The silken line gleamed in the rising sun. Mokou held it aloft and smiled. Over time, Kaguya had become a master at the loom: the thread was as sturdy and transparent as any fisherman could hope for.
She cast her line into the muddy waters, then sat down amidst the reeds to wait. Definitely not to think: she tried to empty her mind of all thoughts. They were all banal, inane fragments that had already crossed her mind a thousand times. She was unlikely to piece together the inner workings of the universe in the middle of a swampy flood plain.
The sun made its way high to the sky, caressing Mokou with its rays like an old friend. Eventually, she sighed and got up. She stretched her idleness-sore limbs. No fish in these waters, she supposed. Then again, a ball of mud didn't exactly make for an enticing bait.
Speaking of mud... not far from her, the swampy earth bubbled with audible pops. Mokou turned her fishing pole around and used it to poke at the bubbles. A frog? A youkai? Or possibly just a buried current.
"Mokou?"
Mokou heard Reisen before she saw her. She crashed into the reeds as though intending to raze them, the pack strapped to her back throwing her off-balance time and time again before she finally made it to Mokou.
Mokou removed the hook from her fishing pole and extracted the ball of mud from it. "Were you looking for—"
The ball of mud fell from her hand.
"You're bleeding."
Reisen blinked and raised her hand to her nose. Her fingers came back streaked with purplish red. "It's nothing. It's a side effect of the deoxidising drugs, that's all."
"Not that." Mokou shoved the hook into her pocket and put the pole down. She crouched down and took hold of Reisen's ankle.
The arrow embedded in Reisen's calf hadn't gone entirely through the limb, but it was nevertheless firmly stuck. Thin trails of blood snaked down her leg and gathered at the sole of her shoe.
Reisen shuddered and closed her eyes as Mokou poked the stem of the arrow. "Oh."
"Sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."
"It's fine. I barely felt it."
Mokou looked around. "Can you sit down on that rock?"
Reisen followed Mokou's instructions without protest. She took off her pack and rummaged through it. "I should have some procoagulant gel and bandages left."
She didn't so much as hiss when Mokou pulled the arrow loose. The arrowhead was unusually large and fashioned from flint. Mokou tossed it aside without a second thought and saw to the wound.
"It's not much," she said as she secured the bandage around the calf, "but it should serve until we get back to Eientei."
"Thank you." Reisen looked away. "You didn't have to do that."
"No-one has to do anything much these days."
"I mean that it was unnecessary. A waste of resources." She let out a helpless little laugh. "Do you think I'm going to die of gangrene?"
"If I did, I would have asked for disinfectant."
Reisen said nothing more and allowed Mokou to help her stand back up. Mokou wasn't too surprised. After all, they both knew there was very little purpose left to the world but performing small acts of kindness.
"Why did you go there?" Mokou asked as Reisen shrugged her pack back on.
The nearest human tribe was superstitious beyond belief, and any attempt Mokou had made to contact them had been met at best with open hostility and at worst with a flurry of arrows. She had died to them twice already, most recently when she accidentally wandered too close to their village and taken a nap in the wrong spot.
They began to walk up the gentle slope. Eientei was a mere five miles away. They'd be there before sunfall.
"I thought they might be willing to trade. That's all."
Mokou decided to change the subject. "So, Eirin can't make a drug to keep you whole that doesn't drench you in blood?"
"She could back when she had the ingredients. We lost a lot of our stock in a firestorm last century." Reisen sniffed loudly and rubbed her nose. "This is nothing, really. I have dealt with far worse side effects."
Mokou's dosage was ten times the original one. It made her stomach lining act up.
It was still better than the previous drug which had eaten right through it.
"I warned you not to take it all at once." Eirin sighed as she handed Mokou the medicine. "I have refined the recipe, but you must take it at two hour intervals."
Mokou took the packet and nodded. It was a sizeable batch. The medicine would never run out, not as long as Kaguya could keep stretching the ingredients, but whether Mokou's body could withstand the amount necessary to stop the decay of her mind was a dif—
Abruptly, Mokou's mind filtered back to reality. She glanced at Reisen, who was either unaware or indifferent to the fact that her friend was hallucinating again. Then again, they were heading towards the best place to seek aid for such ailments.
Mokou scrounged her thoughts for any details of the preceding conversation. "Side effects?"
"I'd rather not talk about them."
"That bad? I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
It was anything but.
They had walked another mile in silence when Mokou realised she was walking alone. She turned back.
Reisen stood still amidst the wild hay. Her eyes were fixed on the tips of her shoes.
Mokou raised an eyebrow. "Are you okay? Is it the leg?"
"No. The leg is nothing. It's just..." Reisen took a deep breath, then shook her head. "It's nothing. Nothing important."
"If you say so." Mokou placed her hands in her pockets and waited. She recognised cracks in a dam when she saw them.
Much like blood from the wound, the truth wound out of Reisen first as a trickle.
"I miss the others."
"Who?"
"The other rabbits. I used to..."
Reisen took another deep breath. The trickle turned into a stream. "I was so stupid. I used to think I was somehow better than the others just because I was a moon rabbit. I tried to boss them around and didn't even notice Tewi was calling the real shots until years later." She shook her head. "And then... before long, I really was an earth rabbit like them. Maybe I was one from the moment I set foot on Earth and Master and the princess just didn't tell me. I think I was... happy."
The next moment, she fell to her knees, clutching her head. "And now they're all gone and I'm still here."
"Reisen..."
Reisen shook her head, refusing to raise her gaze. "I wasn't meant to live this long. It was different on the moon because it wasn't life, not in the same way, but here, where there is life and death we really must die. I must die. Like everyone else. Like all the other rabbits. Like Tewi."
Tewi lived, Mokou knew — she had run into the rabbit mere weeks ago — but she wasn't sure bringing it up would be worth much. Reisen's anguish stemmed from depths beyond mere solitude. Depths Mokou wasn't entirely unfamiliar with.
She walked over to Reisen and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I know it's painful."
Reisen jerked upwards and grabbed at Mokou's shirt. She failed to get a proper grip and settled for leaning her hand against Mokou's collarbone.
"Painful is trying to understand Master's lectures when she doesn't want you to understand them. This isn't that. This is like something is trying to pull every single cell in my body apart, only they won't break—"
Reisen's voice cracked. Her hand slipped down to her knees. For a long time, she did nothing but sob.
It didn't matter. Mokou knew what she had meant. She knew.
"I'm tired, Mokou." Though her eyes remained downcast, Reisen sounded a little more like herself. "I'm tired of waking up every morning to a world with nothing to do. I'm tired of keeping track of time and taking more medicine every single hour of my life. It doesn't matter if I don't look a day older than when I came to Earth. I know I'm old. And my body knows it. That's why it wants to break apart."
Mokou stayed silent. She couldn't allow herself to give voice to the wild thoughts which threatened to bubble to the surface. Any more than she could acknowledge the truthfulness of Reisen's words.
Instead, she crouched down and met Reisen on the ground. She reached out to touch Reisen's shoulder. When Reisen didn't shy away, she took it as a sign to pull her into a hug.
Reisen's breath hitched. She threw her arms around Mokou with enough force to make Mokou's bones creak. Still with a youkai's strength. Always with a youkai's strength.
A youkai's strength. So prodigious. But ultimately finite.
"I know I promised to serve Master Eirin until the end of time." Reisen's voice was muffled against Mokou's shoulder. But I can't. I can't follow further. I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't..."
Mokou said nothing at first. Instead, she allowed Reisen to rest more of her weight against her shoulder. With her free hand, she reached out to stroke Reisen's hair. Not quite as brittle as her own cobweb. But getting there.
"I understand," she said, quiet and soft, petting Reisen all the while. "Let me help."
Slowly, very slowly, Reisen wound out and relaxed against her.
"Thank you."
It was mercy at that point.
Mokou wasn't sure if it felt like mercy, watching Reisen strewn on the bamboo mattress with her head on Eirin's lap. Even if Reisen had chosen the time and place — eventide in Eientei's inner garden — herself. Even if she was smiling.
Beast youkai were not supposed to live for tens of thousands of years, Eirin agreed. Not even lunar rabbits. Let alone lunar rabbits like Reisen who had lost their connection to the Lunar Capital back when Gensokyo still mattered.
Mokou sat down by Reisen's left side and took her hand. In time, Kaguya followed suit on the right.
They could wipe Reisen's recent memories and extend her life a little still, Eirin had continued. Then again, her heart was already pumping more drugs than blood. It was ethically questionable, especially since Reisen herself had chosen otherwise.
Mokou had laughed then, even if she had felt more like weeping. When had Eirin ever considered ethics?
She neither cried nor laughed now. Instead, she stroked Reisen's hand, hoping the gesture was soothing. Reisen's hand was slightly bigger than hers and clammy with cold sweat.
Reisen had always had a choice. She didn't have to keep dousing herself with medicine to stop her body and mind from deteriorating. She didn't have to keep watching the eternal rise and decline. She didn't have to keep walking towards the end of time with Kaguya, Eirin, and Mokou.
She had always had a choice. And now she had made it.
A shiver ran down Mokou's spine. She looked over her shoulder. For a moment, she felt a pair of invisible eyes smiling at her from the roof.
She forgot all about it when Reisen opened her eyes, revealing dimming irises and clouded pupils. "Master. Do you think..."
Reisen paused to gather her breath. The poison Eirin had given her was painless, but Reisen had insisted on a delayed effect. Just in case she changed her mind, presumably. "Master. Do you think I will go to the afterlife here? Or will my spirit travel to the moon?"
Mokou opened her mouth and closed it again. She could have told Reisen her soul would go to the Sanzu just like all other souls on Earth. But Reisen hadn't asked her.
Eirin ran her hand over Reisen's ears, smoothing them against her lap. "Your soul will remain on Earth. You know it as well as I do."
"Good." Reisen closed her eyes again. Her smile returned. "Good."
She said nothing more.
Later that night, as Mokou helped Eirin carry the body across the garden to the furnace, she could have sworn she saw a white rabbit loping into the shadows beneath the full moon.