15488 CE
Friday
It was, as it happened, only Mokou's second time ascending to the peak of a volcano. Self-inflicted scars were among the slowest to fade.
Sitting there on the rim, staring into the depths, she felt strangely underwhelmed. Without ever giving it conscious thought, she had managed to build this moment into an event: a triumph, or at least a resignation. Instead, there was stillness.
She shrugged. So it went. "You know what would make this better?"
"I don't." Kaguya had lost interest in the volcano as quickly as Mokou had and was now tracing outlines in the emerging stars.
"Those sweet pastries they used to sell in that teahouse in Gensokyo. The ones with red bean filling with just a dollop of..." She snapped her fingers, hoping it would bring the name of the relevant foodstuff to mind. "It'll come to me later. Anyway, you know what I mean."
"I haven't the slightest idea."
"It was the teahouse close to the florist's. They had yellow roses growing by the building. We went there together once."
"We did not."
"Don't be stupid. Of course we—" The memory slipped into focus. Mokou stilled. "We did not."
A lapse like this usually gave Kaguya an excuse to be irritatingly smug. This time, however, she didn't so much as flash her habitual smile. "I would wager you're the last person on Earth who has any memory of those pastries."
"Could be." How many things were there that had once been tangible and real and of vital importance which were now only filmy bits of memory within Mokou's skull? How much was there that was recalled by none at all, hopelessly irrecoverable no matter how significant?
Mokou shook her head. She could have looked down, but nothing within the volcano merited further attention. Instead, she leaned back to observe the sliver of moon immersed in waves upon waves of stars. "Do you think they see us up there?"
"Let them watch. The pact will hold."
For now. But that was obvious. And better, most likely. Mokou generally preferred things to be ephemeral.
She kept leaning back until she was lying down, her legs dangling above the abyss. It would have been simplicity itself for Kaguya to sidle over and push her in.
Nothing happened. Mokou began to doze off.
After a few moments of steady breathing, she found the strength to speak once more. "It's a shame. Those pastries were really tasty."
"Perhaps you should attempt to re-create them." Even without seeing her, Mokou could tell Kaguya's face was upturned, her words addressed in the direction of the moon.
"It wouldn't be the same." Mokou breathed out as sleep closed in. "But maybe I'll try."
39179 CE
Possibly Sunday
Mokou woke up dew-sodden and feeling the closest thing to chill she had in centuries.
Without getting up or even bothering to open her eyes, she kindled her flames. The morning mist transformed into billowing clouds of vapour. When had she last truly felt cold? A few millennia ago, when she had ventured into the far south and immersed herself in toxic snow from the neck down just to see if the sensation was as she remembered it? Had that actually happened, or had it been yet another dream?
"It's far too early in the morning for smoking."
Mokou ignored the remark and instead watched the vapour dissolve. It was the first hour of dawn, still the night of a new moon rather than morning. It should have been dark, but there was light, far more light than the usual pinpricks of radiance from the stars. An array of thin clouds like wispy fingers of frost reached across the sky, shining so brightly Mokou had no trouble discerning muted colours around her. What was this phenomenon called again? Aurora borealis? There was some resemblance, but it wasn't quite right.
"Noctilucent clouds. That's the word you're seeking."
Mokou kept her eyes on the illusory ripples of ice in the heavens. "Don't pretend to read my mind."
"I have no need for pretence."
Mokou could have responded, and they could have had a cheerful spat just like in the old days. But she refrained. Maybe once she felt more like herself again. Her dreams had been plagued by shadows and white sand and then by rising flames, suddenly scorching, devouring flesh it had previously protected.
"I didn't think I would see you again."
"Ever?" Disturbed from her reveries, Mokou finally looked at Kaguya. Somehow, the princess always managed to make being dishevelled look attractive: her hair fell like a luminous mesh across her shoulders, and the bits of fern sticking close to her brow looked more like carefully chosen accessories than the result of rolling on the forest floor.
"That's an exaggeration. But I did think you'd avoid me for a few more millennia at least."
"So did I."
"Well." Kaguya's smile was lazy, but still outshone the glowing clouds. "I won't say I dislike being forgiven."
"Who says I've forgiven you?"
Kaguya's smile only widened. And why wouldn't it? She was right and she knew it. At the very least, Mokou had forgiven her for her most recent transgression. The rest was still up in the air.
"You didn't do anything to deserve forgiveness." Mokou turned to her side so that she could better share her warmth. Kaguya's skin was cool where her fingertips grazed it. When had summer nights become this cold again? "But we can still change. That's why I should give you another chance."
Kaguya closed her eyes. In the eerie light of the clouds, she looked like a reclining marble statue. Peaceful, but oddly lifeless.
If only.
"We can still bleed." Mokou nudged herself closer until she was lying on top of Kaguya's hair, her hand falling to rest on her stomach. "And we retain memories of what happened since before our latest death. That means each time we resurrect, we come back as slightly different people."
"In other words, we are living creatures."
Kaguya said the words lightly. She wasn't trying to tease Mokou, but she clearly didn't see how revelatory this simple fact had felt to Mokou when it had finally dawned on her after long centuries of stumbling in the dark.
Mokou kept going regardless. "Maybe one day it won't happen again. One day we might just freeze in place and become something else. But for now, after each blink and heartbeat, we are different people. That means we can change. We have changed. And if we can do that, there's hope we can do better."
"Well." Kaguya's eyes were unusually cool as they stared at the sky. "Now I know who you have been spending time with lately."
They lay in silence as dawn progressed and the noctilucent clouds melted in the face of the rising sun.
"While we are concerned with change and making amends," Kaguya placed her hand on top of Mokou's and faced her with a smile, "do you wish to apologise for your crimes against me?"
She laughed as Mokou scrounged up a fistful of loose earth and tossed it at her face.
91889 CE
???
You return to awareness. It is a heavy feeling, as though someone has walked over all your non-existent graves. It will chain you down and crush you if you don't watch—
The forest had grown in what seemed to Mokou like mere heartbeats, too fast even for bamboo. But then, each past time she had shed her consciousness, time had become a thing that happened to other people. Or had happened back when they had still existed.
She ran through the labyrinth of rising stalks without really seeing them, chasing after a scent. Rather, a lack of scent: a lingering smell of something scrubbed so pure since before its inception that there had never been a single speck of life to it. It had become far less pronounced from when Mokou had first noticed it all those years ago and understood what made her so ready to snap at Kaguya beyond her ancient grudge, but a hint of that non-scent, that alien presence, persisted.
Too many thoughts. Too much pain. Sink, sink, back into that bestial underworld of teeth and claws and bold red blood where you cease being human and so no longer feel the emotion of loneliness.
Good. Now you can chase her.
The soil reeks of rot. The bamboo is stark against the full moon above. Your prey is ahead, unaware of your bloodlust, her hair a shimmering reflection of the night sky. You know her name even as you cannot remember your own. It's engraved within your veins, and you taste it in the blood you draw as you bite your lip.
Hatred. Searing, eternal hatred, hot enough to evaporate bone.
And so you strike.
She senses your presence now, whirling around, the peaceful night sky of her hair turning into whipping waves. Too late, far too late: she can make a moment last for an eternity, but not when you are already on top of her with your hands around her neck.
You bash your skull against hers. Red, metallic, wet, black. Your skull is split, but so is hers.
Take two. You claw, you rend, you punch. She offers little resistance, instinctively raises her hands to shield her face when it's already too late. She's dead. Your fingernails are ravaged with rusty liquid.
Take three. You strangle her. This time she struggles, her eyes bulging, weakening fingers convulsing around your wrists. She smiles. You squeeze harder. She's dead.
You are alone when she dies. You are alone when she is resurrected.
Again. Again. Again. Your knuckles are raw, your lungs breathing in fire instead of air. You will kill yourself with exhaustion: your constitution is in tatters from centuries of living that is not living. Centuries. A blink of an eye.
Moonlight shines into Kaguya's eyes, revealing the stars in their dark depths. She watches you without fear, without judgement. She waits to die.
Mokou's eyes burned.
You don't want to be human. As a human you must remember. As a human you must feel...
Mokou lowered the hand she had raised to plunge into Kaguya's flesh. She fell on top of her, limbs suddenly liquid, the familiar scent of non-scent mingling with blood and salt and the pungent sharpness of acid-ruined earth. The rage which had devoured her escaped with a sigh.
"Have you calmed down now?"
Kaguya's voice was small and distant even though it came from right by Mokou's ear, almost as if she was speaking in her sleep. Her nose was bleeding, the blood trickling down her cheeks. As always, she was staring up at the moon.
Mokou's throat was clogged up with rust. She coughed to dislodge it, briefly wondering why the insides of her mouth tasted like mud. She found a human word, the first she had spoken in five hundred years. "Yes."
"Good."
Mokou saw the rock the moment Kaguya clutched it, saw the strike approaching her temple. She didn't feel the impact as it demolished her skull.
The moon grew larger as dawn approached.
While Kaguya combed her already immaculate hair, Mokou shed her wilderness regalia, one item at a time. A string of dried roots, a mangy fox pelt, jewellery made out of feathers and shiny rocks. All were as remote to Mokou as objects floating in space. Who had strung these baubles together? Whose hands had draped them across her body?
Beneath everything else waere rags, relatively clean only because she had swam across a lake the day before. Unsalvageable, but they would do for now.
A sudden sense of loss made her plunge her hands into what remained of her pockets in search of the red book. Her fingers closed around its spine, then discovered a slim packet, plastered with charms to keep it both fire- and waterproof. Carefully, regretting the grime her fingers transferred onto it, she peeled it open.
A smattering of dried yellow petals scattered into the air and floated to the ground.
Mokou stilled. She barely dared to look at the petals, certain they would explode into dust at the slightest provocation, but she could not look away. Nor could she explain their significance any more than she could name the flower the petals had once flourished from.
Kaguya looked up. The next moment she was crouching next to Mokou, gathering the petals onto her palm. She countered Mokou's stare with a smile. "Do you recall the time I preserved these for you?"
Mokou said nothing, felt as though she was made of wood. How did one exist around other living creatures? All the same, while the animal part of her brain still had its talons in her, just watching Kaguya stow the petals back in their packaging and begin poking through the rest of Mokou's discarded gear with wry amusement made her feel like the world could one day make sense again.
If there was a meaning to life, it likely only applied to lives with more permanent endings. But the lack of purpose was less pressing, less a constant crushing force, with others around likewise bereft of it.
Words. Those still existed. Mokou looked up and found some. "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?"
Kaguya let the ephemera fall. She leaned into Mokou, smiling in a manner that looked as much inward as out. "It only becomes more beautiful with time."
The ensuing silence could have been eternal.
At least, it could have been until Kaguya wrinkled her nose. "You reek. When did you last wash?"
"Yesterday."
"In a pit of mud?"
"Shut up. You and your alien stench have no right to comment on my smell."
"Or what? What do you mean to do about it?"
Mokou placed an arm around Kaguya's shoulder and leaned in to embrace her. "I'll kill you."
"Oh course you will." Kaguya snuggled closer and closed her eyes, her voice a caress. "Just as I will kill you."
It seems impossible, trying to describe Kaguya after all this time. Who is she? Who isn't she? She and I might as well be the same person at this point. Should I even bother? She's no more likely to suddenly vanish than I am. What's the point of including her in this annal of phantoms?
It's a paradox of existence that we can't let our desires be overwritten by those of others, but that we still can't live for ourselves alone. Over the years, I have numbed myself to life for long stretches of time, curling up within myself and sinking to mindless survival, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for centuries. More often than not I've been gone long enough to lose someone close to me. But not her. Whatever happens, no matter how much time has passed and how much I loathe her at any given time, she will be there as I return to consciousness, as obnoxiously beautiful as the first time I laid my eyes upon her.
Here's the thing about Kaguya. We've had more century-long spats than I see burnt blades of grass on this former meadow I sit upon as I write this. More than once, I've spent ten thousand years in a row refusing to see her. Just as often, she has paid me in kind. And for all that, I've spent more time with her than with anyone else in the world. A span of time which is infinitely longer than that which any other human being could even have attempted to spend with their dearest loved ones.
It's a sobering thought. At the same time, there is little enough I can do about it. As it happens, I've already made my peace with it. She and Eirin are my companions for all eternity. That is all there is to it.
I still hate your guts, Kaguya. I likely always will. At the same time, I don't think it matters any longer, living in this world with so few people left to love. So be who you are, Princess. We will always stand by each other's side, one way or another.