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Reclaimed by Nature

Written for the Ladies' Bingo on Dreamwidth

Prompt: Retirement

Title: Reclaimed by Nature

Ship: Ceres Fauna/Nanashi Mumei

Fandom: hololive

Rating: T

Word Count: 2,660

Warnings: None

Tags: Bittersweet, Hopeful Ending, Forgiveness, Head on Lap, Kissing

Mumei staggered into the last bastion of greenery left on this place once called Earth. She held herself, through her ragged off-white sleeves and her forearm carved with injury and stained with blood. She sputtered. She coughed. Yet the relief when she saw this vernal oasis was nothing less than immaculate.

Especially when she saw the welcoming face of her long lost friend.

“Uu,” Fauna emoted, “long time no see.”

“Has it been that long?” Mumei asked.

Her voice was fraught and as a result, her joke fell a little flat. She knew, damn well, that it had been centuries since they had last seen each other. Mumei was an airhead but she couldn’t be so airy on purpose. Her amnesia and other spells of misremembrance were out of her hands and yet.

The pain of being parted from Fauna, and the rest of her dear and beloved friends, was something so sharp in her mind, it felt as though it may as well have been yesterday that they were separated.

Mumei drew in a little closer. Her boots clopped through the sand which was slowly giving way to grass. At first strewn and scattered, the further she hobbled through this scorched land reclaimed by nature, the more hopeful she became. Stray blades of grass, drowned in sand then became a lush lawn. The atmosphere was different, the air she breathed was cleaner and more refreshing. There was shade from the World Tree that Fauna had tended to with her sacred duties was marvellous overhead.

Mumei breathed deep and a satisfied sigh escaped her lips. She needed rest. There was no graceful way to do it. Mumei fainted. Her body had been pushed past its limits in this apocalyptic wasteland. Wandering. Searching. Looking. And now? She was finally home and that sweet relief sapped the last of her strength.

She collapsed at Fauna’s knees like a kicked-in sandcastle. Mumei came tumbling down and hit the ground. It was soft though, like a bed. Mumei hadn’t slept in one of those for, well, who knows how long. The grass tickled the side of her face, the soil below was soft and clodding.

Fauna giggled, unable to intervene as Mumei settled below her but she could help her become more comfortable. Fauna coaxed Mumei into her lap, to use her thighs as a pillow. Mumei went along with it, too exhausted to care or to protest. Not when she knew she was so safe with Fauna.

Mumei whimpered. She was feverish. Her stomach growled. She closed her eyes and surrendered.

“You poor thing.” Fauna lamented. She took Mumei’s hand. It was scrawny and clammy. “But I’m glad you are here now. You're safe with me, I promise.”

“Thanks.” Mumei hazarded out.

Mumei’s eyes fluttered close. Fauna mumbled something but Mumei’s head was so far away, the feeling of Fauna’s hand atop the crown of her head was strange and foreign. Yet her gentleness was the most familiar thing in the world for Mumei. It was all she had wanted for so long.

To have Fauna’s touch once more. She was wonderful. Her stroking movements lulled Mumei to sleep, she was able to put her defences down after aeons of walking towards her salvation. She was finally, thankfully here.

Mumei fell asleep. She was so tired, out like a light in the lap of luxury which had become so alien to her in her wandering. It was not nothingness which greeted her as darkness fell upon her eyes in her slumber. It was a dream. A wicked, twisted, guilty dream of their past and how the apocalypse came to be. It was all her fault.

There was an old adage about how the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. It just took one brick at a time to lay down that road and Mumei had done her best to help.

There’s another adage that Mumei can remember from the eras of the previous civilisation now lost to time. They believed, rightfully, that knowledge was power and as the Guardian of Civilisation, prone to forgetfulness as she was, couldn’t agree more. The documentation that it takes to sustain the world and the curiosity of all its inhabitants was near endless.

Printing, writing, recording: it was all so insurmountable. The forests were eradicated. Mines went deep into the earth and what was found corrupted the already decimated biomes of the world. Animals, insects, plants, and even humankind: the output could not be replaced quick enough. Sustainability went out the window.

And somewhere within it all, in a certain place in a certain country, Mumei became central to this new endeavour for recording and telegraphing information. There was so much she wanted to know for herself, to keep for all times. Her magic went berserk as she knew the inevitability of decay and scared of loss preeminently, she decided now was better than later.

She didn’t want to say goodbye but she was premature and for it, punished.

Mumei was doomed to wander a world without civilisation, or even a space of green. For her hubris, she took all humankind with her and her actions caused a disbalance that the Council could never rectify. One by one, they splintered off, they no longer wanted anything to do with each other because it was clear cohesion was impossible amongst giants of abstract concepts. Try as they might to appear anything less than fractured.

Time. Space. Chaos. Civilisation. Nature.

They couldn’t really get along despite their natural inclinations towards each other. They were all on good terms, friendly with one another but nurture and good will could only go so far in the scale of impossibility that they were both blessed and cursed with. The concepts they embodied were too vast to create harmony alongside one another.

Even now, as Mumei had her head in Fauna’s lap, she wondered in the blackness of her dreams: what resentment could there be unto her? It was Fauna who had been hurt the most by her selfish actions, after all. She lost so much: the forests, the jungles, the meadows and the valleys.

But she had rebuilt.

Her World Tree had grown again, stronger. Despite the rugged wilderness in an inhospitable world depleted of minerals and greenery, the World Tree provided a hale sanctum for its daughter.

Not even Mumei had been able to rebuild. She wasn’t even sure when the last time she saw a human was. It was entirely possible they had gone extinct despite the voracity for life that they possessed. She had seen humans band together again and again to create community but not this time. All that remained was their works of art and other structures, scathed by the wind and erosion, remnants of a past glory now rusted and broken.

Mumei’s heart pounded in her chest. Guilt wormed its way through her guts and she could no longer sleep. Though, it was hard to call it sleep at all thrust upon her so suddenly and marred by the foggy recollections of past civilisations in sequences that could be considered dreams.

Mumei groaned. She stirred groggily, “Sorry, I kinda… fell asleep there.” She pawed at her eyes and tried to wake herself up some more.

“You’ve travelled long and hard, I don’t mind.” Fauna comforted her. “You deserve the rest.”

“Yeah, but-” Mumei protested and she was clumsy as she tried to get up. It was like her limbs weren’t her own as she pried herself off Fauna’s lap. She collapsed again, chin first into the edge of Fauna’s thigh. She groaned. “I kept you waiting for so long.”

Mumei’s expression was dark. Frustrated. She wasn’t all there yet. A touch dizzy with starvation and even the inertia of her previous collapse.

Yet Fauna looked down on her with such grace and kindness. There was only light in the crevices of her smile, her upturned eyebrows.

“I have missed you every day since we last saw each other, Mooms, I truly do not mind to have you here like this.” Fauna gushed. “I get to touch you, I get to feel your breath and feel your heartbeat again. It's a miracle.”

Fauna turned sheepish. There was a scant blush of cherry to her pale cheeks. The smile that tugged at her lips was cherubic. Behind her, she was haloed by the dappled lights and shadows of the sun’s rays coming through the foliage of the World Tree.

“To me anyway.” Fauna mumbled.

“Fauna…” Mumei’s voice trailed off.

Her eyes watered and she held onto the grass underneath her hard. Hard enough that her fingers raked through the soil and she pulled out clumps of grass. Her heart grew three sizes, she could swear. Was that a Lorax reference? She couldn’t recall.

Fauna giggled and she leaned in, “Don’t pull up the grass unnecessarily.” she scolded Mumei.

“Heh, sorry.” Mumei coughed.

She leaned in and she arched her back slightly, for more momentum as their lips met. It felt so natural, so easy, and the affection shared ellipsed as their lips met assuaged all loneliness that they had felt for the past and countless years.

They kissed. Fauna was petal soft and tasted savoury, like the bounty of a spring harvest. Mumei kissed harder. Her lips pressed harder up against Fauna and memories half remembered came rushing back but through it all was a pure earnestness to know again what kissing her lover was like.

Fauna’s hands clambered all over Mumei’s face. She held her gently on either side of her ears and her fingers got tangled in the strands of Mumei’s brown hair. Fauna kissed back, passionately, as though trying to make up for time lost. Mumei couldn’t have been more grateful as she got lost in the sensation that had meant the world to her for so long.

The thought of seeing Fauna again was what had kept Mumei on her two feet as she wandered the world in search of renewal. Of some sign that there was a place to go before the heat death of the universe. That she wasn’t alone, that she wasn’t in pure purgatory of punishment for her transgressions.

Fauna was her everything despite the junction that their friendship put them at. Nature didn’t need humans but humans needed nature yet treated it so poorly. In that vein, Mumei was just like the beneficiaries of her guardianship.

Mumei was full of natural wonder and curiosity towards the world. It was her greatest boon as much as it would become her bane. She wanted to know everything, remember everything but it was all too much for even one unknowable, abstract entity like she was.

But being around Fauna… It made a lot of things make sense. She was sweet and kind, her heart was for all creatures big and small. She cared about humans all the same as she did for wooly mammoths and the tiniest mosquito. There was a place for all of them and Mumei believed her place was by Fauna’s side.

Civilisation and Nature entwined… Hand in hand… It would have been a wonderful dream of harmony and balance but alas. Some only knew how to take and take.

Was that Mumei?

Even now, all she could do was take Fauna’s good will as she kissed her. The privacy of her sanctum, the one good thing on this less than green Earth. Mumei’s heart pained her the more she kissed Fauna and had half remembrances of jokes and meals eaten together, of arguments and making up afterwards. There was so much to know, to remember, to even apologise for.

Mumei hit her breaking point where love now felt like sublime loathing.

“I’m sorry.” Mumei mumbled again. She broke off the kiss, harrowed and pulled back.

Her eyes were wide but her pupils trembled. Tears streaked down the side of Mumei’s face. The salt of them ran against the slats of Fauna’s slender fingers. Fauna smiled, crinkly, but could not deny the tears of her own.

“Why are you sorry? I already told you. I forgive you. I-I’m glad to see you again.” Fauna assured her.

“But I… I ruined everything.” Mumei cried.

“I know.” Fauna said. “And you can’t take that back but… As long as you do better, next time…”

“There’s been so many next times that I can’t even remember them all.” Mumei’s voice went high and frail.

“And there will be so many more times that we can look forward to and hope for a better ending.” Fauna delicately disarmed her catastrophising. “We’ve done it once, we’ve done it a hundred times, and may we do it a thousand more if we really have to.”

Fauna held Mumei’s head and she leaned in. She pressed her forehead against Mumei’s and the thump knocked a little bit of sense into Mumei. Her eyes still watered, her shoulders trembled. She wished she could be even an inch more like Fauna, maybe things really would turn out for the better and they wouldn’t have to wish a thousand tragedies on each other.

Maybe Fauna really was hurt, full of resentment but surely not. After all, Mumei could feel infinite grace in the warmth of Fauna’s skin. Her thoughts were only kind, only understanding.

Wracked with guilt as Mumei may be, she accepted it. She smiled and let Fauna dote on her with only good intentions. They held the moment for a while. A long while. They had only time, after all, as immortals but still, it felt good for Mumei to truly relish the kindness. She wanted to remember this feeling for as long as she could.

She closed her eyes. She listened to the ringing in her ears, caged in by Fauna’s supple palms. She felt the swirl of a balmy breeze skate around them and the crinkle of grass underneath her own weight as she knelt with Fauna in the shadow of her precious World Tree. In all honesty, Mumei could have sat like that forever.

But she couldn’t.

She still had so much to live for, so many more memories to make and with Fauna no less. All her wandering, all her starving, it had been for this and so, the moment broke with ungainly fanfare.

Mumei’s stomach growled. She had forgotten how hungry she was, how on the brink she had been before arriving back into Fauna’s good graces.

Mumei stiffened with embarrassment. “Ah, whoops.”

“Would you like something to eat?” Fauna asked, understanding.

“I would.” Mumei replied.

Fauna smiled and she pulled back. She let go of Mumei and reached upwards. The World Tree responded to her beckoning and gifted her a freshly formed orange. Its citrus scent was a peculiar zest upon Mumei’s nose as a squirt of juice followed how Fauna opened it up.

She peeled it back, pulled apart its natural segments. It was a little messy but it fed more than just Mumei but the spirit and soul of the world around her.

“Thank you.” Mumei replied as she accepted the fruit.

Next time would be different. Next time Civilisation and Nature would truly entwine, hand in hand, with boundless love and the sharing of bounties, as impossible as it may seem given the precedent.

But Mumei was certain as she ate this orange with Fauna, only good things will come of their reunion. The taste of the orange permeated her senses, its spark of acidity, the sweetness of its flavour. She relished it all, how fresh it was and how completely unlike her vague memories of the last time she ate an orange.

“Delicious.” Mumei murmured.

“Thank you.” Fauna replied.

Mumei’s heart skipped a beat. She would do it. They would do it. Together. They will restore the apocalyptic affected world which would become known as Earth again and they would live happily ever after.

She wouldn’t forget it: this important piece of fruit and reconciliation.

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