Hiding behind a cover of lotus leaves and their fluttering flowers, and with her head peeking through the stalks of water-side reeds, sat Wei Zhiruo on her small canoe. At this moment her eyebrows were scrunched up in deep scrutiny, her eyes were filled with an impervious sort of an intrigued look. 

The boat's heavy, wooden oars lay forgotten besides her feet, the only other object on that decrepit looking boat, while Wei Zhiruo sat observing a weeping beauty, who lay kneeling betwixt a patch of grass growing by the shore.

"Why is she crying so bad?" A thought which had perplexed her for too long, was uttered askance. She asked but no one replied.

"...She is wet as well. Look at that place. Isn't that a pair of shoes floating over there? If I am not wrong..." Quite some distance away from herself and the shore, there were a pair of white, embroidered woman shoes floating over the pond surface. "...That splashing sound was her being thrown into the water, wasn’t it?"

Wei Zhiruo muttered mostly to herself. She observed, thought and tried to hold on to a conversation —any dry stuff that could just come out of her already scattered mind rolled off her lips. Lips which had grown increasingly dry and chapped.

As for the beauty— she wailed, lamenting by the shore. It was a tragic sight to begin with and easily allowed Wei Zhiruo to imagine all sorts of intrigue and drama that might have fuelled the current scenario. 

Looking over, Wei Zhiruo thought that the beauty's soaking and dripping hair and even her clothes — if it was any colder, they might have been covered by a layer of frost by now. But that girl kept crying, and crying silently, as if she couldn't feel the cold. Or those growing chills in the air as morning approached closer and was just around the corner was just Wei Zhiruo's own figment of imagination. The girl's skin though was turning blue.  

Occasionally, the beauty would mutter something to herself, while the rest of the time she was quite busy wiping away her tears.

'Heaven's daughter...a shell?' None of the muttered sentences made sense to Wei Zhiruo.

Tears kept falling, streaming down the beauty's fair cheeks down onto the ground hastily losing their traces therein. She did whimper a few times, but then suddenly broke out in an unexpected sort of laughter. Its echo haunted the night; as did the tear drops that seemed to penetrate the fabrics of her reality, and fall piercingly over some silent, still waters.

Its penetrating force recalled some not so fond memories in Wei Zhiruo's mind which she barely shrugged off.

'She doesn't look right. I think…there is definitely something wrong with her. Has she gone insane? But not quite like it either— however, there is a little bit of glaring madness in there as well. Peculiar…'

Wei Zhiruo pried several emotions flashing over her features, yet still couldn't make up her mind what to do next. She felt it would be too unfeeling of her to just ignore this scene and be on her way.

But coming out had its own risks. Finally, after pondering on its pros and cons, Wei Zhiruo decided on not going out. After all, there was always a glaring probability that the girl might have known the original owner.

This wasn't some wild place; that girl looked like a demure, weak resident of this manor who had been clearly nurtured in comfort and peace all her life. 

What if that girl asked her what she was doing here instead? Should she tell her the truth —that she was out hunting for something invisible to most human eyes? Or that she entered and lost herself in a strange space, getting out of where it almost took her half the night? Who will look insane then?

"Nevermind then." Wei Zhiruo looked away decisively. "Marr? Can you hear me now?" 

For the umpteenth time the same question reconciled with the breaking fabric of the night, and like several previous proddings, this one too was soon lost, unheeded.

Wei Zhiruo frowned and then narrowed her eyes, stopping her palms from clenching into a fist due to a gut wrenching worry. Instead, she heaved in a mouthful of cold air, then released a deep sigh.

"It's Cold." Wei Zhiruo muttered. "It's getting colder...Marr. Hurry up, reply to me "

No matter what, she thought, eventually all things will fall in their rightful places. She just had to wait. If he is not responding to her now, she will wait for him to come back to her. Will she be disappointed in her wait? There was a chance of that...but she felt she wouldn't be. 

"Yuemarr…?" She called again.

It was getting colder. Staying out like this any longer would be extremely taxing on her body. If she caught a cold, she would be bed-ridden for most of the week. Heavily malnourished, her body was suffering down to her bones — it was stunted and rigged with dark traces that looked like some kind of poisonous residue and hidden diseases of so many kinds that she had lost count just marking them out. All she surmised in the end, was that she would need to nurture the body for at least a year before it could even reach the level of a normally functioning human being!

And this was nothing in front of the wounds left in her soul. Travelling down here was definitely not like falling asleep in that accursed pond and then waking up here, today—no; it was more like she had pierced through a membrane that sucked away all her powers and strength and left her like a husk of her previous self.

It was so bad that Wei Zhiruo didn't even want to see what was wrong inside her Inner self! She was using her Spiritual Senses, and still could use it flexibly to reach a considerable distance, and this just became another of her excuses to not peer deeply inside her soul. 

Now that she started thinking about healing, she found that it was going to be a very, very long and tedious project, and would definitely need some precious herbs and tonics to support it. Precious medicines needed money and this identity was so sensitive that to go out earning any amount was tantamount to revealing her strangeness to everyone. What else could she do in such circumstances? Actually, the solution wasn’t that hard to achieve - she just needed to merge with her bloodline completely…

She just needed to wait a couple more weeks till the process was done. After that, she could just nurture the vitality as she found it appropriate to do so. 

"... you must be weak and tired right? But wait...if the bloodline's already merging, wouldn't that mean you too have started assimilating with this body? Don't tell me you are busy merging right now?! If you are not — then don't start, okay? It's hardly safe right here. At least wait for me to go back to my chamber. I think those mortal medicinal herbs can help us gain some strength. Since this world has humans, there must be some sort of similarity in the nature of herbs..." Wei Zhiruo said. "We can search for those…"

She thought deeply, as many names started running through her mind. Angelica, wolfsbane, Talons of the Red Rosefinch, and Aster starwood, Auburn Dust leaf and a pinch of coral residue...and this just made a small pot of 'healing' or rather, energy boosting potion...did any of the Runes support internal healing?

But even after waiting for a long while, when she didn't hear any reply –all those herb names, Runes and past annotations got jumbled up in a mix of fear and apprehension. She panicked.

Wei Zhiruo rubbed her shoulders with her palms to escape the cold. Her heart, though, was growing colder by the minute. Apprehension, fear of losing something after gaining it, and that deeply entrenched familiar fear of finding that she had just been imagining things in her head —dreams and nightmares, reality with no boundaries and senses that lied...she could hardly take out her mind from all that! She just somehow sat still, rubbing the bumpy surface of the wooden canoe, obsessively tracing, retracing its rough texture. It felt wet and sticky, and felt obnoxiously irksome.

"A'Marr…? Cannot you say a word...to me?"

Chilling breeze seemed to be sneaking up closer to her, rubbing their hands over her shoulder and wet and naked feet to make her feel their presence all the more. She felt the numbness of the cold already making her muscles stiff, and hard.

A cloud of fog had imperceptibly flown closer to her and built this towering maze of views: some peeking bushes of wild reed peeking down closer at hand here and trees cowering down at the shore over there, a vast carpet of rippling black waters underneath and a wide expanse of blue-black sky hanging overhead. Nearly everything was still, and frozen. A creeping stillness reigned, as fog stole closer and closer rolling down like a tumbling river of smoke.

And that beauty...she was sucked into the background of heavy noises, a scene being enacted from a play, running in the theater with no sound or movement —just a cold glimpse of an alternative reality. If reality was somewhere near in her clutches...which Wei Zhiruo doubted.

Growing colder and colder, Wei Zhiruo looked up into the clouding sky and looked at it as if seeing it for the first time.

"Who would've thought that just a while ago it was a clear night?" She mumbled distractedly, whispering under her breath. "Will it be clear tomorrow?" Or will the rain once again submerge her melancholic, hazy mind in its retelling of poignant tragedies? 

"Maybe...maybe not." She was betting that it would be a clear, warm day full of sunlight and warmth, and fresh breeze, and the smell of popping flowers and drooping vine-blooms. 

Why?

Because Marr was not a figment of her imagination, Wei Zhiruo urged. He was here and when he was close, how could that day be a gloomy day? After all, he was her companion, her Blood-seed that talked and thought and accompanied her like…forever. How could he…desert her like that? 'Let it be a warm, sunny day A'Marr. I am begging you,' she looked up and solemnly urged.

To Yuemarr, Wei Zhiruo knew her words would have reached him even if she just thought about it inside her head. But she wanted to hear his reply, his voice. Confirm that what was almost fantastical was definitely not a piece of her imagination - or a longing that had maddened her to her roots!

Her Blood-seed, the carrier of her bloodline and inheritance, was here —inside a new body, which was undoubtedly full of human blood. Amazing, wasn't it? It was almost a bizarre miracle.

Her human-self had somehow retained a bloodline, which was strictly passed down through a pure family line with no exceptions. 

Marr and her had been together since birth. Although, she only knew of his existence only after she was four and nearing her own Awakening ceremony, but after that, they had never been separated.

At first, he was a tiny seed sleeping in her soul. He didn't know how to talk, and thus, would send her broken 'flashes' and snippets of images formed in her own Inner eyes or thoughts, to tell her what he wanted, what he liked or disliked. And when he could talk, her days were full of his random chatters. 

What books he liked, and which tree smells best to him, and which birds and flowers she should look at once more, she knew it all. What kind of sky's blue he preferred the most, and which sunlit day he wanted to remain dozing in forever — he used to chatter all the time!

When they walked in the capital city Finsmeave, he would always bubble and chirp inside her, absorbing all he saw, memorizing whatever he could —he was the source of unfounded curiosity that had colored much of her own world. He used her senses to build his own land of imagination, felt what she felt, and rejoiced in them. Everything they did, had been done together.

It felt so empty, when she couldn't hear him talk like that. But it was okay now - at least he was still alive. 

Wei Zhiruo shrugged away most of her morose thoughts and kept rubbing her palms together to generate some heat. She even rubbed her face a few times, but found that it was of little help. Her body was getting colder. 

She didn't know why, but she didn't want to go away. She thought about calling a few more times. 

"If it doesn't rain tomorrow —what do you think are the chances of me getting out of this manor? But first, it would be better to see what other places in this mansion look like —what do you say? And meet some people. I don’t know why I still have some of the ability of the original owner of this body, but language shouldn’t be an issue. When I was talking with that maid I clearly understood what she was telling me, and even knew how to talk back. No language barrier means...it's just a matter of increasing more knowledge about the 'common sense' related to this world. And reading—have I become an illiterate person? I don't know. What do you think? Should I go out? Will others recognize me, or find something strange about me if I do so?" 

Wei Zhiruo could hardly predict other people's responses. What if there really was someone very close to Original soul? What will she do to explain her changes to such a person? 

"If I didn't have some of the remnant memories from this body, I would have completely given up on continuing staying here," she said. The language, the expressions and mannerism – these are just the basic things to assimilate with the rest of the world. And to continue to fit in while using this identity — she needed to master all of them quickly. Thankfully she still had these and enough time to digest them without arousing any suspicion. But there was no certainty that she wouldn’t be discovered by anyone. 

Especially when this identity was so... sensitive and mysterious.

A child of her age doesn't have a close maid to look after her, her courtyard looks dilapidated and almost half emptied out of its utilities; it wouldn't take a genius to guess that there was something wrong with her current identity. But what was it? Has her mother offended the family, or what else could a seven-year-old child do to earn such ostracization?...But there was something else that struck her mind while trying to think of reasons for her isolation. Her eyes.

Wei Zhiruo's brows scrunched together in a frown. 'Strange, isn't it? How come they are still so blue?'

All the people in Jinghai she saw today had brown, black eyes. But her body had blue ones —a blue which was almost Cerulean, hardly any different from her past self. 

Did this symbolize anything? She had her past bloodline, and her eyes were blue too...but she was definitely a human!

Maybe the answer to all these doubts lies in the sealed memories? What was the seal for? 

"Marr, at least tell me about this seal? It definitely is akin to an ‘Obliterate’ Rune I learnt. Why is that, when I think about it, my head starts hurting? Don't tell me it was used to lessen my guilt about overtaking this body –? Marr?" She prodded and prodded, till her ears were tired of hearing her own cracking voice.

When she was losing all hope —finally a thought mixed up with the huge river of her internal thoughts, slowly gained strength and became audible.