Seven Years Later

Kagome walked along the country road, humming a pretty little tune she’d picked up in the last village they’d visited. It was spring. The countryside was in full bloom, a patchwork of shining green grass, glowing blue water and rose-white sakura trees, shedding petals like spring snow in the breeze. Kagome breathed in the fragrance of the wild blossoms, the rich earth, the good clean air. The untainted splendor of this time and place weren’t lost on her, and had never been.

This was where she belonged—where they belonged.

“Kaa-san!” Shin cried from on high, falling like a javelin from the canopy of the trees to land light as feather on the fencepost beside her. His handsome little face split into a sharp-toothed grin, his green eyes alight and black ears pricked. “Look what I’ve got—it’s the King Kong of the paddy!”

Kagome’s eyes went wide at the huge fanged fished he produced from over his shoulder—a fish at least three times as long as Shin was tall. “I’ll say.”

Shin grinned. “Wanna have him for dinner?”

“Want to,” Kagome corrected, smiling. “No, baby—he’s all yours.”

Even if she could purify that demon fish flesh into something edible for a human, it’d be nothing more than a grey, tasteless goop.

“I’ll have him for breakfast, then,” Shin chattered, slinging the massive fiendish fish over his small shoulder like an afterthought. “I like it when they start to go soft, even when I haven’t bitten them.” As Kagome grimaced, he frowned over at her, “And don’t call me ‘baby,’ Kaa-san. I’m not a baby. I’m eight-and-a-half years old.”

Shin’s expression was so cool and imperious as he said this—the haughty tilt of his chin so much like his— that Kagome felt the beginnings of tears prickling in her eyes. Not wanting her son to give her grief over it, she smiled instead.

“You’ll always be my baby,” she said mushily, as Shin made a yuck face at her, and then leapt several posts ahead.

“Where’re we going to next?” he called back to her.

“Hmm, I was thinking—north again?”

“No—we should go east again.”

“We were in the East less than a year ago, baby. And it’s the least likely place for him to be.”

“So?” Shin shot back at her, rather hotly. “We can go through the well to see Baa-chan, and we can go to the movies. The next X-Men’s probably out by now.”

Kagome considered this. “Okay, we can go back to the Modern Era, but you have to promise me two things: one, that you’ll stay human, and two, that you won’t turn into a youkai or hanyou. Can you promise me that?”

“Promise, and double-promise!”

They made camp for the night in a pretty little meadow off the beaten road. Kagome cooked a dinner of rice and pork for them, while Shin waited for his demon fish to get nice and ‘soft’ overnight. They bedded down in their sleeping bags—a modern comfort Kagome simply couldn’t live without. She touched a hand to the moonstone necklace she’d been wearing all the time since she’d left Edo, after placing her old wedding band at the roots of Goshinboku.

And as in all the nights since, she closed her eyes, and she prayed.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi