An Education by UnknownRandomness

To Preserve a Memory

Prompt: Orchidaceous - Of, relating to, or resembling orchids. 

Word Count: 372

She had liked orchids. 

The daiyoukai paused to stare at the small flower. Delicate yet proud, the gentle, white-headed plants nodded at him from their place on the ground. They seemed to absorb the moonlight and he thought of her wan but still radiant face before she had died.

Sickness wasn't how he'd imagined Kagome would die at all... She seemed like the sort of woman to die in blazing glory, destroying her foes at the price of her own life. Or the sort to survive to an old age, only to slip peacefully into a never-ending sleep one night.

Not the slow decay of her own failing organs, the consumption that couldn't be prevented, not even by her own modern medicines. It had been painful to watch. The miko was such a free spirit, constantly wanting to do things and see what the world had to offer; and her own worst nightmare of not being able to do these things became a reality, when one bleak morning she'd stepped out of her sleeping bag and her limbs hadn't supported her.  

The illness hadn't been natural- neither he nor the hanyou had been able to sense it before the symptoms became blindingly obvious, nor had the miko herself had any indication of something inside her being wrong. It struck suddenly but worked slowly... She had suffered for many moons before death brought her permanent relief. 

All who had known her mourned. Many travelled from far off lands to attend her funeral... Even the void child and the wind witch came to pay their respects for this human woman who had been their enemy.

He had mourned. The inu felt no shame in it, regardless of the taboo his presence had caused in many noble courts. Kagome had lived a life worthy of remembrance and remember her he would. Even now, a century after her death, he still saw things that reminded him of her. Her blue eyes had always lit up when Rin brought her flower, and he had noted the ones that invoked larger smiles. There had been one that she had scrunched her nose up at, but he couldn't recall its name.

But she had liked orchids. He remembered that.