#[ jingliu: ic. ] trapped in childhood nightmares; she tore off a spread of black silk from the edge of her skirt and covered her eyes.

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❝  so,  what would you be?  if you had to power to change all the things making you unhappy,  what would your life look like?  ❞ [ baiheng to jingliu, late night contemplations over wine perhaps ]

Prompt: Unprompted. // @resolutepath

It taken root long ago, the fear that had been instilled within the heart of a child at a sight none should ever bear to witness. A fear that had kept her from slumber too oft a time, one that she would bear, she knew, until her hands could hold a blade no longer. It was not a fear that caused her limbs to tremble in a moment such as this; no, it was a fear of closing her eyes for even the briefest sliver in time, even one that was caught within the warmth of a sun's rays. Nothing could appease it, and yet, when presented with the dream of grasping at a life that held such endless peace that knew no presence of cursed memories, and instead, held endless normality and chance, she found herself unwilling to reach out to it, and touch even a single petal of its promise. Dreams, after all, were for those who had lived their lives in regret, and that, was a reality of which she was not part. She would face the terrors, and the visions, and the aches of the mind, if each day that followed would echo the laughs of their kinship, joy, and promises that she knew would prove to last a Xianzhou lifetime. That, above all, was the life that she craved to lodge into the palms of her hands, until her lips could hold a smile no longer, and her hands had grown too weak for any blade; until one day, death would prove her only savior from the torments of a childhood's nightmare, taking the secret of its existence into her grave.

But until then, as Baiheng's voice rung clearly in her ear, the birth of something akin to a smile prompting itself amidst a countenance that had warmed in the sun that hung so high overhead. "It matters little, Baiheng, for any other life would not be the one that I have today." After all, it is the four of them that had granted her, finally, the earnest gift of a will to live, and a home to fight, and persevere for. "Who needs dreams, when one is content with their life?" Perhaps in that, lay her question posed in counter: Are you happy as I am, my friend?

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Tag drop: Jingliu