Whoo, back again! Higurashi Month 2019, because it has become one of my lowkey life goals to keep perpetuating this until it becomes a proper tradition for all three-and-a-half people in this graveyard of a fandom. And then keep doing it anyways, because tradition. If you wish to check out the prompt list, its on my tumblr page under the same username.
June 7th, 2019
Rika remembers, a very very very very very very very long time ago, the first time she saw an animated movie. It was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, an American Disney film, and Rika remembers sitting curled up on the rug with wide eyes looking at the people with the too-small eyes and disturbingly floppy movements shift about on the screen in the hospital waiting room. She doesn't even remember what her parents had gone in for or why she was left in the waiting room, it was a singular event that only repeated itself once or twice throughout her many rewinds, but Rika remembers the awe of watching the scene with so many lovely sparkling gems on the screen.
"We dig-dig-dig-dig in our mine the whole day though~"
The voices were just slightly out of synch with the mouths moving, but Rika didn't care, her eyes were fixated on the beautiful sparkle of the animated gems, the way the dancing orbs seemed to take light in and throw it back in a thousand shimmering glints along their multicolored facets. She had never seen anything so beautiful in her whole short life, and would not chatter about anything else for the whole way back on the train, and to everyone she knew for the whole rest of the week.
Rika drifts through the Sea of Kakera now, less than a ghost, a wisp of memory that's stretched on for too long, too long. She watches light glint and spark off the edges of the fragments themselves, some dull, many dull, too many, and some still shining with a faint white gleam, shimmering spiderwebs of possibility spun into a concentrated whole, a glistening faceted lump of possibility, a world yet to be born and ultimately destined for death.
It's not usual for the young shrine maiden to wander through the void that she has found herself in, partly out of primal fear –there is no up or down or left or right, no east or west or north or south, no ground or air or surface or abyss, only the light that comes from nowhere and nothing and herself and the fragments– and partly out of simple grief. She cannot bear to see all the dulled, dim fragments, worlds gone dark after the deaths of her and the deaths of them all, of the utter destruction of Hinamizawa as she knew it.
Sometimes she wanders, touches the fragments, hopes to find in them some glimpse of past rules, an error, a catch in continuity, something to provide a new clue, a new perspective, a refresh of memory that she never wanted and shouldn't have, for when is it that Keiichi beats Mion and Rena to death, and how may she prevent that? What night is it that Shion lures her and Satoko to the Sonozaki mansion, and when can she acquire the suppressant Irie made to try and calm her down?
Rika reviews these worlds and their memories, hoping to catch a fragment, just a little thread caught out of order in this enormous silk tapestry, something to help her find the way out of this maze. But she never does.
And the glinting appeal of the gems has long since worn off.
AN: This is a very real question that has bugged me subconsciously for some time. Just what the hell does Rika plan to do when she actually grows up?!
2.30 PM, USA Central Time