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Chapter 16: Tornado

Year 1869

Difficult. That's the one word she could use to describe those steps she was now taking with her tired feet, walking around a long stone wall she already knew well. It was possible for Tsukuyomi to see the now entirely open house up above, since the walls around part of the property weren't really that high. Mami's new house had been built over a series of large posts, like many others around that area. Most residences in the underground city were either built like that or suspended in some other fashion. Few were the ones simply built on the ground like in villages and towns from the surface.

Once she reached the end of the wall, Tsukuyomi stopped walking. Mami was right there, sitting on the ground next to one of the large wooden posts, leaning on it with absolutely nothing in her eyes. The general direction of her gaze was pointing at the large lake nearby, a sprout of underground water flows covered in those unusual fireflies that lived all over their city along with all the translucent vegetation and insects. However, Mami's eyes didn't seem to be really seeing any of that. She had only some old black shirt and pants on, nothing on her dirty looking feet, and most surprisingly, no color anywhere on her hair.

She called her cousin's name once, twice, but there was no answer and it made her chest feel constricted as if there was no air for her to breathe. The shorter girl decided to take a few more steps towards her, and there was still no reaction or even the smallest acknowledgement of her presence. It was when she stopped just a couple of steps away from Mami that she realized her usual hunting knife was on the ground in front of her, in between her sprawled legs.

With a shaky breath, she decided it was best to just sit by her cousin's side and observe the situation first, so that's what she did. It wasn't often that Tsukuyomi felt that helpless, but Mami's situation made her feel exactly like that, maybe even desperately so. She wanted to believe that she could make this better somehow, but the truth was that she absolutely doubted it. It would be impossible to make this better, no matter how many soft words and kind smiles she had in her arsenal.

Mami's father was dead, among many other members of their city. No words in the universe would be able to fix that. There would be no more awkward jokes during dinner at Mami's parents, no more Mami and her father disputing rock paper scissors over who would get to shuffle the deck before another game of cards in which they all bet food instead of gold. Mami's father had missions all the time, so he had never been the most present father in the world, but when he was around, he was the most affable and understanding parent Tsukuyomi had ever seen. Mami's mom was more of the cold type, but her dad was just the opposite. He had been the one who taught all of them, Mami, Tsukuyomi and Susano-o, how to hunt and how to traverse the forest in the surface when they were little. He had been the one to bring home the most interesting objects from his trips and tell all of them amazing stories about everything he had seen. He would be the one dressing up as monsters to run after them and scare them during the festivals when they were younger, and then pretend to be defeated by their small kicks and weak children's magic.

Mami's father was dead, and Tsukuyomi knew that was a point of no return for her cousin. Earlier that day, they had the funeral ceremonies for the sorcerers lost in the battle with the Sun. It started up in the surface, where they had the main ceremony which had been carried out by her father, the interim Grandmaster. After that was finished, they had all of the lost warriors cremated and half of their ashes spread over the forest by their family members. Tsukuyomi had watched Mami and her mother do that with a lump in her throat. She was supposed to stay by her father's side the whole time he conducted the ceremony, both her and her brother, even if what the two of them really wanted was to be there by Mami's side instead. The last part of it was the burial ceremony, which had everyone march back to the underground in order to place the rest of the ashes into the gravestones in the cemetery.