~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the beginning...

I mocked them and all they stood for. Rising up and laying siege against an enemy that was impossible to defeat. Asinine, really. Truly wasteful of one's time. Why try to improve the world you live in when no one else will give you a hand? What is the point in trying to go on, when your life will be sputtered out as a spent candle within mere decades? Humans. The most worthless, wretched of species. Dirty, spoilt, idealistic and dumb.

And then...

...there was her.

She came upon me as a wave. Vast and unending, ever-enduring and never resting. Never resting her hands, those helping, lending hands. Never stirring early enough to begin the day. Never closing that wretched mouth of hers. She was relentless. Tireless. Faithful, hopeful, true--honesty in its crowning glory. She was light, she was heaven. She was pure and untouched as the highest peak of the highest mountain in the most distant land. She was perfect.

And how I loathed her.

How I loathed what she stood for.

Honesty. Justice. Fairness.

How could I take seriously these things that she held so dearly?

What honesty is there in taking land from others merely to expand your own empire and having no other reason than it pleases you? This I ask and this I answer, that there is no honesty and still I continue to do it. What justice is there, for a learned being to be blinded and muted by my conquests, unable to share his knowledge? Again, what man could survive to even remember those 'grand' things when I come to call on a village? What rational exists to explain to her pure sensibilities my reasons for slaying the very people she lives to protect? Pray, tell me for I do not know.

What moves her so swiftly, so justly, to her cause of saving humanity when all they will do is betray, disappoint, and die quickly anyway? Who could have such a thankless task and yet attack it as willfully as I do my enemies in battle?

Is she waging war on the nature of that damned race--humans--itself? How can she expect to win such a war when not even a battle can be championed?

Ah, now I see her shadows fall about her shoulders. I see the trouble in those once clean eyes. The shadows fall around her like sheer curtains, one after another after another, obscuring that clean hope and pristine confidence. I knew she would not pass the tests of life unscathed and now I see how she breaks so fragilely, just as every other despicable human.

I see the cracks in her hands that break and can no longer knit the lives of others together. I see the blood she cries for those who are not much worse off than herself. And yet while she bleeds and empties her soul, she lends stitches and cloths to others who are not in such danger of death.

She is witless, this one. Stupid. Brash, and detrimental to her own health, even. And yet there she is, striding into the midst of the battle of Human Life once more. And once more, her army of purity is turned aside by the onslaught of the unclean and unwilling.

There, her light of heaven is flickering. There, it sinks below the surface of the black boiling sea of woe and suffering. It sinks lower and lower--I cannot see her light any longer and surely, she is dying. Surely now, she sees it is hopeless. Utterly hopeless. Now maybe, perhaps at this very moment, she is realizing exactly how wasteful and meaningless her life has been. Maybe her heart will stop. More than likely it will break, though. Just as it has broken in the chests of all the others she has tried to save.

Yet still...

I wish, for just an instant, to see that light rise back above the surface of the black masses of trepidation. I want with all my immortal being to see that light once more. Just once, and to know that once, if only once, a human's heart has triumphed over a human's weaknesses.

And yet...

I turn from her. To want such a thing is against my very nature.

I turn from her sinking, withering star and tell myself it was meant to be this way forever. Humans trying to make a difference and humans strangling and dragging themselves back down into the abyss. It is an endless cycle and her star was not the first lost nor will it be the last.

But perhaps...

...her star was brightest.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

It has been...

...many years since I saw her flame go out. And I have seen others like her flourish and die out just as quickly. I have seen other accomplish more and others much more assertive in their tasks than she. But I have yet to see one star in the sky of hapless fools shine brighter.

I do not know if this is a blessing or a curse, to be the brightest among fools or the dumbest among geniuses. I do not know all things. Even I, after all, am not so foolhardy as to believe in my absolute perfection all the time. One would be weary of perfection after countless years, decades, millennia.

Perhaps...

Perhaps this is why I still recall her brightness, burning itself into my mind's eye with a flaming passion that rivaled all the power of the sun. To live so unbridled and free is a dream many wish for and very few ever even begin to achieve. It is the one dream of wild abandon I myself have never achieved. I have not even begun to pursue this dream of reckless feeling and wide-open enchantment because to think that going around offering yourself to the masses will leave you unscathed, is foolhardy at best.

And yet she seemed to strive for this. She seemed to love and lose and love again as though it were water. As though love were infecting the very air she breathed. To see such...wasteful energy being put to such monotonous and useless tasks was truly...is truly...

Masterful.

And now...

Now the girl is gone. I remember seeing her star pass out of life and into oblivion, though none knew I was watching.

How could I not?

How could I not be drawn to such an intense flame that flickered out only after much dousing and prodding and smothering? The forest fire that waged itself against the world...and burnt out after having discovered that no more could be done to burn away the impurities. And, spurned on by angry winds and hot, dry earth, was sucked dry and dead by the very environment it strove to cleanse.

How could anyone, human or no, not be drawn to such heat and passion? Indeed, I knew many that could not resist the lure. Such audacity and nerve, and yet such tenderness as to gently kiss a broken thorn and not be pricked. It was amazing, and disastrous. Her beginning and her undoing. It was her sustenance in this life and the means of destroying her spirit, her mind, and her body.

I remember...

...that day. I remember the night the sky was black but for the moon that shone down in a cold mist that lay across the ground.

I recall how her heart slowed and her soul lay down. It was not the death of her body I witnessed, for that was inconsequential. Bodies break, bodies wither, and bodies die. All bodies die, whether quickly as a human, or slowly as other.

But when the moon hung low in the summered sky, and the stars were wiped out from the same darkened ceiling, I witnessed the breaking.

I witnessed the shattering of the light.

I watched as curtains fell across those cyan eyes as she realized she was losing her essential part.

I watched as her heart shattered into a million little pieces, into a wound she would never recover from.

I watched as she folded in and fell, and began the long tumble down a mountain that would leave her bruised and broken, lame and dying at the bottom. I watched the wonder of the world leave her heart and her hopes and dreams of somedays withered and turned to ash in her hands.

I watched and felt remorse.

I watched her. I watched her.

I watched and saw her light submerge in the boiling seas. I saw her light go out, and one less star had a place in the sky.

Her beauty in the breakdown.

Farewell

.

.

.

Kagome.