Kagome didn’t know whether it was a blessing or a curse, this utter indifference that possessed her. After Sesshoumaru had left her, it had fallen over her like a spell. She felt somehow hollow and leaden at the same time. Dull and empty inside. There was a heaviness centered in her that had nothing to do with the baby. Unlike his bright warm glow, this was a cold, dark space.

Inuyasha didn’t seem to notice. No one did. Because outwardly, it was business as usual. She slept and cooked and cleaned and ate. She took walks to keep her strength up, gathered herbs and attended to her duties as much as she was able. When people spoke to her, she responded.

But as though she were looking at herself from outside of herself, she saw how she was going woodenly through the paces. Inside, she felt nothing, was affected by nothing. All that was driving her was maternal instinct. Without it, she wouldn’t have bothered to take care of herself or participate in the world around her. She wouldn’t have bothered to do anything.

You’re depressed, she told herself clinically, but even this diagnosis didn’t shake her from her apathy.

Increasingly, she felt stifled by it, this crushing indifference. It bore down on her shoulders like a physical weight. She struggled to move beneath it, to breathe beneath it. It was smothering her. She stared around at the walls of her home as if they were pressing in on her. Her ears were ringing, as if she were deep underwater.

On bloodless legs she picked herself up and ventured outside. But now the village was crowding in on her, too. She wandered into the woods, but still the trees felt too close. Her vision tunneled. She kept trudging on, pushing blindly ahead as the pressure inside her built. Her heart was pounding. Her skin was clammy.

Inside her head a dim roar was growing.

When Sesshoumaru appeared before her, she stopped and stood, staring at him blankly. 

“Kagome,” he asked, “where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she said back to him, above the din in her head.

His golden eyes took her in, measured and dark. Knowing. As she held his gaze, the mute roar broke over her, like a fever dissipating. She shivered in the wake of it, stepping toward him. When she reached up and touched his face, she breathed in sharply, as if she’d been burned.

Sesshoumaru covered her hands with his. The flood of sensation was so strong her knees nearly buckled. “We should go elsewhere,” he murmured, glancing past her with narrowed eyes. As his power stirred around them, Kagome started to retreat from him, but he held to her. “Just for a short while.”

Kagome frowned. Hesitating a moment more, she let him pull her to him. 

“Close your eyes,” he said to her, as golden light wreathed around them.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 5/24/23