Chapter Text
The fragile clinking of their wine glasses is lost admist Baiheng’s excited giggle, broken by the little snorts of hers Jingliu finds so endearing.
“You’re so serious, Jingliu!”
Jingliu smiles sleepily, the sight of the moon reflecting off the sparking wine in Baiheng’s glass hypnotic. They’re close, shoulder to shoulder, the warmth of Baiheng’s bare skin a blissful reprieve from the cold winds of…
The cold winds of…
Where are we?
“Jingliu,” Baiheng purrs playfully from Jingliu’s side, her breath tickling Jingliu’s ear. “What’cha thinking about? Is it...me?” Baiheng hums and presses herself closer. Her soft hair brushes against Jingliu’s cheek for a moment as Baiheng lays her head on Jingliu’s shoulder, and it’s all Jingliu can do to keep from wrapping her arm around Baiheng and laying her down, to kiss...to make love, right here in this field, atop the grasses of…
The grasses of…
Something’s...wrong…
“Baiheng…” Jingliu starts, but finds her throat suddenly scratchy and dry, so she tries to cough.
But she can barely breathe.
She starts to stand but something’s tugging at her arm, a firm but gentle grip.
Baiheng.
Jingliu turns to her companion and sees a nightmare, crowned in the fluttering golden waves of wheat that sprout wild from the ground around them in a vast swath of roiling growth, the stalks writhing against the breeze like a field of twisted worms. Jingliu watches, her eyes watering from her airlessness, an alien panic paralyzing her mind, as the grains burst, spilling twisting nests of vines, first fine as silk until they throb and bulge, writhing across the field of rancid, inchoate life.
Baiheng speaks, her voice full of her laugh. “You’re so serious, Jingliu! But do you remember…?” Baiheng sits in the midst of the sickening growths surrounding her, yet somehow, she’s immaculate, untouched, as perfect as she always was (must have been, beneath the mists of memory, clearing barely, why can’t I remember?), daytime smiles, bright as the sun, little snorts amidst her giggles (so cute) or nighttime sweat pressed together, chuckling low, murmured jabs (always teasing) and gasps, and gasps, little moans into Jingliu’s neck, breath heavy and warm, so warm…
Heat, cloying, floods Jingliu’s senses as she turns away and tries to stand up from the cancerous, raucous growth, obscene in its jittering as it pulsates and stretches into infinity.
But a hand, soft and small, wraps around Jingliu’s and turns her back.
Back, again...back to Baiheng.
Back to see Baiheng’s skin splitting open as branches grow through her body, flowing like blood made solid in her veins, breaking all, spilling all, bones snapping and twisting and growing like the branches themselves, fruits of flesh, gold and red, swelling to bursting, then bursting in a shower of blood and wriggling viscera that crawls and grows and grows and grows.
“Do you remember,” Baiheng continues, her playful, teasing voice heard through the sound of her body rupturing open, stretched and warped and twisted like a canopy of flesh and blood and every precious bit of Baiheng (cherished), Baiheng (beloved), Baiheng (lost, lost)…
Baiheng goes on.
Though Jinliu can’t recognize her anymore, can only discern her voice in the dark eclipse beneath the pulsing, growing clouds of flesh and rain of blood above her.
Baiheng goes on.
“Do you remember the day my luck ran out? Jingliu...my Jingliu…” Somewhere in the darkness, a hand, so soft, so small, takes Jingliu’s, and Baiheng’s voice, so soft, so small, whispers to her. “You pull a blade of ice from your heart, but in your dreams, you dream of warmth. You’re so serious, Jingliu...my Jingliu…but don’t you know…?”
Jingliu, for a moment, starts to jerk back, away from that hand, away from that voice, into the darkness that surrounds her.
Jingliu, for a moment, feels revulsion take her, revulsion and wrath, memories of her home crushed, subsumed, taken by the virulent life that throbs and pulses and twitches and writhes around her at this very moment, the scent of blood, the sound of bones scraping and splintering, memories, memories…
But Jingliu sees, for a moment, the mists of her memories part, and beneath those low, grey clouds shines a smile, a smile of tinkling little giggles broken up by the cutest little snorts.
Jingliu falters, and squeezes the hand that holds hers.
A warm hand...so soft, so small…
A hand that never left her.
A love that never died.
A promise she’ll never escape…
Of an end that’ll never be.
On her lips she feels a kiss, and in her chest she feels a twist.
And into waking, she bursts, wet with tears, wet with sweat.
But alone.
Alone…
Her long-ago memories of Baiheng fade into mist once more, and the sickening heat of her Core Esse starts to fade with them. She dons her blindfold and feels again the seeping hatred, ice-cold, washing through her veins.
But even as she prepares to meet with the Xianzhou Yuque’s Master Diviner, a bit of warmth remains, and with it comes the memory of Baiheng’s soft, small voice in her dream.
“You pull a blade of ice from your heart, but in your dreams, you dream of warmth.”
“But don’t you know…?”
Jingliu speaks into the silence of her cell, her voice cold—though it wavers. “What don’t I know, Baiheng?”
There’s no answer. There never will be.
The warmth leaves in full, and only cold remains. Cold, and the dim memories of little snorts between giggles, and gentle hands, so soft and small.
“Jingliu...my Jingliu.”