YUME NO YO DATTA/IT WAS LIKE A DREAM.DAI ICHI BU/FIRST PART

Somehow,as night creeps up on us and I barely even realize that I have been gone from home three days now.
Somehow I realize that I find myself only lulled into a sleepy state when I am grasped by Kiko,her hand has stayed steady on mine this whole carriage ride,one that I was told earlier wouldn't continue much longer.My eyes drift,my pain is settling more and more into a tolerable ache after the herbal paste that The Warrior made had been freshly applied.

I start to see images like a dream flash like Karuta cards in a competition in my minds eye.
My memories of when I would ride stop my Fathers shoulders and try to reach the highest Sakura branches in the park,oh how he would leap but only ever reach a certain branch!Others like when my mother told me  she should could"Simply no longer breathe here in this house,being bored so often in this life,suffocated,child I am sorry..."the last night she stayed home,A whole year ago now,
A lifetime ago.
More and more though appear of Grandmother in her health,how when I would be scared she would gently tap the tip of my head in time with the beat of a fun song to distract me,when she would tell vibrant stories of samurai in the days before even Oda Nobunaga as though she had been there herself.

Stranger yet though is the other memories that are not somehow real but yet FEEL so real.

I see moments flashing fast by  in my mind of myself holding a green eyed child that playfully pulls at my ponytail,
Another is of me holding the hand of a noble,my hand covered in a fine red fabric but blood trickles down my finger tips and down my eyes while the man just grips on tighter whispering something heartfelt,that I know but what he said I do not know yet it makes me grip my heart in vicious ,tearing pain,The others come in fast,my breath turns rapid as I watch myself run hard with that same child from before in my arms,I'm heavy with a child in my belly,I look so frightened that I could scream at myself to hide but the me in this flash dream won't hear me.
My eyes begin to run with tears when I see a mans form,shrouded by the dusk light as he tries to cleanse blood from his left arm,his kimono is pulled down only at that side so I see his bare arm and back,it is crisscrossed with varying degrees of deep,new and old scar tissue.I walk to him,gently,steps that would make a mouse startle at there stealth and reach out to that arm,he tries to cover it quickly,tries to cover vainly the large tattoo on his back but I stop his hand there,taking a new cloth then moisten it to cleanse off the blood from him to which he grips my hand gently,places it on his cheek to which I do not move.
Not an inch.

Even the tattoo itself barely registers to the me in my mind but the me watching now can see it clearly.

Noroi.