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It’s like an unexpected arrow sizzling next to your ear.
A sudden realisation, a feeling of loss, a confusion from an unknown source. Ei snaps her eyes open to the Plane of Euthymia, and the endlessness of it stares back at her, unable to understand the source of that sudden ache in her chest.
The skies above her swirl, not quite a storm, but not the happy, pink skies of when Yae visits her either. She keeps digging for the reason of this, and finds it deep in the recesses of her mind: Indigo eyes, hair of the same shade, a little figure surrounded by maple leaves in a mimicry of warmth.
Ei’s feet touch the ground, and she calls upon her puppet, occupying her consciousness and re-opening her eyes to the world outside her mind: Her chambers in Tenshukaku. It still takes a few seconds for her to get used to being corporeal again, and she takes a deep breath this body doesn’t need. The ache still reverberates inside her, and if she pays attention, in its echoes she can hear what is left of a long gone memory.
Mother!
She walks out of her chambers, in search of a person she can leave a small message to.
‘Almighty Shogun!’ As if summoned by her thoughts, Kujou Sara is the on duty near her chambers today. Or perhaps just passing by. It doesn’t matter, really.
‘Kujou Sara, right?’ She nods effusively, bowing to her. ‘I would like for you to prepare a boat to Tatarasuna for me, and deliver a message.’
If she is confused by the sudden request, she doesn’t show it. ‘Of course, your excellency. I will get to it immediately.’
‘Tell Yae Miko…’ is Kujou Sara shivering? ‘That I am departing for Tatarasuna, and I’ll be back as soon as I solve a minor issue.’
‘Understood, your excellency.’
She can see the shadow of Tatarasuna in the horizon from Tenshukaku.
When Makoto had died in her arms, Ei thought nothing could be worse than that. Nothing could possibly be worse than watch her sister fade away, breathe her last breaths when she couldn’t do anything about it. When the air itself burned around them and she was left sitting in a destroyed land with nothing to hold onto but herself.
Somedays, she would’ve still taken that day’s pain over the emptiness that followed.
Every step she tried to take, every thought and every decision reminded her of what had been lost. The same land that had flourished under Makoto’s gentle guidance was now falling apart, and what could Ei even do about it? She was breaking down with it, hanging onto a vague sense of duty towards the land she and Makoto held so dear.
Fear followed her wherever she went, gnawing at her mind through every waking moment. She looked at Yae, and she saw another possible loss. She looked at the people of Inazuma, and saw the Kaenri’ahn’s misery. She looked at the mysterious sakura tree that now crowned Narukami, and saw it burning down alongside everything else. She could see these scenarios so clearly they were more akin to hallucinations.
This agony delivered by the Cataclysm was eroding her mind and body, she concluded. To fail to protect Inazuma was one thing. To be eroded to the point of actively destroying the people she and Makoto cherished – that would be a fate worse than a thousand deaths.
Over four hundred years later, she would not remember much of the process of creating the first prototype, merely the feeling of being immersed in it, to the point that Miko would visit her often to remind her to take care of herself, and of Inazuma.
But creating something was soothing: It kept her thoughts from wandering, and her heart from hurting. It forced her mind to stay focused on measurements, temperatures, and techniques, exact things that allowed little space for contemplation. In a way, this was taking care of Inazuma, too: She was creating the prototype for their next archon, the one that would look after the land after she went into her Plane of Euthymia to avoid erosion.
What she does still remember, as vividly as if it had happened yesterday, is when the puppet opened its eyes.
Ei and the puppet stared at each other, trying to understand the other, and, for the smallest second, Ei allowed herself the delusion of seeing her sister in it.
It was the puppet’s very first day in the world, but it soon managed to walk by itself and speak back to her. It’s mind was equiped with the knowledge Ei had considered important, but it still stared at everything in pure awe, as if the whole world had been a illustrated book it once saw.
It was a newborn, a mind unblemished by pain, Ei realised.
When Miko arrived at her forge that day, the puppet whipped its head to her, startling her. ‘What the–’
‘Ya-e-Mi-ko!’ The puppet said, clapping it’s hands like Ei had done a moment before. Ei laughed, feeling exhausted, but with the kind of exhaustion that came after a day of hard, fulfilling work, and her chest was light as a feather.
‘Miko, did you see?’ Miko was staring at her, eyes wide and misty, mouth hanging open. ‘…Miko?’
‘Ah, it’s just– You were laughing.’ Miko smiled, rubbing her eyes and straightening her hakama as if nothing had happened. ‘And that’s, well, it’s finished, right? The project.’
‘Not yet,’ Ei commented, looking at the puppet, whose head was tilted to one side. ‘I still have to run a couple tests to see if it’s rationality is functional. But the hardest part is over.’
‘The-hardest-part,’ the puppet murmured, trying to imitate Ei’s voice, ‘is…over…’
Miko sighed, releasing the tension on her shoulders and twitching her ears. ‘Alright.’
The last test was the one Ei had been dreading the most.
The puppet was functional on almost all levels: It learned information at an fast pace, it moved with the strength and agility it was designed for, and was capable of rational thought. It still had a childish mind, but it had barely been brought into the world a few weeks ago, so Ei didn’t think much of it up until that stormy morning.
She put the puppet into a short sleep, promising it would be over soon, and opened its chest up. Within it, there was a hollow cavity where a human heart would be.
Ei took Makoto’s gnosis and placed it there.
At first, nothing happened, and Ei allowed herself to hope. Then, the puppet started spasming, it’s serene expression turning into a wince. This was fine, it was still within her predictions that some turbulence would happen before the gnosis and the artificial body acclimatised to each other. It was a matter of adjusting-
The puppet’s mouth opened, letting out a pitiful cry, and then another. Cries for help, just like the ones she had heard in Kaenri’ah. The puppet’s sobs became the shrieks of people as they mutated into monstrosities, or their bodies were crushed under debris or devoured by lava.
She looked up and saw the red sky, looked down and saw Makoto again.
She tore the gnosis out of Makoto – the puppet? – and threw it away, and the cries stopped. The red sky, however, vanished slowly, cracked open by every thunder falling on Narukami.
Ei sat down, feeling a cold sweat fall down her neck, and felt the urge to vomit, even if she hadn’t eaten nearly anything in days, focused on taking this project to it’s final stage.
The puppet was still on the table. Its arm hung over the edge, and she saw its finger twitching, and the tears that fell down its cheeks. It woke up on its own as Ei’s heart still thrashed inside her ribcage. ‘Mother?’ It’s voice was a murmur, almost unintelligible over the blood thumping in her ears. ‘I-I saw terrible things, I don’t know why.’
Ei pursed her lips. Did it see Makoto’s memories? Ei’s own? She found that she didn’t want to know. The tears kept falling from the puppet’s eyes, their deep blue staring at Ei seeking comfort. But she barely had comfort left for herself.
‘It was a dream,’ she replied, but maybe it was more for herself than for the puppet. ‘A bad dream.’
A nightmare.
‘Oh.’ The puppet sat on the table, processing the information given. It’s tears stopped, but it collected a few with it’s thumbs, staring at them with the same wonder as everything else.
In the end, it smiled with the conviction only a child could have.
‘Okay.’
‘You could just kill him, you know? It would be the safest option.’
Miko said that with such nonchalance, but she couldn’t understand. Ei looked at the puppet as it ran after an insect in the balcony, its face full of wonder for the creature, and it came back to her: the hours painstakingly molding its body and face, staring at her own creation, wondering if this was the right path. She felt a small bit of pride in her chest when she looked at the puppet, a pride that went beyond confidence in her craftsmanship and that she couldn’t identify well.
Even as the puppet did something as silly as chasing a bug, it made something stir within her. So the thought of killing it was…
‘No. I will not.’
‘Why?’ Yae groaned, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘It’s just a puppet. You can create another, or, even better, abandon this idea of yours.’
‘I will not be killing it, Miko.’ Ei sighed. How could she put it into words for her? ‘That is out of the question.’
‘But–’ She started, but gave up halfway, shaking her head. She rubbed her temple, as if afflicted by a massive headache named after the archon she served.
‘Mother!’ The puppet called from the balcony, running inside the room with something between its hands. ‘Mother!’
‘What is it?’
‘I caught this creature! It jumps so far, mother, further than I ever could!’
It sat on seiza next to her, and opened its hands to show her a crushed grasshopper. The puppet observed the insect, expecting it to hop out of its hands. ‘Uh? It was jumping just before I caught it.’
Ei pursed her lips, but Miko huffed and replied in her place. ‘I think you’ve crushed it. You might have even killed it.’
‘Killed…?’ The puppet stared at Miko, and then turned its head to Ei, its eyes full of questions and realisations. ‘So it won’t jump again?’
Ei shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
The puppet looked back at the grasshopper in its hands, and tears started pooling on the corners of its eyes. Ei’s hands curled into fists on her lap – there it was again, the tears, the suffering, the regret. All the things she shouldn’t had let the puppet feel in the first place.
Miko sighed. ‘It’s just a grasshopper, you know. There are many in the world.’
But that did nothing to stop the tears. The puppet hiccuped, and its eyes overflowed with them, its hands shaking as it held the dead insect. ‘I– I didn’t want to hurt it. Now it can’t ever be un-hurt.’ It sniffled. ‘I’m sorry.’
Now it can never be un-hurt.
I’m sorry.
The image of Chiyo’s crazied stare crossed her mind – Ei had cut off her arm in such a clean movement of her wrist, and Chiyo’s shriek had been piercing enough to crack the heavens open.
‘You should try burying it,’ Miko said. The puppet looked up from the carcass in its hands. ‘That way, it goes back to the cycle, and reappears as a new grasshopper later.’
Ei saw the puppet’s eyes widen with hope. ‘Will I see it again?’
Miko just shrugged, but that didn’t deter the puppet in the slightest. It stood up, holding the insect close to its chest, and ran off. There was a strange silence between them, growing more overbearing as the steps of the puppet on the wood became more faded by the distance.
‘I have a question.’ Miko murmured, a little too focused on the patterns of the tea table. ‘Why mother?’
Why, indeed. Looking at the door the puppet had left through, Ei tried to recall the process of creating its mind and gathering the knowledge it would have within. Where had it found the concept of mother, and why had it applied the word to her, almost as soon as it had become aware?
The answer, after a few seconds, became simple. ‘Well, I am its mother, am I not?’
She knew Miko doubted her, or, more like, this whole plan of hers. Ei also knew she worried, but she didn’t want to be doubted when all her worst fears had been proven true. ‘I just think another term might be… Easier?’
‘I’m not disposing of it.’
Ei stood up and walked to the balcony. Miko’s hakama ruffled, and her steps followed her outside, where the world stood quietly. Not even a breeze dared to blow as she looked down to the patch of grass where the puppet was burying its fingers into the soil.
She had carved those fingers. Every inch of that puppet had been consciously, painstakingly carved by her hands in a labour of despair and exhaustion. Every color the puppet saw, every texture it felt, and every song it hummed had been a result of her choice to create it.
Was it strange in any way that the puppet, in its naiveté, had concluded she was its mother?
She watched the puppet take the dead grasshopper in both hands and stare at it. One last hope that the insect would live was snuffed out after a few beats. It then placed the crushed grasshopper in the hole, and covered it, as Miko had instructed.
And it looked up – looked at her – and smiled, mouthing that word again.
‘Mother!’
Ei looked at it, but didn’t find the words to answer. It still had the will to turn around and smile at her after the loss of a grasshopper, but what of the rest of its existence? What of the losses bound to the role of archon? Even after Sasayuri, Chiyo, and Kitsune Saiguu were gone, she had rushed to Kaenri’ah fueled by the knowledge that, with Makoto beside her, she could find a meaning to everything and anything.
And now... Now there was nothing.
‘Ei?’
And of what little remained, she couldn’t afford to lose it.
‘Ei.’
‘I won’t dispose of it,’ she said, adverting her eyes from Miko. ‘But I won’t condemn it to suffering in my stead, either.’
Just by hearing her voice, she knew Miko’s ears were perking up. ‘So you’ll–’
‘I’ll create another one.’ One immune to the pain of change and the erosion inherent to a heart. ‘It should be simpler, this time.’
The chosen spot was Shakkei pavillion, located in Tatarasuna.
As the puppet had barely seen anything of the world, its eyes stayed wide and gleaming the whole time, captivated by the smallest things, such as the size of Tenshukaku from afar, or the unagi that popped out of the sand. In the eyes of that nameless puppet that had never left the electro archon’s abode, the world was still full of potential, even with the pain of losing that small grasshopper behind it.
It was tempting to keep it by her side, try to see through its eyes, as for a few seconds, she felt like the agony within her had been soothed again, and that they could exist together. But then she remembered its tears, the softness that would undoubtedly be sharpened by this mere fact of existing in the world, and remembered that it was her fault to begin with, for bringing the puppet into it.
She took its hand, and guided it to the pavillion. It was soft to the touch like a newborn’s, and Ei realised this might have been the first time she had touched the puppet since the gnosis incident.
The inside of the pavillion was just as she remembered it: The ever red maple trees, the endless hallways, the sun in perpetual setting. She thought it was a warm place to rest, and hoped the puppet would find it so too.
‘Mother?’ It called for her, still clinging to her hand. ‘What is this place?’
‘This is the place where you will stay.’
‘Oh.’ The puppet looked around. Its other hand was clutching at the golden feather hanging from its neck. ‘It’s pretty.’
Back in Tenshukaku, she had tried to plan what to say. She didn’t want to lie to the puppet, but didn’t want to hurt it either. The whole purpose of putting it to sleep was to keep it from being hurt by the world like she- like everyone was.
‘Sit here.’
The puppet obeyed, though it seemed reluctant to let go of her hand, and sat in perfect seiza under one of the bigger maple trees. Its eyes stared up at Ei, wide and blue and deep like the sea that sheltered Inazuma itself, and she kneeled down in front of it.
She draped the purple veil over its head.
‘I’m going back to Tenshukaku.’
‘When will you come back?’
‘I am not coming back.’
The puppet’s eyes widened and it leaned forward, breaking the perfect seiza position. ‘But I don’t know how to go back home.’
Home. Had Tenshukaku been home to this puppet? Had she been home to it, like Makoto had been to her? None of those things mattered now, though. It would no doubt find a far gentler home in its dreams for the rest of time.
‘It’s alright. You don’t need to go back-’
‘But I want to!’ The puppet’s voice rose, and it clung to Ei’s arms. ‘Mother, I want to go back. I don’t want to be alone here!’
‘You’ll understand,’ when you no longer need to think. When you no longer have to dwell on what hurts.
‘But–’ The puppet’s eyes were filled with tears, the same as when it held Makoto’s gnosis, and the sight of them falling on the puppet’s wincing face reignited Ei’s resolve.
She put her finger over the symbol on the back of the puppet’s neck, and it’s body started growing limp, its weight falling more and more on Ei, until it’s eyes were closed shut.
Ei took in a deep breath. She had tried to be honest, to say goodbye, but that only brought more suffering. If she had lied to the puppet, it would’ve gone to sleep without tears, and would’ve never know it was lied to. Maybe she would rather lie, or not say anything at all, if that could somehow avoid further suffering.
Seconds passed, and then minutes, and the sun over Shakkei pavillion kept setting, forever stuck between day and night. Just as the puppet would now be stuck between life and death.
Ei took it in her arms, accomodating its body between the maple trees. It didn’t breathe, it didn’t even twitch, the only sign that it had once been alive were the remains of tears on its face.
Ei wiped them, until only a slumbering doll remained.
Now, she opens the doors to the pavillion once again.
It’s sunset, as it always in this domain. The wood creaks as she walks on it. The maples are red, but nothing rests under them, not even an abandoned doll or its veil.
Ei keeps looking, exploring the pavillion, imagining the puppet rushing through these hallways, the purple veil swaying with it’s movements. She never gave it a name, so now there is nothing she can call for, even if she wanted to.
When it woke up, was it completely alone? Did it look for Ei? Did it hate her for hurting her? Did it try to go back to Narukami? Did it decide to go far, far away, as far from home as it could? Did it make it alive?
Ei wants to know, but is also aware it is not something she’s entitled to, from the day she left the puppet here. Her steps take her back to the maple tree where she once left it to slumber forever, and much like the singular, monolithical eternity she once strived for, it was not meant to last.
Ei smiles. That’s something that Miko would say. That things are meant to change by the mere fact of existing. That Ei herself is changing, with every second that passes, and that this is how it's meant to be.
Ei picks up a maple leaf. If she were here, Miko would also tell her to not dwell on the past so much, even if it’s in her nature to reminisce. The fact that she came all the way here on a whim is enough proof. But she should go back home, Miko must be worried, even if she doesn't like to show it. Back to the home that was, for a brief speck in time, the nameless puppet’s too.
She watches the maple leaf fly away, and hopes it found a new, gentler place to call home.