#Then I realised it might be similar to the 'do orange whites taste bitter' thing or the cilantro thing

[hoc-loco]

After several dark nights of being able to do little else than thrash around throughout the night, or wake up covered in sweat, Yao had developed a rather unexpected dependency on the pills. (ramble. I know I’ll never post the entire thing, which is like over 20 chapters long, so I just wanted to post some little segments. A fic in which China must choose between the past and the present).

He’s old, and with age comes wisdom, so Yao likes to think. With wisdom comes the ability to push through thick and thin without a second thought, but sometimes it’s just not enough to combat the tiredness that also comes with age. And with tiredness comes thoughts, and then with thoughts, comes sleepless nights.

So for months, he lies, staring through hard eyes at the ceiling, two pillows encapsulating his head. The plaster is an unblemished white, grey in the darkness; a blank canvas, splashed with memories that he can’t help but spill. He watches them flash by, like black and white images on a zoetrope.

One icy February night, he finally grows tired of lying, watching.

The memories are different this night; stiller, warmer, pleasantly rhythmic in their flow. He can feel the leaves of the Italian Cypress brushing against his cheek like it was yesterday, a gentle breeze lifting his hair and a soft voice. Deep, but somehow still light. An arm around his shoulder, pulling him close, and the vibrancy of a sunset, unmatched by any other sunset he has seen to date.

For the first time in a long time, he feels his eyes slipping shut, the view of the grey ceiling slowly dimming, and he welcomes it, relaxing as best he can. A familiar heavy feeling settles in his chest, probably from years of exhaustion, and he remembers for whatever reason, wanting to cry.

But like all good things that seem to befall Yao, the memories, the warmth begins to fade into bitter cold, and suddenly, he’s furious.

This time, in an undoubtedly better state of mind, he throws off the sheet and saunters to the bathroom and rummages around in the medicine cupboard. When he finds the correct container, he pulls the top off, a rush of unpleasant memories flashing through his mind. But memories are just memories, right? It’s not like you can… relive them, or anything.

With that, he throws a single pill into his mouth and swallows. The thing doesn’t taste of much; a little bitter, but he still finds himself wincing as it goes down. It doesn’t feel right.

But then again, never mind the tablet not feeling right, he hasn’t felt right for centuries now. One look in the mirror has him staring at the unfamiliar reflection. The skin is unhealthily pale, eyes dim and rimmed with circles just as black. If China were any more gullible, it wouldn’t have taken much to convince him that he was staring at his ghost.

After pulling disbelievingly at his inky hair, which he has unknowingly allowed to grow longer than he’d thought, and rubbing at his tired eyes, he realises with some surprise the efficiency of the human drug.

Already, within a few minutes, he can feel his eyelids begin to droop, and he forces his eyes away from the ghost in the mirror. After stuffing the bottle back into the cupboard, he begins the trudge back towards the bedroom, a heavy feeling settling over his head.

On his way through the dark hallways, he grabs a small, gold bracelet from a cupboard and clutches it close to his chest.

  That night, he dreams. He finds that the memories he relives on the bedroom ceiling seem real, but nothing could ever feel as real as a dream.

Hardly is anyone able to tell if a dream is really a dream. Most of the time, you simply accept it as a more colourful version of reality, but reality all the same. Even if the water is pink and the clouds are paintings on walls, you might never be able to tell if anything was out of place. But the one Yao is experiencing is so gut-wrenchingly real, from the blue-orange of the sky to the sway of summer flowers. The feel of soft grass under his fingertips, the soft veil of light shrouding a glowing city, the distant rumble of chatter rising from the sandy-coloured buildings further down the hill.

Yao draws his legs in and allows himself to relax, feeling the warm air tickle his face, the buzz of crickets seemingly humming an old tune he remembers from some far-off, inaccessible memory. With a sigh, he rests his head on his knees, content. Everything is so still, so peaceful. He traces the line of Italian Cypress trees through old cobble buildings in the fields, all the way to the golden city and his eyes land upon the most beautiful sunset he has ever seen. Flames rise from the horizon, lighting up an ocean beyond, flickers of yellow and orange and pink.

As the landscape before him lights up with the suns last breath, behind him, the fields are falling into darkness.

A shadow from an overhead tree looks, at first, like a clawed hand scratching at the ground and Yao looks up, startled.

And when he looks up, he sees someone staring straight down at him.

For what seems like an eternity and in all honesty, probably was, he stares, frozen. Every gear in his body grinds to a halt and he is hardly aware that he’s stopped breathing altogether. Above the looming figure, the sky is still a vivid explosion of fiery hues, but he sees none of it. And though a dark shadow is cast over the figure’s face, each and every one of his features show more to Yao than the luminescent sky above.

They say that dreams are a by-product of all the wild adventures you conjure up throughout the day, a mesh of all the things you wish you could do, but cannot, because the concept of reality is always something that must be considered. Reality has too many limitations, Yao had thought, and that had been sometime during the very first century of his life; he had hardly been taller than his second sister’s waist and just learning how to hold a sword. He’d already given up dreaming about the distant lands the children of his country did, with all their peculiar spices and strange thatched huts in grassy highlands. Especially when he was younger, he would amuse himself with images of new, undiscovered lands, trekking through faraway villages with friends he had been foolish enough to make. Time took its toll, eventually, and soon the differences between him and the other children became far too great to ignore.

He was different. He couldn’t have the same aspirations as they did; no cloud-laced mountains, no fields of foreign flowers.

They were gone for good before he could reach the lowest platform in the prayer room, gone to a place they couldn’t come back from. He always wondered why his hair didn’t grey, or his eyes didn’t begin to sag, but he stopped wondering after a while.

After a witnessed bloodbath involving two of his sisters – three, a little later – Yao had begun dreaming about not what would, or could happen, but what had happened. Still under a thousand years old, hardly taller than his dead sister’s waist and just learning how to hold a sword, Yao fell asleep at night and dreamt about surprisingly pleasant things. He dreamt of snow in the palace courtyard, skidding over the frozen pond by the pagoda. He dreamt of the sound of swords slicing air and how much he enjoyed fencing sessions with his oldest sister, as well as the way the second oldest would twist peonies into his hair during the summer.

Memories started having much more of an impact than did any future prospects and it continued that way for millennia to come.

So, having not had a single dream about his sisters in centuries, of whom his memories of them are now quite blurred, this was the very last thing he had expected.

Yao can’t be sure how long he stares, but he knows that the longer he does, the more his eyes are beginning to water. A small sob threatens to escape his throat, but he swallows desperately. Instead, the face, and fiery sky behind it merges into a blurry mess.

Without so much as a warning, Yao leaps up from his spot, feet moving on autopilot. His arms tighten around the back of the figure and he presses his face into the chest, the striking familiarity of the smell causing the tears to spill. He holds the figure close, deathly still, and for a second, he tenses when he feels another pair of arms wind gently around his waist.

But this is everything he’s ever dreamed about; memories. Memories of this musky scent, memories of an embrace so similar to the one that he’s in, that he relaxes completely, melting into the warm arms.

“Good to see you again, Yao.”

He wakes up in suffocating darkness, his pillow soaked with tears.