She remembered a time when her own mind hadn’t been so noisy, so full of ‘thoughts’. When it was nothing but clueless and in keeps of great calm – although it was unflinchingly separated from the harmonies of the world, from its secret talks, its reiterated joys and humble hymns, for she was unable to watch or hear the budding growth of a plant, or marvel at the churning of water and its majestic runes, the swirls of the cloud and its magical rules – it had never stifled her with its presence like at present. She was drowning in them. The rules, those runes and secrets of heaven and earth couldn’t save her from their churning.
“Perhaps I am still a human,’ Wei Zhiruo mumbled. “Very human, indeed. Wonder, what a time it was. Full of weaknesses and tense submissions. Each and every one of them could humiliate my-self and walk away untouched. But then, they were all alive and well, and the rivers were just rivers – sparkling, without a voice telling me to jump down and forge my fate.”
She was a human, once, with no pervasive thought clamoring all day long. Once upon a time, long long time ago, in ages past and in some distant land, where common men and women dwelt and rejoiced in life, she too had been the daughter of such a common man. And she had nothing but thoughts of a common human. But then, like fate of a butterfly that must break of its own cocoon to spread its wing, or die stifled in it– she had shed off her human limitations. Since then, these thoughts had accompanied her, echoed with her, filled her with themselves and made itself heard and felt – and little by little, with each passing moment, she had encompassed a gap between the capabilities of what was humane.
In your lands, I stood forsaken
Deeply grooved in your barren soils;
With a soul maligned and a throat cut
–with all my voices undone.
“What an enchanting night.”
It was a poet’s night indeed; a nightingale burst into one of the neatest of songs, and the croaks of frog appeared to be its accompaniment. Even pale moonlight wound its yarn and stars shining with unparalleled brilliance, peered through their mischievous eyes as if alluring their paramours. Even in Wei Zhiruo’s stale eyes, one could peer brilliance, like thousands of scattered fragments had made its home there.
A nodding head curled up closer. With knees drawn back, her back curling into a circle, the tiny figure fell into a trembling slumber full of thoughts and dreams, lulled by the gentle swinging of the water ripples.
Some Star Fragments [Part 2]
By the time the tides of pleasure brought by her surrounding had waned, Wei Zhiruo felt she had sobered up a little. The sleep washed away. The sobriety dawned over her in waves like awakening. It stole away the shivers, the pleasures and in its place left a cold, hard touch of reality. Thoughts filled her; her own, others, permeable thoughts echoed each other, resounded and ricocheted.
Sobering up, Wei Zhiruo hid her tiny figure further inside the canoe, stiffening her body into an inconspicuous blob as she collected the events of the day, finally ready to analyze her current circumstances.
She woke up. Was cared for by a maid in her courtyard. The broken jar had vanished by the time she was dressed and dolled up and left to her own devices for the rest of the day. She tried and recalled the face of that maid, and the only exchange they had today –
“Ninth miss, you must stay in your room, okay? Please don’t go out on your own, it won’t be good if Mistress finds out about it. It is eldest master's crowning and many families from around the county have come to pay visit. Everyone’s been quite busy, you see. It is crowded and you usually don’t like these kinds of occasions, do you? You’re such a quite child, may god bless you for that. You never give Tou’er any worries. Be obedient miss, our Missus said she will ask you out when it’s time for dinner. Then you can gift the young master with the embroidered kerchief you have made for so long! I must say, how happy he would be with you after that! It’s your Eldest brother's most important moment in life! You wouldn’t want to ruin it, right? Is miss happy? If not, I could go ask mistress for permission…”
A strange kind of schadenfreude had dripped from the maids seemingly well-intentioned words. Her eyes had narrowed down to a slit, especially showcasing her amiable cheerfulness, though. But a pretense was pretense. How dare it feel real?
‘A snitch,’ Wei Zhiruo had summed up the role of the woman in an instant.
She was this family's ninth daughter and today she was forgotten, remained confined in her chambers, on the occasion of coming-of-age ceremony of house’s heir. It was a lot of information to take at once.
Unfavored or orphan? Perhaps, an illegitimate child? Wei Zhiruo had thought at that moment and asked tentatively–
“Will others be there? My sister…”
“Eldest miss? She? Yes…of course she has to go. No other way about it. A while ago the royal edict came– all of us were so afraid, you mightn’t have an idea how much (Aunt Jiang was close to fainting – for a long time she refused to get back to kitchen, but I think she was pretending for the most part). We had no inkling of what was to come, and everyone just thought about which kind of trouble the Master had put us into this time, but fortunately! Guess what? It was an edict of engagement! Eldest Miss has been promised to the second prince! Although the royal family is so far away in capital, far away from Jinghai, but I heard that he had heard of our eldest misses reputation. They had met by chance and then the engagement was settled. The prince might come to greet our Young master and meet the family this time. A prince, must you know! Such an honor has been earned by Eldest miss for the family, how could she not be present there on such an occasion?! Of course she will be there!”
“Oh well…then, will my other sisters be there? Will you go there?”
“…oh, they…”
After that, there came no sound. Her maid had continued twisting her long hair, twice her body size into an unfamiliar coiffure, adorning it with strands of jeweled ruby dangling beside her earlobes, touching down her narrow neck. Few carved pieces were stuck in between the rolled buns. The rubies, intricate though were uncompromisingly huge for her head. Not her own for sure.
After that exchange, there was just silence; no pretense of obedience was heard. With a stiffened and annoyed smile on her lips and dull light in her eyes the maid had slipped away at the first chance she had gotten.
If only this event had happened, it didn’t matter much to Wei Zhiruo. An abandoned child, uncared for by everyone is a great news for her personally. She could spend time at her leisure and find clues about her surroundings without worry of being discovered or treated as an alien, much worse like a pariah. Particularly, what she knew was so little about this world, that every step she took was filled with a probable chance of being discovered as something not right, an alien with no common sense or knowledge of norms. Finally, she couldn’t be sure that her wayward emotions or streams of thought will remain unnoticed if she was under gaze of others all day long. She risked being declared insane, if that were to be the case. Being a closed off bastard was a great chance, an invisible role with little consequences.
What had troubled her mostly was…the unfamiliar, unkind gaze that had been chasing after her since the moment the maid had left her courtyard. From that moment on, a pair of cold, covetous eyes had been chasing her. Thoughts, unfamiliar, rootless and especially malevolent, so chaotic that if manifested in reality it would look like an unscrupulous, unresolvable piece of jumbled up wool, spattered in mud – had started filling the room. This, was deeply concerning, especially for her who was so easily influenced with thoughts of any kind – even a stone could arouse a storm in her mind, if she chanced upon such a rune filled stone. Not to mention, that malevolent thought had no root. It was all chaos, with no good thing in it for her to accept.
All day, she looked for its source, yet the strange thing was that it seemed to be especially alert of her combing spiritual consciousness. This situation of standing in the light, while her predator looked up from the shadows was really unsettling – more than being uninvited to a special family gathering.
Wei Zhiruo breathed in the fresh cold air, her back straightened a little and loosened their nervousness. A strand of her hair loosened in her inattention, flew up with the wind, then suddenly it touched the surface of the black water. She followed it blankly then looked up.
She unabashedly stared at the sky filled with countless stars, flickering, dancing merrily. She eased her mind, letting her consciousness travel as it pleased. Waves after waves emerged from the depth of her soul. It rolled in small ripples, encompassing all that came in its way, like a misty cloud swallowing down hilltops and trees, herds of sheep and cattle asleep, inconspicuous housetops and rolling meadows and valleys. It submerged everything, intangible and tangible in its midst and rolled. Mightier and mightier waves emerged and overflowed. In a space, impervious to all, her spiritual consciousness combed through the heath. From the small inconspicuous corner of that manor, it trebled past its majestic walls and shadows, past its grooves and bamboo yards rustling in the mellow wind, past the small stream that ran along it, creating invisible ripples and waves in the cold, dark water. It flowed like churning waves, rustling past Jinghai city fort, even past the mirror-like waterfilled fields, past all the way into the creaks and crevices of the snow-covered Mysterious mountains.
The spiritual Consciousness rose up like smoke and fume, and dark rolling tides of oceans– it brimmed over and bubbled, frothed and shattered its own loosening edges, finally merging into one with the wind. Once again –
“Over-exerted, have I?” She questioned an unknown bystander. “But where is the source – Or how could it be so traceless. Where are you hiding? What is that makes you so invisible? Not in this plane?”
But no, not everything was futile. She found some traces – strange places with rune filled stones. They formed a conspicuous looking hexagon; each corridor, each chamber abandoned and cold held these carved stones etched into floor. It was so conspicuous that Wei Zhiruo realized that everyone was encircling the pond as its center. This puzzled her more than answered her questions.
“What is this shape – it tells a story, for sure. There is a law in it, a strange rhythm of sounds. A magnificent piece, but all too artificial. Its hardly any different from a man-made structure, but if so, could the mortals here draw such complex structures and with so much resonating law in them? How much more advanced they will be from Cuiping world, if it is so?”
As her consciousness prodded and overturned the small agate like piece of stone, examining them from all sides and etching their runes – so intrinsically carved over yellow stones – in her mind, trying to touch their laws and find an entrance to its fully functioning structure of synthesis, she suddenly found a breach and entered. But the next development was completely out of her expectation.
Her spiritual consciousness was cut-off by force, and then she was surrounded in a strange field of energy. The sky was no longer the starry sky, the water was no longer that of a small pond – no, it was more unfathomable, more ancient and majestic looking. As if she was stranded in an ocean on a small canoe, with the sky full of swirling majestic runes and clouds of aurora, if there was something akin to it, it must be the cloud swirl of a nebula she had chanced upon in the space. Equally vibrant and bursting with energy – the vortices looked as powerful, all the more so as her mortal body couldn’t help perceive its unfathomable power without shirking in quakes of passionate fear.
An ancient song seemed to appear out of thin air. Wei Zhiruo hurriedly looked at the water surface. The moon was nowhere, the sky a purple firmament.
The figure of the tiny girl was now completely leaning against the canoe’s edges looking down deeply at the water – a mesmerizing ocean of floating star fragments. No one knew how, even she was completely unsure – she was now floating above a behemoth of an ocean, with countless pieces of milky white star fragments floating abound. Stars, milky white – and they were floating in the water like pieces of broken iceberg. The black of the water, the white of the star and the purple of the sky – no words could ever claim to capture their grace, their magnanimity, the resounding majesty of nature!
Wei Zhiruo fell back, her ears keenly filling with that hollow, primeval song. You yourself might have heard its soft edges, its trebles and falls, its gratified rise and twisted maneuverings of passion, or encapsulate its emotions and headiness. Yet, for unknown reasons, when tracing it back to its origin, its rhythm begins to fade away and it appears hollow like a carved flute. Emerging from the deepest, darkest corners, yet so shallow and so flimsy as if it were made of a whim, or dream woven. So intangible that it seemed worthless to ponder over them.
“Bright.” Wei Zhiruo echoed suddenly, her mind finally easing a little.
That song swelled up in her head, replacing her thoughts and fear of unknown; her lips urged her to burst into them. A tune so, so mellow. Something familiar yet unfamiliar. But unconsciously, she restrained. She mumbled, hummed along that thrumming in her blood and fed it back to the heaven and her loosened thoughts. Unnoticeably, some strange runes started flickering in her cold eyes, the color of which darkened a degree deeper.
Comments (1)
See all