A/N: This was originally posted for Forthrightly's Second Annual Drabble Challenge on LiveJournal. Enjoy! I suppose you could call this the second installment in my small collection for this challenge. The four are not necessarily related and they certainly are not consecutive, but they share the same event: the Obon Festival, which is a version of Halloween more akin to Dia de los Muertos than the American tradition.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of "InuYasha" by Rumiko Takahashi nor the wonderful world she has created.

The pale sky darkened and the wind blew violently one moment and disappeared quickly the next. It left a blank void of disarray where the castle had once been. Among the rubble lay a small boy whose eyes were as blank as the land about him. Cold and emotionless, he laid not knowing himself or if he were dead or alive.

As he struggled to lift his broken body from the mud, Kohaku began his ascent. Truly not even himself knew where, but he would know it once the destination had been reached. From the surroundings he assumed that his legs had brought him to an abandoned slayer village. Stooping lowly against a plot of graves, the small boy traced his fingers over the wooden post in front of him. The place seemed so familiar but Kohaku still needed answers as to why and so he turned to walk toward the one hut that seemed to be occupied.

He hoped that these people might know him and could explain why he had come when he himself did not know. So, walking around to the garden he found an elderly couple, living their lives quietly in the village as if the destruction about them was not there. When the boy saw them he cautiously walked forward and muttered a soft hello.

"Um, excuse me." The man and woman threw one final weed as they glared at the boy in surprise. They had seen no one but themselves for so long that they did not quite even believe he was there. True they saw and recognized him, but only as a figment— a product of the many spirits released during Obon.

"Hello Kohaku," the woman answered, hardly lifting her eyes from her toiling. "It's been a while since I have seen you. How is your father doing?"

"My father?" Kohaku asked, hardly knowing the meaning of the term for his memories still remained clouded. There was still no recollected memory to hold any connotative value for the word. "Do you know who I am?"

The woman laughed lightly to herself and then commenced a conversation with her husband, momentarily acting as if she had not previously been speaking to another. "Did you hear that— the boy doesn't remember."

"Strange," began the husband, "I always thought that them spirits kept in contact with one another." The man turned to Kohaku. "Boy— do you not speak to your father beyond the grave?"

"He is dead?" Kohaku asked once more, slowly his eyes began to pool with recollection. "Will you show him to me."

The man nodded and led Kohaku back to the grave he had come upon earlier and muttered, "strange spirits," as he left the boy.

Hours later a young woman would come across the very same village— the very same grave and see that someone had placed flowers at its head. She would turn to her companion, a monk, and whisper both with sadness and hope the name of her brother. "Kohaku."

As always, I would love and be honored to have any reviews/comments/suggestions that my fantabulous readers may have. I treasure them all!

Truly yours,

Mickey-the-Mouse