(send me ideas for the tital, I can't think of one) by Ambrosia

Prolouge

A long time ago, I lived in a fairy tale. There was always magic around me: magic in the stars, magic in the forest, and magic in the trees. At night when we were only ten years old, InuYasha and I would lie back on our blankets on the branch of our favorite tree and gaze up at the heavens, pretending we were falling into outerspace, flying past this planet and that, circling moons and reaching out to touch the stars. We allowed our minds to wander and imagine. We said anything we wanted to each other, never ashamed or too embarrassed to reveal our most secret thoughts, our dreams, even our intimate questions.

We were twins, but InuYasha liked to call himself my older brother because, according to Mommy, I was born the two longest minutes and twenty seconds after him. He behaved like an older brother from the moment he could crawl and protect me. He cried when I was unhappy and laughed when he heard me laugh, even if he didn't know why I was laughing. When I asked him about that once, he said the sound of my laughter was music to him and it pleased him so much, he couldn't help but smile and then laugh, too. It was as if we were enchanted children who heard our own songs, melodies that were sung to us by the wind and the trees, that we loved so much.

As far back as I can remember, there was always magic in the trees. InuYasha could walk right in and come out with the best skulls, bones, creatures, berries, and even things that he claimed the birds had brought for us to find from other courntries. When it came to the forest, I believed anything he said. Sometimes I thought InuYasha must have been born with soil in his veins. No one loved as much as much as him.

What findings Mommy let us keep, we kept in either InuYasha's room or mine. We desided everything had some sort of power to it, whether it was the power to grant us a wish or the power to healthier or happier just by touching it. We assigned an enchanted quality to each thing we found.

When I was twelve I wore a necklace made from tiny bird bones we had found, my friends at school were amazed at the way I identified each and every bone, explaining how this one could drive away sadness or that one could make dark clouds move on. They laughed and shook their heads and said InuYasha were simply foolish and even immature. It was time we grew up and put away childish ideas. There was no magic in these things for them.

But to me there was magic in a blade of grass. InuYasha and I once sat beside each other and let the blades of grass fall through his fingers, pretending each blade of grass was a tiny world onto itself. Inside it lived people like us, too tiny to ever be seen, even with a strong microscope.

"Be careful where you step," we told our friends when they were with us in the forest. "You might crush a whole country."

They scowled with confusion, shook their heads and walked on, leaving us behind, enveloped by own imaginative pictures, pictures no one else wanted to share. We were inseparable for so long, I guess people thought we had been born attached. Some of my jealous girlfriends once made up a story about me, claiming I had a long scar down the side of my body from my underarm to my waist and InuYasha had the same scar on his body. It was where we had supposedly had been connected at birth.

Sometimes, I thought, maybe it's true, that from the moment we entered this world, our separating had begun, a slow and painful process. It was a sepration InuYasha fought much harder than I did as we grew older.

As a very young school girl and even when I first entered my middle school years, I was comfortable, happy, and grateful for InuYasha's devotion to me. Other brothers and sisters I knew argued and occasisionally insulted each other, often in public. InuYasha never said a really bad thing to me, and if he spoke to me in a manner that suggested he was immpaitent or annoyed with me, he immediately regretted it afterward.

I knew other girls fixed their flirtatious gazes at InuYasha and competed each other for his attention. It wasn't just a sister's prejudice for me to say InuYasha was handsome. From the day he could carry a shovel, he accompanied Mommy to tend the forest in our backyard. He always had a dark tan, that brought out the sapphire in his eyes, and he loved to wear his rich dark long hair, the strands of his bangs lying softly over the right side of his forhead, just before his eyebrow, and the rest going just perfectly down his back to his backside. It looked so much like silk, girls were jealous and all of them longed to run their fingers through it.

My brother carried himself firmly with a demeanor of a confident little man, even when he was just in elementary school. Other boys used to make fun of the way he held up his head and shoulders, striding alongside me with his gaze firmly fixed on where we were headed, his lips tight. Soon, however, they started to envy him, and girls in our classes just naturally thought of him as older, more mature.

Frustrated by their failure to win his attention and interest, they finally found comfort in making fun of us. By the time we were in high school, they were calling InuYasha "Grandpa." He didn't seem to care or even notice. I was sure it bothered me more than it bothered him, and it wasn't unless someone physically got into his face or insulted me in front of him that InuYasha reacted, almost always violently. It didn't matter if the other boy was bigger or even if there was more than one. InuYasha's temper was as quick and as devastating as a hurricane. His eyes became glassy and his lips were streatched so tightly they formed white spots in the corners. Anyone who challenged him directly knew they were in for a fight.

Of course, InuYasha would get into trouble, no matter how justified his reaction was. It was he who had lost his temper and usually he who dealt more dammage to his opponents. Almost everytime he was suspended from school, Mommy gave him a beating and confined him to his room, but nothing Mommy could do and no punishment the school could dictate would stop him if he believed my honor was somehow compromised.

With such a devoted and loyal protector watching over me, other boys kept their distance. It wasn't until I entered high school that I realized how untouchable I had become in their eyes. Many girls my age had crushes on boys or had boyfriends, but no boy dared pass me a note in class, and none joined me in the hallways to walk from one class to another, much less walk me home. I walked with some girlfriends or with InuYasha, and if I walked with the girls, InuYasha usually followed behind us like my guard dog.

When I reached Sophomore year, however, I, like most of my girlfriends wanted a boy who showed serious interest in me. There was a boy named Houjo, who had lived in Shikontown only a year, who I thought was very handsome. I wanted him to talk to me, to walk with me, and even ask me out on a date. I thought he wanted to because he was always looking at me, but he never did. All my girlfriends at the time told me he wanted to, but said he wouldn't because of my brother. Houjo was afraid of InuYasha.

I mentioned it to InuYasha and he said Houjo was stupid and would go out with any girl if that girl gave him what he wanted. He said he knew that from listening to him in the boys' locker room. Later, I found out InuYasha had accually walked up to him and put his face an inch from Houjo's, threatening to break his neck if he should so much as look twice at me. Naturally, I was disappointed, but I couldn't help wondering if InuYasha had been right.

In the evenings after we had done our homework and helped Mommy and Rin, our younger sister who had been born deaf and was attending a special school for the handicapped, InuYasha and I would talk about some of the other kids at school. No matter what girlfriend of mine I mentioned to him, he found fault with her. The only girl he didn't criticize was Kanna. Kanna's mother worked with Mommy in the forest, taking care of it and using the plants to make medicine and other things to sell at our shrine. Kanna's family all had white hair and pale skin, which made them different. The other students looked down their noses at them, especially the ones who came from so called blue-blooded families, families who were able to trace their lineage back to the Pilgrims, families like Grandma Kaede's, Mother's mother, who ruled over us like a dowager queen.

InuYasha liked Kanna and enjoyed being friends with her because he liked the way she and her friends defied the other students. When I asked him if he could ever think of Kanna as a girlfriend, he raised his eyebrows as if I had said the silliest thing and replied, "Don't be stupid, Kagome. Kanna's like another sister to me."

I suppose she was, but as I grew older and felt InuYasha's shadow over my shoulder more and more, I began to wish he found some other girl to win his attention. I did my best to recommend this one or that, but nothing I said made him act any differently toward them. If anything, when I mentioned a possible girlfriend for him, that girl suddenly became ugly or stupid in his eyes. I realized it might be better if I just let nature take it's course.

Only, nature didn't.

I used to think nature just missed InuYasha. She walked by one day while he was out in the forest or something. Other boys his age were trying to get dates, hanging out in town, showing off to get a girl's attention, asking girls to do things with them; but InuYasha...InuYasha just spent all his free time with me or his model swords upstairs in his attic workshop, a room just above mine.

Finally, one day at lunch I mentioned my growing comcern to Kanna. She rolled her dark eyes and looked at me as if I had just been born.

"Don't you hear all the talk behind your back? All the whispering and gossip? Their isn't a girl in this school who thinks InuYasha's normal, Kagome; and most of the boys have their doubts about you. They don't talk to me about it, but I here what they say."

"What do you mean? What sort of things are they saying about us?" I asked, trembling in anticipation.

"They're saying you and your brother are like boyfriend and girlfriend, Kagome." She replied hesitantly.

My heart skipped a beat and I remember looking around the cafeteria that day and thinking everyone was looking at us, their eyes full of contempt. I shook my head, the deeper realizations taking shape like some dark, ugly beast who had crawled out of a nightmare into my daytime thoughts.

"Look at you," Kanna continued. "You're fifteen now and one of the prettiest girls in this school, but do you have a boyfriend? No. Anyone asking you to the school dances? No. If you go, you go with InuYasha."

"But-"

"There are no buts, Kagome. It's because of InuYasha." She said. "Because of the way he dotes on you. I'm sorry," she added. "I really thought you knew and didn't care."

"What am I going to do?" I moaned.

She nudged me with her shoulder like she usually did when she was going to say something nasty about one of the other girls on school.

"Get him a girlfriend who'll stir up his hormones and you'll be fine." She said.

I remember she got up to join her friends and I sat there, suddenly feeling very alone and unhappy. InuYasha came walking into the cafeteria quickly, spotted me, and marched over.

"Sorry I'm late," he said. "Teacher kept me after class about my homework again. What's going on?" He looked at me closely when I didn't respond. "Did something happen?"

I just shook my head. I wondered how I could tell him and not hurt him.

I put it off and never really tried to make him understand until the year after, when Sesshoumaru and his family bought the old Tenseiga Hotel and Sesshoumaru entered school.

For me and Sesshoumaru, it was love at first sight and that brought with it a special kind of magic InuYasha couldn't share.

Somehow I had to make him understand and accept. I had to show him how to separate himself from me.

I only hoped it was possible.