Threads 256-Capital 8

Ling Qi looked up and up to the source of the new voice. Sixiang’s grandmother, the avatar of the Dreaming Moon, simultaneously towered high above and danced innocuously through the crowd in a way almost impossible to understand. Her trailing skirts were the spirits of the dance, her voice was the sound of festival, and her face the reflection of a thousand revelers. She was a child, a young woman, a mature matron, and a doddering grandmother all at once, and Ling Qi felt her head ache and her ears ring from merely perceiving her existence even in partial fullness.

And then, she was merely Sister Brightsong, the Emerald Dancer, a lithe, lovely but androgynous woman in glittering rainbow silks perched cross-legged before the two of them in mid air. She twirled a pale green parasol over her shoulder.

“Granny, you shouldn’t try and stretch her head out like that,” Sixiang complained.

“Oh, she’s fine, child. Your girl is tough. Look at her, not even a nosebleed,” the Dreaming Avatar said.

“Thank you for your invitation.” Ling Qi bowed her head.

“You’ve had it since our walkabout. I’m only glad that you took it. Don’t be such a stranger,” the moon spirit said. “Sixiang is right though. You’ve rocketed up so fast and tried so hard to escape what you came from.”

“I won’t apologize for that. I’m happy to leave most of it behind,” Ling Qi said firmly.

“But you did come back for part of it,” said the avatar, twirling a smoky rainbow curl on their finger. “You faced the form of your nightmare with us before. Has its shadow crept back on you?”

Ling Qi glanced nervously about. Something about the word “nightmare” reverberated when the moon spirit spoke, turning shadows to oil and tar and sending a chill wind through the square.

Ling Qi took a deep breath and met the spirit’s eyes firmly. The scent of cheap wine and the shadow of squinting eyes vanished like dew on a summer morning, and with it went the gnawing hunger, the pain of a broken arm, the fear of pounding feet behind her, and the shortness of breath in a child’s lungs. Ling Qi had left many nightmares behind.

“I understand what Sixiang has been trying to say. There is no need for that. I know I’m still unreasonable about some aspects of my past.”

“Please, Grandmother,” Sixiang pleaded. “I don’t think tribulation is the cure here. I’ve got this.”

The Dreaming Moon regarded them both curiously for a moment. “I suppose you do. But tell me, Dreamer, what do you see here in the Great Reverie, the Dream of the People?”

They were walking now, walking up the stairs to a temple, though Ling Qi did not recall standing up or moving. The noise of the festival was lower here, less wild abandon and more the low sound of conversation from a thousand lips, the breathing of the creature called civilization.

“It’s all so tenuous.” Ling Qi looked up at the dark sky and the near full moon gleaming overhead. Lights burst in the sky overhead. “Families and business and friends are united by the merest thread. It can all fall apart in an instant. It did all fall apart in an instant not too long ago, didn’t it?”

The cracks yawned wide, scabbed over with webs and tarry darkness. Duchess Cai’s ascension to the throne had been tumultuous, and the scars wrought by the Hui still lingered.

“It did. Does that lessen what it is now?” The Dreaming Moon sat upon the arch of the temple as if it were an emperor’s throne.

“But most things are like that,” Sixiang argued. “Connections break. Communities split. But you know endings, Ling Qi.”

Ling Qi’s lips twisted wryly and finished silently. Endings are just new beginnings.

They stood at the top of the steps of the temple, and Ling Qi looked down on the festival, a reflection of the empty void above with warm fires in the place of cold, cruel stars. “It can’t be a clean divide, can it?”

“Nothing involving you wonderful mortals is ever clean,” spoke the Dreaming Moon, and Ling Qi felt her mind itch at the pressure of something so much larger than the already tremendous existence of the avatar.

“We hurt, and we hurt in turn,” Ling Qi echoed Meizhen’s insight, bought by the pain that Ling Qi had unwittingly caused her.

“Dreams and Nightmares are but reflections at different angles,” said the Moon.

“But they’re not only tricks of perspective. That is itself a lie,” Ling Qi said.

“Is not the greatest artist but the most consummate of liars?”

“No, they are the poorest ones,” Ling Qi disagreed. “If you have no truth to convey, your art is empty. If it speaks only to your own self, it is even more worthless still.”

Silver light burnt her eyes and made tears trickle down her cheeks.

Family, she realized, was only a knot of strong bonds, and it was the small connections between people which built a community. There was no line between love and obligation, not if both were true.

The light died. With watering eyes, she saw the avatar of the Dreaming Moon standing before her, and she felt a hand on her cheek. A voice whispered softly in her ear.

“You’re close, Dreamer, but you’re not quite there. The greatest lies, the greatest art, is that which becomes truth. But your fear remains. Face your nightmare, and find your truth.”

Ling Qi fell to her knees, reaching up to scrub at her eyes. The avatar was gone.

Sixiang was there though, an arm around her shoulder. “I should have known Grandmother would be intense. You’re getting close to something big after all.”

“And the Moons make sure that we’re ready for it.” Ling Qi said quietly, remembering the shared memories of the muse. “Sixiang, you have a grandfather too, don’t you?”

Her friend was silent for a long, long time, long enough for Ling Qi to blink the remaining stars from her eyes. “Yeah, I do. How’d you know?”

“Dreams and Nightmares go hand in hand,” Ling Qi repeated. “I’m going to have to meet him, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Sixiang said sadly.

Ling Qi looked down at her hand, opening and closing it. She noted the thin red smears there from wiping away her tears. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Ling Qi nodded and stood, leaning on Sixiang’s shoulder. “Will you show me around the rest of the festival?”

Sixiang smiled, a little sad, but proud. “Sure thing.”

***

<Thank you, Big Sister,> Zhengui said to her.

“I wasn’t going to refuse something so simple after spending most of the morning shopping with Hanyi,” Ling Qi said aloud.

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She walked along a wide and brightly lit boulevard. It was quieter than other parts of the district with no blaringly bright signs or hawking merchants in sight. It was quiet and serene.

As one would expect from a temple ground.

<That was silly.> Gui’s voice came to the fore, and she could imagine his expression of confusion in her mind’s eye.

Hanyi had definitely gone a little overboard, but she was spending her own money. Ling Qi thought it was fine to let her splurge for now. She could give her junior sister a talk about financial responsibility later.

She absolutely wasn’t going to regret putting her foot down at the last shop though. Dreamscapes and reflecting light aside, dresses were not to be made of bubbles.

Well, her tirade had made Renxiang smile, just a little, so silver linings. Hanyi was still pouting though.

“Though I wonder about your interest,” Ling Qi said, looking to the side. “Weren’t you with Lady Cai for much longer than I?”

“Her residence was in the surrounding townships at the time. This is my first time in the Cloudspires as well,” Gan Guangli said brightly. He marched along in his enameled armor, the light glinting off the gold filigree most resplendently.