Morning Dew's Moment

A bronze pocket watch adorned with twisted paper cord and a bell. Its hands are forever frozen at the dawn of a certain autumn day.

An elegant watch adorned with a shrine bell.
The hands always point toward the wee hours of the morning.

As the sky brightens, morning dew condenses and then disappears.
As beautiful as this colorful scenery may be, it is still short-lived.

I once enjoyed the chirping of cicadas and the moonlight with Lady Saiguu on a slope in the middle of an autumn night.
Back then, I was just a shrine maiden from the country, young and stubborn.
Like a chirping finch, noisily insisting on my own view.
A faint smile that crossed the mouth of the Lady Kitsune fascinated me, but her words were — and remain — incomprehensible:

"Trying to hold on to a moment's beauty is like foolishly trying to grasp the morning dew."
"Like the morning dew, I have already passed away. All you have seen of me is but a residual vision, born of your wishes."

In that vague memory, she kept saying some incomprehensible things. Her expression as sorrowful as the eighth month's moon, and I suddenly...
Then she rapped me over the head with her tobacco pipe, wearing her usual expression of rebuke and mockery:

"Hibiki, the sun's about to rise."
"We should head back."