Let me Crawl Inside Your Veins (Wide Open)

[bridge_princess]

Who: Parsee bridge_princess and You!
What: February Open Log
Where: Pretty much anywhere
When: February (after the 8th)
Content Warnings: Body Horror, Blood, Roots and flowers growing in things like lungs and other places they don't belong. Probably some serious self loathing here

Prompts below!

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[bridge_princess]

[They were both kind of avoiding talking about themselves. But, the part of Parsee's life she didn't want to talk about as much as here, not back home. So, when Tifa asked, she sighed and shrugged, setting her chin on her hand and thought about it. How did she really put this?]

A little bit of the same, but more monotonous. So... on the one hand? Nothing happened. I was back without memories for years. Nobody'd seen me disappear in the first place. So, I kept going about my days. By the bridge. Guarding when nobody came along...

But I suppose things were happening around me. Urban Legends from the outside world started showing up and people were talking about them, so some of the more people began pushing them to see which one came out on top. I blame boredom, but it was weird. Especially when I saw one here.

[starshower]

Urban legends?

[Things from an outside world showing up in hers... Sounds all too familiar, which is why Tifa perks up, wondering silently to herself if they're somehow related to the phenomenon they're experiencing in the Void.

A thoughtful look passes over her expression, like a lightbulb going off, but she doesn't think too hard on it yet, wanting to hear what Parsee has to say about them first.]

What do you mean from outside? Not from your world?

[bridge_princess]

Oh right that would get confusing here. [Sigh. She'd only partially explained.] Let's see... uh...

About a hundred years ago, give or take some change, spirits had a crisis. Humanity didn't believe in us much anymore, and it was starting to make us disappear. At the same time? We were going nuts, which made the few encounters violent. Few of the most powerful humans who still believed and most powerful youkai came up with a deal. They picked out the most remote valley ever and the youkai of boundaries created a barrier that set a boundary between the world of the youkai and humans who still believed and the rest of the world. Almost all of us spirits? We went into the Valley of Gensokyo.

So... these were folk stories from the outside world, which shouldn't be in my valley, much less hell? I 'think' some brat who was a witch was causing trouble at the boundary? Never got a clear answer. Reimu and I don't actually talk that much.

[Usually when she crossed the bridge and kicked Parsee's ass because that was normal.]

[starshower]

Right...

[Tifa isn't sure she fully understands the extent of all of that, but she thinks she gets the gist. She continues slowly, trying to repeat her thoughts out loud as best as she can.]

So, exile...? The youkai were moved somewhere else, away from the humans? Because they didn't believe in you anymore...

[bridge_princess]

Yeaaaah... more or less. And we need them to believe in us to keep existing properly in most cases. But, because a couple spirits have tricks and flit in and out sometimes, like Tanuki? Sometimes stuff from the outside world gets in.

...

Actually the whole "If you don't believe in me, I stop existing" thing, might help you? You remember I was letting people pray at the shrine, and you were suggesting I try and be something else, believing I could? It's... related. What you believe? How you treat a spirit? It can change them.

A bridge princess is still a bridge princess. But a youkai is what happens if a spirit is corrupted. So, what you've been helping try to do is to reverse that.