A/N: Just a fun, rando, one-shot blip thing for our Discord group's first weekly prompts thing! The given prompt was "Garden" for the week of 5/2 to 5/9. Thanks a bunch, cranebrulee for starting this! And super special thanks to sable_fahndu for comments and guidance, as always! ^_^ (Thank you for the perfect title for this, heehee!)
Please feel free to join our Discord group run by cranebrulee! It's Douma/Shinobu centric, but all fans are welcome! discord . gg / dEkwXYyy4W (Place to geek out, dumping ground for fanart, fics, or any general fandom stuffs! :)
Fleur Macabre
There is a house that lies in the countryside. So old that no one quite knows who the earliest of its masters might have been. It sits vacant and abandoned to the eyes of any wayfarer who might pass by. Its grand halls are empty, its roofs broken, its walls worn. All trace of its former glory and grandeur gone with the seasons. Its only visitor for ages, a solitary stranger who walks its grounds in the night.
He comes because this place is a curiosity. He comes to ponder the stories that built these grounds and its scores of rooms. He comes in search of the ghosts who might reveal their tales to him. Because he is a being that likes stories, who is enamored with ghosts, and the idea of a good ghost story is simply far too delicious to forego.
But night after night, he comes, wanders through these grounds, finds nothing and nothing. It's as he suspects—ghost stories are always more story than they are ghosts. It's a bit of a disappointment, he must admit, but—oh, what else could there be to uncover here? It's like a guessing game. A puzzle. An expedition. A good book. It's a bit funny, he thinks, because he's found that humans aren't nearly as interesting as the traces that their lives leave behind. The things they've created that far outlive their paltry mortal existences. The inanimate records that prove they'd once walked these grounds as he does now. There's a mystery behind these things since they don't speak. They don't tell him a thing, leaving it all upon his fantasies and imaginings to illuminate and interpret.
Tarnished inlays in the lanterns overhead—what can you share about the one who commissioned your every piece and portion within these halls? Broken shards of painted porcelain in the corner—what form had you taken in your previous existence? Timber door frames and window panes—are you cypress or pine? From what woodlands had you hailed? What emperor had lived the day you were cut?
The stranger treads on, hands folded behind his back as he asks. Finger thoughtfully perched against his lips as he ponders. Seats cross-legged, sights aloft with his dreamy focus, rubbing and kneading idly at the skin of his chin as he imagines. The next progression of his snooping and spying brings him to the end of a long corridor, where he comes upon a set of exterior doors he'd somehow never noticed. Ah, beyond them must lie the central courtyard. He expects to simply find more silent, broken nothings behind them as he wraps his long fingers over the latch. And yes, he must mind his long, sharp nails. How many times has he been careless and ruined the remnants of some once refined silk garment? Or the delicate embroidery of some forgotten cushion or kerchief lying about? Or, goodness, even a pristinely lovely pile of bones left behind—the finest of treasure finds amidst some nowhere ruins of squalor and decay?
…Oh?
Curiously, he finds none of such things here.
He steps out from the porch onto the overgrowth of grass beyond the steps. Of all there is to take in here, it is the distinct smell that fills his senses first. Oh, but it's more than one. Two? No…more than a half dozen, surely. As honed as his natural sight is to the dark, the lack of visible light is still quite arresting to the stranger. He peers about the open space here to realize that among the clumps of surrounding foliage and verdure all about, it is hardly haphazard. No, there is a marker for each scent he picks up here. And…ah, yes. He is made to think of another thing quite familiar. He is reminded of beautiful things. Like ladies. The delicate things they drape themselves in. The pretty baubles they decorate their hair, their necks, their dainty little wrists with. And this? All of this reminds him of the myriad of mixtures and essences they daub against their skin.
Yes—the scent of a lady's perfume is quite unmistakable.
And here, he stands amongst a trove of it all in its purest form. Pristine. Raw. Virginal. Funny how the olfactory senses respond to the merest of cues. The images and memories they conjure. The tastes they arouse, tingling every little clump of cells and nerve endings to the very tip of the tongue.
The stranger closes away the brilliant spectrum of hues in his eyes from all this, tilts his head back to raise his nose high as he drinks it all in with a gulp of a breath. An exhale, and he opens them again to the light of the moon overhead. Bright as it is with its full face beaming down from the vast black of the cosmos above, he laments at how little it does to reveal the true splendor all around him. What aromas to be found surrounding him are so potent, yet his eyes can distinguish so little between it all.
At the center of the courtyard, there is a taller mass of twisting branches and brush that towers over the rest. He steps over to it, reaches his fingers for the nearest tufts that appear brighter against the near-hueless, free hanging spears of greenery. The petals feel dense in his hand as his long nails close over the clumps of blooms. He brings it to his nose and drinks in the scent of pollen and nectar from their cores. Ah—tsubaki. He can only imagine how lively this tree must become beneath that burning light of day. All the warm colors of spring dappled among a cradle of boughs mottled in deep emerald.
But there is an adjacent aroma there, too, that draws him away and toward its neighbor. A different, sharper fragrance. Everything about it contrasts with the other. It is more compact—its scent thicker, its branches and foliage denser in their growths. Yes, it is unmistakable to him what the citrine floret clusters between the greenery are. Even the smallest splashes of kinmokusei are enough to evoke the image of the autumn that their colors herald.
The stranger looks, then, toward the shrubs that line the broken pathway at his feet. Nearest are the fine weave of stems and the feathery leaves that sprout from them. He can make out the little open cups at their ends—some pale, others paler. They're lovely, symmetrical little things, and he recognizes their vaguely star shapes to be those of akizakura. There is something about the faintness of their hues that he associates with the heart. Or, at least, he imagines so. Being bereft of one himself makes it hard to say with certainty, though what harm is there in imagining?
He follows the remnants of brick and cobble until the grass overtakes what remains. To his left, he glimpses what seem to be the faintest colors of dusk atop the thick stalks that reach to his waist. They are an amorphous manifold of petals and pistil, some resembling something like the wafting skirts of tiny, ethereal dancers. They must be shobu, he gathers. And behind them are trellises blanketed by tangles of climbing vines lined with finely shaped leaves. He knows exactly what covers the walls there, even with the dawn shades dead with the withered and wilted trumpet blooms along the tendrils. The nature of asagao has always been ephemeral with the passing of the morn.
Looking to the right, the stranger finds perhaps the brightest among the array. Even the humble moonlight is plenty to discern the splendid, radial faces of the proud, illustrious himawari standing tall against their stakes, bearing all the colors of the sun itself even in its celestial absence. And at their bases in teeming rows are plumes of the dignified kiku. Perhaps humbler and quieter in the shade of their companions above them, but courtly and refined—their brilliant tints born, after all, by the highest of orders in the realm.
There has been so much to absorb all around this night, but there is one last note lingering in the air that ushers his steps further along. He finds droves upon droves of more, growing wild and unhindered across the far end of this untamed yard. Even so, it's easy enough to make out the globes of florets amongst the fringes of stem and leaf. And he knows—these particular blooms have always struck a certain irony within his musings. So many variants, always shifting and turning in their colors. It is said that no one knows how many forms ajisai may truly take.
Something about them feels innate. Something elemental and intrinsic to his nature. He is made to think of a migrant being of many faces, one that may don them all, but claims none. Something undefined, yet universal in its beauty. Something that leaves an everlasting essence even after its existence has long passed.
He thinks of what his eyes are unable to see. All the wonders he is unable to discern. All the million hues within his own panchromatic eyes that remain vastly out of range of them. Because these are things of the world beyond his own. The things that die and pass by, leaving only traces of their stories and existence in their wake for those like himself to stumble across and play guessing games at.
In so many ways, it is these mortal things that seem to fascinate him more than the mortals themselves. They are frail and breakable. Stupid and utterly suggestible. Little more than livestock and entertainment. And yet, there is so much beauty in what is left of them after they wither away. And like these flowers, they bear an entire spectrum of hues and shades. An array of shapes and scents. Each uniquely their own. Each a beauty in itself. He loves beautiful things. They fill him. They give his otherwise empty existence life and nourishment. And as with all things beautiful, he commits their images to memory, brands all their markers and signatures to his every senses. He keeps within him, the stories of their fleeting existence.
He is a collector of such beautiful things, and the world is merely the garden from which he reaps.
"Might I ask you, dear sir—what you are doing here?" a fair voice calls from across the courtyard.
The stranger turns to see a single figure lingering in the shadows from the house. A lady? He smiles before removing his hat—as a gentleman must—and greets her with a bow of the head.
The young lady's eyes narrow as they note the unnatural, blood-red stain upon his crown. Her hand cautiously squeezes the hilt of the blade at her hip.
"Hello, there! Very nice to meet you, pretty miss. My name is Douma," he speaks to his unexpected companion.
He's a demon. All the girls slaughtered from the nearby villages… Was it him?
Replacing his hat back over his head, the stain against his golden locks is once again obscured. He straightens himself tall once more and meets her line of sight. "It's a very nice night out tonight, isn't it?"
The young lady's gaze widens once they glimpse the designation branded against this stranger's glowing, spectral eyes. She draws her sword before her next breath escapes her lips. "Upper Moon Two…"
"Hm? That blade… Oh, you're one of them, aren't you?" he muses. Yes, that's right. Despite the lively floral colors of her haori, that austere uniform she dons beneath it is unmistakable.
What a fortuitous night, he thinks, as the curl of his lips deepen. Who would have thought to find an even better treasure here amongst all of this?
"You're quite a beauty, pretty miss. And I so very much love beautiful things. Won't you tell me your name?"
The stranger watches as the woman releases her breath, and suddenly, he feels the air between them thicken. His sharp canines gleam even in the pale light of the moon as he beams in anticipation.
"My name is Kocho Kanae of the Demon Slayer Corps. I am the Flower Hashira."
Oh, how perfectly fitting. The stranger licks his lips as he reaches for the gold-plated fans tucked in his belt.
"I thought I'd had my fill of so many lovely flowers tonight already…" he hums aloud.
The air made heavy by the lone Hashira's breaths now begins to sink like ice within her very lungs. With each one drawn and expelled, she sees the crystalline mist of their traces coalesce before her eyes. Whatever consternation building within her at the sight of this omen is then willed away as soon as it takes hold. She knows there is no room for any of that. Her grip on her single arm remains steadfast as she stands her ground before the stranger.
"...But, pretty miss—won't you please join me here in this garden for one last feast this evening?"