Alternative title: A Drabble about Being Drunk and Human (Despite not Being One)
It was New Year's Eve that night. The weather was still somewhat cold, but all snow melted by the time this day came. It was February after all.
In the distance high in the sky, booms and crackles sounded before dissipating into the air. Chatter struck into the night, excited giggles, drunk yells and a cacophony of instruments from in front of a certain shrine.
Further away, on a hill reverberated some more talks and laughs. A lone door floated above a hill near the party, but far enough for most sounds to be exhausted by the hillside echoes.
The sounds made were only of fireworks, and of course Satono and Mai. The deva of stars, hindrances, and only she knows what else comfortably sat in her wheelchair behind them and the open door with a cup in her lap.
That night she felt oddly sentimental. She was thinking about the past 1000 or so new year's eves she witnessed. Despite contemplating them, they were so numerous, they were maybe even boring to her at this point. Unlike her disciples.
They were sitting on the grassy hill beyond the door oooh-ing and aaah-ing at every shot up and swiftly exploding rocket while having some snacks and a few drinks. Drinks that looked and tasted like beverage but weren't alcoholic at all, that is. Just for the sake of making them feel included.
Every joke is new for a newborn as they say. Those big children... They must have seen the first minutes of each upcoming year at least a thousand times as well, not that that matters with their memories being unreliable and mostly fractured.
Gensokyo's landscape didn't change all that much even in a millenium. This hill in particular felt familiar to her. As if it was the same hill they watched the fireworks from way back when.
The girls, just like now, being astounded by the dancing lights and her sitting with a blanket in her lap, her back against an old, slightly rotten tree, smoking away from a distance.
They were poor and hungry, but on those nights it didn't matter to either of them, if it meant they would see such a beautiful show, or in Okina's case having the air filled with laughter instead of the drones and creaks of an empty night, fireworks or not.
Deep in thought she gazed at the crackling pseudo-danmaku up in the sky. Birds of paradise with dazzling colors, but little meat on their bones.
They didn't hold her attention for long either, her thoughts were elsewhere. She felt she wanted to say something. As if words suddenly meant anything to her. As if language was in any way capable of reflecting even a shred of the intricate, multifaceted fabric of reality instead of being the clumsy tools that even at best only reflects the way the user sees the cosmos with their limited sight into just how vast it is.
She wanted to believe that at the time. It must have been the sake speaking. A human invention it is, that sake. Just like she was, or anyone of most people she knew. Perhaps because humans aren't capable of creating anything objective, including language, or their objects of worship, they also keep leaving the shards of their very beings in their creations. Perhaps even the embodiment of the unknown, strange and unpleasant had something familiar, ordinary and delightful about her. Something human.
And being drunk is just as human as thinking she could do anything beyond actions to say… something.
Thank you is not enough.
You are great disciples is too sublime. Doesn't reflect what she wants to express at all.
I love you is… inappropriate. Vulgar even. To her ears at least. She knows if anyone told that to her she would pretend to be gagging. Perhaps she would laugh or ignore it completely. Depending on who says it.
She let out a frustrated sigh not even knowing why she wanted to conjure any words at all. Of course she knew why but she still didn't understand why.
These girls, her precious arms and legs… she knew them like the back of her hand, and they knew her just as much. She just felt like that fact warrants… something.
She looked up when she finally noticed that the chatter stopped. Satono and Mai were staring at her like alarmed cats. Eyes wide, their bodies facing her, ready to jump at her word any time.
Okina stared back for a second. Now would be her time to say that certain something. Instead, her wheelchair moves forward, leaving the doorframe behind.
It stopped to the left of Mai. She would have helped her master get out of it if she wasn't so fast about it, but she was. In no time she was sitting with them in the cool February night.
Satono quickly jumped up with her drink in one hand, and her snacks in the other (and her mouth) to take a place on Okina's left side.
Their silence continued after. However among the bites being taken and the occasional light yawns, this time there was a different kind of quiet. Like lazy, noiseless summer afternoons, or bedrooms during the day.
It felt like they knew. Maybe they did not remember that New Year's Eve, or hiding in a barrel in her cart as castaways, or watching her do shadow puppetry with nothing but her bare hands before bedtime, but they knew.
So when she glanced at either of them with both her heart and belly feeling light and warm, and the dancers both glanced back at her, Satono with a childish, toothy grin and Mai with a simple smile with one of her canines peeking out from beneath her lips, the whole universe felt like… something.
