And, looking about the unfamiliar, white room, she cried.
Her dream had ended.
Her paradise no more.
Had she truly slept for years, or was her mind lying to her? Because, in her head, this world was the dream. And the world she created was her home.
Gensoukyou.
Was it all useless, then? Was everything truly gone? Everyone she knew and loved? Was the Eternal Shrine Maiden, Maiden of Paradise, the Hakurei Miko truly gone?
An unfamiliar couple sat at her bedside. This girl's Mother and Father, she told herself. The two were startled when she awoke, near instantly by her side. They greeted her by a strange name, one she did not recognize. Was it her own?
Because to her, she was lost in an Eternity she had created, and she never desired to awake in someone else's.
."...Why..."
She mumbled between her sobs, burying her head in the strange pillow and thrashing away from her parents. She wanted to go back. She needed to go back. She couldn't live in a place like this. Gensoukyou was where she belonged, with her wife, her friends, and...
Was she dead?
She was dead.
Gensoukyou was gone.
It crumbled with her.
But her heart was still there.
."I can't leave. I mustn't leave. They're all dying. I need to go back. How do I go back? They can't be gone. I CAN'T LET THEM GO!"
The young woman cried, rising from a whisper to a scream. She clawed at her sheets, feeling the white fabric tear under her grasp. The strange man and woman were shouting as well, calling for help. She was losing it, they said.
Losing?
No, everything was already lost.
She ripped herself from bed, tossing sheets in a flash of white. Her body was unfamiliar, not as delicate, more bulky.
But she didn't wobble.
She didn't waver an inch.
And she ran.
She needed to run. Home was so far away, through dimensions and years.
They called her by that strange name. Stop, they said. You don't know what you're doing, they tried in vain to halt her. Where are you going, they asked.
But she had a destination, thousands of miles away, hundreds of years ago.
Gensoukyou, she called it.
Her Home.