>>31162 Heads it is.
___
The moon shines callously over the night, uncaring of your woes. Your sandals slapping loudly on the paving as you run with all your might, filling the night with their rhythmic cracks.
Not slowing down in the slightest you leap down the steps, with a clatter you land and charge onwards. Silhouetted by a tree in the distance you see the shape of a girl standing on a tree stump, a silhouette of Youmu.
Joy bursts forth inside you, somehow you knew she would be here. In the shade of that ancient cherry tree, by that gnarled old stump where the two of you whiled away a year together playing chess. Half remembered names and faces of your life tickle your brain, within you the memories of life stir and you recall a time when you felt this all before. Love.
Straining every ounce of your will you draw closer to her where she stands on the stump watching over the garden, her back turned to you.
"Youmu!"
She doesn't turn.
"Youmu, I can't even begin to apologize to you." Her silence damns you further, if she would turn and shout at you. Stab you with her gaze and lash you with her tongue, that would be better than this crushing silence.
"Youmu... I don't know what to say. I can't begin to describe how sorry I am, all this time and I could've even see. See what was in front of me....." You swallow hard, a lump is rising in your throat making it hard to speak.
"Death made me forget, forget what this was. But I know now. You've helped me Youmu, you've let me remember ..... love."
Why isn't Myon with her?
(
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bgcrg1q7iqA play this now)
You take a step closer, then another and then another. You can't see Myon anywhere around here, you know that Myon is her other half and can't travel far from her body.
"Y-youmu?"
The callous light of the moon shines off of the cord extending from her neck to the tree branch.
This, this is too cruel. This can't be true! Yet even as you reach for her pale hand your own passes right through, in life Youmu was one of the few people you could touch due to her ghost half. Desperately you snatch at her, trying to clutch at her clothes desperate to make contact with her. To feel her warmth, to know that this is a lie. A horrible lie.
Wailing you dash yourself over and over into her body, every time you pass straight through without so much as making her rock. Her blue eyes, dead like those of a doll. A trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth.
For hours you scream your loss on that tree stump, as if your ghostly tears could bring her back to you. The cries resonated through out Gensokyo, that night every living thing felt the icy chill of loss listening to that desperate keening.
Days have no meaning in this timeless place. Cursed forever to to be dead, yet undying in thought and memory. For all eternity would you face this loss, death could offer you no comfort. Not even Yuyuko's power over death could offer you respite despite your frenzied begging.
So you hold onto one hope, one impossible hope. Every day you return to that tree stump in the garden of the dead, to await her reincarnation.
For the rest of eternity you swear to maintain your lonely vigil until she's back beside you. Even if the stars burned out in the sky, even if all the oceans in the world dried up and even if the moon was worn away to dust.
If it takes for ever, you'll wait for her.
