"Ready?"
"Always."
"Then open your eyes."
Mokou raised her hands from her face. What she saw was almost enough to make her smile.
Kaguya and Eirin had made a real effort to transform the cave that had served as their temporary home since the firestorm incident. Paper flowers covered every spare scrap of surface and most of the walls as well, pink and red and white. What little of the floor could be seen from them had been metamorphosed into sea-coloured crystal, no doubt through some compound of Eirin's. It glittered under the fairy-lights.
And there was cake. A small, rectangular sugar cake, complete with icing and a solitary candle.
Kaguya hid her smile behind her sleeve. "Make a wish, now."
Mokou closed her eyes and snuffed out the flame. One candle to commemorate one million years.
As Eirin cut them each a slice, Mokou's thoughts, as usual, drifted to the past. It hadn't been that long since their previous cake, created to celebrate Kaguya and Eirin's arrival on Earth. It had been a simple one as well — there were only so many articles of foodstuff left for Kaguya to keep stretching into eternity after the obliteration of most of their reserves — but Eirin had presented her princess with a wondrous drug that made even the foulest slop taste as sweet as the peaches of Heaven.
Perhaps Mokou should have asked for something similar. But she had a different present in mind.
It could wait. She took her slice as Eirin offered it to her. She sunk her spoon into the cake and helped herself to a sizeable bite.
She slowly put the spoon back down. "That's..."
Kaguya tilted her head. "Any good?"
"I can actually taste it." The sponge was light and fluffy, and the frosting hid beneath it a thin layer of something red and sweet which Mokou could no longer name. In all, the cake was everything she could have hoped for.
Kaguya smiled placidly and began on her own slice. She might have taken Mokou's words for a stealthy insult nine times out of ten, but not today. And it had been a genuine compliment. Without effort, few things in their world of ash and dust tasted like anything but sand.
Mokou helped herself to a second slice before Eirin had even begun on her first, chewing methodically. Though staying at the temple had been but a fleeting respite in the endless sea of time, it had taught her patience. She
could float and hope the wind would take her where she wished,
wondered whether she had returned the flowers to where she had plucked them, or whether she had simply discarded them in the first convenient location. She
had never learned how to comfort others
—and she was back, surrounded by paper flowers, the taste of sugar and red bean on her tongue, and realised she had once again slipped away from herself.
She watched the hated, beloved faces of Kaguya and Eirin. Neither had noticed her drift, or else they were as used to it as Mokou herself was.
She set her spoon down, the remnants of the cake forgotten. This was her life with the full support of her associates. Without the food and materials eternally preserved by Kaguya's powers, and the endless stream of medicine created by Eirin's genius, what would be left?
Only much later as Mokou curled up by the mouth of the cave and closed her eyes for the day did she realise she hadn't actually made a wish.
The sun rose on Mokou for the three hundredth sixty-fifth millionth, two hundred fifty-thousand fiftieth and first time.
She blinked at the blaze, then crawled deeper into the shadows of the cave. Kaguya slumbered still, her hands crossed on her chest. Eirin sat next to her, hands on her lap, her eyes distant.
Watching this tableau, Mokou was struck by the feeling she alone was truly conscious at the present moment. She had long suspected that Eirin's mind was capable of travelling far beyond their hiding place. No doubt she was even now exploring the four corners of the universe and everything in between. A complete escape, possibly. Or, as Mokou thought during her more cynical moments, a different kind of madness.
A light cough was enough to bring Eirin back to reality. She blinked once, then turned her attention to Mokou. "Good morning. Do you need something?"
"I need to die."
"I'm sure the princess will be willing to indulge you as soon as she wakes up." Eirin hadn't joined Mokou and Kaguya in their death revelries except for one tentative attempt two hundred thousand years prior. Utterly reluctant to raise her hand against Kaguya and getting no satisfaction either from slaughtering Mokou or from being killed in turn, it had been less than a resounding success.
Not that it mattered. It wasn't what Mokou wanted. "I need to die properly."
"In that case, I shall prepare another batch of cobra lily pills. Would you prefer five hundred or one thousand years of hibernation?"
Mokou shook her head. "I don't want to sleep. I want to die. I want this to be over." She took a deep breath, or as deep as she could with the pressure compressing her lungs. "You can create any medicine you want. You must be able to create a counter to the Hourai Elixir."
Slowly, Eirin shook her head. "It's the one thing I cannot do."
"But..."
Mokou fell silent. From the trace of pity in Eirin's expression, she realised they had held this exact same conversation before. Of course they had. A thousand times, no doubt, all of them long since wiped from her memory to lessen the strain.
She choked back a chuckle. What other absolute basics had she forgotten? "Then what can you do?"
"I can make your body and mind sleep for a hundred thousand years. I can find you a way into another world, although by now I believe you can make your own way out of here. I could disintegrate your mind, leaving only your body to live and die. However, that would go against the princess' wishes."
Mokou didn't even bother nodding. The response was just about what she had expected.
Equally expected was the cool gaze of Eirin's pewter eyes as she observed Mokou. Mokou had long since shed the illusion that she somehow understood Eirin by virtue of their long acquaintanceship. She remained an enigma, a puzzle to which there simply was no key. Or if there was one, Eirin had left it on the dark side of the moon.
Hence, Mokou surprised herself by speaking up again. "How old are you?"
The question elicited no reaction from Eirin. She turned to observe Kaguya, and watched the rise and fall of her chest for a long time before answering.
"Take your million years. Consider every year, every day, every breath you've taken. Take everything you can remember from your birth to this moment, and consider the whole in its entirety."
Mokou tried, and failed. In the end, she could recall only a fraction of all that she had experienced, a muddled swamp that changed even as she sifted through it. She accepted it as it was, if only because there was nothing else she could do. She
stood on a dark plain covered in fine white sand as the void of time sang all around her
"The entirety of your life. A mass of time beyond anything any other human has felt on her shoulders. How much of it remains?"
"I remember what I can." Mokou had a picture in her mind, even if it was riddled with holes. She knew enough.
"Oh, yes. A million years." Suddenly, Eirin smiled. The smile was neither joyful nor sad, neither mocking nor triumphant. It was the smile of a goddess to an ignorant human at the cusp of something wholly beyond their ken. "It's a drop in the ocean."
Mokou stared into Eirin's eyes, kept staring even as they revealed themselves to be fathomless pools beyond all earthly understanding.
She saw it now, the thing she had long since suspected. For all her intelligence, Eirin could never truly understand Mokou's need to die, any more than she could grant her final death.
Mokou chuckled. Then she began to laugh in earnest. What else could she do? She couldn't stop laughing any more than she could stop being reborn again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again
Kaguya's eyes were no longer shut. Mokou wasn't sure when she had opened them.