Scars

[pc32_fics]

A long line, with a circle-shaped starburst on her left side. A memory of a frightening encounter with a creature from Grandfather’s tales of old and her being thrust into a legend she could never remember.

“Oh, where did you get that?”

A thin stripe down her right arm, a reminder of a blank-eyed boy wielding a chain-scythe with deadly precision.

“Maybe you shouldn’t get a bikini… those scars will show.”

Five sloping crescents on her upper arms, evenly spaced… recollections of tears and a kiss so magical she sometimes wonders if it were a dream.

“Did somebody shake you, Kagome?”

A small star, the only mark on a perfect body, healing to perfection every time.

Kagome waves off her friends’ concern. “It’s nothing,” she lies, “I’m always messing around with Souta, is it any surprise I have some scars?”

A huge scar across her best friend’s back… “It didn’t heal well,” Sango said softly, “No, I got this scar… from my younger brother.”

Kagome blinks, catches herself drifting away to memories.

She’s been home for three long, boring years, and now she stands in front of the mirror, supposedly summer shopping, retracing the scars with her eyes and recalling those that put them there.

A gaping hole in a monk’s hand… ‘I wonder if Miroku has a scar from the kazaana…’

Her friends stare at the lines marring her otherwise beautiful body. She knows they want to ask her about them. Kagome shakes her head; they wouldn’t understand.

‘They may find them ugly… but to me… they’re a reminder that he protected me…’

Seeing the emotion in their faces, she realizes how different they are.

She finally decides.

‘InuYasha… ‘I’ll find a way back to you…’