Chapter Text
A Foreword.
The story of how mamono came to be is a tale told thousands of times over - how a shrewd succubus and a brave human hero fell in love, defying the bloody order of nature to create a world bereft of the bloodshed between monstrosity and humankind. The two bestowed all monsterkind with their blessing, granting them the biologies and propensities of succubi, aiming to bridge the two species by diminishing monsterkind’s enmity towards humans, and giving humankind reason to… approach their fairer counterparts.
The words “monsterkind” and “humankind” here refer to the twin progenitors of what is now “humanity” - a term that has since encompassed mamono and humans both. But not always.
The generation that saw the ascension of monsterkind to mamono-hood was a chaotic one. What Mamono Lord Lilith and her husband hoped would work itself out laissez-faire sprouted new issues of its own - encounters between mamono and humans still often worked out poorly. Simply trading out one primal instinct for another, the two still fought each other for survival.
At each and every stage of the transformation playing out between mamono and humankind, intrepid scholars sought to document what they saw, in hopes that their knowledge would reach others that needed it, even if they never lived to pass their notes down in person. The lordly couple’s daughter, Lillenne, recognised these pioneering scholars, and gathered those who believed in the Mamono Lord’s dream for the realm, seeking their counsel on how to best utilise her magical and social influence to create a better future for humans and mamono both.
Among these scholars were humans and mamono both - chiefly among them, my mother, Setsugekka, a hakutaku, just like myself - long-lived guardians of knowledge who took to their monsterisation naturally, that they might better relate to the realm and the beings that roamed it.
It has been centuries since then. Generations of both humans and mamono have passed, transforming and understanding each other through waves of social and cultural change brought in motion by Lilienne and her scholars’ tireless study of the world.
Now that the waters of change have finally stilled, after decades of studying others, how they live, how they love… I finally saw my own reflection upon its calm surface.
All the affairs of this world were known to me save my own. What did I want? What did my future hold?
I never thought to wonder about how I might live, how I might love, outside of the same duties my ancestors have carried on for longer than humankind’s existence itself.
As it turns out, strawberry ice-cream.
Proper, strawberry ice-cream, made with holstaurean milk and fruit from the Southwestern Continent picked in July.
After two-hundred-and-twenty-five winters, I finally entertained the thought of wedding a human husband. Someone who shared in my passion for the rich, yet fresh dessert, who saw me beyond my post - not as a woman who knew and had lived the past several times his lifespan over, but simply as a lovely lady, curious to see what his and her futures held for them.
Many a change in this realm I would like to have said I had a part in, blowing gentle winds of change that eventually turned into great gusts rushing across the world on their own.
Blowing my husband does, also, eventually, turn into a bowl of homemade strawberry ice-cream.
- A wandering scholar of monsters.
Hakutaku-no-Shimotsuki
Professor Emeritus, Lescatian Institute of Anthropology