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Hana packed her purse with the essentials—the essentials for spontaneous art, as she liked to call them. With everything happening in a blink of an eye, lasting for only a brief moment, it was good to always be prepared. And so she carried with her a sketchbook, sewing kit, stationary, various paintbrushes, a variety of paints and a camera.
A fond smile stretched across her face as she fingered the camera. It was a gift from a dear friend. It took snapshots of time, immortalizing moments when her memory couldn't.
Hana stared at the red gates before her and took a picture of the long stairway.
"Hana-chan?"
She put the camera away.
"Yes, Obaa-chan?" Hana answered as she tucked her bag beneath her arm.
"Are you going to paint the Higurashi shrine later?"
Hana smiled secretively. "Maybe."
"I think it's a great idea if you do."
Hana hummed noncommittally as they ascended the many steps leading up. She paused in front of a magnificent tree growing in the courtyard of the shrine, her eyes glazing as her stare fixated upon it.
"Hana-chan?"
She did not answer.
She could not hear. The sounds of everything around her seemed to blur into silence as a vague vision flashed through her mind almost like something out of a dream. In this dream, she could see the hazy image of a woman in an oni mask wielding a pair of swords.
Someone called her.
She reached for the masked woman who faded at her touch and dispersed into wind, slipping through her grasp like sand.
Her hand phased through the woman and landed on the trunk of the tree.
"The future will not give you answers of the past." A woman dressed as a priestess materialized behind her. She wore an arrowhead as a pendant around her neck and had an otherworldly air about her.
"Who are you?" Hana asked the strange woman who presented herself in the form of a priestess.
"I go by many names... Jidai-ju, Goshinboku, the Sacred Tree and the Tree of Ages."
"I don't understand." Hana said with furrowing brows. "What is this? What is going on?"
The woman smiled, and distantly Hana was reminded of Kagome. The woman looked like Kagome, though her eyes were very sad. Kagome had never had eyes like these.
"The answers your heart searches for cannot be found here but in your past. Until you find them, your heart will feel empty."
She slipped a piece of tree bark into Hana's palms.
