[X] "So since we know that that weird perception blocking thing effects not just noticing magic but other strange stuff, think there is anything else getting blocked?"
I'm interested to see if prompting this can help unblock some stuff for Marisa. The people being oddly strange was one, so who knows how much more weirdness is getting covered up in this town.
"I've got two bottles of sake in the fridge," Rei eyes the keyring containing three keys with the Honda logo before shrugging and slipping it into a pocket. "But I can pick up some more if you want."
"You were at the graveyard a few days ago." The words are softer, more vulnerable than the stilted politeness with which she'd taken the order. "Cleaning one of the older memorials."
"The Miko used to tend to the grounds, but she hasn't been around for…" she trails off, her face screwed up in concentration. Eventually, she shrugs almost helplessly, "A while."
That brings up a good point. Rei's mother passed away recently enough that she gave us plane tickets to take us to Japan and back, so sometime within the past year, but her grave was located near the oldest part of the graveyard. And all the residents who knew Miya act as if she was a distant memory.
"Well, the firs' keys for goin' fast." Marisa holds up one almost indistinguishable key from the others.
She holds up a second almost identical key. "The second's for goin' even faster."
"The last key's 'cause the trunk was busted when I got my car an' I had to get a replacement from the junkyard." She holds up the final key. "Never could get the lock to reset right an' eventually said fuck it an' got a separate key cut."
"How can you tell them apart?" Rei stares at the three keys with probably more attention than this absurd conversation warrants but can't tell which one's which.
"If ya' know ya' know." The blonde replies as though the answer were self-evident.
Looking at the absolute certainty on her friend's face, Rei couldn't quite find an argument against that statement. "Fair enough."
Thanks. I rarely remember what I had for dinner yesterday, but when I closed my eyes to think about that scene I could practically see the old school pizza hut we would go for that pizza for reading books thing they had going (still have?).
I'd guess people tend to think that kind of American kitsch is uncool or whatever, but I do miss the character it gave to places. Plus, cool's overrated. I'd rather something be fun or different or weird.
[X] "So since we know that that weird perception blocking thing effects not just noticing magic but other strange stuff, think there is anything else getting blocked?"
I don't think we need to worry too much about time for the scholarship thing.
Not only because I don't think that the QM would introduce something that utterly messed with the pacing like that, but rather…
It's clear that something weird is up with time in Gensokyo. Miya's specific death date, for example. Plenty of evidence suggests that she hasn't been around for a while, but other stuff indicates it can't have been more than a year.
When the QM described time as being liminal, I think that was far more literal than I took from it. So I don't think we need to worry overly much of missing literally everything.
Rei calls out as she pushes the front door open with her foot. "Hope you like pepperoni-"
"Sup," Marisa leans back from defacing a sheet with squiggles of ink—a sheet that definitely hadn't been in her "toolbox."
"Oh, this?" her friend notices the raised eyebrow and grins sheepishly. "I needed somethin' to write the spell on an' it was either this or the floor."
"Well, thanks for not making a mess of the floor, I guess."
Rei carefully sets the pizza boxes on the floor and cracks open a corner of the twelve-pack. She plucks out a white can with a bright yellow star and tosses it to the blonde.
"Quit ruining my sheets and have a drink."
"It'll wash out, trust me." The response is punctuated by the chcksh of the beer can opening, but the blonde does get up from where she'd been working and moves over to flip open the topmost pizza box. "Eww… veggie pizza. I thought ya' had taste."
Rei cracks open her own can and takes a gulp. "It's important to eat healthy."
"I took a peek in yer fridge—did Nitori make it? The thing looks crazy—an' there ain't a thing healthy in there." Despite her protestations of disgust, Marisa grabs a slice of veggie pizza and shoves damn-near half of it in her mouth in one bite.
"Duh, that's why I got the pizza?" She shakes her head and slides the second box free so she can grab a slice of pepperoni. There'd be plenty of time for vegetables later. "Grab the pizzas, and we can eat out back. The view's a lot better."
Not waiting for more than an agreeing nod from the blonde—one interrupted by yet another massive bite—Rei grabs the beer and heads further into the shrine. Since she was a host now—stop laughing, auntie—she'd need pillows, a blanket or two, her Thermo-Cooler… and maybe some plates or something.
It takes a few minutes to find everything and a few more minutes to organize everything so she doesn't have to make a second trip. By the time she makes her way out to the back porch, arms stuffed with bedding and beer, and Nitori's invention rolling in front of her, propelled by the occasional toe-poke, Marisa is more than halfway through the veggie pizza.
"Should I have gotten a third pizza?" Rei untangles a blanket from the pile in her hands and lets it drape over the blonde's head.
"Magic's hard work," her friend's voice is muffled as she tries to free herself from the tangle of blankets. "'Specially somethin' as finicky as this."
"I'll take your word for it." She sets down a stack of pillows in the middle of the porch and then grabs three for herself.
"That's 'cause I'm the expert," She can't see the grin because the blonde is still fighting against the blanket covering her, but she could hear it.
"An expert that spent the afternoon littering in my shrine." Rei pauses her mockery to grab a plate and two slices of pizza—one pepperoni and one veggie—just in case her friend turns out to be a garbage disposal in disguise.
Marisa manages to free herself enough for her pouting head to poke free. "We can't all have fancy, thousand-year-old gold and diamond relics. Some of us have to make do with what's available."
"Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me," she says, cracking open a second beer and draining half of it in one gulp.
"An' here I was, 'bout to explain some real life magic rituals to ya' an' all I get is jokes." The blonde's pout is ruined by the twitching of her lips in a poorly suppressed grin.
"And pizza and beer," Rei says, reaching into the twelve-pack for another can and rolling it across the porch. "And a great view."
Marisa snatches up the can before it can roll off the steps and leans back on her free hand. "It is a hell of a view."
Almost as if by agreement, both girls fall into silence, seemingly perfectly content to enjoy the peacefulness, food, and companionship as the day slowly wends to its end. Eventually, though, the pizza is gone, reduced to a handful of crusts and residual toppings, and the sun has finished its descent into the sea.
"Since we've got some time," Rei lifts herself from her pillow chair just enough to burp softly before flopping back onto her pillow-chair. "You want to tell me what all you were doing while I got dinner?"
"Sure," Marisa rolls herself slowly upright and tucks a pair of pillows under her back before sinking into a reclining pose. "Ya' talkin' 'bout my tools. The wrench an' the windmill an' the rest, right?"
"Yeah." she nods, the buzz of alcohol swimming pleasantly in her brain. "The trash you were scattering throughout my shrine."
"I'll fergive the in'orance," her friend slurs through that with an exaggerated roll of the eyes. "Each one of 'em is a… whatcha call 'em… a simil- no, an analog-, no an effigy… yeah, that's it. Each on of 'em is a rep'resentative of one of the five elements."
"Wait. I know this. I wrote a book report on about all that in high school." Rei ticks each one off with an unsteady flick of her fingers. "It's wood, water, fire, metal, and earth."
"'Zactly." Marisa nods happily. "Each of those pieces represents an element. An' if ya' set 'em up right, ya' get the wuxing… an' if yer real good, ya' can use that as the foundation of a spell circle."
She supposed that made some sense, but if all you needed was a bit of the elements, then… "why not just spill some water and get some dirt from outside?"
"It's 'cause magic's 'bout belief—yours, mine, everyone's—rather than reality." The blonde witch pushes herself upright, and Rei rises to match her. "Water's water, but there's nothin' more to it 'an that. It's fine for some things, but ya' can't make an effigy of somethin' out of itself. On the other hand, a seashell makes ya' think 'bout the ocean an' all that."
"I guess that makes sense for the windmill, but the wrench… isn't that just metal?" That… didn't seem like quite the right question to ask. In fact, it felt like there was this whole piece missing, but Rei couldn't even begin to say what.
"It's an oil filter wrench, an' a bit rusty on top of that. That's two differen' kinds of metal in a tool that works on metal." Marisa pauses thoughtfully and then shrugs. "Could prolly use a cobalt drill bit an' get the same thing, but I'd still need ta work on my car, ya' know."
"Not at all."
At that point, the discussion fades, and once again, silence begins to unspool between the two girls as they sit on the porch and watch the moon slowly rise in the night sky.
The moon is much higher in the sky when Rei decides it's time to begin sobering the two of them up. "Do you drink tea?"
Her only response is a lazy nod—really more of a shifting of a blonde head against the pillow it's currently resting on—but it's enough. With a soft groan, Rei pushes herself to her feet and wanders back into the kitchen for a kettle, a pair of teacups, and some matcha.
Minutes later, water is happily boiling in the kettle, and a generous serving of matcha is waiting in the bottom of each cup. The kettle whistles, and she removes it from the heat, breathing in and out twenty times before carefully pouring the water into the cups—she'd gotten a lot better these last couple of weeks at judging the right temperature of water for tea—before gently beginning to pour.
With a drunken flourish, she places Marisa's cup to one side of the blonde's pillow fortress before settling back down onto her pillow-recliner with her own cup. Perfect.
Now for something a touch more tricky…
"You know," Rei muses as she stares into the bright green liquid. "I've got a lot more space here than I need… you've seen the shrine."
Marisa slowly rolls herself up to a seated position. Golden eyes lit only by the pale moonlight stare at her, some indecipherable emotion swirling within them. "Yeah?"
"I was thinking." She tries her best not to fidget as the blonde's stare seems to be trying to bore a hole through her. "I could set up a spare bedroom in case anyone ever wants to crash at the shrine."
After a moment, her friend nods, the intensity draining from her eyes. "Sure. Makes sense."
"My mother died a few weeks ago…" Rei sets aside her teacup, drained of everything except the dregs, and looks up toward the moon floating above her. "At least that's what her letter said. And yet when people mention Gensokyo's former Miko, they can't seem to remember how long she's been gone."
Fabric rustles to her side, but Rei doesn't turn to look, neither does she turn when she hears Marisa's voice. "Most folks ya' talk to don' even notice that things don' always make sense. I think I might have ended up like 'em too, 'cept I was a bit lucky. My foster family came to pick me up from a group home on my fifteenth birthday—an ain't that a weird present—but it gave me a memory I couldn't misplace… couldn't jus' forget when it happened."
"I'm nineteen now. I only know that for sure 'cause I checked the date on a newspaper when I was in Tokyo a while back." There's a moment of silence and a soft sigh before her friend continues. "There are times though, like when the sakura bloom or the daylight seems to last forever, where time seems to stand still… an' it feels like ya' can't remember a time when it was somethin' different."
"Gensokyo fucks with ya'. Makes ya' forget things ya' maybe should remember." Marisa concludes in a voice that sounds somewhere between amused and rueful.
"So why stay?" Even as she asks the question, Rei knows the answer—or at least she knows her answer. It's because, after only a few weeks, Gensokyo was starting to feel like home.
"'Cause of the magic." The response is instantaneous. "An' maybe some other things… but if a little time weirdness is the price to I gotta pay for the rest… then I'll pay it gladly."
It takes Rei an age to put the feeling bubbling up in her throat into words, but when she does, they practically spill out of her. "If I wanted to unravel this mystery and find out what actually happened to my mother, would you help?"
"Course I will… yer stuck with me now." This time, Rei turns just enough to see the lazy, confident grin that had taken over her friend's face.
"Thanks." She turns away from the blonde and whispers the word into the sky above her.
Like the blaring claxon of an alarm, Marisa sits up and turns to her. "It's a few minutes ta' midnight. Wanna go see what's up with that Honden of yers?"
Rei jolts softly as the idle drifting of her thoughts crash back down into her head. "Time to prove you're worth the pizza and beer, huh?"
"Heh," the blonde bounces to her feet, pausing momentarily to stretch her hands overhead and then readjust her witch's hat. "Never any doubt o' that."
Rei lazily climbs to her feet and falls in behind her friend as they wander back to the specific bit of hallway right outside the Honden.
"I'm gonna need ya' ta' stand right here." The blonde witch points to an unremarkable spot on the floor, and she moves over to it. "Ok. Now, I don' know 'zactly how this's gonna unfold, but once I cast the spell, somethin's gonna happen."
"That's not exactly… reassuring," Rei raises an eyebrow as Marisa unfolds the sheet she'd been painting squiggles on earlier.
"Ya' may see somethin'," the blonde straightens an edge of the sheet and places a geode face up on one corner. "Or ya' may have a dream, or there may be visions. I don' really know. I ain't done this with someone else before."
"Couldn't find an ougi board, huh?" she smirks as the blonde pauses just long enough to scowl up at her.
"Tch." She places a butter knife opposite the geode and steps away from the sheet. "As if I'd want somethin' as lazy as all that. This'll reach straight into the past to an' let ya' see it firs' hand."
"I suppose that's an upgrade." She shifts from side to side, stopping at a golden-eyed stare.
"If it ain't, I'll eat my hat." The blonde scoffs.
"That's a lot of lace..." Rei taps a lip with her finger. "If this doesn't work out, I'll go buy some teriyaki or something."
"Laugh now while ya' can." Her friend smirks. "I'll take yer amazement in the form o' alcohol."
A solemness, a focus falls across Marisa's face, and Rei stills, barely daring to breathe as the blonde begins to speak.
"In the moonlight, on this fragrant night,
These words of prayer, illuminate thy path,"
Rei breathes in as the air grows thick and hot around her.
"Towards stone unturned, seeking the past,
In shadow reveal, the truth long lost,"
The words hammer into her head, crashing against her with the force of a blacksmith's hammer, but her body refuses to move.
"In blushing rain, in elegant trance,
Soul untethered, soar beyond thy bounds."
Light forms behind her eyes, and Rei reaches forward, not with her hands but with a tendril unspooling from within her. Yearning, desperate, she stretches forward…
And falls into oblivion…
Academics 1 [Passed] Rei knows that eastern traditions use five elements rather than four.
??? [Failed] ???
Aplomb 1 [Failed] ???
??? [Failed] ???
The ritual worked, and Rei now dreams. The only question is of what…
[] A gathering of resplendent beings engaged in a fiery debate
[] A spell to cleave the world in twain tilts upon its axis
[] A rain of fire and brimstone drains blood from the land
[AN]
Marisa will now be an occasional visitor to Rei's interstitial segments.
[x] A spell to cleave the world in twain tilts upon its axis
Now I'm not sure about what exactly any of this means, or what these are in relation to within Touhou canon, so instead I'll be picking this because it seems to have the highest chance of allowing Rei to awaken to her own magic, being related to a spell and all that. That seems very important to get sooner rather then later. Hopefully choosing this doesn't cause a calamity to appear!
] ''So... How interested would you be in being the Gensokyo's Miko second wife ?''
