This was pretty nice, The presentation was very interesting. I don't totally get the ending though. Is it part of Sakuya's powers to suppress the rain? Or to make time pass faster, maybe? The only thing I know about her ability is that normally it just stops time. How/why is it sometimes portrayed that Sakuya can stop or repel the rain?

We normally only ever see her stop time, but secondary materials do mention her being able to speed it up, so simply fast-forwarding to a point where the rain has stopped should be possible. Though, I don't think think an obvious answer like that is the intended case for such an artsy story...

This is totally out of the topics but.. Hylarn you registered 'coz you wanted to reply someone? If not then nevermind :)
Just a though, i would love to play a "Game" - if you register 'coz you wanted to answer someone, he/she becomes your Lover or whatever you want.. Master? Teacher? :D
.. But on a second thought it's really stupid. Sorry ^^'

last edited at May 6, 2013 4:39AM

Came across this because the title caught my eye, and wow, it just hits all the right notes? The misty, painterly panels blending inkily into each other, ribbons and fingernails cusped along the sail of a breath, words echoing weathers down the mansion's quiet halls, vampiric marble softening at the touch of a maid's quicksilver, cradling two hearts, one timeless, another eternal, to thread scarlet through foggy gloom... it's sublime. Now here's a story that captures just a glimpse of Gensokyo's otherworldly beauty, of the strangeness of its nature, of the scale of its mystery... the smoky, shaded interiors of the mansion ebbing and flowing to crest at last into that panorama of an azure lake and the gothic castle still shade-slouched adjacent, topped by lithe arms of leaves that descend as a curtain over the scene, pulling you in and yet also reminding you, for better or for worse, that here lies a place of fantasy, never to be reached except in dreams, is such a haunting, lingering image, beautiful enough to make you weep for a loss you can't quite recall. I stared at it for ten minutes straight without ever noticing the time.

Regarding the narrative(s), I also adore how this strange, mirage-like tale captures an aspect of Touhou that I've rarely seen addressed in fanworks- it's not merely a place of illusions and memories, but also of stories, of figures quite literally lent swells and sediments by language, coursing riverrun down histories etched and whispered, tributes giving way to tributaries, meanders to esoterica. The youkai don't merely react to these tales, but swim within them, breathe oddness in to sigh folklore, enact existence itself on starlit stages curtained by flushes of dawn. It stands to unreason, then, that they'd be great lovers of stories too, and couch within their cavernous memories epics, elegies, mythologies untold. Stories to them are anchors and winds, the very bones that fort their dewy flesh, the very blood that sings for raptures more, founding their legends in mountains of words and yet letting them flow from snowy peaks, interpreted endlessly in recollection's rebirth- not a circle, but a helix, much like the caduceus that twines Remilia's dress.

Sakuya breathes life into tragedies by wording them to color, gearing her pocketwatch of blood to make obscure tales beat fresh again, and Remilia drains that life into herself by imposing on them an interpretation, fangs descending upon a yarn of infinite implications to dye them in her signature themes- fate, authority, inheritance and law. The irony of monsters extolling divinity is not lost on Sakuya, but she lets her mistress have her way, sharing her tales as one might pass back and forth a steaming mug to ward off the gloom, for Remilia's blasphemies come from a time before faith, from her eternity in a capricious youth that sees all gods and devils for what they are- words and images, pretty and sparkling, woven into endless formations to pass innumerable nights, septettes for a dead princess. And so eloquence gives way to petulance as Remilia demands another trick, as if every tale before was not a trick as well, and so Sakuya obliges by reaching into her robes again, adroit as a street magician minting mysteries from the unseen, and feeds Remilia once more with tender words, born of the heart and thus redder than any old gore. The maid makes the mistress, the teller the tale, the clock the time, the doer the deed, and so Sakuya's promise, in a land of fantasies, is no different from a miracle wrought upon the world, a cosmos she spins with embraces and words to let her dreamy little bat curl maudlin hours away.