The paths near their ends. The laughter grows sharper. You can feel this black and white reality teetering on a razor’s edge. What part of your past will the future hold?
Eater
Eater
The boy chatters incessantly as he leads you back to civilization. He pauses now and then to see how you will respond, but if you don’t he barrels onward, as if he cannot stand the silence.
Some time later, you find yourself standing before the hustle and bustle of a familiar scene. You remember this street well, even after all these years, and the tides of emotion rise within your throat. The boy is still chattering but now at passerby’s, greeting or bantering with them as the two of you snake your way through the evening crowd.
Lanterns wash over everything in a warm glow. Eventually, the boy stops in front of a building, but instead of going inside he leads you around the back. There’s a modest chicken coop and not much else. The inhabitants of said coop cluck softly, more so out of hunger than anxiety. They know it’s not feeding time, but the boy is known to them and they can’t help associating him with meals.
“Hush, you greedy things,” he scolds them as he ambles over to a wooden crate. “It’s our turn to eat, not yours.” There’s a cloth draped over the crate, and when he lifts it, a fragrant steam rolls up and wafts towards your nose.
Your chest tightens. You haven’t eaten this in so long. In fact, the last time you ate this, something momentous happened. Something you could never forget.
The boy grins up at you. “I was going to eat this all by myself, but since you’re here, I guess I might as well share.”
As he says this, you can hear the sounds of an old memory creeping closer. The wheels are in motion and there is nothing you can do to stop it from playing out all over again…
…or is there?
Clean One
Yuan laughs his light, twinkling laugh as he considers your jab at his penmanship. His back is to you, face turned just enough to show the gentle curve of his cheek. He’s waiting. You’re considering.
And then his familiar figure starts to fade, details blurring into obscurity as your feet carry you down a different, less certain path. He melts into a smattering of paint strokes as you move farther and farther away, toward that which is unfamiliar but perhaps more real and true.
The lantern comes to life at your behest. Only, the flame within is a very specific color. Your favorite color, in fact.
As you travel deeper into the forest, the night grows intensely darker. You can barely make out the shapes of trees around you. They look more like violent brushstrokes swept hastily across a page than the harmless woods you first entered. There are no more sounds of wildlife. The silence, as is the dark, lays thick and heavy around you.
It isn’t long before something breaks through the silence. A conversation? No, a disagreement…one you’ve heard before, or feel you have. It fills you with dread. You know how this ends and it isn’t pleasant. But perhaps, you have a chance to change it?
Itchy Fingers
Your choice is made and the red figure responds in kind. It trots toward the cave entrance, and the closer it gets, the more it glows with an eerie red light.
As you enter the cave, you find that the horse headed creature has waited for you. It moves when you move, staying seven paces from you at all times. It’s light, however, is enough to illuminate a decent radius around you both. You can see that walls are bumpy and of a matte like surface, shifting subtly beneath your scrutiny.
You travel deeper into the cave for what feels like only a few minutes when suddenly, the red creature dashes off, leaving you in complete darkness. As soon as this happens, the rest of your senses immediately heighten. You can hear, feel, smell, and even taste a powerful memory from your past. It’s one that you couldn’t forget even if you tried. As the details come rushing back to you, so do colors and shapes. They quickly flesh out a scene before you. One that has been seared into your mind.
And now, having been stranded here, you have no choice but to relive it.
Ghost Boy
The happy feelings of lakeside memories fade behind you as you stride purposefully toward the open door. As soon as you pull it further open, a gust of cold, crisp air blows through, rustling your hair.
On the other side of the door is yet another impossible scene. It is one from your childhood home, in the lush mountains of Sonshan. This particular part of the mountains, the slant of the fading sunlight, the chill in the air…you remember this. Remember being here as a child, eager to advance in your training. Overconfident in your gifts.
You were always recognized as rather special. Spirits seemed calmer around you, and some aspects of your clans sacred techniques came more easily for you than others. But on that day, you encountered a Raakgui who would not be quieted. It brought you to the very limits of your abilities and beyond, to a point of nearly no return. And so it was on that day that you learned a lesson you would never forget.
And now, caught as you are in this convoluted web of paint strokes, you have no choice but to relive it.
