Reimu pricked her finger for the third time in a row.

Unlike the first two times, when she had simply cursed under her breath and kept sewing, she placed both the needle and the bloomers she had been mending on the floor next to her, lost in though. She examined the pinprick on her finger, and the solitary drop of blood that had trickled from it.

The needle was rusty, but not from the tip, so there was no real reason for alarm. She was more concerned over how laborious sewing was to her after all these years spent patching up her clothing. She had assumed, during her first feeble attempts as a child, that it would get easier with experience. Rather, it had only grown more irksome.

She glared at the offending needle for a time still, then picked it up and shoved it into the barren pincushion. She pulled the bloomers back on. The tear was near the knee, and even if someone noticed, so what? She was long done pretending she had dignity.

She stood up and walked to where the remnants of her lunch, bowls recently filled with plain white rice and some broth, remained. Her larders were still full after the harvest, the only time of the year when that was the case, but indulging daily now would leave her storages bare before snow melted. She took one glance at the dirty dishes and turned away. They could wait.

She slid the door open and stepped outside, immediately forgetting why she had left the shelter of the shrine as the chilly air hit her. Autumn had made its way to the trees near the shrine, and the shrine's courtyard was covered in dead leaves as if Reimu had never swept it that morning.

Reimu stared at the leaves blankly, then slid the door shut. It didn't close properly. Yes. That was why she had come outside. She needed nails, both to fix the door and the leaking ceiling. Even though the shrine had been rebuild twice during the last few years alone, each of the new buildings seemed to have adopted the spirit of the old shrine and decided to decay at an insufferable rate.

A quick visit to the Human Village, then. Nails would put a dent in her funds, especially since she had only had one human visitor at the shrine that wasn't Marisa or Sanae for weeks, but buying bent ones would make it affordable. She would always live at the shrine, for better or for worse, and the least she wanted to do was to make sure it wouldn't collapse on top of her.

She left the ground behind and floated along with the cool tailwind, barely bothering to steer. There was no reason to expend more energy, not on bleary days when energy seemed to be in short supply.

The human village was the same as ever, only dustier. Now that the harvest was complete, most humans remained put, with some of the braver ones venturing out to gather berries, mushrooms, and firewood for the winter already in the air.

Reimu walked with long strides, gaze held steadily in front of her. The villagers had lived their entire lives seeing youkai, and had learned to be very efficient in not seeing. They had no reason to even bat an eye at another human.

Reimu felt a pair of eyes on her, then another. She refused to acknowledge them and continued on with her task.

Buying the nails proved to be no trouble, and soon enough Reimu walked out of the shop, holding a small brown packet containing twenty-five nails, twisted and bend, but without rust for the time being.

Reimu weighted the package in her hands, paying scant attention to her surroundings. Unless she happened to run into Keine or Akyuu, no-one in the village would come to greet her. That was simply how it was.

While Reimu knew the village would survive, it clearly wasn't prospering: many of the edifices were in disrepair, and parts of the ancient log wall shielding the village from the wilderness were rotting away. The villagers paid no more attention to this than Reimu paid to the way her shrine kept falling apart: it was merely a fact of life. Life would go on regardless. As long as the villagers were safe from youkai, they would survive. As long as the Hakurei shrine maiden was there to kept order, her personal deficiencies notwithstanding, all would be well.

Reimu cast one more lingering glance at the village before quitting it, casting it aside in her mind in favour of the wilderness.

She looked up. The clouds on the sky were scarce, but ominously grey. If she wanted to do the sensible thing, she should return and mend her roof into a waterproof state at once.

Rather, as soon as she got into the air, she followed the faint cry of her inborn instinct, and flew towards Youkai Mountain.

Her instinct. It had been more of a hindrance than anything lately. So many false positives, warning her of danger in remote locations, to which she would then traverse only to discover nothing. This excursion to Youkai Mountain would too, no doubt, prove to be meaningless, but even then she couldn't risk it.

She had told no-one, not even Yukari, but her faltering instinct bothered her, Why was her instinct failing her now, after years of faithful if unreliable service?

Reimu rolled her eyes even though no-one was there to see. Perhaps her instinct was simply decaying away after so much use. Couldn't be helped. Perhaps she'd have to do things the old-fashioned way in the future, and rely more on dumb luck, but that would be it.

Then again, if what she sensed now, beyond the current sense telling her to haul herself to the mountain, it wouldn't matter at all soon enough.

Reaching the mountain, she flew straight to the waterfall and then slowly kept going upwards, savouring the roar of the water in her ears.

She looked around as she ascended. Kappa lived near, but the only kappa residence this close to the waterfall had been long since abandoned: a dilapidated hut wedged between rocks, if it could even be called that. Only fragments of the walls remained, and what did was charred black. A small tree grew in the middle of them, having broken through the roof, creating a new roof of green leaves. Only, the tree had already lost its leaves to the autumn, and so there was simply a skeleton of a tree standing surrounded by rotting boards.

Reimu kept eyeing the hut. Marisa had told her it had once belonged to an ingenious kappa working with black powder. She had died in a fiery explosion, cremated along with the ashes of her house. Reimu doubted the story, but looking at the ruins, perhaps the blast at least had been real.

She kept going. It was none of her business, anyway.

Her instinct had fallen silent. Unless she had somehow managed to solve an incident by flying around, it had failed her again. She gave a weary sigh. It was always better when nothing was amiss, but by now she almost hoped to run across yet another youkai or saint entering into Gensokyo just so that the false alarms wouldn't always be false.

Without thinking, Reimu landed on a rock protruding from the mountainside by the waterfall, high above most of Gensokyo. The tengu guard was near, hovering somewhere near the other side of the waterfall, but Reimu paid her no mind. She wasn't going to go bother the tengu today.

Rather, she gazed down at Gensokyo. Autumn had only just begun, and some of the land still sported summer colours. Still, already there had been a shift towards winter: the cool breeze rustling through her hair, the yellow and bare trees, the usually murky parts of Magic Forest bare and filled with cold light, and the overpowering scent of decay.

At length, she noticed familiar figures. Hina Kagiyama leaned into a leafless tree by the stream, a thick cloud of ominous miasma hanging around her. The hazy reverberation moving around had to be Nitori lurking around, the camouflage technique of her dress malfunctioning due to cold weather. Red leaves bandied by the wind, abandoned by the trees, harbingers of autumn, Lily White's fall counterparts.

Reimu looked down quietly for a long time. She felt the dull thudding of her instinct at the back of her mind, but with no direction to which she ought to head. A mere premonition, a warning of something to come. Or yet another false alarm for all she knew.

Rather than taking to the air, she began descending down the slippery rocks. She hopped from rock to rock, often forced to pause and consider her options, and more than once she had to turn a jump into flying to avoid losing her balance and smashing into the rocks below. Slowly but surely, she made her way down, paying close attention to the thick green moss growing on some of the rocks, the small bell-like flowers, the trumpet-like mushrooms, and the brown leaves plastered onto some of the rocks like a slippery shell.

She jumped off the final rock and onto sturdy ground, looking up at where she had come from. In flight, the height felt like nothing, but now, after she had been forced to take the journey step by step, she could respect Youkai Mountain in a new way, if for nothing but for its height.

She continued on foot, finding a tiny footpath leading to the woods nearby. She faintly recalled there being a spring that never froze, not even during the coldest winter, in the woods. In the year of the stolen winter, some of the more foolhardy villagers had braved the wilderness and the nest of youkai the mountain was, and come to fetch water from the spring when all the wells in the village had frozen over. No casualties, amazingly enough. The youkai of Gensokyo had truly grown soft.

Reimu smiled at herself. That was what the youkai wished the people believed, anyway.

She had barely stepped into the forest when they all came to her, quite uninvited: squirrels teemed at her feet, skilfully dodging her as she kept walking along without paying attention to them. Sparrows circled her, joined by robins and wagtails. A hare and two pheasants ran by her side on the woods beyond the path.

By now, Reimu was used to this nonsense, and all but ignored it. When she came across a large rock by the side of the road, however, she sat down on it, and waited for the animals to gather around her.

"I have nothing for you," she said out loud. She knew it didn't make a difference: animals always came to her whether she fed them or not. They always had, back when youkai too avoided the Hakurei shrine; when she had first found herself all alone in the world, sweeping the shrine's courtyard with a broom far too big for her, and eating anything and everything she found on the ground.

She gently petted one of the squirrels with two fingers. Half of its fur was already the thick wintry kind. She smiled despite herself. For all that she was supposed to remain eternally impartial, as long as none of these beasts ate the flesh of a hermit, she was free to like them as much as she wanted to.

"I should have something for you."

That said, she stood back up. "Go. Winter is coming up fast."

She doubted the animals actually understood her, but as she kept walking, her animal followers dwindled one by one, until only one particularly tenacious squirrel, the one she had petted earlier, hopped after her.

"Didn't get the hint, huh? Don't blame me if you starve to death." Reimu crouched down and stroked the squirrel's soft fur again before moving on. The squirrel still followed her for a while, but as soon as she came across a grove of oak trees it finally left her. Better that way.

The footpath petered into nothing, and she waded into the sea of leaves, brown, red, and yellow. Right ahead was a copse of maple trees with leaves still on their branches.

Reimu saw someone standing on the branch of the largest maple tree, a girl with golden hair and a bright red skirt. She recalled the face, but not the name. One of those minor goddesses of the seasons with no servants nor worshippers, subsisting on any pittances of faith thrown in their general direction. Despite the lack of a following, the goddess was diligently at work, leaning against the trunk of the tree as she gave its leaves finishing touches.

Reimu intentionally stepped on a twig and looked the startled goddess in the eye as she raised her gaze. "Hey."

The goddess gave a shudder. "What do you want? I haven't done anything wrong. Leave me alone."

Reimu smiled. Indeed, what other reason could a shrine maiden have to approach a goddess except causing trouble?

From where she stood, the leaves on the maple almost looked like an extension of the goddess' skirt, flowing around her legs like a colourful trail.

Reimu clapped her hands together and smiled up at her. "You look beautiful."

The goddess immediately blushed as red as the brightest of her leaves. She made no response, but hid her mouth behind her hand and looked away, leaning so that most of her was hidden behind the tree trunk.

Reimu walked past her, her smile eroding away as soon as she left the maple trees behind.

Soon enough, she found another path, and after following it for some minutes, she came to a crossroad. One direction lead towards the Road of Reconsideration, the other to the now barren Magic Forest.

She paused for a while, staring blankly at each direction, just thinking about walking in either direction sapping her strength away. She took to the skies, heading back to the shrine.

She landed on the bottom of the steps, and without thinking began climbing up. The muscles of her legs, unused to such abuse, protested on every step, and it took all her strength to hop over the crumbling step near the torii.

She kept climbing.

She reached the torii, with its bright red paint slowly chipping away, and paused on the step just before it.

"I will be the last of the Hakurei."

"My, what a hasty decision." Yukari leaned into her sphere of vision from behind her, half of her body still beyond a gap.

Reimu didn't look at her. "It's not a decision."

Yukari chuckled. "Your mother said similar things at your age. We know how that—"

Reimu gave Yukari a frigid glare. Yukari, not one to be cowed into silence, allowed her sentence to remain unfinished regardless, a knowing smile on her face.

Reimu kept staring at her for a while, then turned back towards the gate with a sigh. "Don't toy with me. If I can smell it, you must have known about it for a long time now."

"Smell what?"

Reimu looked at the clouds. "Rot. The smell of Gensokyo rotting away."

Yukari made no response. Finally, Reimu felt she was actually listening.

"I shouldn't be surprised, really," she continued, her lips curling into a smile on their own. "From the very beginning, my job has been trying to keep things from falling apart. To slow down the decay. Doesn't mean it's something that can be stopped. When will it happen?"

"What will?"

"When will Gensokyo die?"

Yukari took a moment of silence before responding. "You are a macabre one, Reimu Hakurei." Reimu saw her waving her fan from the corner of her eye.

"I'm serious."

Yukari put her fan away. "It depends on you, I'd say. If some cataclysm threatens Gensokyo and no-one can stop it, then yes, perhaps Gensokyo will die."

Reimu looked away. "What if it's the kind of thing that can't be stopped?"

"Entropy?" Yukari smiled as Reimu tilted her head, not understanding. "Is that what you fear? That Gensokyo is withering away?"

Reimu gave Yukari a sour look. "That's exactly what I've been saying this whole time."

"You said rot."

"You know what I meant."

To that, Yukari had no response. She floated in place, still smiling. Reimu allowed her chin fall to her chest. The strange feeling of her strength draining away and sinking into the ground unused wouldn't leave her.

"I'm going to go to sleep tonight," Yukari finally said.

"For the winter?" Reimu grimaced when Yukari nodded. "Already? You're so lazy."

"Oh, and you're the shining emblem of diligence?" Yukari chuckled. Then, to Reimu's great surprise, she leaned over and clasped her arms around Reimu's shoulders from behind, resting her chin on her right shoulder.

Reimu remained rigid as a statue. "What are you doing?"

Yukari sighed. "I'm going to miss you."

Reimu did what she could to discern to look on Yukari's face from the awkward angle. Yukari almost looked genuinely wistful. Almost.

"I didn't know you even had feelings."

"What a monstrous thing to say." Yukari laughed, but there was a touch of a wound to it.

"I don't hear you denying it."

Yukari allowed more of the weight of her head rest on Reimu's shoulder. It was beginning to wear down on her.

Reimu sighed. She had known Yukari long enough to know it was better not to take anything she said at face value, any more than she allowed anything to affect her more than skin deep. Even then, sometimes these games got a little too real for her.

"What are you even talking about?" She finally asked when Yukari said nothing. "You'll be spending the time in slumberland anyway. I'm the only one of us who will even notice." She neglected to mention the other month-long breaks Yukari had taken from her visits during the past few years, too. "We'll see again next spring." She jerked her head upwards. "Assuming there will be a spring."

"There will be a spring." Yukari finally lifted her head away.

Reimu gazed at her evenly. "I will be the last of the Hakurei."

"Oh, is your mind still on that?" For once, Yukari didn't smile. "Even if you were the last of the Hakurei, does is make a difference?"

Reimu shrugged. "What kind of a difference could it make? I still have my duty. I've always only existed to keep things from falling apart. All I have to do is make sure I keep doing that until my final breath. What happens after I'm gone doesn't matter."

Yukari waved her fan again. "Rot isn't the same as death."

"What are you blathering about now?"

"Rot allows new life to be born." Yukari slammed her fan shut. "It's possible you're right, and Gensokyo will change. It may contract, even. It doesn't mean it's dead or dying." She smiled. "As long as dreams and fantasies exit, so will Gensokyo."

"It's possible I'm right?" Reimu repeated with a glare. "Why can't you just tell me what's going on for once?"

"My, that would be no fun at all." Yukari curtseyed deeply, holding to the hems of her skirts with one hand. "We will meet again."

Then, like leaves snatched by the wind, she was gone.

Reimu was left feeling hollow and reeling. Her instinct screamed at her, but if what Yukari had said had even ounce of truth to it, its warnings were mistaken.

Yukari hadn't lied when she had said there would be a spring. Reimu was almost certain of it. Whether something was actually wrong or not, she'd have to bide her time and content with the winter to find out.

She forced her feet to move, every step towards the shrine increasing the weariness weighing her down. By the time she reached the shrine and slid the door open, she felt everything drain from her; she could barely stand, and her mind was nothing but muddle thoughts that she couldn't focus on, leaving her mind floated in a weary spot behind her eyes. It was all she could do to hobble over to where her futon was and fall over.

It was only after she had already dozed off and been woken up by an errant ray of the setting sun that hit her eyes through the door she had left open that she remembered she had set the futon outside to air it in the morning, and was now lying on the floor.

After a few moments of futilely moving her limbs, she shrugged mentally, unable to fall asleep again, but equally unable to get up.

She curled up and closed her eyes, briefly wondering if she had slid the door to the shrine shut.

Nearby, a lone bird sang.