InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ It Is Well ❯ Chapter 1

Title: It Is Well

Summary: All of her life, every scrape she’d bandaged, every tear she’d dried had been building to this moment.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Rumiko Takahashi owns all.

A/N: I was listening to the story of a popular Christian hymn ('It is well with my soul') and some of the lines struck me as fitting for Mama Higurashi. I think she's an amazing and underappreciated character and decided to give her a small tribute.

Warning: Character death.

She ran her hand over the characters, carved into the bronze by a skilled hand.

The legend went that a girl from a far land emerged from this well: the guardian of the Shikon no Tama.

Azumi had memorized the tale the plaques told. She had also memorized the longer, more elegant tale told by the beautiful calligraphy on the scrolls in the shrine’s library. The final of the scrolls was kept in a simple box in the corner of Azumi’s bedroom.

Kagome had been so frustrated when she couldn’t find the end of the tale. Azumi remembered smiling patiently, saying, “Some things we are not meant to know.”

“The scrolls are wrong,” a weathered, yet familiar voice spoke from behind her.

Azumi didn’t ask how they were wrong. She also didn’t release the sad sigh that threatened to escape her. All of her life, every scrape she’d bandaged, every tear she’d dried had been building to this moment.

“I have to show you,” the voice broke before finishing quietly, “something.”

She didn’t have the heart to tell the hanyou, battered by pain and time, that she knew what he would show her, that she’d found it herself.

She had studied the final scroll intently, at first fascinated by the change from the elegant script and emotive prose of the first scrolls to the almost rough characters and functional words of the last. She’d known, almost instinctively, whose hand had written it.

Following the directions on the scroll had made it easy enough to find the small grove, hidden from prying eyes, protected from the ravages of progress, cared for by a tender hand.

She ran her hand over the characters, carved into the stone by a skilled hand.

Kagome, protector, mother, friend, sister.

Below, almost hidden by vines was another, rougher inscription.

Beloved.

Her days as a mother to the esteemed Miko of the Shikon Jewel were over. Her days of drying Kagome’s tears and soothing her hurts were over.

Her days of healing the wounds left behind by her daughter were just beginning. She would soothe new fears and dry new tears, some that should have been cried centuries ago, and maybe, just maybe, she would heal her own heart.

After all, like mother, like daughter.

Azumi turned, armed with the gentle smile that had soothed so many fears, and faced the moment.

-Fin-