herself. But there was a forked leafy branch stuck on Mrs. Shishi's nose, and damned if she was going to leave it there.
She hefted herself up and reached between the ears, patting herself on the back for surviving thus far. Death by sheer clumsiness would be a horribly embarrassing way to go.
Her heart gave a jump as one sneaker slipped squeakily. And yet, it would be so totally me.
Her arms stubbornly refused to be long enough to reach the branch, so she scooted forward till she was sitting atop its head. With a victory cheer she at last managed to toss away the offending foliage. "Hah!" she said to it. "Taught you a lesson, I did. Hmph."
She swung her legs back and forth, looking at the sky.
You'd better hope, her mind commented, as though it had no involvement in the situation whatsoever, that you don't have to wait for someone to come get YOU down. For, from her high perch, facing totally the wrong direction, it appeared that getting down was going to be twice as hard as getting up.
Damn it.
She frowned at the gape-mouthed statue across from her. It seemed to be laughing. "You shut up," she told it. That one always had reminded her of Inuyasha.
She should probably make an attempt soon - the statue was several centuries old. But working her way backwards across its muzzle didn't seem to be a good idea. So she proceeded, with no small amount of masterful acrobatics, to turn herself around and face the way down.
There was a crescent moon scratched into its forehead.
She blinked and the world flipped over, and she landed with a bone-bruising jolt in – thankfully - a very deep sludgy mud puddle.
For a long minute, she lay there on her back in the mud, staring at the sky.
And then she was on her feet and half-way up the statue's shoulders, planting her palms on its forehead, and it was still there, oh god, oh god, it's still there, what is it doing there?
Kagome tried to get herself under control but she appeared to be having a small but very real heart attack.
It was really a very rough scratch, she noticed, feeling a stutter behind her ribs, and it really didn't look any different than all the other scratches marring its body, except it was crescent moon shaped, and it was on its forehead, and it was a youkai dog.
And that was a hell of a coincidence!
On impulse she dashed to the other statue and scrabbled up its side, but there was no moon on its brow. But from here she could again see the mark on the other one, so obvious now that she was high enough to see it.
She slid down to the ground, dazed, and sat there for a long time.
Her body at some point got up on its own and made its way over to the Sesshoumaru-statue, and she found herself standing beneath it, looking up at its solemn face.
Now that she thought about it, gazing up at the scratches criss-crossing its head - did those two almost look like stripes? Or was she just imagining things now?
It really had been a crude mark, more of an unfinished circle than a proper crescent, but still -
"You're not really a statue of Sesshoumaru," she told it, looking up into its watchful eyes. "Because the odds of me finding a Sesshoumaru statue sitting on a mountaintop are so low its crazy. And," she added, "the universe can't find me that funny."
Kagome, traveler of time, breaker and restorer of the shikon jewel, and second year Anthropology student, realized that this was an absolute lie. If the laws of physics didn't apply to her, what chance did the laws of statistics have?
And it was a well-established fact that the universe thought Kagome was a scream.
Plus, she thought, it perhaps wasn't that the odds of finding a Sesshoumaru statue were low, but that the odds of someone recognizing a Sesshoumaru statue were low.
Plus, her mind added helpfully, no amount of logic seemed to be banishing the crescent-moon-graced statue that was sitting right in front of her, RIGHT NOW.
Dizzily, she sank to her knees. Her fingers clenched the muddy grass while her world shifted beneath her.
The workers found her there later that afternoon, the mud on her shirt starting to dry and crack. She told them she had just slipped. She didn't care if they believed her or not. They offered to call her mother to pick her up, which snapped her out it enough to stammer out a "no thank you, I'm fine, really," and to get her feet moving back down the trail.
She climbed into the car, buckled her seatbelt, and sobbed.
She was as far from them as ever, she realized, clutching the steering wheel - all her petty attempts to fill the hole inside her with trinkets and memories and stone dogs had done nothing but make the hole bigger. No matter how much her mind pleaded, no matter how much her heart cried that surely, surely this must mean something, her friends were dead and gone, and her memories were all that was left of them. She was just torturing herself.
So why, why couldn't she squash that part of herself that was happy?
Even as she wiped her eyes on her sleeves, there was a low, giddy thrill rising in her veins, bubbling up through her. A laugh slipped out.
A Sesshoumaru statue! Here! In Tokyo!
At the very least it was funny, at the very best it was…exciting. A mystery. A spark in a pit of ashes.
And this was a dangerous thing, she knew, just like treacherous hope was, and she had to stop herself now or it would break her later.
But as a grin escaped and spread across her face - totally against her will! - she knew it was too late.
- - -
"God Kagome, you're out here again?"
Souta was standing over her, half-silhouetted in the early evening light, giving her the gruffest look he could muster. Which - even though his last growth spurt had finally beat her in the height department - was sadly lacking.
Kagome squinted up at him from where she lay on ground. "Fresh air helps me think," she finally said, hoping he wouldn't point out that her textbooks were all closed.
He threw up his hands in exasperation, heaving a mock-sigh. "Whatever. At least you're not dancing naked in the moonlight again," he said, waving a hand at the statue looming over her.
She shot to her feet. "I never did that, thank you very much!" She gave him a swat and he grinned and skipped backwards.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, sorry. But, it would've been funny if you had. You should - ow!" He rubbed his arm and put on a puppy face. "Kagome, that one hurt. I was only kidding, sheesh. Anyway, mom said dinner's ready."
"Alright, alright, I'm coming, just let me get my books." She bent to gather them from where they were spread out all over the base of the statue. As she stood and dusted herself off, she looked up and met the broken-eyed gaze of the stone face above her.
Kagome sighed.
She really was wasting too much time chasing ghosts. Which had always been a bit of a problem with her, but now that she had something tangible to cling to, it was oh so much worse.
She had found over the past month, despite her early misgivings, that the discovery of the statue actually did help her in some ways - but now she was having second thoughts on how good a thing that really was. The craving that ached in her bones had not gone away, but it had changed.
To obsession.
It was no wonder curiosity killed the cat, she often thought, because for her, curiosity came in the form of a great, big white dog. With known homicidal tendencies.
The first time she had gone home to see them at the shrine was about a week after that day, and it had been, as she climbed the stairs, like she was going to someone else's shrine. But when she reached the top, and saw them before her, standing in front of the red temple archway, against the backdrop of their tiny old shrine, she decided that it worked. It added something that had been missing ever since the well house had burned down.
It was a gap her family had been trying to fill for two years, and her family was delighted when she started visiting the shrine more - nearly every few days. That she spent nearly all of her time outside lying at the base of the statues, or inside rummaging through scrolls and records, was something they were willing to overlook.
It was funny really that she thought more of him now than she had back in the past when he was still around, even though he'd been just as much of a mystery then. Inuyasha always saw things in black and white, but she had been quick to realize that Sesshoumaru, despite his snowy appearance, had an awful lot of gray in him. Hated his brother but held back from killing him; loathed humans but took one under his wing. Killed without mercy, but not without purpose.
There was a lot of gray in her too, so despite the deep blood feud between him and Inuyasha, she'd always had a wary respect for him. In the way one respects a lion when the cage is unlocked.
She had to know what had happened to him. Who had carved the statue, and why was it on the mountain? Had it been made when he was alive, or after? Why were the two figures in the wrong places? How had he died? Had he lived long?
Had he died?
Kagome shook her head to snap herself out of her thoughts, stuffing the last of her books in her bag. Her mother had already sent Souta; if she didn't come in soon then Mama would come out looking for her herself, and she really didn't need anymore embarrassing questions.
"'Naked in the moonlight'," she muttered, shouldering the bag. "Humph." She most certainly had not been naked, the moonlight was incidental to the whole thing, and she wasn't dancing, she was, ah…chanting.
Fine, so it hadn't been one of her most flattering moments. During her obsessive musings a few weeks ago, she had entertained the thought, briefly, that perhaps Sesshoumaru had suffered a curse and he was the statue.
If so, he was gonna be real angry when he woke up and found someone put that crack in his eye.
The thought of Sesshoumaru left to turn to dust on a mountainside had been terribly depressing though, so she went outside for three nights in a row and threw sutras and miko powers at it trying to change him back. She'd even tried the jewel.
And then her family had caught her at it - in a delightfully awkward moment - and that had been the end of her midnight spellcasting.
Eventually, several somewhat untrue explanations later, she decided the statue couldn't actually be him anyway, unless he'd acquired another leg before being stonified. And lost a lot of weight.
Maybe I have been taking this too far, she thought with a sigh as she headed in. She'd argued mentally a hundred times that this was good for her - she at last had something to do with herself - but convincing her family she was crazy hadn't been part of the plan.
She still had her doubts that it even was a Sesshoumaru statue - that the mark hadn't been just another scratch, and she was the one in a million who would mistake it for something more. But logic and obsession didn't really have much to do with each other.
Dinner, thankfully, wasn't too awkward - her family was too happy to have her home again to bring up her odd habits. Grampa had totally bought her excuse of 'miko training exercises' anyway. He'd even offered to help get her out of classes so she could practice more.
After dinner, she went straight up to her room and threw herself into her schoolbooks. Enough was enough - she'd spent all week researching Sesshoumaru instead of Mayan architecture, and unless he showed up to help her write her paper, that wasn't going to be too useful. Besides, she'd already found - to her growing frustration - that the statue apparently was the only trace left of the demon lord. Even the internet had failed her, and if the internet didn't know it, no one did.
There was no record of him in any book, any myth, any story. Granted, there had been no mention of herself or her friends either, save a passing mention of the jewel, but Sesshoumaru had owned an entire region! Moreover, there was no way someone like Sesshoumaru would have gone down without a fight that would leave people talking for generations.
Which is what led some small, secret part of her to wonder if he was really dead at all. Could a youkai of his power survive unnoticed for so long? With no other youkai around, he'd be a beacon to even an untrained miko like her, but still. Dying seemed just as illogical. Which made her hope - treacherous, treacherous hope - more and more that he hadn't.
Just the thought of someone, alive out there somewhere, who'd seen it all - who knew it all - was enough for her.
"Kagome?"
Kagome looked up at her mother in surprise - she hadn't heard her mother knock. A glance at the clock told her that more time had passed than she thought. "Yes, Mama?"
"Can you go bring Buyo in? It's getting dark and I can't find him."
"Sure, no problem," she said, glad to give the textbooks a break. Putting her hair in a loose twist and grabbing a flashlight, she headed out through the back and started checking all his normal spots. Fat as her tubby old cat was, he was still enough of a Tom to like roaming around in bad places.
She checked first under all the bushes flanking the house, and then up in the branches of the god tree. Then the shed, then the back of the gift shop. Then the woodpile.
With a slightly sick turn to her stomach, she approached the large, burnt square on the ground where the well house had once stood. Even two years later the grass was thin and scraggly, making the outline of the building still clear.
The temporary stairs - left over from when they cleaned away the debris - squeaked as she crept down them, shining her flashlight in all the dark corners of what had once been the lower floor but was now a glorified pit. In the center was a piece of plywood weighted down by cinder blocks. Under it was a hole in the ground that had once been a hole in time.
There was no way Buyo could have gotten under the plywood, but she slid it to the side and shined her flashlight down anyway, trembling.
But the well was empty of cats and demons, and with a sigh she slid it back in place.
By now it was getting dark enough to have to use the flashlight on the shrine grounds, and a cool autumn wind kicked up as she started to check all the not normal spots.
Rounding the corner of the house, she gave a small start - there were two points of light just a short distance away, high above the ground. She swung her flashlight at it, and -
"There you are!" She put her hands on her hips and looked sternly up at her tubby kitty.
Buyo peered down at her from on top of Sesshoumaru-statue's nose, his eyes shining in the dark.
"Oh, you bad kitty, you gave me a scare. What are you doing up there you naughty boy?"
Buyo gave her a lazy mrow and rolled over onto his back, as though this was a perfectly normal place for a tummy rub. "Oh no you don't, none of that," she said, "You get down here right now." She stuck her flashlight in her mouth and reached up for him, climbing up onto the stone dog's paws.
It looked so different in the dark, she thought distantly as she climbed, with the way the shadows warped it. When the flashlight hit it just so as she pulled herself up a shoulder, it looked almost alive, and when it hit it right there as she drew up to the muzzle and grabbed Buyo, all the scratches became black canyons, and the crack in its right eye became a chasm so deep she thought she could see stars glinting on the other side.
Then something clicked.
And her mind roared.
She dropped to the ground, Buyo in her arms. She didn't go inside. After a minute or so Buyo began to squirm and complain.
And then she was running, running, her breath catching in her throat, and she burst into the kitchen, dropping Buyo. Her grandfather was at the stove heating a glass of milk.
"Grampa," she said, her heart thundering in her ears, "grampa, the princess. The princess from the mountain. How did the princess die? What happened to her?"
Grampa set his warm milk down, and did not say anything for a long minute. "She died as all mortals die, if they live long enough," he said, his voice quiet. "She died by time's hand: of old age."
Kagome sagged against the doorway, boneless. Puzzled at this reaction, her grandfather poured another cup for her and put it in her hands, then sat back against the counter.
"She was very old for someone of that time," he added, taking a sip of milk. He squinted as though it would help him pick the memories out of the air. "They say she was laid to rest on a bed of flowers and pearls."
His bushy eyebrows then lifted and he peered over at her in concern, for she had begun to choke on her milk and had turned a most unnatural color. "Is everything alright, Kagome?"
"Fine! Yes, yes, everything is fine!" she said, her voice squeaking. Not fine, her mind shrieked, oh god, not fine! She coughed. "Ah, I've got to get ready for bed. Goodnight grampa."
She fled the kitchen and ran to her room, where she lay in her bed in the dark for an hour and a half. She fingered the pink jewel around her neck until she had to clutch her hands together to stop the shaking.
When she was sure her family was asleep, she slipped out the back door and went to the shed.
It must have been after midnight when she rounded the front of her house, wearing pajamas and a pair of slippers, a hammer clutched in her hands.
Her hands tightened around it with each step she drew closer to the statue, looming ominous in the dark, watching, waiting, silent. She stood before it, feeling the wind on her legs, the moon on her skin. The night was a taught string and the air was humming.
She pulled herself up till she was looking the dog in the eye. Her heart was skittering around in her chest like a caged bird. "Forgive me for defacing a historical artifact, grampa," she said. She forced a weak laugh.
Then she turned the hammer around to the two curved prongs, jammed them into the crack, and heaved.
Rock crumbled and something small and dark fell into the grass.
Kagome dropped with it, falling to her knees.
Trembling, she picked the object up, cupping it in her palms like it was made of eggshell and glass; of crystal thin as paper. She felt as though it would break if she breathed on it, if she breathed at all. It was smooth and dark and heavy in her hands, and warmer than she thought it would be.
"The right black pearl," she whispered, the world turning over at her words.
The pearl that had lain in a half-demons eye. The tomb of the Great Dog General. Here, right now, in her shaking hands. The same as it had been five hundred years ago when it was torn from Inuyasha's eye.
Hidden for all these years in the eye of a statue that bore his brother's mark on its brow.
"I never thought I'd see this again," she quietly breathed.
Questions loomed stormy on her mind's horizons, but at this moment all she could do was hold the pearl and marvel, wonder, tremble. She felt like she had a tiny eclipse in her hands; it was black as the new moon, with a faint sheen that made it seem to almost glow around the edges.
Her heart lurched in her chest.
It was glowing – darkly -
It flared, andthe night was lit up with black light.
"Oh no - " she dropped it. "Wait, no - no! No!" She threw herself backwards, but the ground somehow wouldn't hold her. She slid forward, digging her hands helplessly into the grass. "No, don't! Please, no!" Her grip failed, and then wasn't so much that she was being dragged in as she was falling in - it was a black hole, a hole in everything -
And the pearl that was a tomb pulsed -
And the dark light blazed around her, suns made of shadows -
And she plunged, screaming and twisting, from the sky.
A/N: Thank you to everyone who's suffered through that insanely long first chapter! Apologies for the obscene length – I'm an innately wordy person, but I'm trying to control myself.
Oh, and on a technical note, Koma inu are real. For anyone who's interested, you can google them for some nice pics. Unfortunately, they're not a well-known part of Japanese culture over here, so please forgive the not-so-subtle "Encyclopedia" moments. They'll be important later.
Anyway, I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts! This is sort of intended to be a strange fic so I'm not sure what people will think of it, but my muse demanded it be this way. To be perfectly honest, I'm not happy with how this chapter went, but rewriting was just making the problem worse. I'm always open to constructive criticism, just, if you're going to tell me how much it sucked, tell me why (and tell me nicely? Please? Fragile ego.).
Let me know what you think!