Mozen’s sight shifts to the window and as does the raging owl who felt stifled, one was eerily calm, the other falling into panic. Following the disturbance the trees violently sway, the clouds churn into a whirlpool, pulsating like a heartbeat, twisting endlessly. In the center of the most chaotic reaction an eerie sensation grips at the heartstrings, pulling them tight, forcing all matters of attention to not dare to look elsewhere. There amongst the white a line split the sky, disgorging fire, a deep shade of blood, seemingly racing to escape this unusual anomaly.

Shira's blue eyes dilate and fright overwhelms her heart. She reaches out for her friend’s shoulders and shakes them. “Get up! There’s still time. You can still leave. With me here, not even Liu Rougang can dream of touching you. Come now Mozen, what’s stopping you? There’s nothing. Nothing I tell you! Nothing at all. So why, why aren’t you doing anything?" Her beak snapped close, waiting. With only the chittering birds answering, dread sets in and panic forces fear to blurt out, "Luo Luo, do you want to die again!?”

“That’s enough Shira—–you’ve done enough. Just let it go. Let me go." Mozen lifts her eyes and pats Shira's shoulder in unwanted reassurance. "Now—– I hope you won’t blame me for not seeing you out.” She lightly pushes her friend away, the carefree smile on her face springing forth tears in the latter’s eyes.

Shira’s beak hung open then closed into a tight frown. Her wings fall from Mozen’s shoulders and she whimpers. “Luo Luo——– Luo Luo please. I don- don’t want to lose my only friend.” As a loner, she had only this single friend. If she were gone, what would she do then? “Who am I to go to when no else wants me?”

As the eccentric owl of the west, Shira had many names. The Eyes of Wisdom, Clear Cut Looking Glass, A Feather of Truth, Thousands of Steps in One. These names all spun tales of her talents in astrology, the eyes that see through thousands of truths and lies to pick out a star hidden in the vast sky. But behind these superfluous titles, bogged down in the mud, she sinks in the saliva and curses of those unwilling to hear the ‘truth’ they sought. Berated and scorned, pursued and hunted. Pushed into the corner riddled with injuries, she had none to lean on for all hated her. Even those that gained disliked her no less than those who'd lost. Attempting to silence once the job had been paid for. All but this friend, no one else but Luo Luo treats her like a living being with a heart. No one else but her ever cared for the life named Shira.

Silently Mozen watches over her longtime companion shaking like a leaf in the wind whilst one tear after the other falls to the wooden floor. She opens her mouth to speak——–but in the end she hesitates. Ultimately she kept her silence and looked back to the window. “Shira. It’s time for you to go. Leave and never return.”

Horrifyingly startled, Shira raised her head, the tears scattered into the air as her beak hung open in utter disbelief. To fathom how cold, how merciless her friend had become felt nigh impossible. No this couldn’t be real! Was this the same Luo Luo who hadn’t a single hateful bone in her body? Even if done in the name of protection, the Luo Luo she knew could never act so perfectly. This was real, so real that a sense of incongruency dizzied her mind. Oh how utterly confused and betrayed she was.

Aggrieved and weighed down in heavy disappointment, Shira turns around to leave but stops. She looked back, wanting to say more, but she instead heaved a sigh. ‘No one can change Luo Luo’s mind once stubbornness sets in… not her… not master and perhaps—– not even Shenghuo could. She pulled back her head, her eyes locked to the ceiling, forcing back all the tears left unshed to return, even if all they wished to do was drown her. Once the burning headache set in, her eyes fell to her beak, and her beak fell to her heart. With a flick of her wing a cyclone of wind surrounds her body. Pulling into itself to be sucked into a void, the turbulent air vanished——– along with Shira inside. 

As soon as Shira faded from her sight, left behind in the cold and empty courtyard, Mozen sank into her chair into a choking coughing fit. Harsher and harsher she hacked, inhaling as she rasped, wheezing on exhalation. This fit lasted for what felt like an eternity, simply refusing to stop, her back bent like reeds in the wind, ready to snap. With how terrible she sounded, snapping in two seemed all possible. But slowly it calms down, painful wheezes with each breath, until they finally stop. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, clearing her throat several times before mustering up a few painful words. “I’ve…..always loved the snow….such a good day…to die.” 

Mozen’s hand falls to rest on the table, those eerily calm eyes flicker back towards the window and a creeping chill over takes the room, the chair’s shadow stretching, looming behind her like a waiting gravestone. There on the back of her hand glimmering in the light, is a red stain tarnishing her unhealthy skin vined in blackish blue veins. And on her neck, the black scaly complexion that was spreading to her clavicle, then suddenly, as if faced with an enemy, retreats back beyond her shoulder blade. Mozen reached for that very spot and softly began to laugh.

Such a mournful laugh rasped with tears and pain, with a hint of something else that can’t quite be grasped. Joy? Sorrow? Or perhaps both. Only she would know.

• • • •

Day had turned to night. The temperature had risen from frosty winter into scorching summer. A raging fire, the likes this world has never seen, had engulfed the Vermilion forest. The wildlife frantically ran to escape the inferno, circling the forest for any way out. Whether they be landbearing or airborne, an invisible pair of hands caged the forest with an inescapable net, preventing neither insect nor beast from leaving its grasp.

Near the outer edge of trees bordering the Moondrop lake’s main reservoir, was where Shira had retreated and rested upon a tall catalpa tree. Her sight locked unwaveringly on the epicenter of fire. In her wing she gently strokes a blue pendant, her feathers trembling with each caress.

Suddenly and without the slightest bit of warning, a rush of air blasted past. It pushes the trees to a snapping point then pulls them forward. Pop! Vibrations ricochet, the gust is forced back at an alarming speed. An explosion of blue fire plumes into a collapsing wave, ripping through the Vermilion forest with ease, toppling trees in its wake, turning beasts into ash, almost leveling the forest into flatland.

"Another one?!" Shira's disgruntled voice echoes into the night sky popping with ambers.

Flicking her wing forward, a light shoots out of her sleeve and a cloudy crystal ball appears, floating in mid air. With a wave of her wing the fog dispersed and images of Mozen’s clinic were revealed inside. The abode surrounded in fire had yet to fully burn. The roof above the bedroom was missing by more than half, the rest of which was steadily burning. In the skies above, a tall 182 centimeter man stood cloaked in black, a head of silver hair raining down his shoulders, and that lithe body wrapped in a menacing aura. Not too far behind him two shorter men dawned in black stood. With swords held at the waist, backs at attention with their heads lowered in subservience.

Her wing flicked across the ball. The scene changed to the inside of Mozen's clinic. Shown right before her comes the tragic, chaotic sight that sprung forth a blizzard inside her chilling blue eyes. A dense pressure erupted from the catalpa tree. Within a finger's snap, a depression fifty meters deep and ten miles wide circumferences the width of the catalpa's crown. A roar erupts. This unnatural indention opened a new path for the Moondrop lake’s reservoir, causing crashing waves to fill the air with its chilling cacophony.

• • • •

Inside Doctor Mozen’s clinic a once immaculate room has transformed into a disaster left in the wake of a raging cyclone. Not a single furnishing was in one piece. Scattered debris and chard wood litter the ashy floor. Bloody cast off stained the white walls, disappearing into the vermilion beams. And a girl dressed in red sat stoically in the center of this ruin.

Mozen’s blue and white robe was no more. The crimson stained doctor sat reversed butterflied striking a ghastly appearance. Both her legs were broken with the bones nearly escaping from the skin. One arm rests unnaturally limp by her side, spilling blood off her mangled fingers. Blood also trailed from her revealed ear, staining one side of her face red. Her messy raven hair had been victimized with the ripped out strands thrown across the floor, drowning right below her in an increasing blood pool, one which reflects the exhaustion, the detachment aging her youthful face, a face paler than white marred in gruesome blood and dead eyes calmer than stagnant water.

In these brief hours few words had passed between the reticent pair, the one down below and the one up above. In fact barely any words were said before the situation entered into such a tragic state.

From the man, a statement of marriage containing a name and just four words was his introduction when he forced his way inside the clinic. The woman's response of a single “no,” sparked the flame, setting off an explosion of anger unlike any other. Lost to his blind rage, the man brutalized the woman into the state she now found herself in——bleeding and broken. No sense of hope and not enough heart to care to search for one.

In the cracking fire, the stalemate of silence came to an end when chuckling laughter came from inside the clinic. The crimson woman’s light hearted titters were off putting in this situation. So much so that the man stops his own silence, sending a 'what strange medicine did you take,' look down below.

"Why are you laughing?" Liu Rougang fist clenches at his side. He shot a signaling look at his servants, reaching out his hand in a receiving motion. One bows while the other steps forward, a hand reaching into his sleeve. His gloved hand touched a small box, but before the box could leave his sleeve, the laughter stopped and all eyes fell to the broken building.

"What. Can’t I laugh?” Mozen relaxed her posture, languidly tilting her head with a slight smile. “In the wake of it all. Am I even denied this? A simple pleasure. One before my untimely end? You are aware, being a little responsible, for once, won’t hurt, but instead reward you, with good karma. Hadn't your faith, in Buddhism, taught you such, or, was that a lie, too?" Mozen spoke slowly and measuredly. It was quite obvious the smoke had damaged her throat and lungs. She was having trouble speaking as even that laughter was a sweet chore forced out in the moment.

The servant stayed still. He looks to his master for any direction. Well aware of the turbulent currents between the doctor and his master, but also lacking the empathy to guess, he was unable to read the stirring ambiguity, nervously awaiting instruction.

Liu Rougang paid no attention to his servants and crisply orders. "Enough. Answer my question Mozen."

"Ha——–Simply juvenile- as always." Mozen grievously placed a hand on her heart, looking at the tyrant with a strange lopsided smile. “Never wrong and your golden words are law. Isn’t it tiring to support, such heavy arrogance? I’ve yet to have my own answers, so why must I humor yours?”  

Liu Rougang's green eyes turned bloodshot. Red color dyed his eyeshadow into sharp points that reached into his silver hairline, whilst his pupils slitted with an icy fury condensating into mist around him. To the far left, the last remaining garden exploded into flames, a tower of fire rose into the sky, twisting with disintegrating herbs.

Mozen seemed to find his anger funny and titters once more. But out of view her sight flickers to the blazing fire, her heart prickling in pain as the splendid green turned gray, then black, then was eventually blown away.

Only after feeling bored, "fine, fine, if curiosity must be met with answers, it's due to an ironic thought and I simply couldn't help myself. If you were in my place, knowing what I know, without a doubt you'd laugh until your ancestors left the grave in concern. Then sooner grab some cookies and tea to enjoy, spilling the tea in an act of filial piety to offer a few laughs." 

Seeing a fool go through so much needless effort is quite funny. So funny in fact she begins another bout of painful laughter. But this laughter hides a deep seeded sorrow that no one but herself understands, least of all the tyrant burning himself in anger.

"Is. That. It? Going to keep laughing or properly explain yourself?" Liu Rougang enunciates each word carefully, wholly attempting with all his might to reign in his temper, lest his sanity break once more.

Sometimes he doubted if he still loved this infuriating woman. His raging heart bleeding out once more with the ache for her, but then a skip of the beat and he'd remember. It was no one's fault but his own. Their eyes would never meet. She hated him, and he was the one to blame. But be that as it may, love and hate being two sides of the same coin, he hopes one day the mirror would flip and that hate would change to love. Yet, that hope was dangling off a ledge, seconds away from falling into the fire and becoming dust in the wind. If only she reached out, just a little bit. Was compromise so difficult? Taking her hand and adoring her for all eternity is a given. But this stubborn woman——–refused! He had already compromised so much, what more did she wish for him to give?! He had nothing else.

"Oh.” Lifting her shoulder to whip away the sweet from her cheek, those fire filled eyes, deathly calm look to the sky. “You should know better than to ask such a foolish question. To take laughter over needless explanations any day of the year is an answer that needs no rebuttal. Enjoying the simplicities of life, even at the edge of death, is quite liberating. For you to feel it as well, may not happen, but, it's worth putting in a good word no?"

Suddenly the ground began to shake. "Mo. Zen!" He softly growled.

She paid no heed to temper tantrum rumbling below. "Tsk tsk. Getting angry with me will not help you any, neither will spoiling my good mood. Do save us both the trouble and keep silent." She chuckles. That tyrant of a man can swallow that angry blood for all she cares. She was about to die, so she'll laugh for as long as she pleases. If he wished her to stop then kill her out right. Who’s stopping him? Certainly not her.

And so Mozen ignores him and tumbles out into pure painful laughter. Her able arm wrapped her waist, her messy hair curtained around her, and her shoulders shook in glee, whilst unseen tears rained from her eyes, spilling into the much larger blood pool that had reached a concerning size.