~Author's Note~

We've all heard at least one fairy tale about Three Brothers. You know the drill: three brothers take turns to go on some sort of quest, but the eldest is a bit of a wanker, the middle brother loves the sound of his own voice and the quiet, unassuming younger brother turns out to be the one who actually succeeds. Well, this is not one of those stories. It's a Touhou fanfic. Any more questions?

I thought not. On with the fable!

~The Three Little Vampires and the Hermit~

Last Tuesday in a distant land, there lived two little vampires and one medium-sized vampire who had come for a sleepover. They lived happily in their big red house with a caring maid, a sleepy gardener and a librarian who wore only purple, knowing neither hunger nor fear.

On a morning like any other, the two little vampires and the one medium-sized vampire woke up to find the house quiet and empty. They didn't want to wake the gardener, so they crept downstairs and slinked into the dining room, but there was no breakfast waiting for them. There were no steaming bowls of miso soup, no scones dripping with cream and jam and no steamed rice piled high in its bowl.

The vampires were distraught. How would they ever survive when their tummies were empty? Flandre cried and Kurumi ran around in a blind panic, but Remilia came up with an amazing idea. They would make their own breakfasts.

Kurumi found a sack of flour and eggs in the pantry, so she set to work mixing up a batch of pancake batter. Flandre sawed up a loaf of brown bread and slathered it in butter, then she dusted the slices with sugar and drizzled them in lemon juice. Remilia roasted a chicken and seasoned it with pepper. After a couple of hours, the girls were all messy with honey and sugar and very satisfied indeed.

Once she was able to move again, Remilia decided to go and look for Sakuya. To her amazement, the silver-haired domestic servant was still in bed. Remilia climbed on top of the sleepy maid and gave her a vigorous shake.

Sakuya awoke with a tortured groan. "I don't think I can make you breakfast today, Milady…" she whispered.

"It's almost lunchtime, but go off I guess," said Remilia sympathetically.

"I'm afraid I do not feel so good," said Sakuya weakly. "I think it's the Black Death. Oh, Remilia, whatever will become of me?!"

Remilia was horrified. She ran downstairs and told her sisters the terrible news. They knew they could not let Sakuya pass away, but how would they cure her?

It was eventually decided that Remilia would set out to look for a cure. She packed a loaf of bread, some cheese, a flask of tea, some spare clothes, a bottle of sun cream, a diving suit, her parasol, a football, an alarm clock, her beloved teddy bear and some candyfloss in a rusty old wheelbarrow, which she gave to Meiling, and the two of them set off.

Remilia and Meiling trekked through the Forest of Magic. They hiked for an hour beneath the trees, over streams and past frolicking fairies, until they came to a mysterious house in a clearing.

Remilia knocked timidly on the door. After a few moments, an unexpectedly young and pretty witch opened it.

"Ooh! Hello there, dearie!" said the witch, trying and failing to sound venerable. "It's not often I get any visitors around these parts. Come in, come in! I'll have you for- I mean, um, I'll make you some tea!"

Remilia and Meiling followed the witch into her dining room, shoved some piles of books off the chairs and sat down. The wheelbarrow they left in the front garden, trusting that nobody would come and steal it. Marisa brought them piping-hot bowls of tea and sat down for a chat.

Remilia explained what had happened to her maid and begged Marisa for some help. Marisa thought about it for a few moments and decided to offer Remilia a deal.

"The truth is, these old bones aren't quite as strong as they once were," sighed Marisa, who had won the village arm-wrestling tournament on her twenty-second birthday last week. "I need a strong young lass like yourself to help out around the place. If you can weed the back garden and alphabetise my book collection, I'll give you an antidote for the Plague. If you should fail, I shall eat you and become immortal! Deal?"

Remilia was confident in her abilities, so she agreed without hesitation. She changed into her work-boots and dungarees, rolled up her sleeves and had a nap. Meiling sighed heavily and got to work.

An hour saw every last weed in Marisa's garden piled up on the compost heap. Remilia awoke to a tired, filthy, sweaty, fairly miffed Meiling shaking her out of her doze.

"The garden's done," declared Meiling. "Now I believe it's time for the books!"

"Of course! Just leave them to me!" said Remilia confidently.

"Help," whimpered Remilia, inspecting the four thousand books piled haphazardly in the spare bedroom.

They struggled valiantly, but Remilia and her companion managed only to line up two volumes of a trilogy in the proper order. As the sky grew dark, Marisa summoned Remilia to the kitchen, where she'd prepared a woman-sized pizza base dripping with tomato sauce and cheese.

"I hate to do this, dearie, but a bet's a bet." Marisa shoved an apple inside Remilia's mouth. "How should I cook you? Until golden-brown?"

Remilia desperately wracked her brains for a way out. She spat out the apple. "I'm, um, best served with tartare sauce? You should go out and buy some!"

Marisa shook her head. "Thank you, but I already have a jar. Now, if you'd care to lie down on the pizza base, I'll see if I've got a carving knife-"

Meiling hit Marisa over the head with a shovel, grabbed Remilia by the shoulders and carted her back home.

The following morning, Kurumi set out with a backpack full of food and survival gear, which she gave to Patchouli. After twenty agonisingly slow steps they came to the front gate, at which point Kurumi decided to carry Patchouli.
It was slow going with Kurumi so encumbered, but she soon came to the ramshackle house in the clearing. Marisa met her with a face full of green make-up and a bandage on her head.

Marisa invited the travellers in for tea. Patchouli rather conveniently woke up in time to drink hers. Kurumi told the witch about their dilemma and how her elder sister had already tried and failed to find the cure, at which point Marisa smiled slyly.

"I'm sorry to hear about your sister, dearie," she declared. "I might be able to help you, however! If you alphabetise all my books and knit me a new pair of socks by sunset, I'll give you the cure for the plague. On the other hand, if you don't succeed…" Marisa licked her lips, smearing the green lipstick.

Kurumi got the message, but what other choice did she have? She accepted the witch's bargain.

Patchouli had been listening eagerly since she heard the word "books". She took Kurumi firmly by the hand and all but dragged her upstairs.

"Right," said Patchouli, her eyes shining, "we'll start by stacking up the books according to the first letter of the author's name! You take A and B, I'll do the rest. Move! Move! Move!"

Kurumi frantically rifled through the piles of books. Occasionally an A or a B would show up and she'd deposit it on the appropriate stack. Patchouli was a blur, moving thousands of books a second with only the occasional pause for breath. Kurumi had never seen her like that before. The cure was as good as theirs.

The next morning, Marisa found Kurumi and Patchouli curled up under a blanket in the spare room. Walls upon walls of books stretched out around them, all in perfect alphabetical order. It was an awe-inspiring sight.

Out of gratitude, Marisa made the travelers some bacon and eggs for breakfast. Still exhausted from the previous night's exertions they wolfed their meals down. Once she judged that enough time had passed to avoid seeming presumptuous, Kurumi broached the subject of her payment.

"Oh, of course, the cure! I daresay you've earned it," smiled Marisa. "Just one thing, though. Where's my pair of socks?"

Kurumi turned to Patchouli. "Go on, give her the socks!"

"Socks?" said Patchouli nervously. "But Kurumi, the socks were your job!"

"Oh, dear." Marisa sighed with unconvincing regret. She grabbed a box of sage and onion stuffing from under the table and took a handful. "Would you mind taking your bloomers off?"

"Wh-what?! No!" yelped Kurumi. "You can't eat me! Patchouli, do something!"

Patchouli thought for a moment and set the house on fire.

Meiling and Patchouli had their work cut out nursing the severely burned Kurumi back to health, so Flandre was on her own when she began her journey the following morning. It would be her first trip outdoors without Remilia or Sakuya by her side, but she was determined to do her very best. She packed an apple, some shears and a yo-yo in a small bag and headed out through the forest.

After an hour's walk, Flandre came upon a clearing full of charred, smouldering wreckage. A woman was crying on the blackened stone doorstep, her head in her hands.

Flandre sat down beside the witch and put an arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Hm?" Marisa looked up. Her eyes would have been red and puffy if they weren't a faded greyish-green instead. "Oh, hello… Some good-for-nothing librarian burned my house down, as you can see. Now I've got nothing. Won't you please help me build another house from stuff that doesn't burn?"

Flandre thought about it. "I wish I could help you, but there's something I really have to do. My maid is dying of the Bubonic Plague and I'm the youngest sister, so if I don't find the cure, nobody will!"

Marisa's face lit up. "I know how to cure the plague! If you help me build a house I'll give you the cure within the hour!"

"Really…?" Flandre was suspicious. "You won't try to eat me if the house doesn't turn out that good, will you?"

"No, of course not! Cross my heart and hope to die!" said Marisa earnestly.

"All right, then! It's a deal!" Flandre stood up and stretched. "To start with, we need to clear up the wreckage." She focused her power on the burned corpse of the previous house. It vanished in a puff of red smoke. "There we go!"

Marisa stared at the empty flat area where her house had been, then at Flandre.

Flandre just smiled. "Right, then, I'll go and quarry some stone. Can you take care of the cement?"