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jessiphile · 5 years

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The Light, The Dark

There was a place, many years ago, where the children of a small Haven town came to play. Nestled by the countryside, there were plenty of forests to explore and fields to run through, though Sebahnea’s nearby presence kept it safe from overly fearsome creatures. For the more rambunctious young chimera of the Tranquil Lotus Childrens’ Home, there was the Drop. Once, a number of rivers flowed from deeper in the province toward the Sabic Sea, though some had forked away from the main path and become smaller and smaller, until eventually drying up altogether. The Drop was one such spot, a deep gulch formed by hardened sediment and rocky mounds, quiet and eerie enough to some that it sparked tales meant to scare one another when they were supposed to be sleeping.

To Yunxu, the Drop was fun. Treasures lost long ago to the extinct current often found their way into his small, inquisitive hands, and chasing games unfolded atop the muddy soil. He was scolded by Miss Hina for getting his clothes dirty, but she knew he would go right back the next time he could. Miss Hina, or Hinata Seiwa, was the caretaker of Yunxu and the rest of the children. She wore elegant dresses in the eastern style and her eyelashes were long and multicolored. They always fluttered when she smiled at him, which was often.

One day, he brought a new friend with him to the Drop, an ursine girl named Rhuna, to explore and maybe spy a ghost lurking about, if they were lucky and their childhood superstitions were to be believed. To their surprise, they came upon a cave Yunxu had never seen before. Acting more bravely than usual, perhaps because he thought she was very pretty and wanted to impress her, he eagerly rushed inside. He held her hand so she wouldn’t be scared, even though he thought he was getting a little too old for that, but as they ventured farther and the air around them grew colder, he found that it was because he was also afraid.

It was a maze of twists and turns, each step more daring than the last. Their fear was softened by curiosity, the chance to plumb that haunted cave both creepy and exciting. Rhuna bragged that they were the very first souls to ever go into it, and that the other children would look at them in awe at their discovery. But then there was a rumbling above their heads, and dirt sifted from the cave’s ceiling. They ran, their shrieks echoing in the depths, but could not outpace the rockslide suddenly chasing them. The entrance buckled, and they were trapped with only a sliver of daylight peering between the cracks. Rhuna cried and Yunxu pretended not to as he gave her his last pack of crackers, not knowing when he would eat next.

During what little sleep he found through the long night, he had a strange dream. In it, a figure atop a hill reached for him, their form blackened by an impossibly bright light shining behind them. Brief, though vivid and yet unexplainable to him, he felt calm when he awoke and told Rhuna that everything would be alright. They huddled together until the morning, when the fallen stones stirred and he could hear shouting beyond them. Some Ironscales cleared the obstruction, securing their rescue, and then he saw her: Miss Hina rushing down the gravelly hill with her blue peahen tail shining brilliantly in the sun, her arms outstretched towards them.

They weren’t allowed to go near the Drop anymore, and soon after that Rhuna found a family to care for her.

As a boy of not yet ten, he thought he’d known what the dark was as he was pulled from the rubble, his eyes stinging against the light. But that had not been darkness at all.

Darkness was a small room in the Esgarias Empire, tucked within the many hallways in the deepest point of Eden’s Rise.

The silence inhabiting the corridor was unbearable, his acute cervid ears straining against every distant scratch, the arrhythmic drip of water from an unseen pipe. His own breath was deafening. He listened for footsteps while dreading them at the same time, for the sound of footsteps meant someone was approaching, and who else would come for him but a different captor wearing a sweeter smile. Syderea possessed the pretense of kindness, of mercy, but ultimately she sought to take.

As he laid there, bound by a thick, unyielding material, he began to develop a perplexing relationship with the dark. Closing his eyes protected him from confronting the sight of the creature, but not knowing exactly where it was proved equally distressing. It disappeared once, moments or hours before, and he couldn’t decide if seeing it or not made him feel better. The only light, the sole disturbance in the abject blackness was the dim, yellow stare of the being he shared the room with. It watched him, unerring and dispassionate, utterly piercing his resolve. He could not escape its penetrating gaze even when he squeezed his eyes shut.

Despite its constant presence, Yunxu had never felt more alone, more isolated. Humiliated. Every part of his body ached, limbs growing numb from the tight straps encircling them. He realized that one of his antlers had fractured, the pain pulsing all the way down to his head. Cracked lips trembled as they fought to cage a sob that rose and subsided in his throat like the tide.

A whimper did ring out faintly, distinct from the heaving of his chest. Yunxu clamped his mouth shut to silence himself, but another came. Then, a child’s familiar voice. Though he expected the shadowy beast’s chilling visage, his heart leaped upon glimpsing a different pair of figures before him, each glowing as though displayed on one of those projection machines. A boy not terribly younger than he was then, standing protectively in front of another girl. Younger still and with hair of pale silver, she clutched at the boy’s shirt. Yunxu recognized him at once, and his golden eyes that warily fixed at a point behind him.

A-Mei, Tian’s image said, the sound of his voice distant and distorted. He raised an arm, behind which she wept. Footsteps followed, and for a moment terror froze him, before another, taller form glided into his vision. A Firstborn man he recognized well, who loomed over classes taught in the continent’s most prestigious academy. His scarlet eyes bore into the pair, and he gestured for Tian to move aside. He didn’t, and there was a small part of him that felt proud to see it. Then they began to fade, but before they’d completely vanished, Tian suddenly looked toward him. It lingered in his sight, like what happened after accidentally staring at the sun for too long. But it didn’t leave, and that’s when he realized the creature’s stare had returned.

The joy he wanted to feel upon seeing them, his parents, broke apart before it could fully form, and spread as a hollowness in his chest. Why come to him then, when their faces would soon be wrenched from his mind? Yunxu pushed weakly against his restraints, desperately wishing to be anywhere else - in Mitsukishi with his friends, watching the gleam of Bertrand’s shield and the wind play in Rhodanthe’s umbral feathers.

He tried to focus on anything other than the room he was kept in, the hellish futility of waiting. The memory of Honey’s hand clutching his could not bring warmth to the chill of his fingers. Delfina’s witty murmurings did not beckon a smile. Sofia’s confident voice was powerless against his spiraling thoughts. Hiro’s peaceful smile flashed through his mind, a thing that made him feel nervous and calm all at once, but even its beauty could not quell his hastened breathing. Yunxu thought about that long-ago sliver of light, which had somehow comforted him through weariness and hunger, but there was no such relief for him then. Rhuna and her mothers were far away, safe, and all that was left for him was the unceasing gaze at the door.

His eyes burned with fresh tears as he closed his eyes, trying to secret away his memories like the snacks he kept in his shawl.

#atma #yunxu #writing #:')

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