Welcome to Scarlet Devil Mansion. Over here, you'll see the eternally young mistress of the household, Remilia Scarlet. In the basement, you'll see a feverishly working magician and a devil. At the gate, you'll see a Chinese woman. Her name is Hong Meiling, and she's probably asleep. Looking back to Remilia's side, you'll see Izayoi Sakuya, serving her mistress as ever. But oh, what's this? Yet another soul wanders these magically enlarged halls, alone, perhaps even neglected. The younger sister of the devil, Flandre Scarlet.
Flandre's skin prickled with unease as she made her way through the deserted halls. Remilia was out and Sakuya was getting some well deserved rest. Meiling was probably slacking off somewhere. The only person Flandre could think of to talk to was Patchouli, who was known to stay up into the latest hours of the night clinging to pages laden with knowledge.
Flandre rubbed her cold arms, stumbling down the hall, angry with Sakuya for making them so long. She was all but running, tripping on her nightgown, shying away from the one thing most people would assume vampires would accept as a friend: Darkness. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, but shadows crept along the edges of the glowing silver pools it cast on the floor.
The young vampire heaved a sigh of relief as the basement door came into sight. She threw the door open and fearfully descended the nearly pitch-black staircase, rushing for the light at the bottom. The library. The smell of musty pages hit her like a wall as she stepped into the light.
"Patchy?" Flandre called quietly, hesitantly, a tiny bit afraid to disturb the librarian.
"Hmm? Oh, yes Flan?" Patchouli said, by the sound of her comment just tearing herself from the labyrinth of printed words. Flandre followed her voice, coming to a halt at one of the several tables scattered throughout the aisles of bookshelves. Patchouli sat there quietly, a heavy book in her hands. She removed her glasses and pulled up a chair for Flandre as she approached, seeing as her devil assistant Koakuma had passed out in the only other seat present.
"I had a nightmare," Flandre blurted out as she sat down. Her stomach churned with the memory of what she had seen in her sleep.
"You did?" Patchouli's eyebrows creased with concern, overshadowing the already dark circles under her eyes.
Flandre nodded. "I was really scared."
Patchouli hmmed as if she were contemplating an equation, which was absolutely not what Flandre wanted her to do. Flandre wanted someone to do what Sakuya had done last time the young vampire had a nightmare. Sakuya had fetched her something warm to drink and had insisted she talk about it, had stroked her hair, and had just generally made her feel better. Talking to Patchouli about emotional problems was basically like talking to a scholarly wall. Flandre considered going to wake the maid instead.
Suddenly, Patchouli seamed to remember who it was she was talking to. She perked up, blinking herself out of thought. "Tell me," she said. After a moment, she had an idea about how one should treat a frightened child. She patted her lap as an invitation for Flandre to come.
Flandre breathed a sigh of relief in her mind as she hopped into Patchouli's lap. Flandre closed her eyes and shuddered as she called up the memory of the dream. "I was in the clock tower, when Sakuya pushed me through the clock face. I fell, and the fall was longer than it usually would've been. I couldn't fly. Things kept reaching out at me, but I couldn't see them. They stole all of my wing crystals, one by one. They- the things that stole the crystals, I mean –kept whispering things to me. I can't remember half of what they said, but they kept telling me to fear the dark. Then all of a sudden, this portal thing opened up below me and I fell through."
"Sounds a bit like Yukari," Patchouli interrupted, forgetting momentarily that she was supposed to be playing the role of a concerned maternal figure. "Go on," she said hastily, stroking the back of Flandre's head for good measure.
"Then there was a room. One half was dark, and the other was light. I was afraid of the dark half, because of the voices from earlier, so I went towards the light. But I got ripped in half. Sort of." Flandre's lip quivered and a fat tear spilled over her eyelid. "One half of me got to go to the light side. But the other half, which was entirely vampire, was scared of the light, you know, because it burns. That half went and huddled in the corner. The shadowy part of the room grew hands then and started dragging me towards the dark half, and the voices started again…" Flandre trailed off into sobs.
Patchouli rubbed the young vampire's back distractedly. This didn't sound like any ordinary child's nightmare. In fact, this sounded a bit more like an incident than anything else. Especially because of one detail: Yukari's gap had probably appeared. And Flandre didn't know who Yukari was.
Miles away, an immortal princess of the moon awakes from her sleep. Her name is Hourisan Kaguya, and she's just had a horrible nightmare. In a magic shop in the middle of the woods, a magician wakes as well. Kirisame Marisa, ordinary magician. And she's just become aware of an incident through her dreams as well.
A/N: So this is my first fanfiction! I hope you guys like it. A brief disclaimer even though I don't know why it's necessary: I do not own Touhou Project or its characters: the things just mentioned belong to ZUN. – Nazo the Kitsune