So sorry for being late, but the internet service in the area decided to break yesterday and amongst my other obligations, this was the first time I could get online. That being said, obviously, this is the last prompt of June 2018! My Higurashi Month is over with this post, yay! Though, of course, I will be back next June with another list of prompts...but that's next year. Thanks to the startling amount of people in this fandom that supported my efforts this June!
June 30th, 2018
Don. Don.
Swish.
Rika let the shrine tool fall into her open palm, the heavy weight of the golden blade at the end making her hand dip just barely.
Step. Step.
Jangle, jangle, went the bells at the end as she mimed striking down, as though cutting into the earth, and spun smoothly on one foot, transcribing a neat half-circle. She lifted her other hand and made a sweeping gesture across her face as though scattering grain –or something else. She brought it down again –this time on the soft cotton of an old futon, and Rika raked the sharp blade through it, the ancient edge matting and curling the soft fibers as she went.
Her violet eyes flicked to the altar out of habit, but no dimly glowing shape sat atop it. Hanyuu was elsewhere tonight, and in a rare moment of deviation from the dance she had danced hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times –Rika didn't even know the true amount anymore, only that she had done this performance for so long that even thinking about the steps was less than base instinct– she glanced into the crowd.
Men and women who would sob and cringe in terror of the fearsome god Oyashiro-sama's wrath, whose very ardency made them push and shove to better see Rika-chama's yearly tribute, crushed a little girl in a pink sundress against the edge of the altar, the force of the crowd pushing the lilac-haired this way and that as her taller friends strove to keep the smallest of their group from being crammed into a corner.
What they would say, or think, to know that the tiny child in the crowd was the very god they so feared, Rika didn't want to think.
Hanyuu caught her looking away and, amidst the pushing and shoving, managed to send the young miko an encouraging, bright smile.
Rika turned back to her dance, and later, when the last of the cotton balls were drifting like snowflakes down the sluggish river current, she asked Hanyuu why the goddess had seemed so happy as she watched Rika's dance during this particular Watanagashi, when she had seen Rika Furude dance this dance hundreds of times before, and seen the dance itself preformed thousands upon thousands of times by her predecessors. True, they were free of fate this time, but this was a particular happiness that seemed to stand out from the joy Rika had seen shining in Hanyuu's face all throughout the festival.
Hanyuu's answer would stay with her for years.
Of the thousands of offerings that I watched enthroned upon that altar…the one I loved the most was the one I watched from the crowd.
10.52 PM, USA Central Time