Work Text:
Setsuna is one part human, one part demon, and one part spirit.
When Touwa tells her that she doesn’t turn into a human on the new moon because the Dream Butterfly ate her memories, Setsuna doesn’t contradict her. Just like she didn’t contradict her when she assumed that she can’t sleep because of her lack of memories.
She knows that neither is true, at least not completely. Youkai sleep a lot less than humans, yuurei never need to. Setsuna can’t remember the last time she was tired, or really exhausted, or even hungry. Her human part needs rest and food, the youkai part can go without either for long periods of time, and the spirit needs neither nourishment nor recovery.
As a child, when she lived by herself in the forest, she had no concept of what a normal life was. Sometimes she hunted, sometimes she rested, most of the time she wandered.
The first time she remembered the woman (saw her, but she didn’t realize it then), she thought it was her mother. A natural reaction for a young child, to assume that the female who looked vaguely like her would be related to her. Why else would she imagine her being there? But the figure was gone in the blink of an eye, blurred away by the leaves dancing in the breeze.
Alone, all by herself, without her sister to connect the dots (and Setsuna does, can’t lie to herself once she looks the other in the eye, because she has seen that exact color before, many times) she didn’t understand the circumstances of her birth, her lineage.
It was humans who made her realize that she is different, who called her hanyou and stared at her violet eyes and the red streaked into her hair.
Being a half-demon explained how different she was well enough, but Setsuna kept seeing the woman, still does. Her hair is the same shade of brown as her own, her eyes just as read as Touwa’s and sometimes there are feathers in her hair. She never talks, only looks at her wistfully, thoughtfully, sometimes smirks, as if she is satisfied with what Setsuna has become.
She can’t be sure, of course. The only thing she knows is that the spirit is tied to her.
Their mother was human, she is told, and it makes her heart clench even though she had already figured out at the yuurei most likely wasn’t her actual mother. The youkai woman (because whatever she was in life, it certainly wasn’t human) is her oldest memory, has been her companion for near ten years.
When Setsuna caught her first fish, she was there, when Setsuna picked pretty flowers in summer, she was there, when Setsuna cried because she was lonely, the spirit was with her; when Setsuna allowed her youkai blood to take over for the first time, those red eyes were watching her.
The yuurei had looked as close to upset then as the girl had ever seen. She remembers the sharpness in her gaze, and how she let go of her youki in shock.
Now she understands why.
She is less youkai than her sister, whose only trait that she inherited from the yuurei is her eyes, but she is also less human. She doesn’t turn human during the new moon. She doesn’t need to sleep. Her demon doesn’t control her like it would another hanyou.
Setsuna is one part human, one part demon, and one part spirit, and when she changes into a giant spirit dog for the first time, the yuurei is smiling at her.