Threads 299 Identity 4

Ling Qi landed lightly on extended toes, surrounded by shards of glass. She stood on immaculate jade tiles, surrounded by cool mist and music. Applause greeted her, and she was met with a grand ballroom full of spirits in every shape and in every size. Beasts were strolling around on their hind legs, garbed in noble finery. Creatures of the elements, the avatars of stream and breeze and leaf and earth, conversed. Hybrids and mixes of the two and so much more filled the hall, laughing, clapping, and dancing under the glittering night sky and among the mist.

“It’s been a long time,” Ling Qi said.

“It’s a delightful little venue,” said the Emerald Dancer, avatar of the Dreaming Moon. “Much cozier than the capital.”

They stood before a woman of indeterminate age in a glittering, gossamer green gown. Her eyes were glittering and black, and their hair a drifting halo of silken color waving in an unseen wind. A parasol of living wood and rainbow silk rested against her shoulder.

Ling Qi brought her hands together and lowered her head respectfully.

“Hey, Grandmother!” Sixiang hooked an arm through Ling Qi’s. “Glad you got a little distance down here.”

“You’re still immature, Sixiang,” laughed the spirit. “I am I, and I am also they.” The spirit raised her eyes, looking at the looming gibbous moon in the sky. “Indeed, so are you, my dear. There is so much more of ‘you’ now.”

“We’re here to visit someone else, unfortunately,” Ling Qi said apologetically, not raising her head.

“You’ve resolved yourself to meet my other half then?” The Dancer tilted her head.”Do you understand that this is not only your tribulation?”

That brought her up short, and Ling Qi raised her head. She looked at Sixiang.

Sixiang winced, tried to smile, and then wilted under her glare. “I mean, you’re the one that matters here…”

“I spent the early morning reassuring my mother that while I was doing something dangerous, I would be back, even if I might be hurt,” Ling Qi accused.

Sixiang equivocated, “Well, that’s not entirely true.”

“It was as true as it could be. It’s my intention,” Ling Qi said. “Sixiang, I understand that you’re connected to me, but that’s not what your grandmother is implying.”

“My, you’ve gotten so much better at reading beyond words spoken.” The Dancer rested her cheek upon a hand, looking perilously amused.

Sixiang, meanwhile, just looked uncomfortable. “It doesn’t have to be about me. I can just stay here…”

“Oh my, no,” said the Dancer, smiling pleasantly. “You won’t be stable if you keep refusing to acknowledge your nightmare, dear.”

Ling Qi turned to the avatar for explanation.

“Your muse calls us Grandfather and Grandmother, and that isn’t wrong for children. But we are not separate beings. I am he, and he is I. Dreams and nightmares cannot be so neatly separated,” the Dancer explained gently but firmly. “And that goes for your muse as well, young lady.”

Sixiang’s shoulders slumped. “It’s fine, isn’t it? I don’t gotta touch that stuff. We’re fine. I’m fine.”

Ling Qi frowned as Sixiang slid their arm out from under hers. She stopped them, grasping their hand. “Sixiang, I trust you.”

They looked up, startled. “Ling Qi—”

Hands fell on their shoulders, and Ling Qi turned to see fathomless black eyes, deeper than the empty night sky.

“Let us go now to the other side.”

***​

The smell struck her first. It wasn’t awful or overwhelming. It wasn’t the vile, rotting air released from Hui Peng’s sealed chamber nor the ugly smell of blood and spilled viscera. She wished it were.

It was stale sweat, wine, and a clinging, musty odor. Faint incense tried to cover it and failed. Ling Qi felt like her hair wanted to stand on end. She stopped breathing because she did not want this air.

She was in an achingly familiar set of rooms. They were well furnished on the house’s dime. Her eyes darted to the door on the left. That was a little walk-in closet meant for wardrobe and storage. There would be a bed in there, a tiny table, and a lantern. A loose floorboard stored treasures.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Or there would have been, once upon a time.

“Ling Qi?” Sixiang stumbled, and it shocked her out of her thoughts as she caught their arm. The muse swayed, looking confused. “I’m solid,” they said, horrified.

She shot them a tense look before returning to scanning the room. There, on the other side, was the door to the bedroom proper, her mother’s room where she took clients. “It’s still the liminal, Sixiang.”

“N-no.” The genuine discomfort in their voice drew her eyes back. Sixiang’s eyes darted to their own hands and then back to her. She noticed that Sixiang’s hair hung limp and solid around their face. “I can’t change, Ling Qi. I can’t change. I’m not in—”

“Control.”

The voice rattled the floorboards, and the little windowpane let in the pale red light of dusk. The sound made Ling Qi’s skin crawl. It was a man’s, slow and slurring and hideously interested. It was a boy’s, barely older than her, snarling at her as her arm broke under his grip and he stole what she had stolen herself. It was Sun Liling’s sneering challenge on the mountainside. It was the thunder cracking in the sky as the stars fell down upon her in the caldera.

There were so many more layers than that, each an ugly, violent memory of loss and helplessness.