Chapter Text
A Thousand Years
If the calculation was correct — and Isaluna was no longer entirely certain her calculations could still be trusted after so long drifting between darkness and silence — a thousand years had passed since she became trapped here.
Inside a broken ship. At the bottom of the sea. In a place where sunlight never reached and the sound of human voices could only be felt as faint vibrations through steel walls already beginning to grow coral.
She had no body.
Or more precisely — her body existed, but she could not use it. Stored inside the ship's emergency capsule like cargo packed neatly but forbidden to be opened. Her mother's punishment worked that way. Not destruction. Only... a lock. Leaving her consciousness alive while her body could not be touched, could not be moved, could not be felt.
So Isaluna did the only thing she could do.
She borrowed Fushi's eyes.
Fushi — a small white sea bunny whose antennae moved with every flicker of curiosity — was the only connection Isaluna had to the world outside that broken ship. Part of her consciousness clung to the small creature like a shadow, and through Fushi's round, clear eyes, Isaluna watched the world keep moving without waiting for her.
Fish swimming between coral. Light dancing on the water's surface far above. Whales passing like islands that had decided to walk. Storms that turned the ocean into something furious and white and unpredictable.
She saw all of it.
But what she thought about most often — even in this sunless ocean depth, even when her consciousness could barely distinguish between sleeping and waking — was a girl.
Iroha.
That name was like a small lamp that never went out. Among all the darkness surrounding her, among all the time that kept flowing without permission, that name was always there. Sometimes she thought of it with peace — remembering the face she had seen from the Moon, the smile that had made her decide to leap to Earth without a second thought. Sometimes she thought of it with something that ached — because Iroha was living somewhere up above, breathing, growing, changing, not knowing that someone at the bottom of the sea could not stop thinking of her.
A thousand years.
Iroha had been gone for a long time. Of course. Humans did not live that long.
But her feelings had never been informed of that.
The day everything changed began with light.
Not ordinary light — not the reflection of the sun that sometimes penetrated to certain depths, not bioluminescence from sea creatures that occasionally passed. This was different. Sharper. More directed. And strangely — familiar. Like a frequency she had not heard in so long, yet her body still remembered.
Fushi felt it first. The small antennae moved quickly, and through the bond of consciousness they shared, Isaluna felt the curiosity overflowing from the little creature. Fushi swam toward the light without being asked. And Isaluna — who for a thousand years had had no choice but to follow wherever Fushi went — let herself be carried along.
What they found made Isaluna stop breathing.
Or would have made her stop breathing, had she possessed lungs to do so in that moment.
Six figures stood outside the broken ship. At the bottom of the ocean. Wearing clothes that clearly did not belong to this era — or to any era Isaluna had witnessed in a thousand years of glimpsing the world through Fushi's eyes. Their garments shimmered faintly in the ocean's darkness, material too perfect to be something crafted by human hands. Technology. Lunarian.
And on the shoulder of one of them — sat a small white sea bunny who had just swum there full of curiosity.
Fushi.
Treacherous little thing, thought Isaluna, but without any true anger.
Then one of them — a woman with warm posture and a calm face — lifted her head. Her eyes searched toward the ship. Searched toward the place where Isaluna's consciousness hid behind rusted, coral-covered steel.
And that woman said — in the Lunarian tongue Isaluna had not heard from any voice but her own in a thousand years:
"Isaluna."
The world stopped.
Not literally. Fish still swam. Water still moved. Time did not truly care about the moments that shattered someone from within.
But for Isaluna — the world stopped.
Because there was only one group of beings in the entire universe who knew that name. The name she had never given to anyone on Earth. The name that had never been on the lips of Kaguya whom Iroha knew, not in the avatar of Yachiyo she had not yet created. A name that lived only among the people of the Moon — among those born and raised in the place she had not been able to reach for a thousand years.
Lunarian.
And at once — the dread came.
Not dread born from danger. But dread born from possibility. Because if they were Lunarian, if her mother had sent them, then their mission might be very simple: find Isaluna. Bring her home. End all of this.
No.
She did not want to go back. Not now. Not before —
But then the emergency capsule door opened.
And Isaluna — for the first time in a thousand years — felt air on her skin.
Or not air. Cold seawater. But still — skin. She had skin. She had hands she could move, fingers she could curl into a fist, knees that could barely support her own weight because a thousand years of disuse had been spent in stillness. She had eyes — real eyes, not borrowed ones — and with those eyes she saw the six figures standing before her.
She stepped back.
Reflex. Her back met the ship's wall and she held her breath, bracing herself for whatever came next. Her body trembled — whether from cold, whether from fear, whether because a thousand years without movement had made her muscles forget how to work properly.
The woman extended her hand. Slowly. Without threat. Smiling in a way that held no pretense at all.
"Isaluna," she said again. Softer this time. "At last."
And something in Isaluna's chest — something that had been compressed for so long by loneliness and darkness and time that never stopped — cracked, just slightly.
She looked at the woman. Looked at the five figures behind her. Looked at Fushi, who was now drifting slowly back toward her, antennae moving as if both apologizing and feeling absolutely no regret at all.
Then Isaluna looked down.
And realized she was naked.
If the circumstances were different — if she had not just emerged from a thousand years of solitude at the bottom of the sea, if her heart were not still pounding as though it meant to break through her ribcage — perhaps Isaluna would have responded to this situation with the dignity more befitting a Lunarian crown princess.
But this was not a different situation.
So she simply stood there, at the ocean floor, in a body she had not used for a thousand years, and panicked entirely.
The woman — her expression unchanged, as though this were the most ordinary thing that had ever happened to her — removed the outer layer of her robe and held it out to Isaluna without a word. Isaluna took it. Wrapped the cloth around her body with hands that still could not quite believe these fingers were her own.
Someone from the group — a dark-haired man whose expression was more readable than the others, suppressing a smile that very clearly wanted to escape — held out something shaped like a small mirror.
Isaluna looked into it.
And stopped.
What looked back was not the face she remembered. Not Kaguya's blonde hair, not the warm brown eyes she had chosen when she first took a human form to descend to Earth. What was in the mirror was — something else. Something more. Hair white as the light of a full moon, hanging wet and heavy around her face. Eyes of blue — not ordinary blue, but sapphire blue, a blue as deep as the sea that had held her captive for a thousand years. Skin pale and translucent as porcelain.
Her absolute form.
Isaluna had once read about this in the ancient Lunarian texts — that there comes a point where a Lunarian who has remained too long in a certain state loses the ability to choose her human form, and only one remains. The purest form. The form that can no longer be changed.
Apparently a thousand years was sufficient time to reach that point.
She gazed at her reflection a moment longer. Then, with a strange kind of honesty — she was beautiful. Not beautiful by plan or by choice. But beautiful in the way that comes from within, from a thousand years of waiting and longing and refusing to be broken.
"Done making peace with the mirror?"
That voice — warm, mildly amused, yet carrying something far deeper than humor alone — made Isaluna raise her head.
The woman. Still standing in the same place. Still smiling in the same way.
And something in that voice — something Isaluna could not attach to logic, only to a feeling older than words — made her lips form a name.
"...Maven?"
The woman nodded. And her smile widened — not in triumph, but in the way of someone who has waited a very long time to be reunited with someone they love.
"You remember, finally," said Maven.
They introduced themselves one by one.
Aegis — a man about Isaluna's age, with a direct manner of speaking and eyes that held something he was not yet ready to voice. Kael — broad build, low voice, but gestures far gentler than one might expect. Mei — a tall woman with an appraising but not unkind gaze, firm in a way that made people feel safe rather than threatened. Pril — who had taken the form of a twelve-year-old girl with an expression that always seemed to know more than she let on. And Toro — who had been suppressing a smile since the beginning and finally gave up, introducing himself in a manner that made Kael shove his shoulder for being too casual in a moment that was supposed to be solemn.
They had been sent seven thousand years ago. They entered the Earth using Lunarian technology, found this era, and searched. For a thousand years they searched — until finally it was Fushi who led them here.
So Fushi had not betrayed her. Fushi had found her.
Isaluna looked at the small sea bunny now sitting quietly on her shoulder, antennae moving in their steady rhythm.
Then, without warning — the dam broke.
Not slowly. Not gracefully. Tears came like a thousand years that had finally found their way out — and Isaluna, who had endured solitude and darkness and cold without crying even once, who had compressed all her fear and longing and not knowing whether she would remain here forever — Isaluna wept at the bottom of the sea.
Maven said nothing.
She only stepped forward and embraced the princess. In a way that existed in no Lunarian protocol. In a way that existed between no queen and no subject, between no envoy and no crown princess. In the way of a mother — or something closer to a mother than anything Isaluna had ever felt from someone who shared her blood.
And Isaluna let herself be held. Let her shoulders shake. Let a thousand years of it flow outward.
At last. At last. At last.
The seven thousand years that followed unfolded like something with no equivalent in any world.
The seven of them — Isaluna, Maven, Aegis, Kael, Mei, Pril, Toro, and Fushi who was always on the shoulder of whoever was being most quiet — wandered the world from era to era, from continent to continent, from civilizations rising to civilizations falling.
They fought creatures that appeared in no human record. Ewa — monsters half-lizard half-ape, with teeth like shattered obsidian and claws that could tear through steel, that breathed fire from jaws too wide for faces too small. They came from the cracks between dimensions, from places where the boundary between this world and the next had grown dangerously thin, and their task was to ensure they traveled no further than they should.
But between all those battles — other things happened. Smaller things, warmer things, more human than all the parts of themselves that were not human.
There was a night in Mesopotamia when Toro, with complete innocence, decided the best way to resolve a dispute between two kingdoms was to pretend to be a god. The result — the legend of Gilgamesh. Kael laughed until he fell off his horse. Maven sighed at considerable length. Isaluna could not decide whether to be angry or to laugh too, and then she laughed as well.
There was a morning in Egypt when Aegis — flying too low while rescuing a village from a swarm of Ewa — was accidentally seen by hundreds of people, the light from his eyes still blazing. Ra, they said. The god of the sun. Aegis returned to camp with the expression of a man who had given up on life. "I only wanted to save their wheat fields," he said. "Now I'm a god." Toro suggested building a temple. Kael picked Toro up with one hand and moved him to the corner of the tent.
There came a time when stories about Isaluna herself spread — the white-haired girl with blue eyes who appeared in the darkest moments, who conjured illusions that deceived all the senses, who manifested a shield of blue light when no one else could stand. Athena, some said. Maven eventually stopped trying to correct the stories.
They had not planned to become legends. But apparently when seven non-human beings walk through history and leave traces too large to be ignored — humans always find a way to turn those traces into stories. And those stories become myths. And those myths become scripture and epic and carvings on temple walls.
All of human history. Full of their shadows.
Isaluna was not certain whether to feel pride or guilt about this. She chose not to think about it too deeply.
What she thought about — what she always thought about, between all the battles and adventures and eras that kept changing — was Iroha. Every time they passed through Japan, every time she heard that language, every time she saw a girl laugh in a way that reminded her of something she could not define — the longing would come again. Not like a wound. More like gravity. Always there. Impossible to fight. Only possible to endure, day after day, until the awaited day arrived.
The 1700s.
War.
Not the ordinary wars they had long grown accustomed to witnessing across thousands of years — small conflicts, battles between clans, territorial struggles that ended within a single generation. This was different. It spread like fire across dry land and showed no sign of stopping, and every day they spent at its margins Isaluna could feel something inside Mei growing tighter.
The night that something finally broke, Mei stood on the edge of a hill overlooking the valley below — where smoke still rose from a village that had ceased to exist the previous night. Isaluna stood behind her. She had known Mei long enough to understand that this was not a moment for words.
But then Mei turned.
"I am done," she said. Not in a raised voice — on the contrary, in a tone too low, too controlled, which was precisely what made the hair stand on end. "I am done watching this and doing nothing. I can stop it. We can stop it."
Maven was already between them before Isaluna could move.
"Mei."
"Don't. Don't speak of the rules again."
"This isn't about rules. It's about consequences." Maven spoke with the calm Isaluna had come to know — a calm not born from indifference, but from having seen enough to understand that some things cannot be resolved with force, no matter how great that force may be. "If we intervene — this war ends. But what replaces it may be worse. Far worse. Because we will have redirected the river without knowing where it leads."
"So we just... stand here."
"Yes."
Mei was silent for a long time. Wind moved between them — carrying the smell of smoke from the valley below.
"I cannot," Mei finally said. Quietly. But with finality. "I cannot continue like this. Cannot keep watching and doing nothing and pretending that is a choice I can accept."
"Mei —"
"I want to leave."
Those words fell among them like a stone in still water. Small ripples spreading in every direction.
Isaluna stepped forward. "Mei. We can talk about —"
"There is nothing to discuss." Mei shook her head. But her eyes — when they met Isaluna's — held no anger. Only exhaustion. Exhaustion of the kind that had grown too deep to be resolved in a single conversation. "I need to find my own way. I cannot keep following someone else's rules and calling it my life."
No one said anything.
Because each of them — in different ways — understood.
Maven was the first to exhale. Long and deep, like someone who had anticipated this moment from a great distance but was still not entirely prepared when it arrived.
"It is time," Maven said at last. To all of them, not only Mei. "You have been together for a very long time. But there comes a moment when someone must find their own illumination — a path that cannot be walked together because it is a path wide enough for only one."
One by one they nodded. With the same expression — something between understanding, and sorrow, and a refusal to let that sorrow show itself too plainly.
"But this is not a farewell forever," Maven continued. Her smile returned — smaller than usual, but still present. "When the time comes, we will meet again. And we will sit together and eat and tell stories of everything we each endured. And laugh about all the things that should not be funny but are, in the end."
The parting took place in embraces held too tightly and too long.
Mei embraced Isaluna last — differently from usual, longer, closer, like someone who wanted to ensure that what they carried away was not only memories but something that could not be named. Isaluna returned the embrace in kind.
Then Pril tugged at Isaluna's sleeve from behind.
The twelve-year-old girl — who had worn that form longer than the lifetimes of kingdoms they had watched rise and fall — looked at Isaluna with eyes that always held more than they revealed.
"Where will you go?" asked Pril.
Isaluna had known the answer for a long time. Perhaps since a thousand years ago, when she lay inside a broken ship at the bottom of the sea and counted the name of the only lamp inside her that had never gone out.
"Japan," she answered.
Pril nodded slowly. Then smiled — a rare smile, all the more precious for its rarity.
"I hope you find the love you have been waiting for."
Isaluna only smiled back. Did not answer. Because there are things too large to fit inside words, and the best answer for those is sometimes a silence that already knows what was meant.
Japan.
Isaluna arrived by ship — not a Lunarian vessel, but a wooden boat smelling of salt and tar, with Fushi on her shoulder and no one knowing who she was or where she had come from. A white-haired girl with sapphire eyes who did not speak much and always stood a little further from the crowd.
She watched the empire move. Conflict and peace alternating like seasons without a fixed schedule. Wars that redrew maps. Technology growing like trees after the first rain — slowly, then all at once, then unstoppably.
And Isaluna, who had witnessed civilizations born and die across thousands of years, who carried Lunarian technological knowledge inside her mind like a library without limit — began to build something.
Not a ship. Not a weapon. Not anything related to all the missions and battles she had passed through.
She built a world.
In an apartment that appeared ordinary from outside but contained rooms that existed in no building's blueprints — rooms whose walls were covered in screens and servers and cables glowing faint blue in the darkness — Isaluna and Fushi worked for years. Merging Lunarian technology with the development of human technology. Building a foundation that could not be seen. Composing the architecture of something that did not yet have a name.
When it was finally complete, Isaluna stood before the sleep capsule she had built with her own hands — steel and glass and blue light that pulsed gently like a heartbeat — and did not immediately enter.
She looked at Fushi.
Fushi looked back. Antennae moving.
"Are you ready?" asked Isaluna.
Fushi answered in a way that could only be understood by someone who had shared a consciousness with her for thousands of years — a small leap to the left shoulder, antennae moving twice, head tilting to the right.
Ready since ages ago.
Isaluna laughed softly. Lifted Fushi with both hands and looked at her for a moment.
"Thank you," she said. "For everything."
Then she lay down inside the capsule. Closed her eyes. And let her consciousness flow into the world she had built — like water finding its river.
That world was named Tsukuyomi.
And inside it — for the first time in eight thousand years — Isaluna ran.
Not from a threat. Not toward a battle. Just running, across a field that appeared on no map, beneath a sky she had designed herself with virtual hands that felt more real than they should. Then stopping in the middle of it, raising both arms, and turning in place.
Around her, the world lit up.
Colors she had chosen. Architecture she had designed. Every corner, every light, every small detail that did not need to exist but existed because she wanted it to. Because at last, for the first time in so very long, she was building something not because she had to but because she wanted to.
Fushi appeared beside her — her virtual form brighter, antennae longer, but the same expression exactly.
Isaluna smiled.
Then, with a lightness and a small playfulness that existed in no protocol anywhere, she chose a name for herself in this world.
Yachiyo.
Eight thousand years. A name of long, long time, for someone who had existed since before most could imagine. A name she gave to herself — not from birth, not from duty, but from choice.
And in that new, luminous Tsukuyomi, Yachiyo — the Moon princess who had walked eight thousand years to arrive here — sat on steps she had built in the middle of a virtual city that had no inhabitants yet, lifted Fushi onto her lap, and waited.
Not in despair. Not in anxiety.
Only waiting — in the manner of someone who had learned long enough that some things cannot be hurried, only endured with patience — for the one girl whose name she had carried for thousands of years.
For Iroha.
I will wait for you, she thought. No matter how long.
Outside the sleep capsule in the apartment that appeared ordinary from the outside, the city kept moving. The years kept turning. The world kept not knowing that someone within it had been carrying a longing longer than the age of humanity's oldest civilization.
But Yachiyo knew.
And that was enough, for now.