Ah well. I suppose I'm happy that my mind remembers something I read four months ago in Japanese and trots it out at need when I want to write a story. I just wish it came with a citation so it doesn't look so much like plagiarism.

Thought it would be useful to translate a Yumemakura story to see how it goes in English. I was going to do the Oni Komachi one, but I've already summarized it and anyway it has arrghh poetry in it; so I fixed on the one that happens in autumn about a monk with umm problems. And here's Seimei and Hiromasa looking out at the autumn garden and here's Hiromasa with something on his mind and here's Seimei dragging it out of him and here's Hiromasa saying the plants that grow so green in summer wither in fall and are covered in frost and isn't that just like the world we live in and Seimei nods and Hiromasa says 'Even that Taira no Masakado who was once so gallant and bold is now no longer part of this world.' And here's me going Ulp is that where that idea came from?

Fortunately a little googling reveals that Hiromasa is indulging in a bit of où sont les neiges d’antan reflection and not particularly mourning the death of a friend: not that I knew that when I was reading the thing first time. Masakado was a rebel who died in 940 when Hiromasa was 22. IIRC Hiromasa is in his late 30's in the first volume of Onmyouji, though I get the feeling Yumemakura backtracked a little on that in later stories. It's a little odd to find Hiromasa sighing over the gallant Masakado, but oh well. (It's also odd that Wikipedia has an entry for Taira no Masakado and none for Abe no Seimei; also that the historical Hiromasa was three years older than the historical Seimei. This shouldn't affect totally theoretical considerations of which one would be seme should I ever god-forbid write explicit Onmyouji slash; but of course it does.)