3
The shadows shifted as dusk descended over the castle. In the garden, whispers sounded out eerily, like the laughter of things long forgotten. "Tell me." A quiet voice, eagerness dripping from its tone. "Tell me again, what happens after." An indulgent chuckle, deeper in pitch, and movement from behind the bushes and sakura tree.
"After? We can be together. For so long, we have been forced apart. But no longer. Just a bit more time, a few more tasks, and nothing, nothing, will keep us from each other. We just must be patient until that time comes, my darling." A brief, pregnant pause filled the garden as stars twinkled coldly from the sky. "Remember, they are targets, tasks, vermin for us to disperse. No more, no less." A dark giggle crept from the shadows.
"Of course, my love. I have done this for too long to think of them as anything but little pests, so caught in their own worldly problems that anything else is unimportant. And it's become so very fun to tear down their walls, expose them to what horrors lie beyond their pathetic ideas about reality. They know nothing about suffering… I like to think of our purpose as… purely educational." Another giggle, this time growing in volume to a sinister cackle. "And their souls are so very sweet once they've tasted pain and sorrow. It's almost ambrosial." Quick movement came from the darkness as one of the conspiring figures whipped around to look at the rising moon.
"Alas, my time is to be cut short with you, my love. I must return and fulfill one of my contracts. I'll save you a morsel of his soul, should you find yourself famished, my darling." The woman in the shadows turned on her heel, vanishing into the night with a sigh. The remaining figure looked to the moon, head falling back.
"Well, there she goes, doing your work so willingly. And I am progressing rather well, don't you think? My Lady of the Moon?" A short burst of humorless mirth, stained with sarcasm filled the night air before all was still again, the petals of the sakura falling silently, dyed crimson in the moonlight.