Sonam stirred from his dreamless slumber at the sound of crashing waves. Though, his eyelids seemed to weigh much more than what he remembered. Each time he tried to lift them, they grew heavier. Irritably and with no small effort, he forced them open, only to wince at the onslaught of muted ivory light before him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, keeping them shuttered until his blurring sight began to focus.

Great beams of seafoam, white and burbling, rose from the ocean’s depths and into the moonglow. Sonam lowered his hand further as he stared across the rolling sea to where the wet full moon hung low enough in the sky that its curve kissed the ocean’s horizon. The air, while cool and crisp, didn’t prickle his skin or tingle his fingertips. And as he lifted his gaze upward to where the stars arced across the open sky, his eyes softened with understanding.

“So, this is the Far Shore,” he said, drawing his leg to his chest and then hooking an arm around his knee. “It’s emptier than what I expected…” 

His chin sank down against the curve of his knee as he remembered the warnings that naughty children were being spirited away to the Far Shore. When they could not remember the kindness bestowed by their parents and why they should remain good and filial, the revenants stole them from their beds - attracted by the gloom in their hearts - and whisked their souls away. No living creature could enter the Far Shore, and thus, the children were too far from the protection of their parents.

A smile ghosted Sonam’s lips as he watched the cresting waves. The Far Shore was ethereal and quiet. Stars gleamed atop the dark waters, and Sonam listened to the gentle susurrus of the rolling tide as it lapped against the obsidian sandy shoals. The shimmering sand seemed to span for miles, mottled with undulating shades of silver and white, as if it were mimicking the sky. Sonam tipped his head back, following the streaking stars with his eyes. He imaged, somewhat to entertain himself, that they were the souls of children who’d been spirited away from their beds.  And perhaps they learned their lessons quickly enough to be returned to the Land of Willows. 

Sonam, didn’t you want to stay with me?

He tensed, whipping his head around at the voice. His eyes scanned the shoals with a shaky, disbelieving laugh. “So it’s started,” he choked out, burying a hand in his hair. How could he have forgotten the other part of the tale? How errant spirits, unwilling to release their hold on life, were driven mad by specters?

“Do as you’d like to me,” he said soberly.

Then, as if the floodgates were opened, voices poured into him. His hands clapped over his ears, but it did little to block out the heated admonishments from voices that’d never once spoken to him unkindly. Tears leaked from his tightly clenched eyes as they continued their onslaught, and every part of him ached as if he were being torn open.

I can’t deny them, he thought. This is what I deserved, but… 

It was difficult to feel their presence, knowing to some regard that it was not real - and yet he couldn’t dissuade himself from allowing the torment to continue. The impression of his father’s hand slapping the tender nape couldn’t have been real, for he remembered his father, and the man might have been aloof but never cruel enough to strike his son. Still, Sonam weathered the harsh blows, gritting his teeth as his head bent low to the gritting sand. Then, his sweet-faced little sister’s shrill screeching obscenities upon his head, questioning why he’d never returned to Jutai for her. She lamented, sharing the same blood, and at the sound of feet slapping against damp sand, Sonam imagined the specter wished for him to open his eyes in time to see his sister drown herself in the waves - rather than spend another second in his presence.

Pema isn’t dead, he reminded himself, grimly reminded that it was Nyima who told him as much. She is in Jutai with Tashi, and no matter how she may think of me, she would never - she couldn't.

“It isn’t real,” he whispered. The specters were not deterred, continuing their onslaught without delay. “They aren’t here...”

He shuddered violently, hot tears stinging his open wounds as he pushed up against the relentless blows. His toes dragged against the sand until he found a foothold, leveraging himself up into a dazed stand. Whereas when his body felt light before, now it was as if lead were strapped around his ankles, making his feet sink into the sand with every step. He dared not open his eyes to walk, letting the wave’s whispering guide him. 

How have you grown to hate the world this much?

Thinking back, he wasn’t sure if he had an answer to give her. Because he didn’t know himself. There was no one to blame. After all, what goodness he’d been born with was excised piece by piece by his own hands. The actions he committed were the same, and he couldn’t say that he would have changed a thing. His legs shuddered against their bindings at the thought, yet he forced them to move all the same.

Nyima, if I was going to be dragged into the Land of Roots, I couldn’t bring myself to take you with me. I may not be free from the Wheel of Time, but you can be. You must.

A calling tide gently sluiced over his toes as he stumbled into the shallows. The water was cold, and as he pushed past a strong current, the weighty binds around his ankles loosened - carried back to the shore. A bone cracked beneath his foot, and he hesitated for a brief second, realizing that this was where the bodies of the dead must have been buried. Beneath the waves, they rested in a shallow sleep, unable to move forward and unable to go back.

A haze, like the fog of an early morning, rolls in as he walks further. Invisible hands brush against his fingers and wrists, welcoming him into the ocean’s cradle, and he lets them pull him down, knowing they would strip the flesh from his bones and turn his remains into saltpeter until there was no more of him to be remembered. Yet, he refused to stop walking.

Nyima, live. So when I see you again, I can take you to eternity with my own hands.

“Wait!”

Sonam’s eyes shot open. 

That voice. No, how could you be here?

“Elder, can you hear me?”

He tried not to listen, but his heart wavered. A part of him believed it couldn’t be real, that this was another cruel example from the resentful specters of his past, lauding his failures.

“I’m looking for my mother and my brother. Please, could you help me?”

Sonam tightened his fists at his sides, feeling the eyes watching him beneath the stirring currents. Moonshadows reflected his crumpled expression on the brine, and in his reflection’s dark gaze, he felt thoroughly mocked. How far must he go until he is rid of this agony?

“I cannot,” he whispered. “Your mother no longer walks this realm, and your brother is gone. Leave.”

He shifted his foot a half-step forward before he heard the voice cry out, “You’re wrong!” with such indignation that he felt shaken to his core. “Mother wouldn’t leave us, and my brother would never leave me. Take that back!” 

Childish. For a fake, it is rather convincing. You could never allow a slight against family.

Sonam sighed, “You don’t know him the way you think you do.”

“And you do?” The young, accusing voice shot back.

Sonam hesitated, feeling the sharp bones protruding from the seabed pierce his soles. He could hardly feel the pain with the numbness creeping up his legs. “No,” he answered, “perhaps I never did.”

“Hmph,” the specter huffed peevishly, “Of course not; no one would know him more than I do. We’re twins, and my brother is—”

Sonam shut his eyes, preparing for the slight. 

“The kindest person in the entire world.”

His eyes slowly opened. 

“So don’t speak badly about him.”

For several heartbeats, Sonam fell into a silent repose as he stared at the distant horizon, and then he turned to look over his shoulder. Standing there on the once desolate shore was a young boy, triumphantly grinning with his hands on his hips. When was the last time someone smiled at him so freely? Spurred by a desire to see the smile closer, Sonam turned back and waded through the chilly shallows.

"So you do have a face!" The boy cried. His guileless brown eyes sent shivers down Sonam's back. "Grandmother Hairiti said if I came across a spirit, they wouldn't be able to see me because they've forgotten who they are. You're different, aren't you?"

Grandma Hairiti, it's been years since I heard that name, Sonam thought as he fell to his knees in front of the youth. The open wounds on his soles smarted as sand grit in the torn flesh, but he could not move any further, mesmerized by the boy’s presence. Looking up at his face, Sonam judged that the child couldn't be old enough to begin mara-dispersion alone; his cheeks were still plumped with childhood, matching the bright, round eyes that peered into Sonam's face. 

Curiously, the boy raised his brows, tipping his head slightly as if he were trying to place something.  “You look like Mother,” the boy said after a short spell of silence, his voice hushed and wondering. And that, too, twisted the knife deeper into Sonam’s chest. “Are you… one of our clan's elders? Mother said when we need help, we can call upon the ancestors for guidance.”

Mother did say that, didn’t she? I could never trouble our ancestors with my burdens, knowing what I am, but you -

“How far was the road you walked, elder?” The boy asked, knocking the wind out of Sonam when he recognized the tentative formality slipping into a too-young voice. He didn’t want to slip away from him. Not like this, not when they were able to see one another after so long. With desperate, grasping hands, he held the boy by his thin shoulders and drew him into a tight hug. The boy yelped, squirming a little when Sonam pinned his arms at his side. 

Awareness lingered at the edge of his anguish, a stab of self-loathing joining it when he realized the pain he must have caused. He was a grown man who’d watched twenty-five suns go by, while this boy couldn’t have seen more than ten. Sonam loosened his old enough for the boy to free his arms from where they caught between them, but instead of pushing him away, small hands touched the top of his head and the flat of his shoulder in a show of comfort.

“Are you alright?” The boy asked, tears pushing at the backs of Sonam’s eyes as the youth tried to brace his arm around Sonam’s back.

Sonam huffed dispiritedly against the boy’s shoulder, “I am not crying; pay it no mind.”

“You are,” the boy accused, though there was no mocking to be found in his voice. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying. It’s the same as saying sorry when you do something wrong. When you’re sad, you cry. That’s all.”

So childish.

Yet, he craved the notion of right being right and wrong being wrong. It was a truth he once knew but now no longer could understand.

“Why did you have to be so rash, Brother Tsering?”

“Huh—?” The boy’s protest quieted as Sonam continued.

“When they entered our gates, you should have fled with Pema to Taidji as Mother bade,” his ears felt flush as he muttered under his breath, “Yet you couldn't be moved, no matter how she begged. That night, Pema's tears wouldn't cease when we learned you—”

The boy stiffened up, and Sonam bit the inside of his cheek to try and stem the tide, but he pondered over what he would say should they have gone to the same place or if the heavens prove merciful for once and allow him to see that cherished face.

Now that the opportunity was within his hands, he couldn’t let it pass. 

“If you’d lived to see adulthood, you would have been able to rally our people and rebuild Jutai into the haven she once was. The younger disciples were eager to follow you because of how bright you were. You inspired us. I, too, felt comfort in your shadow because I was safest by your side.”

Tears slid down his cheeks when he blinked, “And without you… I made foolish, dangerous decisions. I invited our clan’s warriors to take revenge against Yinagh, and though I said it was for their fallen, for the children murdered in their beds, to take back our home - I lied.”

He hissed the last word, feeling the smoldering contempt he’d carried for all those years pours from his mouth in venomous, harsh words. 

“It was for my own ends. I wanted Yinagh to suffer for all the harm they’d caused to our family, for taking away my brother. In the end, I couldn’t find the one who’d given the order. Your killer still draws breath, and I…”

The specter’s whispering lingered on the precipice of his hearing. They waited for him to give them his ear, to let them into his heart, but he had eyes for none but the boy in his arms. 

“I know now that you’ve doted on me since we were old enough to know ourselves,” painstakingly, Sonam peeled himself away from the child, his eyes downcast as he held the boy’s shoulders in a firm grip. “You bore with my short-sightedness and sacrificed your comforts for mine out of love - but no more…” He cut off with a broken sob, lifting his tear-stained face to look into the boy’s eyes as he pleaded, “Please, please reprimand me, Brother Tsering. Denounce me; curse me for failing to protect our family.”’

The boy stared back at him, wide-eyed, with a myriad of emotions playing out across his face. Confusion, apprehension, then rage.

He snatched his hands back, bereaved Sonam of their tepid touch. “Who are you?” He shouted, and Sonam flinched back, releasing him when the boy elbowed his way out of his hold. “Elder or not, why would you say such horrible things? About our home, about Pema and Brother Tsering?”

It was then Sonam’s turn to gawk in confusion. Realization dawning as he fell back onto his haunches, hands limp atop his thighs as he stared, petrified at the frightened, agitated child.

“You aren’t Tsering…” Sonam whispered, fresh tears brimming his eyes. “You’re…”

“Sonam..”

The two turned their eyes skyward, watching the stars streak across the heavens, bursting faint hues of color at the horizon.

“Mother?” The boy whispered, sparing a doubting glance in Sonam’s direction before he made to run. In a flash, Sonam's hand lashed out, seizing the child by the wrist and yanking him back. The boy struggled and thrashed against his hold, yelling for his mother. Hardening his heart to the kicks and cries, Sonam dragged the child back toward the coming tide.

"Let me go! Let go–"

Sonam squeezed the boy's thin wrist, lifting him up to eye level once they reached the shallows. The child ceased struggling, but his deep breaths and the fierce look in his eyes spoke of the fight he had left in him but also the fear of what fate lay before him at Sonam's mercy.

Good, Sonam thought as the revenant's whispers began to fill his ears, madness clouding his mind as a tear slipped down his cheek. You will need to hold that fear.

And with the last of his lucidness, he hurled the child into the churning sea. The distant voice called, shooting stars scattering on whitecap waves, unable to follow the youth into the deep's embrace.