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Nice.
That was all she said about them.
The cherry blossoms; they were nice.
Sunflowers somehow tilting AWAY from the sun? Nice.
The lotuses arranged perfectly into the shape of the iris of an ancient and forgotten long legged marsh bird? Nice.
Roses. Roses of every color that could be conceived of, even those not discernible with average eyes beyond the domain of light and measured frequency, arranged delicately and shaved down to the atoms to spell 'My Worthy Mistress', the most elegant kanji, the most excellent and meticulous trimming.
Nice.
Just... Nice.
Youmu had gone to her garden. She always went to her garden.
She had looked to her phantom side for comfort.
Myon, it had said. It always just said Myon.
'In this garden,' thought Youmu 'there are uncountable orchestras of blooming things. There is every named flower and every unnamed one. Every plant in one of that library girl's infernal tomes, and a trace of ever spirit of the forest, wolf paws and bear claws and sickening, howling things, that somehow know not to stay here long than a single kalpa.'
She always considered this. Youmu closed her eyes, tilted her chin all the way skywards, and prayed.
The things unnable to be cut by her Roukanken are close to none, the sky said silently.
She considered this a while too.
If there was no mountain in gensokyo large enough that surmounting its summit would make her lady happy, then what was she, Youmu, doing here?
Well, she was sort of friends with the library girl, and the maid, and she didn't mind the fae if they were mostly sober and free of belligerent agendas.
Was that enough?
She knew every time her thoughts drifted away something would cut into--
"Youmu? Are you in here? There are many leaves, and I've forgotten my slippers."
Always, Youmu's tongue would squiggle and scrunch up in her mouth. Just a voice could cut much neater or sharper than any swordblade she'd yet encountered. It felt like a hand on her shoulder, though Yuyuko's hands had long since lost any sensation of real touch, only remaining as cold, ash-silk gloves that chilled anything they contacted all the way past the marrow.
Youmu kneeled, made her mudra of faith, then stood with rehearsed precision and a half-phantom body that made no qualms about reflexes or weight loads or hours in a day. Even when her Mistress's calls would cease for days at a time, there was always gardening to do.
"Ah," Yuyuko said. "There you are." She giggled with a sound like every cherry tree in the world suddenly being stripped bare in the frost.
Youmu closed her eyes and sighed. Mistress in a playful mood was more stressful than any other. Rouzanken could cut its owner's lying tongue out if need be. Always, the words that were supposed to be free and easy, flowing like water from the font of her spirit, somehow found themselves caught on a reed.
"Yes," Youmu said. "Here I am."
She felt a breath of wind, tickling the long flames of the tapered candles. Every hair on her body stood up on end and her breath held itself.
Youmu felt the cold, soft snow touch of her Lady's hands, pressed over already closed eyes.
"Please... Mistress, I haven't the--"
"Shhh shhh shhh. Don't speak."
"Lady Yuyuko--"
"Shh. Just let it be."
Youmu felt the hands again, the ghostly pair of appendages tracing a small, ephemeral line down the skin of her back, somehow fully irreverent to the workmanlike gardening outfit meant to seal the world away. Youmu stood on end, yanked upwards somehow by the very core of her body; that was a good trick.
If she had wanted, maybe her voice could have come out. But then the ghostly glove-like touch had somehow crept even lower, settling into the small of Youmu's back. Resting there. Being kept in time with more rustling wind, more whistling bamboo thickets and imperceptibly falling leaves and petals.
"See?" Yuyuko asked, then giggled, fully admitting any type of answer was unnecessary. "This is better sometimes. No words. Hmm?"
Nice. That word had bitten Youmu's soul just before, like a microscopic cut only a single lepton in size, moving through her body over and over again and carving a karmic pathway made out of razor blades. If she clenched around the feeling it just bled harder, and did nothing to stem the pain.
"This is..." Youmu began, then let the rest of the thought slip away. Maybe it was the ancient memory of a sprint breeze that made her shiver. Maybe it was the song of a dove or a swallow. Or a partridge.
"Nice," Yuyuko said.
Youmu opened her eyes. Her Mistress was always standing near when she was needed.
"Yes," Youmu said through teeth gritted only against her clinging now. "You're right. It is... Nice."
Yuyuko smiled warmly, with enough spring in the blush of her cheeks to warm an entire village. She couldn't help another giggle before raising her hand and blowing a gentle, phantom kiss through the air.
It landed invisibly on Youmu's cheek, and almost stung, so warm against the winter that had been brewing inside.
"Oh," Youmu said.
She didn't feel hurt.
She didn't feel like she needed saving.
She just felt...
Hands, again. Breath, again. Yuyuko always smelled faintly of blossoms, but now the fragrance was overpowering, and Youmu bathed in it, letting her eyelids fall shut and the waking fall to dream and the dream back into a nameless warm peaceful light. She let herself fall backwards and felt her conversation with gravity interrupted by that same ghostly presence that had caressed her skin. By the same warm light she always returned to.
Myon, said myon.
"Yes," Youmu said, having to gasp the word out. Her chest tightening, her outfit dissolved into sightless fire and water, her whole body sinking into the feeling of Right Now.
"I never needed to forgive you," Yuyuko said, her lips forming every word from the aether of the dreamscape.
"Yes," Youmu said again, choking through her layers of disbelief. "I know that, Mistress."
"I never meant for any bad karma to cling to your shoulders," Yuyuko said.
"Yes. I know." Shivers. Black light that somehow became silver. Lotuses.
"Then do you forgive Me?"
Youmu nodded in the soundless ringing paradise. Yes, she thought. Yes, she felt. Yes.
"Yes," she finally said, almost screamed out of her chest and shrunken down into a tiny little cry, the sort a mouse might make if it was caught in a corner the size of a universe. She felt impossibly, infinitely small, and next to something impossibly, infinitely... Her.
And still, it didn't feel like enough.
"Always there is a hidden Thing," Youmu said. Whatever was actually her body was shivering now, the cold always creeping back in even through the fragrance of summer blossoming
"No," Yuyuko said simply. "But there is a You. There is a Me."
In words, description was impossible. In feeling, there was Yuyuko. Her ghostly form pressed up behind, the sly and subtle curves of her makeshift body coupling in a way that suggested magnets or waveforms or bent light. Youmu could feel her self slipping away as the caress enveloped everything else. Skin that should have been cold was warm. Hands that should have left ice trails in their wake were instead cups of small water poured from a nearby hot springs.
Yuyuko was just there. Pressing into Youmu from behind. The buried architecture of bones beneath spirit flesh, and those fallen away in a bright light, and those fallen away in real touch, in real warmth. In the tiny shadow of Yuyuko's otherwise ephemeral frame, gone blood to flesh and ghost and maybe back again some day.
Youmu felt cursed. She wasn't allowing herself anything to happen. That was fear, always.
But what could not be cut by her Roukanken?
It felt right to draw the sword. To kneel, though she could neither see nor feel anything that was not paradise creeping into her senses. Clouds. Mist. Falling stars. A crown of cherry blossoms, swept away by a winter wind.
Yuyuko was all warm now. Her arms were wrapped around Youmu's waist from behind, her modest chest felt like two bolts of lightning on Youmu's bare, sensitive skin.
Her garments had never fit properly. It was better to be like the river; naked and alone.
"But even the river has its stubborn rocks, no~?" Lady Yuyuko smiled from somewhere in the blinding refrain, and it cut the cold breeze apart like the air split by a vajra. Her voice was musical bells. Her touch was sweet relief.
"Lady Yuyuko--" Youmu began, then stopped, looking for a phrase in the frost and drift of sutras that now howled in the garden.
Hands again. Yuyuko's hands, holding hers. Holding a bright little lamp in shelter from infinite rain drops. Translating the cold back into heat again.
A mouth on her neck, not biting, but leaving gentle trails mapped along a snow driven path. A mouth on her neck making impossibly small whispers of impossibly minute kanji, parables in the voice of silence and lips lingering just long enough to make Youmu ache, to cause her hips to sway front to back and all of the snow inside her to melt.
"You know you are enough," Yuyuko whispered in her ear, flowering and perfume laden and lavender oil anointing Youmu from her head down. That oil was from a warm place, so it was warm. Lady Yuyuko may have been dead, but felt more alive than life itself.
A fern blooms as it unfurls.
Youmu felt herself coming apart.
She felt Lady Yuyuko's body against every part of her now, no clothing made could separate them. She felt longing for a dying wish, the presence of that instant and ephemeral samsara, the extinguishing of ten thousand and one candles. She felt her own flame flicker, feasting on the air, the wood, the waiting heat. When she breathed out, somehow assembled again, her breath fogged against the garden's snowy backdrop.
"May I..." Youmu started, then failed to ask, as always.
Yuyuko was in front now. The pink cotton candy of her hair, the simple silent or muted lilac of her garments. The pale perfect shade of her lips, her haunting, sympathetic eyes.
"Yes," Yuyuko said, grinning like a cup of over-sugared tea. "You may. You always may."
She did.
There was an all consuming relief. An extinguishing. A soft white light.
Youmu tried to cry out again, but her voice had abandoned her, as had every sense but bliss. This, in fact, seemed to mean one thing. That Moment, long ago... Had she dreamed it? Or was it right now?
She held on to it for as long as she could. Her toes curled with the effort and strain of clinging. Her lungs seized, her chest heaved and gasped out for more, though they had already taken everything. Breathing came easy, but stopping breathing did not.
It felt...
Nice.
And then the white light became sleep.
Then waking sleep.
Then dreams.
And then, finally, lady Yuyuko's face, smiling sweet and serene as a hot pot of tea crested the parabola of its boiling.
When she properly awoke, it was on a bed of flowers.
Nice ones.