Ship: Seiga Kaku x Yoshika Miyako Words: 876 TW: Possibly unsettling descriptions of a reanimated zombie.
--
Back beyond the temple of Myouren, in the corner of a lovely little cemetery, there lays a small pond. It is hardly thigh deep ordinarily, and a willow overhangs its Southern corner. Its shoreline is regular, its shape mild—its basin a gentle bowl-slope down to its deepest central part, ringed by sodden grasses and lilies and invisible frogs.
It, perhaps, has not always been here—or perhaps it has, a vestige of a bygone age. Certainly, it’d been here for as long as Seiga had been guarding the mausoleum, and some time before; yet the gray-weathered gravestones always seemed a tad too close to the water, close enough that, in the rainy season, the feet of their charge were presumably underwater, and their frontages were slick with condensate.
Perhaps that was why Yoshika took a liking to it.
Seiga didn’t know the real reason—Yoshika’s brain was a tad too rotten to really give much of a reason other than she liked looking at the water, liked watching the frogs, liked stamping around in the mud (she thought Seiga didn’t know, bless her heart). But perhaps, under that dopey smile and unexpressed in those little faux-feral growls she did, there was some sort of cognition going on—some cascading of relays, some crossing of wires, flicking of switches. Perhaps some vague recollection went on in there too.
It was work, keeping a jiangshi animate—even the ones, like Yoshika, abnormally motivated to cling to their new unlife. Joint-loosening massages were in order every few days; the basic anti-decomposition wards only really lasted a week. And of course, Yoshika would always forget to do her calisthenics, so Seiga would oft find her collapsed over a gravestone with her legs or torso seized (perhaps the poor thing passed originally of lockjaw). Scented oil was always in demand too, if she could find it in the Human Village (an anti-decomposition spell can only do so much to combat odor, and the poor wretches do still have a sense of smell after all).
But all the maintenance was hardly a problem. Yoshika performed her (few) duties with aplomb, and she was always notably cheery whenever Seiga came to visit her—a rarity amongst the turned corpses Seiga had known. Besides, it was even somewhat therapeutic, taking care of someone like that. If she were in a frank mood, Seiga would even admit that the little zombie had grown on her—she’d outlived her usefulness somewhat, yet Seiga still kept her around, aimlessly protecting a locale that didn’t need protecting… The mental health of a servant is important, after all.
Thus, when through various groans and growls and occasionally speech Yoshika actually showed a preference for something, Seiga was happy to oblige. Thus she began to perform her weekly maintenance routine at the water’s edge—Yoshika would waddle over to the Myouren pond, plop down against a gravestone (which doubled nicely as a seat), and look out over the water. Ordinarily, Yoshika’s gaze would be drawn all about the lake—the shivering willow, the plops of frogs, the warble of birds perched upon the surrounding stones—even for a zombie, sitting still for a few hours was somewhat of a bore, so at least the pond-view was somewhat pretty.
But one day—it was a day that still sticks out in Seiga’s mind, if just for the shock of it having happened at all—they were partway through the process when Yoshika spoke out of the blue.
“…cen-terrrrrr…” Yoshika groaned, barely opening her mouth as her right arm twitched under Seiga’s fingers, Yoshika’s ancient lungs forcing the consonant out in a wheeze, “Seigaaaa... Lookkkk..."
Seiga’s eyebrows knitted, and in a moment, she realized that Yoshika was trying to *point* at something in the water—a lotus flower. Delicate, pure white, in full Spring bloom, floating impossibly alone amidst the murk. Seiga, paused whilst delicately kneading oil into one of Yoshika’s joints, while Yoshika herself still affixed those willow-gray eyes to the lotus—
“Is that it, my dear?” Seiga said, loosening her grip on Yoshika’s arm so she was free to flail as much as her heart desired, “Did you want to show me it?”
Yoshika sat up, then, bolt-upright—her movement was jerky, unnatural, baring her teeth and opening her jaw up and closing it again soundlessly, her arms flailing up and down and all about, mouth like a fish trying to gulp down gill-fulls of an atmosphere alien to its very nature—
And then, through lips stiffened by rot and age—Yoshika spoke:
The weather… clears… And breezes comb… The hair of the young willow…
Only silence followed her words—a call with no response. Yoshika sat back in a corpse-like slack then, as if her body had lost its spirit momentarily. Her jaw hung open, eyes newly sightless—and then she blinked, and then a stiff, slow smile spread across her face, and she burst into a wheezing, grunting laugh.
And from her perch atop the gravestone, Seiga leaned over and down and pulled Yoshika into an embrace, so that each little wheezy flutter rang through her own head too, and she whispered back:
The ice melts… And wavelets wash… O’ver the whiskers of the old bog moss.
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FILL: Team Touhou
Date: 2024-07-01 03:09 am (UTC)Words: 876
TW: Possibly unsettling descriptions of a reanimated zombie.
--
Back beyond the temple of Myouren, in the corner of a lovely little cemetery, there lays a small pond. It is hardly thigh deep ordinarily, and a willow overhangs its Southern corner. Its shoreline is regular, its shape mild—its basin a gentle bowl-slope down to its deepest central part, ringed by sodden grasses and lilies and invisible frogs.
It, perhaps, has not always been here—or perhaps it has, a vestige of a bygone age. Certainly, it’d been here for as long as Seiga had been guarding the mausoleum, and some time before; yet the gray-weathered gravestones always seemed a tad too close to the water, close enough that, in the rainy season, the feet of their charge were presumably underwater, and their frontages were slick with condensate.
Perhaps that was why Yoshika took a liking to it.
Seiga didn’t know the real reason—Yoshika’s brain was a tad too rotten to really give much of a reason other than she liked looking at the water, liked watching the frogs, liked stamping around in the mud (she thought Seiga didn’t know, bless her heart). But perhaps, under that dopey smile and unexpressed in those little faux-feral growls she did, there was some sort of cognition going on—some cascading of relays, some crossing of wires, flicking of switches. Perhaps some vague recollection went on in there too.
It was work, keeping a jiangshi animate—even the ones, like Yoshika, abnormally motivated to cling to their new unlife. Joint-loosening massages were in order every few days; the basic anti-decomposition wards only really lasted a week. And of course, Yoshika would always forget to do her calisthenics, so Seiga would oft find her collapsed over a gravestone with her legs or torso seized (perhaps the poor thing passed originally of lockjaw). Scented oil was always in demand too, if she could find it in the Human Village (an anti-decomposition spell can only do so much to combat odor, and the poor wretches do still have a sense of smell after all).
But all the maintenance was hardly a problem. Yoshika performed her (few) duties with aplomb, and she was always notably cheery whenever Seiga came to visit her—a rarity amongst the turned corpses Seiga had known. Besides, it was even somewhat therapeutic, taking care of someone like that. If she were in a frank mood, Seiga would even admit that the little zombie had grown on her—she’d outlived her usefulness somewhat, yet Seiga still kept her around, aimlessly protecting a locale that didn’t need protecting… The mental health of a servant is important, after all.
Thus, when through various groans and growls and occasionally speech Yoshika actually showed a preference for something, Seiga was happy to oblige. Thus she began to perform her weekly maintenance routine at the water’s edge—Yoshika would waddle over to the Myouren pond, plop down against a gravestone (which doubled nicely as a seat), and look out over the water. Ordinarily, Yoshika’s gaze would be drawn all about the lake—the shivering willow, the plops of frogs, the warble of birds perched upon the surrounding stones—even for a zombie, sitting still for a few hours was somewhat of a bore, so at least the pond-view was somewhat pretty.
But one day—it was a day that still sticks out in Seiga’s mind, if just for the shock of it having happened at all—they were partway through the process when Yoshika spoke out of the blue.
“…cen-terrrrrr…” Yoshika groaned, barely opening her mouth as her right arm twitched under Seiga’s fingers, Yoshika’s ancient lungs forcing the consonant out in a wheeze, “Seigaaaa... Lookkkk..."
Seiga’s eyebrows knitted, and in a moment, she realized that Yoshika was trying to *point* at something in the water—a lotus flower. Delicate, pure white, in full Spring bloom, floating impossibly alone amidst the murk. Seiga, paused whilst delicately kneading oil into one of Yoshika’s joints, while Yoshika herself still affixed those willow-gray eyes to the lotus—
“Is that it, my dear?” Seiga said, loosening her grip on Yoshika’s arm so she was free to flail as much as her heart desired, “Did you want to show me it?”
Yoshika sat up, then, bolt-upright—her movement was jerky, unnatural, baring her teeth and opening her jaw up and closing it again soundlessly, her arms flailing up and down and all about, mouth like a fish trying to gulp down gill-fulls of an atmosphere alien to its very nature—
And then, through lips stiffened by rot and age—Yoshika spoke:
The weather… clears…
And breezes comb…
The hair of the young willow…
Only silence followed her words—a call with no response. Yoshika sat back in a corpse-like slack then, as if her body had lost its spirit momentarily. Her jaw hung open, eyes newly sightless—and then she blinked, and then a stiff, slow smile spread across her face, and she burst into a wheezing, grunting laugh.
And from her perch atop the gravestone, Seiga leaned over and down and pulled Yoshika into an embrace, so that each little wheezy flutter rang through her own head too, and she whispered back:
The ice melts…
And wavelets wash…
O’ver the whiskers of the old bog moss.