YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 3

[a1c0bb]

For this bonus round, we're looking for prompts inspired by plant/flower symbolism and the language(s) of flowers!

Here are some resources on flower meanings:
Script Florist
Farmer's Almanac
Wikipedia: Hanakotoba
Wikipedia: Plant Symbolism

This round will end on July 1st.

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.

You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:

PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

for your fill post title, please use the following format:

FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 150 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:
First 4 fills by any member of your team: 100 points each
Fills 5-10: 50 points each
Fills 11-20: 40 points each
Fills 21-50: 30 points each
Fills 51+: 25 points each

Comments

PROMPT: TEAM ACE ATTORNEY

[ghostvines]

Cherry blossom: kind, gentle, transience of life (hanakotoba) / "There are dead bodies buried under the cherry trees!"

(A very famous and very short story by Motojirō Kajii. Essentially a mental breakdown formatted in words; read with caution.)

FILL: Team Rosemary

[cosmicabsurdism]

pairing: June<>Terezi

FILL: Team Touhou

[514ko]

Ship: Junko x Hecatia Lapislazuli
Words: 708
TW: Monologues describing acts of rather violent revenge.

--


Junko could not sleep.

She spent that night sleeping not a wink—simply staring up at the wooden coffers of her hermitage, her girlfriend splayed ungracefully beside her in the futon, waiting for the stroke of midnight.

Silent as a wandering spirit in the night, Junko slipped out the back sliders in her bedclothes, her stockings making nary a sound on the weathered veranda. She followed it around to the side of her home, dismounting it upon a path of flagstone cobbles inset into gravel. She followed the path as it left the grounds, through a grove of trees, and up towards a hill adjacent to the grounds of her Senkai home.

Upon which stood a very old, very big cherry tree in full, fluttery bloom.

“How long hath it been? Since I last walked ‘neath these branches?” she said, stepping up to it and rubbing her hand over the bark. “…ten years? No, no, a hundred—a thousand, perhaps. O, I have forgotten—what sort of mother am I?” Junko whispered, as her gaze fell from the branches to the root. “You must think me feckless still; I am sorry. I stand here not on the day you were slain—I stand here on the day on which I brought you into this miserable world. And someday, that too I shall forget.”

The very air around her was a blanket of cherry blossom—warm despite the Spring windchill of Senkai. The smell of it was nostalgic, that subtle fragrance never having changed along with her memory. “Blooms everlasting—the miracle of Senkai! I know thy body—mine own flesh and blood has nourished this tree, so why do I feel no pride? Why do I feel no joy…?”

She fell to her knees, then.

“My memory grows hazy. My body grows frail, my mind grows weak. I can no longer remember thy face, my love! Only thy body lain in mine arms can I remember, cold and leaden, bathed in that sweet stillness of death… As you left me, I left you ‘neath this cherry tree. O, my child, my sweet child! None in the whole of that wretched court deserved anything, anything, from me, but for you—the fairest, the gentlest, the wisest among them, taken from me in your sleep with a knife through your heart—”

Junko felt her head tightening, felt mana alighting upon invisible veins—she opened her eyes to the flicker of her own foxtail-fire, tamped and controlled for now but fit to burst into a raging inferno.

“Who did this to you,” she whispered first, before she bared her teeth and her demure voice distorted suddenly to a growl, “who did this to you?

“I will find him. I will find him. Grind his bones to dust. Gouge his eyes and slit his ears. May his traitorous, lying tongue be ripped from his head and thrown to the wolves, may his body be shorn of its limbs and the rest drowned in a lake of eternal fire—this is my prayer, my rage, purified and made manifest, I have killed him but once yet once is not enough—Chang’e! O Chang’e, his beloved wife—you are immortal! So rich in your eternal life that you can spare so very many deaths! Chang’e, you can pay for the sins of your beloved, you can pay, you can pay, you can pay—"

And then, ever so gently, a hand was laid upon her shoulder.

Junko opened her eyes, and her pure fury broke—her breath stilled but her blinks were frantic, and she saw now that she was crying.

Beside her, another knelt down—the goddess of Hell herself. Hecatia, still in her bedclothes, barely even touching Junko but for that lone hand.

“…why are you here?” Junko whispered, her voice rasping and wavering, “why are you with me?”

“Because,” Hecatia replied, her hand slipping down Junko’s shoulder, then her arm, and into her hand, “You ain’t alone anymore.”

Neither of them said a word further. After a few moments, Hecatia produced two sticks of incense—the two of them lit either stick with their off-hands, and sat that night holding hands and watching curls of smoke rise heavenward into the branches.