InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Flower Girl ❯ Deception ( Chapter 40 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Inuyasha.

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Kagome frowned in her sleep, a deep warning pulse echoing through her dreams, and suddenly, they changed from pleasant and happy, to dark, and cold.

Why am I standing in a field of... snapdragons? What's that supposed to mean?

She looked up, and noted that clouds hung, low and menacing, in the sky, and as far as she could see, there was nothing but the colorful flowers, and tall grasses bending deeply in the quickening breeze.

I don't think I've ever seen this place before - so this has to be a dream construct, which means my miko ki is trying to warn me about something, she looked around with a deep frown, obviously bad, from the ominousness of this place.

But what could it be?

She looked around once more, then shrugged, and picking a direction randomly, since it didn't seem to matter much which way she went, she started walking. No matter where she looked, there were only endless fields of grass and snapdragons, and the sky echoed the endlessness of the lands with uninterrupted fields of dark gray.

It was... eerie, for lack of a better term.

The only thing that seemed changing in this place was the wind - and the feeling of wrack and ruin that only managed to get thicker the longer she was in this dream - and unbeknownst to her in the dreamscape, she was tossing and turning in reality.

She was also whimpering, and that sound didn't go over well with the beautiful, cold-seeming youkai lord that crouched over her in concern.

That sound, coming from her, is unacceptable, he thought.

Reaching out his hand, he gently grasped her shoulder, and shook her. "Miko, you must wake up. It is only a dream."

Inuyasha watched with sad envy in his heart at the gentleness of his half-brother's touch upon the miko. It had taken losing her for him to realize that if he had treated her half so well as Sesshoumaru did, he wouldn't be watching his brother with her - he'd be with her himself.

Kagome whimpered again, the determined movements of the daiyoukai beginning to bleed through into her dream, but before consciousness could come, the fields faded, and instead, she found herself looking at Kagura - for some reason, however, the woman faded in and out, with an image of Naraku overlaying her own...

Almost as if they were one person.

She finally succumbed to the Lord's demands to awaken, and sat up with a gasp, staring with wide, upset eyes out into the darkness until Sesshoumaru spoke again, and she snapped a blank gaze to him.

"Kagome, what troubles your dreams?" he asked softly, a concerned frown marring his regal brow.

Blinking, Kagome took the last few steps back to full wakefulness, and shivered, then, as her mind flashed back to what had been in her ki induced dreams.

Snapdragons... what do they mean?

Without answering, she lunged forward, grabbing for her pack, and took out her little flower book, running one finger down the page until she came to snapdragons.

Deception.

A frown formed, then, and she shook her head uneasily, starting a bit when Sesshoumaru reminded her of his question.

"It.. it was a ki dream," she said at last, and he tilted his head, a questioning look on his face.

"Ki... dream?"

"H-hai. My miko ki sometimes uses dreams and familiar images to warn me of dangers. I suppose some could say they are like visions." She shivered; he reached down and pulled her blankets around her shoulders, and she smiled gratefully up at him.

"Tell me, then, little miko, what your ki was saying."

"Well," she mused, a finger tracing her full bottom lip, to his distraction, had she but known it, "I was standing in a field of snapdragons, as far as the eye could see. I figured that part out," she gestured at the book, "snapdragons stand for deception. And then, right before I woke up, I saw Kagura's image, but it kept flickering with Naraku's, back and forth between the two."

Deception...

Sesshoumaru sat back on his heels, and considered her words. It seemed as if her thoughts about Kagura not being Kagura were correct - but...

Kagome sighed, then looked back up from her lap. "I think that Naraku is somehow taking Kagura over - slowly... and I don't think that she yet knows it. Kinda like possession," a haunted look crossed her face as she remembered Tsubaki, "but I think that soon, what was once Kagura will no longer exist. She will be... someone else."

The daiyoukai stared at her for a moment, one brow raised as he considered her words.

That would be in keeping with the way that Naraku functioned - everything he did was based in deception and lies... smokescreens.

He reached out and took her shoulders in his large hands, gently laying her back into her bedding, and nodded. "You may well be correct, miko... but we can consider this later. You should go back to sleep for now."

With a weary sigh, she nodded, and closed her eyes, shifting herself into a comfortable position as he watched.

Once she was settled, he stood, looking down at her for several moments, then turned on his heel and walked into the trees, disappearing under them like a ghost.

Inuyasha sat back in his tree, thoughts all on what he'd just heard.

Why can't that spider just die already? There has got to be some way to out-sneak him...

If we can just find it.

He looked up into the sky, then, staring at the stars.

Deception... just what he practiced on Kikyou and I, and from that time to now, it hasn't changed at all.

He's still nothing more than a liar.

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A/N: And so, we begin to see what it is that Naraku's done...

Amber