Shikai - Chapter 1

Disclaimer: She belongs to Rumiko Takahashi, not to me.
Written for Iyissekiwa’s “Cold” theme. Kikyou-centric.

Shikai

She believed in the cleansing fire, the purifying flame, and in death as a beginning. Once rendered a drift more fragile than the snow, a veil finer and softer than the rain, she believed that she would sink beneath the soundless loam, and dreamless, sleep.

Now, conspiracy rides the wind; and the blazing moon offers no warmth, no sympathy.

“Souls of the wretched, the wandering, the abandoned...”

What she was, she is not, will never be: never again, never holy, never wholly and completely whole!

“Souls of women scorned and spurned: hear my plea!”

What she is, she never wished to be: a chrysalis of memory, wound in threads of borrowed soul.

“Souls steeped in anger: tormented, miserable, and malingering...”

She died for love, knowing she had been betrayed. Malice burns like frost in the hollow of her heart, and hunger howls, insatiable and unyielding. She hates it, but must heed it, or die a death that is not death, endure a sleep from which there will be no reawakening --

“Souls of women rejected: come now to me!”

Through the arms of shivering trees, her steadfast companions come. Dropping their gifts of pale fire into her ravenous palms is like tossing coins into the well of night: a pittance for the priestess, the former guardian of light.