Tewi held her arms to her sides like a child balancing on a fallen tree trunk. She hopped onto the first stone off the shore and looked up at the sinking sun. "How many jumps do you think it'll take to reach the island?"
Mokou eyed the island in the near horizon. When she had last seen it, it had been a peninsula. "About seventy."
Tewi smiled at Mokou. In the orange light of the sunset, the red of her eyes looked darker and richer than it ever did during daytime. She turned and hopped onto the next stone. She balanced on one foot upon it before bounding forward, skipping over the water as though the possibility of falling in had never occurred to her. It probably never had.
Mokou stepped onto the first stone, her hands in her pockets, her eyes gliding across the bay. Rocks dominated the view: large and small, smooth and jagged, fully immersed and bone-dry upon the ground. Had the waves brought them along, or had they been tossed there by some careless oni? Or had they always been there, and Mokou had simply forgotten?
It was likely the latter. There was so much to forget.
She sat down cross-legged on the rock and let the wind blow through her hair. One of the fire-warding charms on her shirt was peeling off, and she hastened to pat it back on. Not that Tewi was likely to mock her fashion choices even if she did burn a hole in her clothes. The rabbit was still wearing a dress from a civilisation a century gone: colourful embroidery on black fabric depicting flowers and birds of prey, the once long sleeves frayed to nothing and leaving her arms as bare as her mud-speckled feet.
"Ten, eleven..." Tewi twirled around to face Mokou, her hands behind her back. "It's more fun if you jump too."
Mokou ignored her and looked down at the water surrounding the rock. She met her reflection, with its ankle-length, spiderweb-brittle hair, and less than immaculately clean face. Eyes carrying endless years stared back up at her.
She tugged at a thread coming loose on her trousers. Her new clothes were already unravelling to rags.
She looked up. Tewi was jumping back towards her, arms once again mimicking wings. "This is even more fun with sharks."
"I bet it is."
Tewi waited. Knowing she wouldn't leave her alone till she played along, Mokou got up and followed her down the bridge of rocks.
Tewi skittered ahead. "What were you thinking about?"
Mokou blinked and slowed down. Truth be told, she hadn't been thinking about anything much. "The usual stuff. What I'm going to eat next. What Kaguya's up to. If it'll be decades or centuries before something new shows up."
"Mm-hm."
"And... the same as always. How long it will take for us to be free."
Tewi halted. She turned back towards Mokou, her head bowed so low Mokou could only catch glimpses of her small face through her reflection.
"Is that what you're always thinking about?" she asked quietly.
Mokou shrugged. "Just sometimes. Can't help it." She thought back at faces she hadn't seen in centuries. "Kaguya does too. Not so sure about Eirin."
Tewi stayed statue still, looking as young and frail as a freshly hatched chick. And yet she was as old as Mokou. Older. And had a way out.
Mokou smiled. She hoped it lacked any residual bitterness. "I guess that's not a concern you share."
Tewi looked up with the biggest grin Mokou had ever seen. "Nope!"
Mokou sighed, then kept smiling. "Probably for the best."
Tewi turned back towards the island and cleared another gap between rocks. "You might want to go see Reisen."
She knew it had been only a matter of time, but still the words felt like a stone had sunk into her chest. She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. "Has she made her choice?"
"You should ask her yourself."
"Yeah. Of course." Mokou plunged her hands into her pockets and fell into reflection. Yes. It was time to go home. She would be kicking herself for a hundred thousand years if she didn't get to say farewell. Or, she'd be doing that at least until Eirin's medicine wiped Reisen's life clean out of her memory.
Tewi kept moving forward. There was a new spring in her step, as though relaying the news had freed her from any shackles holding her back.
Funny. Now that Mokou thought of it, she had never heard of Tewi needing medicinal aid.
"Do you think it's gonna end?"
Tewi's question shook Mokou back to the present. "Is what going to end?"
Tewi said nothing, merely skipped ahead.
"Life?" Mokou sighed. "Eventually. It can't go on without the world. And since the world began somewhere, it's going to have to end one day as well."
Tewi paused. Tewi turned. Tewi smiled.
Without another word, she turned once more and ran ahead, dashing from stone to stone so quickly she might as well have been flying. She raised her arms ahead as though trying to catch the sun the moment before it hit the water.
Perhaps she would.
This is really the story of those who left us behind.
A time came in my life when I realised I was no longer capable of change. In a way, we have all become eternal, like a parody of those who dwell in the Pure Lands. The time of those who could pass away has long since entered its long twilight. The time when I belonged in their number isn't even a memory.
Those changing creatures, human and youkai alike, those were the real living beings. While my mind can still bear the strain, I'd like to leave behind an account of those I once knew. Something to remind those who come after that such beings once existed.
Anything I write down will be feeble and distorted. A monument of illusory memories and half-forgotten impressions. It will have to do. There is no-one else left to do it, anyway.
The Child of Miare once told me it's easier to picture a single person and write with them in mind. I picture you, reader, as one of the dregs of the Lunar Capital, who has finally returned to purify Earth in its entirety. Someone to whom eternal existence is as natural as dying is to the living. Someone just a smidgen more sympathetic towards the impure creatures of Earth than the rest of your kind. Even so, my attempts at describing life as it was will likely seem to you like carefully cataloguing the souls of insects.
Still. I will try.