Threads 25 Winters Muse 3

“… ter! Big Sister!”

<C’mon, Qi, don’t do this to me. Wake up! Wake up! This isn’t your dreams,> Sixiang begged her.

Ling Qi shook her head violently, and the blizzard resolved itself again before her eyes. She felt so tired and cold. “… Hanyi? Sixiang…?”

“I thought I saw Mama, and she looked scary, and then you stopped moving,” Hanyi babbled, clutching her neck tightly.

<I dunno about Zeqing, but you just froze up. It was like there was a cage of ice keeping me out of your thoughts,> Sixiang muttered fearfully. <Please get moving.>

Ling Qi shivered, recalling the visions she had apparently experienced. Even as she did, she bounded forward, forcing herself through the wind and snow despite the fatigue dragging at her limbs. She had forgotten exactly what Zeqing was. Zeqing was not just a creature of brute force and snow storms but also a winter siren who could bring those who fell under her spell to death of their own will. She just had to hope that whatever Zeqing was doing to restrain herself did not slip again.

And yet, as she ran through the snow, banking and turning on the command of her charge, her thoughts kept returning to those visions and why she had rejected them. Her heart ached at the memory of it, but she could not help but feel that there was a truth she had realized in the visions.

She could not let herself forget that the important people in her life had thoughts and feelings as important as hers. Just because something would make her happy did not mean it would make them happy. It seemed like such an obvious thing to realize, but Ling Qi wondered just how many people there were that did not truly internalize that into their Way.

Ling Qi had little time to muse further on that insight, not when the storm was picking up and the soft mournful melody that underlaid the winds was growing stronger. The music struck deep in her soul, ringing like the miserable sobs of a loved one, and it took every scrap of will that Ling Qi had to keep running. She knew it was only Sixiang’s efforts that allowed her that much. She could feel the insubstantial spirit’s strain, their qi diffused through her every meridian as it pushed back against the cloying despair that threatened to overwhelm her.

“Why is Momma crying?” Hanyi whispered, her voice trembling. “I-if she really wants us to leave, why is she crying?”

Despite her resistance to the song woven into the storm, Ling Qi felt the tears that welled up in the corners of her eyes, only to freeze solid, still clinging to her cheeks. Despite that, she never allowed her legs to stop moving. “It hurts when someone you love leaves, but sometimes, things have to hurt before they can get better. Hanyi, please, tell me where I need to go next,” she begged, struggling to keep her voice from wavering.

“… Through that drift,” Hanyi muttered, pointing out a high rampart of snow. “If Momma really wanted me to stay, Big Sister would have never even made it this far, huh?”

“You get it, Hanyi,” Ling Qi replied shakily, veering toward the sheer wall of densely packed snow. Her instincts told her to veer away or jump over, but Hanyi had said “through.” Ling Qi just had to trust that her mentor’s daughter knew what she was saying. So, gritting her teeth, Ling Qi charged headlong into the snow.

Ling Qi felt like she had run into a wall. Cold, wet weight crushed against her face and chest, even as she struggled forward, pushing through. Then, in the next instant, it was gone, and Ling Qi rocked on her feet, nearly stumbling as she found herself once again standing in an empty void.

“Left!” Hanyi cried out, her voice echoing in the dark. Ling Qi didn’t even think. She sprang to the left as if her life depended on it. Wind screamed past her ears as she shot down what seemed to be an open corridor. Though her eyes saw only a uniform darkness, Ling Qi could feel the churning, hungry nothing that had consumed the space behind her and even now roiled outward like an invisible mist, devouring everything it touched. Zeqing’s house groaned and shook like a cottage in the middle of a violent storm.

<Oh, to nightmare with that! Run faster, please!> Sixiang shouted in her head, and Ling Qi obliged as she darted around a corner at Hanyi’s direction. Ling Qi heard a crack and a crash like a heavy beam or rafter falling and crashing to the ground, and she launched herself upward at Hanyi’s shout to clamber up the invisible and glasslike surface that presented itself.

With each centimeter she climbed, Hanyi’s weight grew ever greater until her limbs trembled with the effort of holding them both up. For the first time, the mad dash she had been making felt like it was catching up with her. Fatigue dragged at her limbs and dulled her senses, and below, the nothing churned, climbing upward with every moment. Could she really do this? Zeqing’s resistance was growing stronger with each passing moment, and she knew that once it passed a certain point, there was no hope of success.

The darkness yawned infinitely overhead and all around. Ling Qi knew somewhere in her mind that her fatigue wasn’t natural, that the creeping despair that she felt rising wasn’t her own, but it was so hard just to hold on. Even Sixiang’s urgent fear was fading, growing dull under the weight that seemed to suffuse her entire being.

She stiffened as she felt Hanyi’s arms tighten around her and felt the young spirit’s face pressing against the back of her neck. “It hurts,” she whispered, and Ling Qi felt the cold pinprick of tears against her skin. “It’d be better if I stayed, wouldn’t it? You could get away, and I could be part of Mama again. Wouldn’t that be okay?”

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“It wouldn’t,” Ling Qi gritted out through clenched teeth, digging her fingers into semi-solid darkness and dragging herself up another handspan. She hated this. For so long, night and darkness had represented safety to her, but now, it rejected her, repelling her qi and pressing down like a smothering blanket.

“Why? It’s my fault Mama is like this,” Hanyi whimpered. “Before I started bothering her for lessons, everyone was happy.”

Ling Qi squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the growing instinct to agree, to release her charge. She knew there was a reason, but it seemed so very hard to grasp at the moment. “She enjoyed it though,” Ling Qi rasped, finding it difficult to push out words. “It was the same for me. She liked seeing us grow. Didn’t it make you happy too?”

“Obviously not, if this is the result.”