Warily, Kagome stepped back. “No way am I drinking from that.”

The demoness’s eyes glinted, almost reprovingly. “Do you think one such as I would stoop so low as to poison you?”

“Maybe,” Kagome said evenly, thinking of her sordid entanglements with Sesshoumaru. “I don’t know what it is about me you’ve heard.”

“I don’t know what you worry I’ve heard,” his mother returned, just as levelly.

Kagome stared at her, in bitter stalemate. “You drink first,” she said.

Sesshoumaru’s mother took a delicate sip from the silver saucer. Kagome waited a moment, but no discernible change came over her. Realizing this didn’t really prove anything, Kagome set her jaw and shook her head.

“No way,” she said again.

“It is merely ceremonial,” Sesshoumaru’s mother assured her. “A feminine custom among my kind.”

“I’m just supposed to take your word for that?”

“My word,” the demoness said with a hint of ice, “is generally taken without question.” Seeing Kagome’s stubborn scowl, the Lady’s gaze turned bemused. “But if you are so afraid, then I will relent. It is true that the draught sometimes grants visions to the worthy. But not to you, now I think, and I hardly wish to share a cup with one so fearful, at any rate.”

As she started to tilt the cup to empty it, Kagome stuck out her palm. “Wait—I’ll do it. Give the cup to me, and I’ll drink.”

Really, Kagome asked herself, what the fuck did she have to lose? Goaded or otherwise, she was allured by anything that might grant her some clarity of sight in the darkness that eclipsed her. A vision of hope, however slim, seemed worth the risk of taking.

Even from this distance, Kagome could sense the power of premonition emanating from that strange, beaming cup.

Sesshoumaru’s mother passed it to her on a wisp of youki. Plucking the cup from the air, Kagome cradled it in her hands, studying it with her senses. Brimming with lunar magic, it didn’t seem anything but softly benign.

Raising the rim to her lips, Kagome took a sip.

A second passed. Then another.

Just as she was beginning to feel disappointed, Sesshoumaru’s mother smiled slightly and said, “Gaze down into the cup.”

Kagome gazed down. The contents of the cup shone mirror-bright. But the closer Kagome peered, the more the silvery liquid seemed to flow before her eyes, gently lapping, cresting and falling like ocean waves…

She could feel them now, tugging at her feet. When she looked out, she could see that calm, endless sea stretching on before her, silvery and unbroken. Ever-flowing.

As though that gentle tide were tugging at her from within, she waded out. The water didn’t seem to grow any deeper, but now she could see something pale gleaming on the silver surface of the waves, rippling and distorted. Guessing it to be a reflection of some sort, she looked up, as though now only realizing that she could, and saw the source of the image.

It was a moon, bright and full—but it wasn’t alone in that void of dark sky.

There was another moon next to it, quite near, though it was only half-full. For a moment, Kagome thought she saw a lighter darkness just beyond these two, a circular relief set against the void. Was it an afterimage, or a new moon? Kagome couldn’t be sure.

As she waded farther out, the sky seemed to change. She could see, far away in the distance, a trailing array of moons—

Six more, in total, each one more remote than the last. But the first of these was the only other moon that was full. It was so bright and strong it hurt her eyes to look upon it, and with tears streaming, she turned her face away.

And that was when she saw it, looming behind her…

Bloody and full and sunken forever beneath the waves, a fallen moon.

A dead moon.

Blank, cold horror filled her mind—

Kagome crushed her hands to her eyes and screamed.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi