| abstract | - Reimu is a newborn yukkuri. She dropped off her mother’s stalk a mere 3 days ago. Reimu loves to be with her family. She would practice saying “Take it easy!” with her parents as they fed her good food, but she and her little sisters could only ever get “tage id eajy!”. Whenever she or her sisters found anything interesting, they would always find the others, saying “Yu! I found mwister ball! Wet’s tage id eajy with mwister ball!”. To them, even a discarded ball of paper or leaves blowing in the wind were the most amazing things they had ever seen – never mind the dozens of other “most amazing things” they had seen as little as a few hours ago. With her playthings, sisters, and parents that always could provide good food, Reimu and her sisters led a very easy life. However, one day, tragedy struck Reimu’s family. Little Reimu was playing by herself while her sisters were eating a few yards away. She had already eaten her fill of insect larvae, and so was playing with dried leaves on the ground; rolling around them and enjoying the soft crackling they made. While rolling around, she saw a butterfly go over her head. “Yu! Yuyu! Mwister Budderfly! Wait for Reimyu!” Butterflies were her favorite food. Not only are they delicious, but they’re loads of fun to play with until caught! Reimu began to chase the butterfly, away from her family. Butterflies aren’t very fast, but this one was flying too high to reach, so she had to keep following it and wait for it to land. The butterfly wouldn’t descend, no matter how many times Reimu told it “Pwease land, Mwister Budderfly! I wanna ead you!”. It didn’t take long for Reimu to follow it outside of her parents view, and they were preoccupied feeding their other children and didn’t notice Reimu running off. Reimu herself was too preoccupied with the butterfly to notice she had run off from her parents, or even that she had run off to a part of the wilderness her parents always avoided, or to notice that it had flown over a cliff edge. Carelessly, Reimu hopped after the butterfly, and suddenly plummeted. The cliff wasn’t a straight drop, but was far too steep to support her. Reimu slid down the surface of the cliff, but quickly stopped, as she had been caught by the thicket growing on the cliff. Skidding down the cliff hurt and had put several scrapes on her body. The branches of the thicket hurt. For the first time in her life, Reimu knew pain. She screamed. “Yuuuuuuuu... Id hurds! Mwoomie! Yuuuu.... I wanna tage ij easy! Hwelp! Yuuu....”. Reimu’s first taste of pain caused her to flail about, slowly causing her to fall through the thicket and land again on a lower branch, hurting her more. Being so young, she could not understand that her screaming was only worsening her pain, or the danger she would be in if she completely fell through. She continued to scream and flail until she finally fell through, and continued to slide down the cliff. This only continued for a few seconds, as the cliff edge eventually stopped being slanted and went vertical. Reimu then fell to the ground, screaming. Her parents never saw Reimu run off. But they knew she was gone and didn’t return. A koyukkuri could not survive in the wilderness without the knowledge to gather food and avoid predators. There was only one conclusion: their precious little Reimu was dead. The entire family wept. However, this was not the end of little Reimu. The cliff had scraped her, but resulted in only minor cuts. The thicket only hurt. Her fall was miraculously cushioned by landing on extremely thick vegetation and leaves dropped by the many overhead trees. She was in physical pain, but the mental pain was worse. Even the tiny, sheltered yukkuri was able to understand her situation. She fell down and can’t jump that high again. She has been separated from her family, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see them again. Reimu could only “Yuuu....” pitifully. Depressed, in pain, and unable to take it easy, Reimu just lay still for several hours, until she eventually got hungry. Being motivated to movement by her hunger, Reimu took her first actual look around her as she started to hop. She was astonished. As far as she could see; lush, thick greens. Plants were even growing up the cliff she had fallen from. There was food everywhere. Excited, she began to eat part of the plants close to her; a large fern and some thick grasses that had cushioned her fall. “This shit’s good! So good!” Delicious! Absolutely delicious! While the greens that her parents had brought back always had little flavor and were only there to fill them up, these were simply amazing! As good as the candy her mother had managed to find the other day, and there was so much of this! Reimu couldn’t help but completely stuff herself on this amazing food. After eating so much that it became very difficult to move, she cried out “Hwappinech!”, hopped underneath the fern she had been eating, and went to sleep early. Even if her parents weren’t here, she could still take it easy. She was truly in a paradise for yukkuri. When Reimu woke the next day, she immediately began eating. With this much good food, it’d be wasteful not to eat all she could. After concluding her meal with a “Hwappinech!", she decided to try to find her parents so she could share this paradise with them. However, she didn’t know how to get back. She knew she fell too far to hop back up and couldn’t think of any way to go up besides hopping. All she think of was to follow the cliff she fell down, and hope she could find some passageway up. So she started following the cliff to the left and cried out “Mwommie!”, in case her mother could hear her. The area she was in was very large, but everywhere she went was filled with food, so she could always take a quick break to eat. It took Reimu all day just to reach the end; another cliff facing down extending as far as she could see. There was certainly no way to get back from this end. Depressed, Reimu went to sleep. The next day was filled with more searching. Reimu went back to where she landed so she could cover the remaining half the cliff she fell down. The area wasn’t so long on this end; Reimu discovered that the cliff bent shortly after where she had fallen, creating another cliff wall that was impassable. She was surrounded on at least 3 sides by cliffs, and the only remaining side just led away from her family. She cried herself to sleep. Reimu awoke hungry, and immediately started eating. The excellent food helped to keep her mind off her missing family. She did miss her family, but the food here was so much better then what she was used to. Perhaps this place wasn’t too bad. Reimu did her best to convince herself of that, and tried to put her family out of her mind. So Reimu continued to eat. She tried to play by herself, but it just wasn’t as fun without her sisters around. Even if Reimu wasn’t playing with her sisters, just knowing that they were close by made everything better. So Reimu mostly just ate. And ate. And ate. And grew. This continued for about a week of doing almost nothing but eating and sleeping. The food didn’t taste as good as it used to, and Reimu found herself trying to play more often as the days passed. Reimu could no longer lie to herself. She was lonely. She was terribly lonely. She wanted to play with her sisters. She wanted to talk to her parents. Her overeating had caused her to grow to almost the size of her parents in only a week. She wasn’t sure if she could even still play with her sisters, who would be tiny compared to her now. She wanted to talk to something. Anything. Even one of the humans her mother had warned her about. She hadn’t seen anything larger then insects since she arrived in this place. There was nobody to talk to. Nobody to play with. What good was a land filled with food if there was nobody to share it with? Reimu suddenly stopped eating and started running in a random direction, crying out while hopping. “Yu! Hewo? Anybwody?! Pwease, talk Reimyu! Mwommie! wanna eajy! Say! Hwelp! Hwelp!”. She didn’t stop for hours, well after becoming hungry and tired. No matter how lonely she was, she still had to eat. The food tasted bad, but she still ate. She resumed crying and running until she was too tired and continue, and slept. She woke and continued screaming. She never found anyone. She was the only creature that could talk. But even this changed. A little over a week after she started searching desperately, she tried crying out, as usual... but couldn’t. She could only muster out a pathetic “Yu”, with barely any force behind it. She couldn’t understand why, but she couldn’t speak anymore. She could only barely “Yu”... but even that was enough. Any yukkuri could Yu and recognize the Yu of another, so she could still reach another yukkuri’s ears, if only she could find one! There has to be someone here! Reimu just has to keep searching! So she searched. And she searched. She Yued as much as she could, but never found anyone. There were simply no other animals in this vast land, only plants and insects. Even after two full weeks of searching frantically, stopping to eat and sleep as little as possible, she found nothing. And so, after another long day of searching 4 weeks after arriving in this hell, the no longer little Reimu went to sleep. She never woke again. End.
|
