[yes, that isnβt great! Itβs painful but something about the pain is clarifying too, gets her adrenaline going. she shrieks in rage and reaches for the pistol, trying to fire to hit the skull. Itβs just a 10 though.]
[ he's reaching so hua cheng's a...arms?? arms are in crispy range. stupid small attic. harrow can shoot at the nasty little skull, he won't stop her, but he is going to move so he can haul her back towards the ladder to maybe get them the fuck out of this attic (super)hell.
honestly getting a 6 means that it's not even really worth mentioning that he'd spite shoot at it also so we're moving on. ]
[ you guys are doing terribly and i support you anyway. the bullets ricochet through the room - shooting holes in the attic that let the moonlight in. the horrible little skull shrieks and rolls, as if it could dodge out of the way.
it screams. GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT! it's very rude. it then opens its nasty mouth to start shooting fire again. last chance!
below them, the main floor with its dusty furniture awaits. ]
[sorry that harrow is the most stubborn bitch alive. she's not attempting to leave the attic but she weighs 90 lbs so Hua Cheng is more than capable of just grabbing her and getting out. meanwhile, she's going to try to shoot it one last time. that's a 14, so less terrible?]
At least fucking hit it! I told you I was going to have to carry you out of here -
[ whether because of grievous bodily harm or because she's just Like This, hua cheng never specified. but he holsters his glock and ignores the pain, letting the adrenaline rush and survival instinct drag his heavy-as-a-wet-kitten bone sister to the ladder.
he will absolutely jump down with her under his arm. fuck the ladder. ]
[ well this time there's a couple things that happen. first, harrow's shot finally connects - the shitty little skull blasts to pieces! it's very satisfying. however, in its death knell, it shrieks and shoots out another beam of fire. thankfully, hua cheng is quick on the draw, grabbing his sweet baby sister down and out of the attic.
secondly. both harrow and hua cheng will realize their fucks were censored and bleeped out. they heard the bleep, and the both of them will feel a sort of unpleasant tingle up the back of their necks. mind your manners. :/
anyway congrats you beat the skull monster. hua cheng and harrow are left standing in the hallway with its dusty covered somethings or others and feeling very crispy. have your tender sibling moment or whatever. ]
anyway, when they make their way down to check out the furniture, they'll find all of it covered in these cloths! when harrow pulls off one of the cloths, she will find...a mirror! it's large, in an ornate frame.
when you look into the mirror, you see a beautiful landscape. it looks familiar - the seaside of a port town in the evening. the longer you look at it, the more familiar it feels, filling you with a sense of longing, for something you've maybe only just learned to have. in the landscape, you can see a group of people at a table outside of a restaurant. they're smiling, laughing, fooling around your reflection, where you're sandwiched in between a rowdy girl with bright orange hair and sunglasses, and a purple creature with horns that's throwing his head back and laughing. normally, this sort of sight would put you off.
... but you know these people, don't you? you know them. you know that feeling, the feeling of joy and belonging that you've been a remedial student at for so long. it's right there. you know this.
don't you?
Hua Cheng.
you're looking at the same mirror because you are so goddamn tall you can both look into it, but what you see is different. you see... yourself, but so much smaller. you were always such a scrappy thing, weren't you? tiny, when you were a baby, tiny little hands, terrifying red eye. but as you look in the mirror, you see that child, and he looks wide eyed up at a woman. she strokes the side of your hair, tucks it behind your ear, reveals your brilliant red eye to the world with a jangle of her silver jewelry. she's alive, and she leans down to kiss your forehead, and mouths something. there's no sound, but you swear you can hear the language, old and forgotten by so many, but not by you. she loves you. the feeling of it fills your chest, effusive and warm.
you know her. you know this place. you know this memory. she's right there. you can almost taste her name in your mouth. you know this memory.
[she's immediately struck by a sense of longing, distant from her somehow but very real. that's her family there. but on the other hand, her family is also here. it's hard to know what's real, isn't it?
the ocean is so beautiful. she wants to see it again, to share it with someone else who will be overwhelmed by that sight the way you were.]
[ there's a lullaby, right there, on the tip of his tongue and at the back of his mind. that a woman so fierce and sharp and magical wove into something soft, soothing, reassuring.
red is a lucky color.
hua cheng touches under his eyepatch, briefly, with his burnt fingers. ]
... don't get too close to it, Har. [ he doesn't know. ]
[ it's just a mirror. the scenes change, a little, but not by much.
for harrowhark - it seems to zoom in a little bit, on the group at the table. the purple creature is beaming as he gets up, still pressed to your side. you can almost feel yourself being lifted off your feet as the orange haired girl gets up with him, squeezing you and picking you up and away from the table. the others at the table laugh, or shake their heads, amused - a man with longer, ink black hair excuses himself to join you, nudging the table out of the way so the other two can successfully jostle you out of your seat and you're more or less frog marched up and over to the ocean and away from the table. it's gorgeous, the view is gorgeous, and they are going to toss you into the water, because all three of them are the absolute fucking worst and you knew you never should have let mollymauk and gu yun meet gideon, ever. (but god, it's so good that they could, isn't it?) you can feel the sand squish under your boots. you can hear them, laughing, raucous. joyful, cheering on this mischief, because of course they are.
it's yours. that's what this is. all of them, every person at this table is your family, and the emotion that swirls in her chest is love. (well, and irritation. those seem to go hand in hand for you, sometimes.) it's desperate and it's all you've ever needed, and it's right there. happiness is right there. you could reach out and touch it.
hua cheng. you can hear that lullaby, can't you? it's so sweet and familiar. she mouths the words, even if the image has no sound, but you know every single line. when you were tiny, she reminded you that you were beautiful and fearsome. when the world beat you both down, she did everything in her power to protect you. she's alive. your scene shifts, some. it shifts to the view of a parade, of golden streets with golden buildings, and you find yourself sitting on her shoulders. your mother is here, she's alive, and the two of you intermingle freely with the crowd. the parade is coming into focus - dancers, martial artists, golden glimmering something that seems to fall from the sky.
the two of you aren't alone, either. when you glance to the side, you see just briefly, someone else - two other kids, one sort of surly and dressed in all black, the other in all white and smiling. the white clothed one smiles at you. the black haired one doesn't, and you feel like you could nudge him over and knock him off of the perch he's standing on, because you're friends.
you watch the parade come closer, and you find yourself drawn to the image. something's coming in this, isn't it?
hua cheng feels it too. love, cloying up in his chest like a firework. it's right there. he could reach out and take it.
the both of them find themselves stepping closer to the mirror. ]
[yeah sorry i'm not even going to roll for this one. harrow has been starved for love for so long, accepting scraps and holding onto them. a brush of her mother's fingers here, the memory of her father's voice there. an old man who she knows isn't right in the head, but she needs him. the man who said he would like you as his daughter, so nothing else he did to you mattered compared to that. the woman your brain may have invented from your madness and loneliness.
the girl who ought to hate you, but she doesn't. the people who met you, didn't even know who you were, really, but decided to love you anyway. it's too powerful and addictive a feeling, to be really loved by someone, and she'll never stop reaching out for it.
[ ( sisi voice ) yeah you're both just sad lonely orphans starved for love
she's right and there's no point in rolling for me, either.
something is coming. something that changed your life and wrote the course of it. (eight hundred years)
your father hates you even while your mother is still alive. but he's not here, and she loves you with her entire being, whispers secrets in magic and wrath and love into your ear every night, sings you songs in her dead language that you keep alive with you. she loves you. she would love to know that you're happier, now, and full of love yourself.
that you have friends - no, companions. you want to jeer and tell yoo joonghyuk that his face will be stuck like that, get kim dokja to help distract him so that you both can gang up on him. they're both so irritating, and you'll probably annoy each other to death, but they are selfishly yours. you understand each other.
but, most of all, hua cheng wants to see the parade. he wants to see the greatest treasure in it.
he reaches past harrow, wanting to draw it out - he touches the mirror on the other side, mirroring her. ]
harrow. your vision doesn't change - what happens, happens. the combined forces of gideon, molly and gu yun - well, mostly gideon, because she's stronger than them both mean you get thrown right into the ocean. salt water fills your mouth and you sit up, irritated, and not three seconds later, mollymauk comes diving in after you. he grabs you and scoops you up in his arms like a wet cat, but it's a hug, fierce and loving, and he's laughing and so, so happy. he bears no injuries, no crescent moon shaped scar over his eye, no missing piece of his horn, and he smacks a big kiss on the top of your saltwater soaked head.
hua cheng. you know what's coming next, don't you? yoo joonghyuk and kim dokja both stop trying to harass you and also each other, turning to look at the parade. your mother gently nudges your leg, teasing, because she knows what you want to see.
the spectacle of the parade is of course, the crown prince of xian le. he is resplendent in white and gold, fluttering down from the heavens like one of the gods himself, amidst flower petals and beautiful silk. from ten meters he leaps, landing gracefully on the ground, wielding a sword. a ghost - a "ghost", really, in a performance, turns to meet him, pointing a sword in his direction. the crown prince lifts a hand to the sky, and a flower falls into it - he looks confident and charming, and he begins to do battle with the ghost, one handed, an awe inspiring sight. the dance of the fight leads them across the parade route, and there's a moment where the ghost pushes the prince back - and the fight is right in front of you, and your family. the prince's head turns to look at at the audience. flushed cheeked and full of brimming life and light, he makes eye contact with you, and he smiles. and you could die, you could die happy, as you breathe in and butterflies fill your chest, as you fall in love with him.
your visions are filled with paradise.
outside of the mirror, things are a little different.
blood begins to track down your cheeks, spilling from your eyes. (or eye, singular, if you're hua cheng.) that love that harrow and hua cheng feel is cloying and thick and heavenly - it's the feeling of their insides, twisting, turning, being squeezed like a vicegrip, of something rupturing.
it's not salt water you taste, or butterflies you're breathing. it's blood, as you're both lifted slowly off of your feet. but they can't notice, can they? everything's fine. they're in paradise. they're happy.
the clattering, chattering noises are silent. the mansion is silent. ]
[there is something wrong here; she knows the taste of blood in her mouth, the pain she's feeling, that there's something consuming about this feeling, even though... she has always been so afraid of love, of letting herself be loved, of the idea that she would be helpless before it, unable to resist or maintain herself in the face of it. but it hasn't turned out that way; this has felt safe after all.
there's something a little different this time. but whether that's enough to shake her out of it, i don't know.
[ sometimes you're AU'd into siblings and you both roll 13s. narratively, i'll take this to mean that there's some absent thought of "wish harrow could see this" as the crown prince, the greatest treasure of xian le, fights this terrible "ghost" to please the gods.
but blood and pain are something that he's intimately familiar with. (you don't fight and die in a war, you don't spend ten years fighting to survive, you don't live to be who he is, without knowing it.) but dianxia sees him, and smiles, smiles at him, and it's hard to tell if it's butterflies or an agonizing and slow death.
love is painful, sometimes, when you've been starved of it for so long. ]
it hurts. the best of it comes with the worst of pain, of suffering. this universe knows it - it knows how badly the siblings crave their chance to be loved by anyone but each other. how badly they've needed to be seen, to be recognized. love they've lost, or love that never found them, or love they shaped with their own two hands.
harrowhark. molly slings in arm around you and gideon comes crashing into the water a second later, making a huge mess. she laughs, she slap pats your cheek, and then makes a move to dunk you and molly both under the water. gu yun is no help - he does not get in the water, but watches you all on the shore, the look on his face fonder than he'd ever own up to. your head is pushed under and you taste salt water (blood?) salt water, and molly squawks and swears, and under the water, gideon's stupid face is right in yours and she kisses you, right there.
you can barely breathe with it.
hua cheng. dianxia's smile is so warm, isn't it? it's the sun. he effortlessly turns on his heel, pivoting around the ghost - you know exactly who that is, too, fucking mu qing, who deserves to get his ass kicked by xie lian a hundred times over. - and then back into your line of sight again, a whirl of brown hair and beautiful silk. he reaches out.
your mother bows a little forward to let you reach your tiny hand out. you reach, in real life, too, your hand coming up, up. xie lian places a flower in your hand, as white as snow, covered in fresh dewdrops.
your feel yourself starting to lose feeling in your fingers. it must be from the shock, that he'd pay attention to you. in your vision, your mother bumps you playfully where you're on her shoulders, and you're choking on butterflies again. you want to introduce them. your mother thanks xie lian for you, because you feel like you can't speak. it's all you've ever wanted. the world tastes like fine flowers, the air of xian le crisp and beautiful.
in real life, something has been stabbed through hua cheng's hand. a claw, of some kind, perhaps. it sticks, and it twists, going straight through the palm.
--
and then, like a flash out of the blue, something shatters, and the images change.
harrow. your beautiful dream is filled with red eyes. they're everywhere, in the sky, in the ocean, on your person, on your skin. when gideon pulls you out of the water - her face is hollow, her eye sockets empty and bleeding behind her sunglasses. you look to your left - molly is the same, eye sockets empty. empty, empty. back to the nein, gu yun on the beach, in a panic - they're the same. eyes empty, bleeding from their faces, their mouths. the sky goes dark.
(the body is there. she's there, out of the corner of your eye. you see her, and she turns her head.)
hua cheng. in a flash, the beauty of xian le is destroyed, and its a familiar scene. the entire city is on fire - it burns into the night. you drop off of your mother's shoulders and you stand in the center of the city, of the chaos, as the faces of plague infected citizens turn their ire on you. they are miserable, gaping human faces on their bodies, gaunt, dragging themselves towards -
- no, past you. in a temple, a dark temple. they've got a sword in their hands, and they plunge it into someone's body. he's wearing white clothes. he's barely recognizable. the sword stabs down - down, down, it stabs again, into the man's flesh, as he cries out for help, as someone covers his mouth and you cannot do anything about it and you feel his pain as your pain, as you realize he jerks his head back and his eyesockets are completely empty, blood streaming down his cheeks --
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
guestservices) wrote2022-07-03 06:13 pm
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honestly getting a 6 means that it's not even really worth mentioning that he'd spite shoot at it also so we're moving on. ]
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it screams. GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT! it's very rude. it then opens its nasty mouth to start shooting fire again. last chance!
below them, the main floor with its dusty furniture awaits. ]
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Fuck you!
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[ whether because of grievous bodily harm or because she's just Like This, hua cheng never specified. but he holsters his glock and ignores the pain, letting the adrenaline rush and survival instinct drag his heavy-as-a-wet-kitten bone sister to the ladder.
he will absolutely jump down with her under his arm. fuck the ladder. ]
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secondly. both harrow and hua cheng will realize their fucks were censored and bleeped out. they heard the bleep, and the both of them will feel a sort of unpleasant tingle up the back of their necks. mind your manners. :/
anyway congrats you beat the skull monster. hua cheng and harrow are left standing in the hallway with its dusty covered somethings or others and feeling very crispy. have your tender sibling moment or whatever. ]
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[so tender...
anyway you've mentioned this dusty furniture so many times so harrow will finally go look at it.]
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You sure showed that skeleton who had the last laugh.
[ so tender. the main room is down the stairs, right? was it just the ladder up here in the hallway. ]
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anyway, when they make their way down to check out the furniture, they'll find all of it covered in these cloths! when harrow pulls off one of the cloths, she will find...a mirror! it's large, in an ornate frame.
just the ladder in the hallway! ]
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o
/|\
/ \ μ
anyways. are things unchanged down here? ]
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when you look into the mirror, you see a beautiful landscape. it looks familiar - the seaside of a port town in the evening. the longer you look at it, the more familiar it feels, filling you with a sense of longing, for something you've maybe only just learned to have. in the landscape, you can see a group of people at a table outside of a restaurant. they're smiling, laughing, fooling around your reflection, where you're sandwiched in between a rowdy girl with bright orange hair and sunglasses, and a purple creature with horns that's throwing his head back and laughing. normally, this sort of sight would put you off.
... but you know these people, don't you? you know them. you know that feeling, the feeling of joy and belonging that you've been a remedial student at for so long. it's right there. you know this.
don't you?
Hua Cheng.
you're looking at the same mirror because you are so goddamn tall you can both look into it, but what you see is different. you see... yourself, but so much smaller. you were always such a scrappy thing, weren't you? tiny, when you were a baby, tiny little hands, terrifying red eye. but as you look in the mirror, you see that child, and he looks wide eyed up at a woman. she strokes the side of your hair, tucks it behind your ear, reveals your brilliant red eye to the world with a jangle of her silver jewelry. she's alive, and she leans down to kiss your forehead, and mouths something. there's no sound, but you swear you can hear the language, old and forgotten by so many, but not by you. she loves you. the feeling of it fills your chest, effusive and warm.
you know her. you know this place. you know this memory. she's right there. you can almost taste her name in your mouth. you know this memory.
don't you? ]
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the ocean is so beautiful. she wants to see it again, to share it with someone else who will be overwhelmed by that sight the way you were.]
...What is this?
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red is a lucky color.
hua cheng touches under his eyepatch, briefly, with his burnt fingers. ]
... don't get too close to it, Har. [ he doesn't know. ]
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for harrowhark - it seems to zoom in a little bit, on the group at the table. the purple creature is beaming as he gets up, still pressed to your side. you can almost feel yourself being lifted off your feet as the orange haired girl gets up with him, squeezing you and picking you up and away from the table. the others at the table laugh, or shake their heads, amused - a man with longer, ink black hair excuses himself to join you, nudging the table out of the way so the other two can successfully jostle you out of your seat and you're more or less frog marched up and over to the ocean and away from the table. it's gorgeous, the view is gorgeous, and they are going to toss you into the water, because all three of them are the absolute fucking worst and you knew you never should have let mollymauk and gu yun meet gideon, ever. (but god, it's so good that they could, isn't it?) you can feel the sand squish under your boots. you can hear them, laughing, raucous. joyful, cheering on this mischief, because of course they are.
it's yours. that's what this is. all of them, every person at this table is your family, and the emotion that swirls in her chest is love. (well, and irritation. those seem to go hand in hand for you, sometimes.) it's desperate and it's all you've ever needed, and it's right there. happiness is right there. you could reach out and touch it.
hua cheng. you can hear that lullaby, can't you? it's so sweet and familiar. she mouths the words, even if the image has no sound, but you know every single line. when you were tiny, she reminded you that you were beautiful and fearsome. when the world beat you both down, she did everything in her power to protect you. she's alive. your scene shifts, some. it shifts to the view of a parade, of golden streets with golden buildings, and you find yourself sitting on her shoulders. your mother is here, she's alive, and the two of you intermingle freely with the crowd. the parade is coming into focus - dancers, martial artists, golden glimmering something that seems to fall from the sky.
the two of you aren't alone, either. when you glance to the side, you see just briefly, someone else - two other kids, one sort of surly and dressed in all black, the other in all white and smiling. the white clothed one smiles at you. the black haired one doesn't, and you feel like you could nudge him over and knock him off of the perch he's standing on, because you're friends.
you watch the parade come closer, and you find yourself drawn to the image. something's coming in this, isn't it?
hua cheng feels it too. love, cloying up in his chest like a firework. it's right there. he could reach out and take it.
the both of them find themselves stepping closer to the mirror. ]
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the girl who ought to hate you, but she doesn't. the people who met you, didn't even know who you were, really, but decided to love you anyway. it's too powerful and addictive a feeling, to be really loved by someone, and she'll never stop reaching out for it.
she touches the mirror.]
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she's right and there's no point in rolling for me, either.
something is coming. something that changed your life and wrote the course of it. (eight hundred years)
your father hates you even while your mother is still alive. but he's not here, and she loves you with her entire being, whispers secrets in magic and wrath and love into your ear every night, sings you songs in her dead language that you keep alive with you. she loves you. she would love to know that you're happier, now, and full of love yourself.
that you have friends - no, companions. you want to jeer and tell yoo joonghyuk that his face will be stuck like that, get kim dokja to help distract him so that you both can gang up on him. they're both so irritating, and you'll probably annoy each other to death, but they are selfishly yours. you understand each other.
but, most of all, hua cheng wants to see the parade. he wants to see the greatest treasure in it.
he reaches past harrow, wanting to draw it out - he touches the mirror on the other side, mirroring her. ]
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harrow. your vision doesn't change - what happens, happens. the combined forces of gideon, molly and gu yun - well, mostly gideon, because she's stronger than them both mean you get thrown right into the ocean. salt water fills your mouth and you sit up, irritated, and not three seconds later, mollymauk comes diving in after you. he grabs you and scoops you up in his arms like a wet cat, but it's a hug, fierce and loving, and he's laughing and so, so happy. he bears no injuries, no crescent moon shaped scar over his eye, no missing piece of his horn, and he smacks a big kiss on the top of your saltwater soaked head.
hua cheng. you know what's coming next, don't you? yoo joonghyuk and kim dokja both stop trying to harass you and also each other, turning to look at the parade. your mother gently nudges your leg, teasing, because she knows what you want to see.
the spectacle of the parade is of course, the crown prince of xian le. he is resplendent in white and gold, fluttering down from the heavens like one of the gods himself, amidst flower petals and beautiful silk. from ten meters he leaps, landing gracefully on the ground, wielding a sword. a ghost - a "ghost", really, in a performance, turns to meet him, pointing a sword in his direction. the crown prince lifts a hand to the sky, and a flower falls into it - he looks confident and charming, and he begins to do battle with the ghost, one handed, an awe inspiring sight. the dance of the fight leads them across the parade route, and there's a moment where the ghost pushes the prince back - and the fight is right in front of you, and your family. the prince's head turns to look at at the audience. flushed cheeked and full of brimming life and light, he makes eye contact with you, and he smiles. and you could die, you could die happy, as you breathe in and butterflies fill your chest, as you fall in love with him.
your visions are filled with paradise.
outside of the mirror, things are a little different.
blood begins to track down your cheeks, spilling from your eyes. (or eye, singular, if you're hua cheng.) that love that harrow and hua cheng feel is cloying and thick and heavenly - it's the feeling of their insides, twisting, turning, being squeezed like a vicegrip, of something rupturing.
it's not salt water you taste, or butterflies you're breathing. it's blood, as you're both lifted slowly off of your feet. but they can't notice, can they? everything's fine. they're in paradise. they're happy.
the clattering, chattering noises are silent. the mansion is silent. ]
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there's something a little different this time. but whether that's enough to shake her out of it, i don't know.
my wis save is 13, sisi, so up to you.]
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but blood and pain are something that he's intimately familiar with. (you don't fight and die in a war, you don't spend ten years fighting to survive, you don't live to be who he is, without knowing it.) but dianxia sees him, and smiles, smiles at him, and it's hard to tell if it's butterflies or an agonizing and slow death.
love is painful, sometimes, when you've been starved of it for so long. ]
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it hurts. the best of it comes with the worst of pain, of suffering. this universe knows it - it knows how badly the siblings crave their chance to be loved by anyone but each other. how badly they've needed to be seen, to be recognized. love they've lost, or love that never found them, or love they shaped with their own two hands.
harrowhark. molly slings in arm around you and gideon comes crashing into the water a second later, making a huge mess. she laughs, she slap pats your cheek, and then makes a move to dunk you and molly both under the water. gu yun is no help - he does not get in the water, but watches you all on the shore, the look on his face fonder than he'd ever own up to. your head is pushed under and you taste salt water (blood?) salt water, and molly squawks and swears, and under the water, gideon's stupid face is right in yours and she kisses you, right there.
you can barely breathe with it.
hua cheng. dianxia's smile is so warm, isn't it? it's the sun. he effortlessly turns on his heel, pivoting around the ghost - you know exactly who that is, too, fucking mu qing, who deserves to get his ass kicked by xie lian a hundred times over. - and then back into your line of sight again, a whirl of brown hair and beautiful silk. he reaches out.
your mother bows a little forward to let you reach your tiny hand out. you reach, in real life, too, your hand coming up, up. xie lian places a flower in your hand, as white as snow, covered in fresh dewdrops.
your feel yourself starting to lose feeling in your fingers. it must be from the shock, that he'd pay attention to you. in your vision, your mother bumps you playfully where you're on her shoulders, and you're choking on butterflies again. you want to introduce them. your mother thanks xie lian for you, because you feel like you can't speak. it's all you've ever wanted. the world tastes like fine flowers, the air of xian le crisp and beautiful.
in real life, something has been stabbed through hua cheng's hand. a claw, of some kind, perhaps. it sticks, and it twists, going straight through the palm.
--
and then, like a flash out of the blue, something shatters, and the images change.
harrow. your beautiful dream is filled with red eyes. they're everywhere, in the sky, in the ocean, on your person, on your skin. when gideon pulls you out of the water - her face is hollow, her eye sockets empty and bleeding behind her sunglasses. you look to your left - molly is the same, eye sockets empty. empty, empty. back to the nein, gu yun on the beach, in a panic - they're the same. eyes empty, bleeding from their faces, their mouths. the sky goes dark.
(the body is there. she's there, out of the corner of your eye. you see her, and she turns her head.)
hua cheng. in a flash, the beauty of xian le is destroyed, and its a familiar scene. the entire city is on fire - it burns into the night. you drop off of your mother's shoulders and you stand in the center of the city, of the chaos, as the faces of plague infected citizens turn their ire on you. they are miserable, gaping human faces on their bodies, gaunt, dragging themselves towards -
- no, past you. in a temple, a dark temple. they've got a sword in their hands, and they plunge it into someone's body. he's wearing white clothes. he's barely recognizable. the sword stabs down - down, down, it stabs again, into the man's flesh, as he cries out for help, as someone covers his mouth and you cannot do anything about it and you feel his pain as your pain, as you realize he jerks his head back and his eyesockets are completely empty, blood streaming down his cheeks --
and then the two of you gasp and breathe in and shit is happening. ]