Why? by Chante

Damn you, Naraku!

Kagome was scared, alone, and confused as she fumbled through the forest. Grasping her side and attempting to walk without wincing too much, she cursed her horrid luck. Although she remembered to bring her bow and arrows, they did little to protect her from her own clumsiness.

            It all started when she and the group were fighting Naraku, nothing new there, right? The normalcy continued when he continued to abduct her, flailing and screaming from the extreme heights that he had her at. Naraku had growled, threatened, and throttled her and so she had reluctantly become quiet, waiting for her chance to escape. However, lady luck had flicked her off, twisted her wishes into an almost good situation. She had been released from his tentacles… but, an updraft forced her higher into the sky before making her plummet to the ground. And that was how she had gotten into this situation.

And so, limping around in circles… in a forest… with only her bow for protection, Kagome cursed all the gods for putting her in these situations, Inuyasha for not coming to save her even though he jumped readily into the path of oblivion when Kikyo was in dangers way, and Naraku for being… Naraku. Sighing, Kagome had to resign herself to the fact that she was doomed, and she would die, all alone, in a god forsaken forest. At last, her legs refused to make the motion of walking, and she collapsed a messy pile of miko limbs.

How the hell am I going to find the group, she thought miserably, how am I going to survive? Miroku gets the fire wood, Inuyasha gets the game, Sango cleans and guts whatever he finds, Shippo or Kirara lights the fire and I cook. She smiled ruefully. I can’t catch anything or make a fire, but I make a mean bowl of ramen! She laughed softly, on the verge of tears, as her situation grew bad to horrifying proportions.

Get a hold of yourself! An angry voice called from inside her head:

 Don’t panic you idiot! Get your stupid butt up and go and find yourself something to eat!

Bewitched by this little voice in her head, she forced herself to her feet, she stumbled along, forcing herself to stumble this way and that, and she looked for whatever edible thing she should find.

Please, please let me come to some wild plants, a radish, cabbage, anything! I don’t want to die out here…, she thought frantically, hoping to find something to eat. Kagome suddenly strung her bow, suddenly paranoid, suddenly scared. Suddenly a little bunny hopped out of the brush, and her inner mind screamed at her.

Kill it! Kill the little thing. It will sustain you until you can find something more satisfying!

Her morals begged her to shut the little voice up, begged her to pet the little rabbit instead of firing her arrows at it. A single tear streamed down her face as her fingers trembled in protest. Some unknown power forced her to pull her arm back, some power beyond her imagining made her fingers release the bowstring, and she closed her eyes as the little animal gave a pathetic squeak, and then gurgled sadly.

Oh, no! Her mind raced, I didn’t kill it!

With saddened eyes, she stared at the little animal, kicking frantically and trashing itself about. She stared in a sort of horrified awe as its eyes glossed over, as its movements slowed down, as it’s gurgling became quieter. Suddenly, it went limp, its eyes staring out at something unknown.

This is how you support yourself. This is the circle of life. Get used to it.

She wanted to fight this horrible voice in her head, wanted to deny that it was right, to deny that she understood. Sighing, she went and grabbed the rabbit, whose eyes were still open and its fur still warm, and she pushed her arrow out of the poor pelt. Nearly gagging, she forced herself to cut it open with the same arrow, forced herself to gut the poor thing, being careful around the intestines, lest she spoil the meat she didn’t feel that she deserved. With eyes blinded by the salty tears that wouldn’t stop falling, she scraped the fur off of the animal, and suddenly stopped.

She didn’t have a fire.

She couldn’t eat the innocent, yet germ infested rabbit, without a fire that killed the icky germs.

So, picking up a few sticks and a log that happened to be around the clearing she stopped in, she set up the fire the way she watched Shippo do a thousand times. She dug around in her bag until she found the supply of matches she always kept on the off chance that both Shippo and Kirara were absent. Lighting one she caught a few of the sticks on fire, and reveled at the orange flames that reached fruitlessly into the sky. Fashioning a spit out of a few of fallen branches, she roasted the rabbit.

And, despite herself, she had to say that she loved the feeling that she felt as it went down her throat into her empty stomach.

Unrolling her sleeping bag, she laid as close to the fire as she could and closed her tired and weary eyes.

Perk up, Kagome. The fun is just starting.