Once Upon a Time

Disclaimer: Nope. Don’t own ‘em. I’m sure I would notice it if I did.

The woman closed the book she had been reading from. Though she had long since stopped counting her years, she looked no more than twenty or so. “So, what do you think?”

The group of teens and young adults sitting at her feet looked at each other. “It’s quite a story,” the oldest of the girls said, the huge black pearl hanging around her neck reflecting the firelight. She shook her head, the silvery hair swirling around her like a cloud. Her honey-gold eyes shone in the dim light of the room.

Her older brother grinned at her, his dark eyes flashing and ears twitching. “But why did you decide to put us into it? I mean, it’s only a story, isn’t it?”

Kagome smiled. “That’s what anybody else who reads it is supposed to think. I wrote it as an adventure story so that people would read it, but every word of it is true. Maybe,” she said, shaking her head, “If people read it--and like it--someday they’ll stop fighting with each other and start building the kind of world we’ve started to make here.”

The tall, red-haired youkai leaning against the wall at the rear of the group asked, “So what’s going to happen next?”

She smiled at him. “You’ll just have to wait and see, Shippou.”

She looked up as the shoji slid open to admit the only man she had ever loved. He came up behind her chair, burying his face in the side of her neck. “I’m home, koi.”

Glancing at the heavy volume in her hands, he looked up at her in surprise. “It’s finished?”

She grinned broadly. “Just this morning.” She tickled his ribs gently and continued, “You can start reading it tonight--let me know if there’s anything you think I should change.”

He smiled wryly. “Probably a lot--I really was an idiot back then, wasn’t I?”

She reached up, rubbing the fur on his ears as his eyes started to roll back into his head. “You sure were, but you were my idiot.”

He bent over so that he could reach her lips. “And I always will be.”

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AN: That’s it. Thanks to everybody who stuck with me through this whole thing. I still have a few things backlogged that I can start to post, but it’ll slow down eventually, once I catch up to what I have finished. I do, however, have three new pieces in the works….