Threads 301 Identity 6

The words struck her with physical force, sending her to her knees as her bubble of control collapsed. The wind swept in. Rotten leaves and snow plastered themselves across her, filling her nose with their disgusting moldy scent.

Linq Qi pressed her hands to the ground, refusing still to fully buckle under the pressure. Sixiang’s words in their brief argument came to her.

“He’s making it look all scary and gross because of course he is. And that’s enough for you because you think of it like that!”

How much of this was the nightmare, and how much of it was her?

With effort, she pushed back the storm again, but it wore away at her power, whisking it away into the nightmare. It was not like Huisheng’s playful theft, but a scouring brush, sanding down her qi and will. Her meridians ached, her hands throbbed, and her heart pounded in her ears.

She had come here, so sure of herself. So sure she had the solution and that she could face her fear and reject it, replacing it in her heart with what she wanted to believe. How foolish. Since when had fear ever worked like that? Logic and reason were not weapons with which one fought nightmares. She had decided that she was wrong, but she had never decided how to be right.

She could feel the nightmare eating away at her, getting into the cracks in her resolve, peeling her away bit by bit. This was the liminal, and the only barrier between herself and dissolution was her own surety of self.

So she was wrong. But what did that mean? The puppet strings revolted her, but they existed and were real. She couldn’t deny that.

Relationships. They bound people’s actions. She had chosen to take Hanyi. Zeqing had chosen to let her, even if it killed her. She’d thought she had solved the problem. She simply had to keep her distance and not smother those she loved.

But that wasn’t a complete insight. It was a dodge and evasion, an avoidance of truth.

Her first error.

Love did come with restrictions and with chains. These chains were hers as much as any other’s. If she truly loved someone, there were things she would not do. And in turn, there were things they could not do.

There were so many chains in life, but these chains did not have to be evil. They could be, oh, they could be, and they too often were out of malice, out of ignorance, or even out of altruism.

Meizhen had said: We hurt, and we are hurt in turn.

Calling them “chains” was her error.

These strings went everywhere, a web of awful complexity that she could not see in its wholeness. Her bonds connected her to the enigma behind people’s eyes. She had never bothered to see Sixiang’s feelings despite how deep their threads ran.

Was it even possible to know another person without such terrible techniques as Shu Yue’s?

Her second error.

People were not puppets, no matter how many strings tugged at them. They could be forced along with enough strength, enough will, enough cruelty or righteousness. But even she, at her lowest, was Ling Qi. She had her “I.”. She was sometimes a prisoner, but never a puppet.

No one was.

She remembered the tale of the Nameless told to her by Elder Ying, so long ago now. The Nameless Mother’s first wish was a connection with a thing not herself. And for that to happen, she had needed to accept the influence of another being, that of the Nameless Father.

Perhaps she couldn’t know another person fully. But that was no excuse not to try. To do the impossible was the remit of a Sovereign.

Ling Qi inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with cold, clear air untouched by the scent of rot and blood. The strings under her skin extending off into the storm smoked and trembled, writhing like worms. She felt the echo of pain, of anger, and of confusion.

Sixiang was still here.

The wordless bar she sang was a thunderous cry of rejection and frustration. Once again, leaves were flung back, and the earth became crackling ice. Ling Qi got her feet under her. Her dress whipped in the wind as she began to rise trembling to her feet, and its train and her shadow became one, growing into a dark silhouette far larger than her as mist trickled and poured from her hems and sleeves.

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“Wrong! My heart, my vision, was wrong!” she sang into the storm, and with trembling knees, she took a step forward. “What you twist against me, I refuse. Because it is wrong!”

Her hair, long freed of any ties or styling, blew wildly around her head, a halo of glittering stars around her head. And in the storm outside, something immense skittered, the click and clatter of far too many hooves.She glimpsed the shadow of thin, bent, insect-like legs in the storm and the burning darkness of misshapen eyes.

“These ties are not strings or chains. They connect us, not bind us.”