Threads 239-Fox 1

Colors, shapes, lights, and sounds rushed by. Ling QI held tight to her friend’s hand against the ethereal wind which pushed back, rejecting the other girl’s stolid, firmly material qi. Ling Qi gritted her teeth in the face of it, tasting red on her tongue and hearing stone and earth in her ears as she focused, grasped the skein of the thin barrier between realms, and pushed.

The first sign of her success was Su Ling letting out an explosive breath as if she had been punched in the gut as the semi-familiar terrain of the liminal realm resolved around them.

Like before, the endlessly tall trees stretched in every direction through heavy winter fog, the dark canopy overhead shrouding it in eternal night. The air was still charged with an electric tingle. Flashes of gold were visible in the pinprick gaps between the leaves and branches like brilliant stars.

But it was not the same either, and Ling Qi found herself drawing her mantle close as a moaning breeze blew through the forest. It carried the faintest scent of fire, smokey and ominous. Below, the faint light of luminescent fungal crowns was visible in the depths of the mist.

“This place makes my skin crawl,” Su Ling said with a shiver. “What the hells is watching us?”

“Sixiang?” Ling Qi asked worriedly, glancing around. She didn’t notice anything of significance observing them. There were little spirits, fairies, and motes of dreams, of course, but…

“I think that’s what she’s talking about,” Sixiang said. Manifested here, they were solid, an androgynous figure in a loose flowing robe with glittering black eyes and pale skin. “Hey, why’s this bugging you so much? It’s not like you don’t see plenty of little spirits at home.”

Su Ling straightened up, her hunched shoulders slowly relaxing. “Is… that what…? Wait, fuck.”

What’s wrong?” Ling Qi asked.

“My spiritual defense art stopped working when you brought me here,” Su Ling answered. “Well, that sorta makes sense. Eightfold Broken Paths is supposed to defend against spiritual attacks by anchoring me more firmly in the ‘reality.’ It makes me solid, so I can’t be moved by the ‘unreal.’”

“Which breaks down when you step out of reality willingly,” Ling Qi concluded. “Will you be alright without it?”

“Yeah, I think so. You’re here, so it’s just uncomfortable.”

Ling Qi didn’t let herself smile or acknowledge the trust in that statement. She’d just make sure to live up to it. “Ok then. Sixiang, I have an idea, but do you want to explain how we’re getting where we’re going?

Sixiang nodded as Su Ling straightened up, scanning the endless gray horizon with wary eyes. “Dreaming is more a state of mind than a place. So if you want to get somewhere beyond what you can see right in front of you, you need to have it in mind. Focus on what you’re looking for, the same way you’d create a mental image when cultivating an art, keep a hold of Ling Qi, and keep moving forward!”

“Got it,” Su Ling said, scowling as she squeezed her eyes shut. Her grip on Ling Qi’s hand tightened.

Ling Qi began to walk forward, and when she leapt down from the platform of earth and stone they had appeared on to a slowly falling leaf the size of the market square in Tonghou, Su Ling followed.

Leaf to leaf, branch to branch, they went. Coming at last to a thick bough whose upper side held a carved road of dirt and stone, they traveled on. The travel went slow with Su Ling’s eyes screwed shut, but soon, their surroundings began to change.

The branch road shifted from one blink to the next, becoming a bubbling river whose cool water nonetheless supported their feet. It wound down in a spiral through the misty sky, bringing them to a shadowed canopy a league below the greater one where sun dappled trees and soft rolling hills gleamed like an emerald in the shadowy interior of the Emerald Seas.

The shadow of a third tail, black as night and glittering with starlight, swept through the air behind Su Ling like a ghost. Shadows clung to her like mist, casting her hard face in a light that was at once more beautiful and more feral. Predatory. Patient. Watching.

When at last their feet touched grass, Su Ling’s plain brown eyes scattered the glittering green ones which had formed in the shadows on her face.

“We’re here.” Su Ling looked down at her free hand and the shadows clinging there, lit by embers of pale blue foxfire to outline talons. She clenched her fist, and they dispersed. The tail remained. Su Ling’s ears lay flat against the side of her head.

“And where is here?” Sixiang asked. The muse’s expression was serious as they looked around at the bright, but unsettling isle of green in the dark gray mist.

“Not home,” Su Ling answered darkly.”But the closest thing to it. It’s… hers. Her hunting ground. I can feel it.”

“Could Su Ling’s mother be aware of us here?” Ling Qi asked quietly.

“I don’t know what she can do exactly, but it’s not how you’re thinking most likely,” Sixiang replied.

There was movement among the trees. Ling Qi’s eyes shot toward it.There, in the shadows, she met a pair of wide but small eyes. A little girl with tangled bushy hair and sun darkened skin crouched there dressed in rags. She fled with a yelp, a dark brown tail the last thing to disappear into the brush.

“That could not be a more obvious trap,” Su Ling said flatly.

“Maybe. This place might not have come from her though.”

Su Ling pursed her lips. “It’s not a memory of mine, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How are you sure?”

“Granny wasn’t dead when I was that age,” Su Ling explained tersely. “She wouldn’t ha’ left me to get that filthy when she was ‘round.”

Ling Qi chose not to comment on the thickening of Su Ling’s accent or the look in her eyes as she said that. Instead, she let out a breath. “Alright. This is your journey. Where do you think we should go?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Su Ling looked around. “I recognize this place.I it’s where they used to gather mushrooms. If we follow this path, we’ll find… We’ll find the old shrine, assuming this place makes sense at all.”

“It makes as much sense as you can impose on it,” Sixiang said. “It’s warm here.”

“Village was a good ways north and west,” Su Ling grunted, stepping toward the ill kempt dirt path.

“What makes it the ‘old’ shrine?” Ling Qi asked, peering at the shadows under the canopy. She didn’t feel watched, but…

It felt like stalking the den of a sleeping beast.

Su Ling scratched absently at her ear, the two real tails curled about her waist twitching and coiling tight. Her brows furrowed as she searched her memory. “Gran said that a long time ago, the village got wrecked, a big disaster, so it got moved, and when it did, some big priests from the city came down to consecrate a new shrine. The old one got exorcized and abandoned.” Su Ling chuckled, and it was both fond and sad. “She said the old spirits would take away dumbass nosy children too curious for their own good.”

“Did they?” Ling Qi asked, tilting her head.