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 18th, 2019
July 1st dawns to bright blue skies and fluffy clouds chasing each other over the horizon, a brisk wind that smells of summer grass and the sun comfortably warm instead of sticky-hot.
Rika's eyes sparkle as she walks to school, every wisp of cloud, every ray of sunshine, every blade of grass a thousand glints of new colors that she savors and commits to memory, storing them alongside the bank of a thousand years of repeated cycles.
Rika Furude has never witnessed July 1st, 1983 before. Every instant is new and unheralded, fresh and unexpected, and her heart is so brimming and overfull with joy that it wants to thrum out of her chest, like a beam of pure happiness.
Her friend's catch her mood, and Hanyuu's too –for Hanyuu is caught up in an equal and identical rapture– and it spreads among the group, becoming one of those intangible, heart-full moments, one of those eternal days, that seem to exist in a state outside mundane life.
"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun –which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes."
For Rika, that day is today and that moment is now. It is not the dull, aching, exhausted and ennui-filled eternity that she thinks of, the prison and the maze that has closed around her for so long, but the rapturous joy of a human life lived to the fullest, and a life that is filled to bursting with moments of transcendent happiness and fun. She will find that life here, with her friends –has found that life, and today is the day that she sets her foot upon that radiant path. She knows it.
The dewdrops on the glass sparkle like glittering crystals in a fairy's palace, flecking out rainbow bursts of color around the glints of their edges, and Rika's heart soars as she tilts her head back and watches the birds glide through the sky.
Today is the first day of her real life, and she cannot think of a day more suited to such beginnings.
AN: The quote is from "The Secret Garden," which has a surprisingly large number of deeply relatable concepts and quotes for being a children's book written over a hundred years ago. I'm also starting to read the Umineko manga, so we'll see how that goes.
7.07 AM, USA Central Time