‘The world is brimming with vitality, and yet strangely the spring is so far away,’ Wei Zhiruo couldn’t help but sigh out aloud, as she swept her spiritual senses all around Jinghai.

Her eyes swept past the farmers in their hot-beds, curled to early comfort. There were archers up in the high towers of fortress castle with their longbows polished and ready to move, gazing with their hawk-like gazes in ponderous doubts. And also those stiffly clothed guards yawning and scrunching their faces, walking around the town gate unbothered; every one of them appeared unaware of the other and of her. Yet the moonlight was mellow and all embracing.

Wei Zhiruo recalled with difficulty. Like people seldom do to call back certain deeply closeted and forgotten memories kept under locked up chests burrowed deeper into layers of forgetfulness – she tried hard to paint those hazy figures. She had a premonition that if she didn’t settle all her thoughts, or put them in order she wouldn’t be able to do the same in near future. What she was expecting to happen, she herself didn’t know – but the gist of the upcoming storm lingered under her nose. People like her hardly let go of such building up premonitions as illusions.

She remembered a time when her own mind hadn’t been so noisy, so full of ‘thoughts’. When it was nothing but clueless and in keeping of great calm – although it was unflinchingly separated from the harmonies of the world, from its secret talks bubbling all around her, its reiterated joys and humble hymns that could be heard even in rustling winds. She was unable to watch or hear the budding growth of a plant, or marvel at the churning of water and its majestic runes, or swirls of the cloud and its magical rules – it had never stifled her with its presence like at present. She was drowning in them. Those natural rules, those runes and secrets of heaven and earth couldn’t save her from their churning. At moments like these, she couldn’t help but wonder - was the pain worth it? The answer was almost always - yes; with exceptions being such moments where there seemed to be no end to these foreign thoughts. But still, she would never trade this magical aspect of herself with anything! 

“Perhaps I am still a human right now,’ Wei Zhiruo mumbled. “Very human, indeed. Wonder what time it was. Full of weaknesses and tense submissions. Each and every one of them could humiliate my-self and walk away untouched. But then, the clan was all alive and well, and the rivers were just rivers – sparkling, without a voice telling me to jump down and forge my fate in death.” But she was not going to leave everything behind and seek death or listen to that illusory sort of earthly wisdom. Perhaps, that was the alien something in her nature. Even weeds were not as ruthlessly indifferent as she had been in those years.  But notwithstanding that particular phase of her life, she had been quite quiet. 

Believe it or not, she was a human, once, with no pervasive thought clamoring all day long. Once upon a time, long long time ago, in ages past and in some distant land, where common men and women dwelt and rejoiced in life, she too had been the daughter of such a common man. And she had nothing but thoughts of a common human. But then, like the fate of a butterfly that must break off its own cocoon to spread its wing, or die stifled in it– she had shed off her human limitations. Since then, that awakening, these thoughts had accompanied her, echoed with her, filled her with themselves and made itself heard and felt – and little by little, with each passing moment, she had encompassed a gap between the capabilities of what was humane.

                                      In your lands, I stood forsaken

                                   Deeply grooved in your barren soils;

                                  With a soul maligned and a throat cut

                                         –with all my voices undone.

“What an enchanting night.” Wei Zhiruo mumbled.  

It was a poet’s night indeed; a nightingale burst into one of the neatest of her songs, and the croaks of frogs appeared to be its accompaniment. Even pale moonlight wound its yarn and stars sparkled with unparalleled brilliance, peering through their mischievous eyes as if alluring their paramours. Even in Wei Zhiruo’s stale eyes, one could peer brilliance, like thousands of scattered fragments had made its home there - settling blue and deep.

A nodding head curled up closer. With knees drawn back, her back curling into a circle, the tiny figure fell into a trembling slumber full of thoughts and dreams, lulled by the gentle swinging of the water ripples.