The day that I found her, it was a little bit over ten years ago. I remember it as if it was yesterday, and that is quite something, you know?
I am a youkai, a creature that often gets lost in the sea of eternity through which it is afloat. A lot of things are inevitably forgotten by me as the sands of time flow; in this light, for me to remember a meeting down to its smallest details... that is quite the miracle.
It rained heavily at that time. Holding my trusty umbrella, I managed to remain relatively dry as I walked on through a small beaten path, weaving in between trees and shrubbery. Supposedly, I was taking a stroll in the forest paralleling the Great Hakurei Barrier.
"Supposedly" taking a stroll indeed, since as far as I know, a stroll is to be enjoyed under a pristine weather - not under a diluvial-like precipitation.
It seemed that nature was being capricious once again. There should have been a bright sun shining above Gensokyo according to my predictions, but the weather clearly had decided to do otherwise - it had preferred to grant us a torrential downpour, rather than a radiant sky, and that was quite a bother.
I wondered wherever or not I should take one of these "Meteorological Stations" from the outside world and implement them in Gensokyo. The feasibility of such a project was not excessively low, but it did have a few implied problems at its core – such a thing would weaken the hold of gods and superstitions on the Human Village, and that was something the Youkai Council could not allow since mystery was something we lived on. It was not as if I cared though, I was different from most of them... I was the Youkai of Boundaries, their problems were of little concern to me.
These thoughts ran on in my head like little critters as I kept going on. Pondering about the different ways through which I could make Gensokyoa better place was always nice to relieve me of my greatest enemy - boredom.
This moment of reflection came to a halt though, when the sound of strange, inaudible utterances came to my ears.
I stopped to listen. I was able to make out the where the source of these noises was through the pelting weather. It was coming from the back of a nearby tree.
Curious, I set out to investigate this strange phenomenon. What I found was simultaneously adorable and... out of all things... miserable. It was an absurd paradox, at any rate.
There was a small trembling ball curled up against the trunk of an azalea. It was a human child, a girl, to be precise. As if she did not already look pitiful enough in that state, her clothes were in rags. What probably had been an exotic kimono beforehand had become a decrepit torn and tattered cloth. Holes in the textile exposed her white and fragile skin, some of the latter's surface having already been violated with bruises and injuries.
I looked at the poor thing, at the small figure drenched from head to toe in water, and I realized that I had found a little, totally helpless butterfly.
And I felt the near-uncontrollable urge to eat it.
To us youkai, despairing and agonizing children always were one of the most delectable meals we could enjoy. Small and tender, consuming such delicacies always netted a marvelous experience, and the fear exhibited by these terrorized "meals" when they stood at death's doorstep added, to say the least, a wonderful flavor to it all.
But no matter how delicious the prospect of gulping her down into my stomach seemed... I restrained myself - I had my own standards. I held the title of "Sage of Gensokyo"; I would not allow myself to stoop down to such a level. Greater Youkai had their pride after all.
I cast aside this uncivilized instinct and approached the girl, mustering the warmest smile I could. She did not notice notice my presence, even as I walked up to her very front. She just kept her eyes closed and continuously cried on and on, her strangled voice continuously calling for a mother and father that were nowhere to be seen.
"A lost child, without doubt," I thought to myself.
Was she a denizen of the Human Village, or had she accidentally been spirited away to Gensokyo from the Outside World? I could not ascertain with certainty which of these statements was correct. While she wore traditional clothing, it was possible that it was traditional clothing from the Outside World itself. Japan held on to its traditions very dearly after all; outsiders wearing kimono for special occasions were not a sight that would be out of the ordinary.
"Hello darling, are you alright?" I asked the girl, sheltering her under the cover of my umbrella. It was rather large, and she was quite the minuscule child - there was no particular difficulty in fitting the both of us under it.
She remained silent for a moment. I thought that she had not heard me, so I was about to move my hand to tap her shoulder. However, at that very moment, her cries weakened, and she raised her head.
Raising one's head is such a small gesture that anyone could do. It was the contraction and expansion of a few muscles, all the simple outcome of a command given by the brain. Yet that movement I saw there felt so... I had no words to describe what it instilled within my heart, and to be fair I still do not have any today. All that I could relate it to, was to the rising of the sun at dawn, as rays of light put an end to the darkness of night.
It was more than beautiful.
There was hope in the girl's eyes, yes, in these flooded, anguished and agonizing ruby eyes, I could see a light of hope.
She scrutinized me, her facial expression jolting from pained to joyful, from scared to relieved - and it all happened in a fraction of a second.
To me though, that instant lasted as if it was an eternity.
A wonderful eternity.
"Mother?" she said.
These two syllables that she then uttered etched an unforgettable, irremovable print onto my soul.
It was the very first time in my millennial lifespan that someone had called me so. Even my shikigami had never seen me as a motherly soul whenever I took care of her, but rather, she had always referred to me as "Master".
I could not bring myself to do anything else other than stare back at her in disbelief, wondering if either her vision had been clouded by all of the tears inundating her eyes, or if she had simply had lost her mind.
"You're Mother, aren't you?" she asked again, looking at me with these eyes of her, filled with an ever-endearing light.
I was left in continued speechlessness, I who was a being that had lived for over a thousand years, a being that had the opportunity to learn so much about the world, to roam across it, and above all, to wise up to life's harsh experiences through such a long lifespan.
I was all this, and yet, I was left speechless against a human that had breathed fresh air for a lapse of time that did not even exceed a mere decennium.
As I look back to that moment, who was really the miserable one? Was it that child, or was it me? Furthermore... who actually found who? Did I find her, or was I the one that was found? Did I save her, or was I the one who was saved?
The question bothers me to this day.
At any rate, this is how an era ended, and a new one began.