The clouds that have threatened rain finally break overhead. My clothes are soaked within the bell to my guess. Even while the faint shadows could have told me the sun’s position, time has lost all meaning. 

 I want to give in to the cold. My body is losing the strength to shiver, and I have already lost sensation in my legs from kneeling. 

“Yujia.”

I lift my head to her call. At her gesture I stand, and do not allow my struggle to do so to be seen.  My limbs tingle as the blood flows freely once again. I don’t speak as I haven’t been asked to.

The Mistress sits on her raised seat in the courtyard’s pavilion. There is miqo’te male standing next to her. He is watching me. A witness to my punishment? I can’t say for sure as rain showers down the sound of their conversation to my horns.

Something has been decided as he approaches me. He walks to the enclosed weapon’s case. His steps are sure and he is not looking at me. He is less than two fulms in height, and seems to be of average strength. I wouldn’t need to overpower him to defeat him. I was sure of it. Am I meant to though?

“Are you my punishment?” I dare break Silence to ask.

“Is kneeling not enough punishment?” he asks.

“Not for what I have done.”

“Yes, for the great sin of free will,” he says the words under the rain, but he is close enough to be heard.  He inspects the weapons in the case. I know what he sees. The polearms that the mistress prefers, the weapons of a shinobi, and a few traditional lances from Doma. The latter being my weapon of preference, but not my specialty. The mistress wanted a guard trained in the ways of a shinobi. 

I can’t stop myself from correcting him though. “For disobedience,” I say.

“Hmmm,” he hums with thought. He pulls two shinobi blades from the case. “You know there isn't enough punishment for disobedience then. Not for her, not in this place.

He throws the weapons to me. I caught the pair of blades as he stepped into the yard. He takes battlestance.

“Are you worthy of The Fury's Forgiveness?” 

Those are the mistress’ words. Kill him and be forgiven is the saying’s meaning. Further meaning is that he is not my punishment, but executioner. 

He has a common reverse grip to his blades with thumb over the handle. His stance is non-traditional. It is narrower and a lower position

He thrust out expertly, but not as a striking movement. A test. He is observing my reaction as I study his action.

I do the same with a jabbing movement. He dodges just as I would have done. Equal skill then. I may not win a battle of endurance, so I will need to disarm him quickly. 

As I slash out, he switches style completely. A forward grip and a kick. I’m faster though. I catch his leg on the kick, the hook is blocked but I can not counter the unexpected vertical slash. It grazes, but  profusely bleeds solely because of the wound’s position on my arm

I forget the cold. My feelings of guilt and shame are burned up in a rage. I’m overwhelmed with a need to make him bleed, to give an equal share of my pain. All of my pain. He needs to be hurt. I need to hurt him.

“The Fury does not grant mercy freely. All compassion is earned by strength,” I say as I give my heart to the assault. 

The pool of rainwater at our feet is dyed a thin red. It’s not enough. It is never enough to see the blood, to make the wound deeper. There must be more.

Our blades lock in a counterattack, and we are trapped in a test of strength. Fury give me strength, I pray.

“Aren’t you tired of living this way?” he asks through gritted teeth. 

“I have never lived.” I do not waiver as a well of hate floods me at the question. 

“I won’t feel guilty for killing you then.” He pushes me off by allowing me to fall onto him. Only to reverse the momentum and push me off.

 Ice covers my body. Hyoton. 

Katon. Fire spirals from me. 

Once again locked to keep the other from forming anymore mudras. 

“Die in my place.” I almost plead. I almost say please. I need the mistress’ forgiveness. I’m not sure that I don’t say the word. Until he responds. 

“Only because you’ve asked nicely. He releases his weapon leaving himself open, but I’m not one to fall for the same trick twice. I catch myself and stand to thrust a blade into his abdomen. Except my blades’ tip never reaches him though. 

A small blade is buried in my neck. The pain of it is barely a sting. A bright red runs down my chest, and it's not even warm.

“Stay dead for me.” He said as if I had any choice.

I have watched as death came over people, but it doesn’t feel the way it looks. 

There wasn’t any fight in my body as I bled, no pain, my limbs were dead already and my mind was sure to follow. 

Above me, I am welcomed by the starry sky as the rain dissipates the clouds. 

Then, nothing of my killer closes my eyes. His lips form a word, but I didn’t hear it as my horns are underwater.  The Lifestream is darkness. Death is sleep. I feel myself on the verge of wakefulness, but my senses are softened and there is nothing. 

>next>

I wake with a dizzying start. Alive again.  I’m in water.  The room has a warm light, there is the smell of topsoil and perfumes.

I would have believed I had transmigrated, but my body is my own. Every scar and scale that I know. there is a hyur woman and a knife on a table top beside me. I try to grab the knife, but my limbs are too stiff.

“Don’t try standing,” she said as I tried to stand. The water of the bath slashes onto the floor as I fall back in. “Don’t move until you’re warm.” She pours more hot water into the bath. “Once your body is warm, you’ll be able to move.” She leaves afterwards, and I am by myself.

This is worse than being dead. Being weak. My head lulls against the edge of the tub, but it isn’t a tub at all. I am in a medium-sized aquarium. I’m in my small clothes as my outer clothes are in a dirtied, cut pile on the floor.  The room is bare besides a made-up bed, a shoe rack, myself in the tank, and the table with the knife. Under the knife is a robe.

When I try again I am able to grab the knife, so I stand. I feel the door the woman left from. It is the only exit in the room. There is noise from the otherside. Something quiet like a mouse, two different vibrations and someone more robust. I open the door to allow the sound in. 

I see into the other room as sound comes in. It is much larger than this room, but there is echoing, so it must be just as bare as this one. I peek through the opening. There are three people seated at a low table. A Roegadyn man, the woman and a hyur young man. 

I hid the knife in the folds of the robe and opened the room. All the chatter at the table stops. 

“Join us when you’re ready,” The woman says. She has a soft look to her, but her sleeve is weighed down by a hidden weapon. Her dark hair is held up by a thick ribbon and she knows I have no exit from this room. 

The table where they sit is positioned between myself and the door on the other side of the room, and the other two are watching me. The Roegadyn is anxious. His muscles twitch as he unsettled in his seat with his hands restlessly tapping his teacup. The hyur man has light hair. He is thin and weak, but his light eyes have a narrow glare as he waits for me to move. 

I don’t move until his eyes are off me, and he looks away as a miqo’te enters the room. My murder. 

The mouse I heard earlier is behind him. The child I am not concerned with, but I could not fight my way through all four adults. “Sakichi,” he calls to the hyur. He leaves the table to take the child. They don’t leave the room, but go to a settee in the corner of the room. 

My murder and I sit opposite of each other as I take the seat vacated by the hyur. 

“Have some tea. You were cold as death, and that was before we buried you.” The Roegadyn laughs lightly as he pours new cups for everyone. “Drink,” he repeats.

He doesn’t say it as a command, but I obey it as one. The cup is at my lips as I realize it. I smash the cup against the table. The rough bits of porcelain embed into my palm, and the tea scalds me.

The woman reaches into her sleeve and I reach into my robe. 

Before the weapons come out though, the miqo’te attempts to calm us. “Don’t. Jiro was only being kind, and Hotaru doesn’t appreciate ungratefulness. We have gone through an ordeal saving your life. Let’s not waste a second chance over a broken cup.”

“Is that the reason you’ve saved me? For gratefulness! To be owned in a life debt?”

 A second life, and it is still not my own. 

“What else will you do with yourself otherwise,” the woman says.

“Wouldn’t be either of us anyways. You’d belong to Manami.”  He points behind me to the child and young man. 

I observe her now. A young Au Ra with scales as dark as mine, and she looks at me feeling my gaze. Eyes as deep and dark as the One River at night. 

I’ve seen her before, and she had seen me.  

-

Pulling the blade from his throat, blood sprays me like sea breeze. He clutches desperately at his throat. He drowns in his own blood as he tries to speak.

He gives up quickly, falling to the ground. I stand over him looking into his eyes. I see the question he is choking himself to ask. To question why he deserves this death. To question who I am. A final beg for death not to take him. 

I lower myself over him. He can’t make more than gurgling noises as I stab him in the chest. It is never a good idea to stab directly to the chest. Too much bone, it is not a direct death. This man is dying and he should know agony as he does. His blood smells of rot as it coats my hands. It is not only his blood, it is everything within him. 

Of all that I have forgotten, I remember his face as he lied to me.

Now I memorize his face as it becomes ashen, eyes dulled. I was the last thing he saw as well. 

I feel nothing. There is no comfort or relief. I scream in the silence of the night. I want to turn the blade on myself. To feel something to end the numbness that revenge didn’t cure.

When I open my eyes again, I am there. My eyes. So blue, but these still light in them, and skin with no flaws.

“It will never happen again.” I promise as I reach for my younger self. I leave a bloody mark on my cheek. On her cheek. I leave.

<prev.< | >next>

TW: Self-Harm; Suicide Attempt.

Manami, the Au Ra girl is the one I had seen. She stares at me as she had in the alleyway.

“I don’t,” she says. She shakes her head.  “No.” 

The group is talking again. Chattering in a way that is familiar and familial, but my killer is watching me. I’m seeing him much clearer than before. Eye marks, nose bridge tattoo, but the eyes. Both eyes are yellow as gold, but one is shades darker than the other. Eyes to die for, eyes of a killer, the Mistress’s voice.

He speaks, “That is settled then. No matter the ungratefulness, you’ll need to stay here until a way has been cleared for you.”

“The mistress can never know of our involvement, so if you do anything to risk anyone here, I will deal with you.” Hotaru leans closer to make her promise into more of a threat.”

I can see into her sleeve now. It's a cord. Soft-looking, but willing to choke someone to death. ‘An intricate piece for my collection’, I could hear the mistress say in my mind. 

“You have been owned by the Mistress?” I propose the question, but I know it is true. 

“We were employed by House Silence,” Hotaru says at the same time the miqo’te says, “Same as you.”

“You were the one of the assassins living in the walls? It is why Hotaru and Luken, don’t recognize you?” 

“Don’t say another word Sakichi,” Hotaru demanded.

“How do you know that?” 

Sakichi continued despite the warning, “I lived in the walls of House Silence for a moon. There was someone there, but I never saw him. He saved me.”

‘There is an infection in these walls, but you’ll be the burning blade that cleanses this house’. The Mistress had taught me the best method to cure sickness is to cut away the infirmity. In front of me was only a vermin that threaten my Mistress.  

A furious animal inside me growls at him. I had the knife in my hand without a thought. I only got a step forward before I knew it. 

The pieces of the broken cup dug deeper into me as I gripped the knife. Hotaru stood behind me with the cord, and Luken had the same dagger I was killed with in hand. Jiro, the Roegayn, took my attention as he moved towards me.

“Will you die to keep that insane elezen woman’s secrets even now?” he asks. 

“I was held separately. A treasure. A weapon. Only for the hands of the Mistress.” My voice says the words, but they are not my words.

The miqo’te, Luken, is pretending to be in control, but he does not have the same hold over these people as the mistress would. The hold she still has over me. I can’t let go of the knife, but I turn my head enough to see him clearly in my periphery.  “A treasure, weapon or tool, you still were going to be discard all the same.” He gestures for someone to move. “I’m sure the Mistress still has a spearhead sharpened for your neck.”

I turn, my anger, my body to attack him. I jump across the table before I feel the cord around my neck.Taut, but not tight enough. Any struggle against it makes the hold tighter.

‘Luken’, the miqo’te, flips the dagger in his hand, showing the trick. A needle hidden in the blade, the edges dulled, handle retractable. Completely useless for defense, but I do not release the knife in my hand. 

“I can still prove worthy of The Fury’s mercy. My Mistress will forgive me, if I bring her your heads.”

“You’ll lose your head before you can,” Hotaru says as she tightens the noose at my neck.

Luken’s eyes are calm. Death is in this room, but it is not me. Still I am the one holding the real knife.

“Why save me at all?” The question eats something inside me.

“How can I save a life that has never been lived?"

Those are my words. He had heard me, and I’ve heard him before too. 

I let go of the knife, and the cord is released. The room is empty now except for the three of us. 

“Now that we have tried to each other more than once, let us introduce ourselves. I am Luken Meharianni. What’s your name?”

‘My lovely Yujia’, I hear it in the Mistress's voice. Naginata, a family name of a clan that died out long ago.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. I feel the pieces in my hand, the blood is welling in my palms. It hurts. “The name is dead, but I’m alive.” If that is contradictory, it also doesn’t matter to me. Nothing in this life matters, yet.

The blood drips from my hand. My blood is the only part of me that has always been mine, and always will be only mine.

[one] [two]

Traveling Teach Me This!!!

People traveling for different reasons. What is yours?

I used to traveling to see the world. But like a ripley's once said, whether you believe it or not, the cities are getting more look alike day by day. Yes, the culture and the food still vary, yet people nowadays mostly seem to traveling to POST on Instagram.

I don't think I am one of those. And it's up to me totally 😎

For me now, traveling is a journey of questioning my way of life at certain degree (and different from time to time).

So there was one time when I traveled in group, the group kept on taking many photos, like 10 shots on one place and then in the next less than 10mins, my WA group were full with please be my guest to guess on how many photos are taken. YES MANY.

Then suddenly one of the member of the group approached me and said, 'I don't like 'this' group'. I frowned and asked why. Well long story short, the person dislike some habits of other members of the group, that they're like 'over everything' in some ways. Yet in my opinion, it's still normal because I understand both. I mean perhaps they haven't met after a long time or maybe they just wanted to create moments, what is wrong with that? And that's my 'AWAKE' moments.

Why? Because that's when I realised, we don't have unlimited time in life. That I have to choose MY WAY. Less complaining and don't do things you dislike instead. I still travel to experience the nature whilst the interaction with the people within is merely a sidekick, a bonus. That I actually blessed to have a position to choose. That hey, you, yes, everyone, when you have time to travel, you have a full right to choose the way that YOU WANT IT. Even if you're part of the group, you still at the first place have a choice if you wanna be a member of the 'unknown' group. If you don't like group traveling then don't do it. Same goes if you're not a fan of solo traveling.