From her vantage point on the opposite side of the street, Kagome looked on as she had for some days now, at the little boy who rushed between shops doing the dirty work that others considered beneath them. Though he toiled, emptying slop buckets and hauling around water or wood or bolts of cloth, his

The sprawl of the outlying township had grown. It seemed quite prosperous here, and Kagome was glad. She strolled through the markets and streets, unrecognized and unremarked upon. It was a bustling place, so the presence of strangers passing through wasn’t an uncommon thing, she supposed. A monk at the temple balked at Ikiryou. But

At the sound of his name, the great grizzled dog cocked his head to one side. The feral glint in his eyes receded. Trotting forward, he stood on his hind legs, pressed his forepaws to Kagome’s chest and licked her face. It was wet and smelly and unpleasant, but Kagome couldn’t stop laughing as she

Kagome breathed a sigh of relief as her feet touched solid earth once more. Hanging suspended in a ball of strange, wormy demons as she traversed the boundaries of the mortal realm hadn’t been anything less that gut-wrenching. But the danger had passed. She was back now, at last. As the Shinidamachu slithered away with