Threads 435 Green 4

“Where did the Kohatu and Atamai come from?” Gui asked. “Gui does not smell lands like these mountains, hills, and woods in your spirit. The mud and roots are wet and hot and scented of salt.”

Kohatu blinked slowly. Gray dust flaked off and fell, and Ling Qi observed another stronger pulse of glowing verdant green. She caught the scent of exotic plants and the harsh glare of sunlight off of a beach of glittering black sand.

“Yes. Far, fAr from here, we were born. North. North. North. Beyond the girdling cuRrent in the shadow of the Everstorm,” Kohatu began, sounding almost entranced. “Where mountains belch fire, and ravenous green sweeps out in fire’s wake, new shoots growing up before ash has even cooled. Warm. WaRm. Bright Sun. Black Sand. Where men are few and tread most beneath the waves off of shore.”

When first taking care of Zhengui’s egg, Ling Qi had looked into bestiaries and found some mention of the Volcanic Tyrant Tortoise, inhabitant of islands far out in the northern sea. It was as she suspected, but she did not want to disrupt the shade, which she could see was drawing stability from her recall of times long past.

“I, Zhen, never liked waters until Miss Snowblossom. They are too cold and heavy, drowning fire, but, I scent the warm water, the brightness, the falling ash and blooming shoots in your words. What is the Everstorm, which breathes so hungrily, casting its rains over all?” .

“It is the wound in the world, the fallen piLLar,” Kohatu replied. “Raining, ever raining, cracking the firmament to release the blood that makes our isles of fire and green. Child, you should see it, O ruin in purest form. Such is the world that even it blooms new life,” Kohatu said reverently.

From her reading and conversations with Xuan Shi, Ling Qi was aware of the permanent storm that churned the oceans north of the boiling seas created by the death of the Sun. But the storm had only been mentioned as a passing detail of geography, a note that voyages to the east of the empire were functionally impossible.

“Oh. Oh. It is the hole Zhengui can feel far, far away when he stretches his roots out as much as they can go and becomes the land,” her little brother said, both voices weaving in and out of the words spoken, one going smoothly into the other.

“It is that. A great wound. But few things are one thing alone. Atamai and our master, they would meditate on this.”

The strange rising and falling and sudden changes of the spirit’s tone were fading, along with the spasmodic twitches of her claws and flicking of her tail. She was growing more still, and yet the gray blight on her scales was not taking her as it had been when they first approached.

There were many kinds of motion, Ling Qi supposed. Many ways to fight killing stillness. To speak, to teach, and to be reinvigorated through others was a reminder that one’s existence could extend beyond their flesh and spirit.

“Ah, your master. You had a human, too?” Gui wondered

“Yes,” Kohatu replied, her scales shook and dust sloughed off… but something dark crackled and popped like rotting static through fields of verdant green. “He was. Master was… He was of the sea, but preferred the shore. He was an outcast of shoal, not hated, but unwanted. I do not understand the ways of humans above or below wave. But Master was good. Devotee of storm and surf, blade of waters…”

Her claws dug into the packed and fossilized ruin.

“Ships came then, the great mistake… No, nO, no. Was nOt mistake. not YEt. Later. Years and years under bright sun and verdant leaf. RemEmBer, reMemEr, emptiness cannot HaVe IT!”

The last word was a bellow that left Ling Qi clinging to Zhengui’s shell and him bobbing downward under the force of the wind.

“Ask. AsK. Ask,cHIlD. I must rEmeMbeR…”

Zhen let out a worried hiss, peering at her nervously, but she nodded to him. It was fine. They were fine. She was ready to drop them out of the dream if necessary.

“Will you tell Gui about the green under ash? The leaves that grow from fire? My land is different. My ash makes it strong, but I wonder if I am doing wrong, bringing fire here. Gui worries. He only knows what is in his blood and little things from scholar friends.”

Kohatu’s immense body shuddered, clouded eyes rolling, and the cataracts that had begun to bloom in them shrank back down.

“GreEn. GReeN. YessSss. Green, cOld lands, stoNe lands. NOT islEs of gRAss and fIre.” Kohatu exhaled, and Ling Qi could feel all the clearer now the multitude of cracks running through the shade’s very existence, barely held together by the echo of the once living beast’s will. “Green is rIch, grEEn is hungry, bUT ash, Atamai’s fire, destroys with destruction. Watch. Watch the earth. It shoots, it sprouts, life ever blooming. If you are in bAlance with yourself, as he and I were in balance, you will not blight any earth. But. I do not. Know. Interference. Cold Ones. Enemies. I cannot know.”

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Kohatu’s rapidly changing cadence lent a melancholy to her words. It was liek talking to someone so old that they were beginning to forget themselves.

“Gui understands. He is happy he can make things grow without worry. He will just keep working hard.” her little brother said, having taken a moment to parse the rush of tangled words.