77000 CE
Tuesday
In the end, Mokou had to admit that no matter how many days and weeks she sat adamantly still, her feet simply wouldn't take root in the forest floor.
She yawned and stretched, listening to her bones creak like rusty hinges, then settled back down to gauge how hungry she was as she eyed the stillness around her.
Her chosen resting place was near the top of a steep hill, just above an animal trail leading down and left deeper into the woods, only barely visible in the dark. As she got up, however, she ignored the trail and took to the right, stepping next to the white birch whose massive root had served as her seat for the past several resurrections.
She gave its trunk an appreciative pat, then waded into the overgrown tangle waiting behind it.
Short, prickly plants obscured by the tall hay scratched at her bare calves, reminding her again to acquire a new pair of full-length trousers to replace the rags she wore at the present moment, but she kept going at the same even pace. As soon as she was utterly soaked in dew, the vegetation parted before her, revealing a barren hillside with nothing but haphazard tufts of grass growing on it. High above her head, there was the rotting skeleton of some human structure, the purpose of which she had long since forgotten.
She took a few tentative steps forward, then sat down again. From this high up, she could see dozen of miles ahead, at the sea of trees that began mere feet from the foot of the hill and never ended. Though it was obviously night-time, the sky wasn't entirely dark — traces of the setting sun still lingered against the midnight weave, golden at the top and darker as it neared the horizon, the colour of burned caramel until it simply melded with the blackness.
Utter silence fell.
She felt as though she was in the centre of an artificial world, like the kind Yukari Yakumo had created and ultimately disappeared into. For the moment, she was the only living creature, and everything she surveyed was her domain.
Look upon my works.
She closed her eyes, and when she next opened them, she once again recognised her surroundings and herself as the creations of Earth, her body not much different from the stones jutting out of the dirt.
She looked upwards, at the burgeoning moon, and wondered just how long it would take to walk to the Lunar Capital.
She shifted her hand as she pondered it, and struck it against something small and much softer than a rock.
She looked to her side to see a dead sparrow, its eyes shut, its head lolling back in an unnatural angle.
She stared at it for a moment, then stood up and scooped it up. It weighed less than a dead leaf, so little that Mokou had to keep looking at it to be sure it was still in her hands. It looked almost intact, but already the stench of decay, accelerated by the summer heat, grew at every moment.
She continued walking across the hillside, ascending in a lopsided manner. Soon, the bare ground made way to more plants, but none of the kind she was looking for.
She kept going, and soon found herself at the top of the hill. There, finally, some flowers awaited: small, white clusters on top of long, spiky stems.
She spotted two birches growing next to one another, and carefully laid the bird between them. She then turned around and walked to the flowers, plucking all the ones she could reach without wading into the brambles they shared their space with. The stems cut into her fingers, but soon she had a reasonable bundle.
"I assume you have a good reason for doing that."
The voice was like a whisper of the wind, and so refined it would have been easy to mistake its words for a gentle observation.
Mokou straightened her back and turned, trying to smile. Truthfully, it hadn't been that long since she had last met Yuuka, but as the millenia rolled on, coming face to face with remnants of Gensokyo always gave her a jolt of shock.
Yuuka walked through the brambles as nimbly as a mountain goat, without receiving so much as a scratch, and soon stood so close that Mokou could see her garments, similar to what she worn in Gensokyo and unlike anything anyone else had worn in ten thousand years, were knitted entirely of tiny, uniformly coloured flowers. She had a distinct feeling they were not only alive, but thriving.
Yuuka smiled at her placidly. Mokou had made enough mistakes over her endless lives to know what it meant.
She nudged her head towards the birches. "They're for a burial."
"Ah." Yuuka's gaze flitted over to the trees. Mokou wasn't sure she could see the broken bird from the distance, but regardless she walked over, her eyes fixed on the correct spot.
She paused halfway between Mokou and the trees. "Well. You didn't rip out the roots, so I suppose I can let you live today."
"Thanks." Yuuka's skin had eroded to where Mokou could see the greenish blood in her veins through it, but she had no doubt a battle between them would have the exact same result as it always had.
Yuuka said nothing for a while. Then, she turned her head. "Well? Will you let their sacrifice be in vain?"
"Oh." Mokou stepped past her and gingerly placed the flowers at the bird's feet.
"That will do." Yuuka placed her hand on Mokou's arm and moved her aside so gently she wasn't sure it had happened till she realised she was now standing to the side, with Yuuka where she had just been.
Moving with the glacial speed of a much larger creature, like the giants that had sprung from the mountains and had either crumbled or fallen back into slumber when the people who had believed in them had perished, Yuuka crouched down and lightly touched the stems of the flowers with the tips of her fingers.
At once, they plunged towards the earth, taking root once more. Mokou looked on in surprise as the flowers rose towards the moon at a visible speed, until mere moments later their stems were taller than her and Yuuka put together, their biggest blossoms the size of her hand, almost glowing in the darkness. The new plants had entirely engulfed the bird. A tomb of life, then, rather than of earth.
Yuuka stepped back, and without warning, began walking down the sloping hill. Mokou couldn't help but smile as she followed her at a casual distance. In her experience, everyone living past a certain amount of centuries eventually become a drifter, detached from the reality which had birthed them, wandering through it half spirit, half dream, paying little attention to their surroundings if they didn't happen to coincide with their special interests. Mokou's mind had began its drifting so long ago she no longer remembered what it had felt like to be stable, but it was only during their few most recent encounters that Yuuka had had that vague, distant look in her eyes, her previously unerringly polite demeanour giving way to the not unkind but far off behaviour of the ancients.
But really, in her case, didn't it just mean she was once again becoming one with nature?
"Not many birds around, these days," Yuuka spoke into the wind.
"True."
"Or insects, even."
Mokou nodded, though Yuuka couldn't see it.
"Yes. Well." Yuuka lowered her head and stopped in her tracks. "So it is."
Quietly, Mokou walked to her side, and slowly turned to peer at Yuuka's face.
What greeted her was the most gentle, serene, and above all, most beautiful smile she had ever seen.
Time passed. Mokou had struggled to tell hours and minutes apart for millenia now, but by the time she looked up, the sun's crest had been wholly swallowed by the trees.
Yuuka met her eyes, their red gleam reminding her of times long gone. "Until we meet again, then."
She continued down the slope. Whenever she raised her foot, a small, determined plant rose from the stone and sand and stretched its leafs outwards, like a person stretching after a long respite.
Mokou sat down in the dirt and looked on as the row of asters grew and opened their blossoms just as the forest came to life with birdsong.