Emphyreal Divide

Chapter Six

The scene before him was painfully, achingly familiar, the room taking shape in such a way he couldn't be entirely sure that it wasn't fully real, despite the knowledge screaming at him from the back of his mind that it, in fact, was not. Thunder rolled overhead, playing accompaniment to the vicious clattering of rain against the roof as it hung overhead, dampening any other sounds, sealing the room into a bubble of stillness and isolation. Candles flickered, strewn about the room with care, chasing the darkness of night away gently, casting the room in a warmth that he had rarely seen it in. There were shapes, figures of people cast in shadow just behind a screen at the far end of the room, a short distance from where he stood in the doorway.

The figure of a woman lent against the wooden panel that held the screen in place, shadow casting a dark shape across the illuminated screen, distorting the wooden shapes that formed the symbol of a lotus. She remained still, statuesque, staring forward with her back solidly to him, a figure difficult to pull from the edges of darkness as they tried desperately to hide her, slate grey robes melting into abject nothingness. He couldn't make out her face- nothing about her held any familiarity- leaving a stretching dissonance in the room as the air held itself still.

He took a step forward.

Then paused, hesitancy creeping into the situation, the sound of his movement fading into the ambiance of the room. He couldn't be certain, couldn't be assured what was currently unfolding was, in any way, good.

He took another step forward, then another, time seeming to meld around each stride he took, impossibly long just as it was impossibly short. Finally, he came shoulder to shoulder with the woman in grey, and he followed her resigned gaze forward.

Three painfully familiar women conversed in quiet tones in front of them, lost in their own little world, either unaware or uncaring of the two that watched them. His breath caught in his throat at the sight- this wasn't real, this couldn't be real- that was impossible. They were all dead.

"My, my, you are a fussy thing, aren't you," Madam Yu said, adjusting the squirming bundle in her arms carefully, looking down at it with an exhausted look. "Don't you know all good young masters sleep through the night? Don't you want to make your mother proud? You're my last hope, A Cheng... Don't let it be a futile one."

"You would be best to put your faith in the Young Mistress, My Lady," Jinzhu said softly, stepping towards Madam Yu's side, footsteps as silent as a cat. Madam Yu scoffed, giving the woman a scornful look.

"Watch your tongue, Jinzhu," Madam Yu replied shortly, voice carrying an unspoken threat with each word. "A son from a gentry clan carries weight here. He will not be overlooked."

"But that does not diminish the significance he carries," Yinzhu adds, daring to be bold in the isolation the room held; that the night offered them. "Your mother warned you."

"My mother warned me of nothing of the sort," Madam Yu snapped back, expression turning dark as she looked over to the two women who stood by her bedside. "Do not speak of such absurdities- honestly, you expect me to believe that nonsense? Don't let her foolish, superstitious words of- of falling skies and endless nights corrupt your thoughts."

"A son who brings with his fall the sky with an endless night," Yinzhu recited softly, crossing her arms as she did so, stance almost challenging the other to object to her words.

"A falling sky and an endless night," Jinzhu corrected, only to earn a scathing look from Madam Yu as she drew herself up to her full height.

"Neither of you will speak of this again, you hear me?" Madam Yu said, voice filled with venom, eyes narrowed into slits as she looked between the two women. Not bothering to wait for a reaction, she continued on, "I will not listen to such baseless superstition, and my son will not be hearing such things either, understand?"