... She wonders if there's a special place for those who've cheated death. Does the afterlife wait for them with swollen jaws?

Death would be better suited for you– she cruelly rattles in her head as he twists in pain. A witch covets the beauty of virgins so she's sure the underworld remembers and despises the worms that escape the flood. Hungrier by the dwindling sunsets of a human lifetime.

Will you slip into a pit of fire or become stuck under a frozen lake? Kikyo wonders.

"Priestess, were you born kind or is it taught?" The breaks between Onigumo's words remind her of dying flowers. Dry, brittle, and a limp lilt. Even though she's given him buckets of water.

"Kindness is taught. Some are keen to it. Some aren't." Kikyo rolls up and ties her sleeves.

"And you're partial to it I assume?"

"Why does it matter how I've acquired the trait, Onigumo?" Saying his name alone, Kikyo feels like she's complicit in his punishment when he meets death for good. She grimaces as she cleans the peeled skinned on his hands. He's lost all feeling in his fingers.

"You're right. It doesn't matter..." He wheezes a human laugh.

"I admire your resilience." Kikyo manages to smile above the smell of dried blood. Even after he's gone, this hole of a shelter will retain his stink. There wouldn't be enough rain to wash away his memory. His soul drips and seeps in an odd way. Inuyasha claims he can smell Onigumo in her hair for days.

"Such resilience has rewarded me with the most gracious of company. I'm unworthy."

"Pray tell, Onigumo–why do you think you're unworthy of mercy?"

"Perhaps I'm wrong. It's not a matter of unworthiness. It could be my punishment. To have a beautiful woman wash away my squalor. Such cruel mercy."

Kikyo pauses and her smile fades as her heart searches for anything to say. She sprawls his fingers and laces them in her hand.

"Punishment for what? You don't strike me a cruel man." She is curious about his past.

"No man seems cruel when he cannot properly relieve himself in private."

Onigumo can never look at her directly when they speak. There are times when she catches him stealing a glance and when she's not looking she feels the weight of his soulless eyes on her skin.

"I suppose so. I still do not think you were that bad– fate has favored you." She examines the cracks in his flesh down to his elbow.

"You think so highly of me."

"What were you like before this?" She immediately regrets the crass question.

"I just want to forget." But he answers promptly. It's the clearest he has ever spoken. He sounds like a man not destroyed.

"With perseverance, you can forget. You can be a new man." Before he's chewed up by the wrath of the afterlife.

"With your help, I can be, priestess." He really looks at her for the first time and cracks his teeth into a hopeful smile. Kikyo doesn't look away but her throat tightens.

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"Hell is the absence of the people you long for." ~ Emily St. John Mandel