The Swan Curse by Sarasa

Prologue (in which Kagome loses something)

Disclaimer: Once upon a time there was a premature Austrian girl who thought she owned anything. When the men dressed in black arrived at her doorstep she cried and wailed to no avail. THE END

Und die Moral von der Geschicht': I don't own anything! Not even the plot sniff

The plot is based on a fairy tale called "The Six Swans" or "The Swan Prince". There are many titles. I also copied some elements from "The Daughter of the Forest", a fabulous book based on the same tale.

Comment: Wait for the next part, the prologue is just for giving an idea so you know what kind of writing to expect from me. It is just an introduction with few hints at the actual storyline.

Prologue (in which Kagome loses something)

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She had long black hair like the finest silk and chestnut- brown eyes.

Together with her mother and father she lived inside an homely castle, surrounded by a giant forest which was so vast and dangerous that it had never been crossed by anything but the wild creatures.

So was it that on one beautiful autumn day that her mother had died.

A painful illness had swept her away, had made her body fragile and easily breakable so it hadn't been in her strength to survive the first chills of the dawning winter.

Father, who was an important person within the rows of the Emperor, had left for a seaside journey at that time, and he grieved and regretted oh so much when he had heard of his wife's decease and little Kagome who, despite all the berating and despairing of the castle staff, stayed with her sleeping mother until he stood in the doorframe with a pained expression marring his still youthful features.

Then small Kagome, innocent Kagome, ignorant Kagome, had lifted her soulful deep brown eyes to look at him and asked with careful eagerness: "Why doesn't mum wake now that you are home, Otou-san?"

"'Mum' won't ever wake again." He had answered in a stiff manner, finding it unbearable to be left alone with his grief, accompanied by a daughter too young to fully comprehend eternal loss and a staff too distant and beneath him to rely on.

Accompanied by the daughter he had tried to avoid since her birth, he had managed to hate merely for two months before he resigned himself to her natural charms.

Kagome, whose every feature, every gesture remembered him painfully of someone now lost.

~*~

Her father was no king, but neither was he without fame.

Therefore many widows and unmarried ladies travelled a long way to Higurashi castle, trying to lure her father into marriage.

And so the day came when Akira-san remarried. Ironic or not, this event occurred exactly one year after his beloved wife's death, again on a cold day in late autumn.

The new lady of the castle enamoured Akira Higurashi with great ease.

No month had passed and Kagome was a forgotten entity, purely a beautiful piece of furniture to look at and to dismiss just as easily.

Actually the lady only showed friendliness in front of the little girl. The first time Rhiannon had laid her eyes upon Kagome, she immediately smiled and complimented her oh so beautiful dark hair, many women would give their life for to have.

Kagome had smiled too, but it hadn't been two full weeks later when she obtained insight on the other side of her new mother.

Father didn't know it, but the innate magic Kagome inherited from her mother told her without fail.

Rhiannon was a witch.