It made her afraid. And she did not want to be afraid to go to that beautiful twilit place, with its trees that she desperately desired to see bloom. With its long grasses and its beautiful cemetery and its quiet, wonderful peace.
She did not want to be afraid of her world. So she refused to be.
She pulled out her phone, took a deep breath, and transported herself there.
She was, she found, not where she was used to being. This time, her planet had gently pulled her inside--perhaps inside that manor that she and Encke had seen on her last visit. She bit the inside of her cheek, thoughtfully, and then--
A wisp of memory. A figure in white and blue, kimono sleeves trailing, white hair like incense smoke flowing behind her, darting down the hallway. Izanami inhaled, and ran after her, heart pounding. she'd seen so few glimpses of her previous self, this one felt like a shock and a blessing all at once, and she was not going to let it escape her.
"Wait," she called, as if the memory could hear her. The figure--herself, the last Izanami--didn't react, but she did turn, looked left, looked right, and darted into a room off the hallway.
In the distance, Izanami could hear the sounds of battle.
"Oh," she said, softly.
She pushed the door open.
Inside was a bedroom, and laid out on the bed was a corpse.
All bones, now, but clearly dressed in a kimono, and it wasn't hard to guess whose it was, or what had happened here. The room was in terrible disarray, and there was old blood on the floor, the walls, under the body left on the bed.
"Ah," she said, softly, and she took a step forward, and sat next to the body of the girl that had once had her starseed.
There was so little to guess from what was left. So little she could determine. But she could carefully unwrap the kimono and gather all the bones into the cloth,and then wrap it into a carry-pouch that she took out of the room. She was the Senshi of Cremation, was she not? And there was a tomb for the remains of the previous Izanamis. It felt right, then, to let memory and instict guide her out into the courtyard of the manor that must have belonged to her past self. Maybe had belonged to every Izanami. To carefully set the bundle aside and gather up sticks and broken branches and anything else she could find, and stack it until she had a decently sized pyre, and place the bundle on top.
The next step seemed obvious.
"Cremation Pyre!"
Her magic leapt from her fingers, in a burst that was so powerful it staggered her, and it felt like all of her spells had been wrenched from her all at once. Her knees wobbled, and she sat down, but only for a moment. The pyre would take time to burn through, and there was more she needed. It was difficult, staggering around and hoping that she was finding the right things, but eventually she found a beautiful lidded vase that would serve as an urn, and an ancient broom she could use to sweep up the ashes and put them inside it.
Once she had them, she returned to the courtyard, and in the ethereal ever-twilight of her world, she watched the pyre she had made burn. It was long, and slow, and hot, and she was glad that here on Izanami, it felt as if the temperature was much less miserably hot than it was on Earth. Her fuku was also light enough that it didn't stick or cling.
It took a very, very long time, but finally, the pyre was reduced to ash with the power of her magic, and she was able to collect the ashes and tuck them into the urn.
There was one last step.
She walked out a side door of the manor, to a long set of steps that took her down the hill and tot he cemetery below. Wove through the graves until she found the proper entrance to the crypts below, and stepped into it. Moved through the underground vaults that contained the urns of her people until she found what she was sure was the right one.
Here was the underground portion of the grave she had found on her first visit. And there was a space, among all the urns, ready and waiting.
She slid the last Izanami's urn into place, and left the crypt.
A breeze caught her hair and her outfit as she stepped back onto the planet's surface, and she smiled. Yes, this felt...right. Something inside her felt more aligned, more correct. This was something she had needed to do, and now she had done it, and she was better for it.
But even if it wasn't necessary, it still felt like she needed to do one last thing.
She walked to the grave, again, and knelt in front of it.
"Next time," she promised, "I'll bring proper incense. I sohuld have thought to this time, I'm sorry." She ran her fingers over the grave marker, tracing the alien script that made up the names on it. Previous Izanamis--more than she might have thought. It settled something warm in her chest.
"I will do my best to live up to what you would all want to be," she said, softly.
The wind picked up again.
This time, the breeze carried a stream of petals with it. A soft gasp passed her lips, and she stood, turning--and there, at the top of the hill, she could see that the cherry blossom tree she and Encke had found had burst into bloom.
And, as she stared in awe, a single butterfly, snow white except for two blue dots at the lower tips of its wings, alit on the grave in front of her.
[WC: 1,088 words]
