lover, you ask how you can miss / what you’ve never touched. i dream of / flurries of birds surrounding me, / fluttering, my body as verb. / & i wake with ache stagnant in my hair / right where the birds were. / i think you can miss anything / you can name, the feeling / like ultraviolet light. / & so i miss you. / i miss you. my neck / has never held so many crooks / without your comfort. & the glowing? / so many poets write of glow worms / & i always wonder about their meaning, if it’s true / that soldiers used their light to read maps / in the dark. is that all we ever are, / just orbs that help each other home? / i suppose there’s still romance / in the brilliance. i imagine us / hand-in-hand as we navigate through forests / & we stumble, losing one another in the lush / & i miss you / & you answer / & together we beat all the soundless myths of trees.

hot breath crowding before

wrenching away quickie blurry shadow leaving only

blue hickies and purple stains splattered across states

disoriented and pressed against walls us torn apart like

the arrow tore through achille’s heel you

pressing the ball of tongue against the granite breast

pebbles pinched gut our vocal chords scream scream and leave again like a

storm you only pull downwards and haha

ha i will laugh i will laugh i will

split you open please don’t resist

convulse in the fever dream and i breathe you out

stutter shudder and see just like that you’re

gone again

pull those eyelids apart apart spread wide and pop the

redness from those irises a

stream of cherry follows my footsteps pecking poking at my

achilles heel again that is to say are you in

pain? but even you’re here

upper face obscured by the shadows of love can only see that

gaping pink mouth gasping around

your little sorrow pool and choke and choke on it

hope for it hot tears burn parts of my cheeks off bitter

bone i have long since met your demons

rip your limbs from that bruised bruised torso mine

and i have let them take parts of me too and i can only

embrace you through this agony who is it who is the one

torturing you afraid of the answer i want to be

destroyed by you and you only so i

loop my broken arms around your neck again and

pull close pull close again

pull close pull close again

My intimate peerage of some four hundred and fifty students has reached its terminus. It has technically been two months, yet the sun has made one-third of its elliptical orbit since our last day together. For thirteen years we were, and now all that is left to say is that we once were. As we sat in dark rooms behind chipped plastic desks, before we knew anything of the volatile horizon on the other side of our cinder-block nursery, my classmates voted that I, out of the many, was the most likely to take over the world.

I do not see myself a conqueror, as they are so often on the wrong side of history. Nor do I see myself shoulder-to-shoulder with the men who inhale privilege and exhale oppression... all the while playing blind, dumb, and deaf. This world we are in has planted these thoughts as my interpretation of what it means to take over.

I saw no use in watching my own virtual graduation. I sat down at my desk and found the link to a video of some commencement speeches. I chose not to click the little blue line. What could be there that isn’t already in my mind? Life is full of unexpected problems, and we shall persevere; we are coming into the adult world now, and it is not what we expected; it is time for our generation to yield its power onto the world, and it is up to us to determine how that will happen. No high school commencement is complete without a redundant trip to the dictionary, therefore, instead of watching my own graduation, I went to Merriam-Webster.

My superlative, with its domineering connotation, implied to me that my peers had a perception of me which I found uncomfortable. To take over, as an infinitive, has three general interpretations. My inherent idea of the meaning aligns with the third: “to take or make use of under a guise of authority but without actual right.” That is not the way I want to take over the world.

The second meaning, I found more comfortable: “to take to or upon oneself.” The exemplar use of the words put it into terms of assuming responsibility, which I can accept. If anything, as an educated adult, I do feel responsible for the world–at least my corner of it.

I relate the most to the first meaning of taking over, which was the last definition I would have thought of if not for looking at a list of definitions. This meaning is “to serve as a replacement usually for a time only.” In this case, I accept my title. In fact, it is the only title I feel worthy to accept. I do not want to be president...as that position decreases in value alongside the national debt, nor do I want to be remembered for possessing the best seventeen-year-old body, or any other thing in the back section of the yearbook for the class of 2020.

In this life, in this world, I am here to serve as a replacement for a time only. The truth is that we are all of us just temporal replacements, here for a brief minute, waiting for those who will replace us. If this is it, and it is my turn to take over the world, as many have tried and many more will attempt, I would like to let the world know that I only intend to serve you all for a time, and God willing, this blue marble will be made better by it.

8/4:

i’m a swarm, i’m static, i’m drifting awake at 3AM with

next door’s TV on and the voice of a soccer game

announcer weeping distorted through the walls. i roll

onto my side and the world groans feverish. the bedsheets

are black oil, sticking to my feather-cold skin;

the ceiling hits boiling point, melts and

tastes like plaster. i roll onto my back and the

room splinters loudly. 

8/20:

warm tortillas cinnamon french toast sizzling 

bacon ripe avocado food that makes kaleidoscope

eyes twist with color & taxidermy shops and death

smelling soft like fresh soil & the art

museum like cavers shining a flashlight

through my insides & the way my shoes sound 

hitting the tiles in an empty office supply

store & don’t you want to sing don’t you want to 

run isn’t this something even if it terrifies you?

8/29:

and despair grips my throat with blushing 

knuckles. and we’re manically silent. and the crescent moon

wanes to dawn. and you’re home but the basement’s

reworked and everyone’s cut their hair and

who’s gonna stay up talking till midnight

anyway? lately i wake from dreams with a residual

taste in my mouth. like i forgot to press “record” on

the videotape. i turn on my bedside lamp and tell

myself: it is august. soon it will be september. then

october, then november, and then christmas and new years. it’s

meant to be comforting. 

    ---

7/27:

and i wake with hot glue pouring upwards

from the floor and the TV on in the next room; 

haul my feet on the floor and the world flips 

like a coin. i wake again in bed, facing the other

wall, silence toying the air with a question:

well, is this it yet? 

i am roadkill; there lies liquid

asphalt beneath my nails.

exhale carbon monoxide and car

exhaust between my parted lips, and i will tell you that

i am carrion; i am the disenfranchised lover.

the vultures know my taste. the jackals nip at the

pulse of my wrist and laugh and laugh and

laugh.

yellow painted lines stretch into hallucinogenics across

dried tar and potholes and intersections and

did you not see me? i think

you did—at least as you drove by. as you drove past.

if you pressed a kiss to my knuckles, i wonder if you would still map out

the speed bumps and laugh, startled. laugh and laugh and

laugh.

there is streetlight red in my ledger that rotted its way between my gums and

i still want to ask you: there were so many signs that told you to stop.

why didn’t you?

so now i’ve become the roadkill, the villain living off vasoline but

i wish upon speed limits, you know.

and i hope that you find heaven on the highway.

Love is a divine place, even when the wells are poisoned.

Even when the walls crumble and the ceiling leaks, like a metronome as the droplets hit the bottom of a bucket. Even after you patch up the hole and the orange, water-stained paint remains. And you stand where the water once fell, without a grudge.

It’s rarely unblemished, and it’s never perfect, but it’s bliss.

It’s usually fleeting, but it’s pure comfort when it’s live, right in front of you.

It’s giving your entire self up, to be nothing but a safe haven whenever they call.

To feel everything at once in that fraction of a second long, extraordinary glance.

*please do read the top comment before proceeding to the story

In the depths of Chrys’s memories, there is an elderly person.

The wind strokes the soft grass and cries softly. The hill shudders, and atop it, the crimson pavilion creaks and balances the weight of the sky on its back. The aforementioned brilliant azure fans itself with the fading clouds and tries to detach its arms from escaping wisps of crawling sun. Beneath the battered roof of the wavering struture, a shadow waits, blurring in the breeze.

Perhaps this is what once was: perhaps it is not, but Chrys is not the one to deny herself of such dreams. In the moment, she simply indulges herself a delusion, a memory, a faraway fantasy—whatever it was.

The figure smiles in such a way that the skin around their mouth wrinkles and cracks with grey age. They cradle a cracked porcelain cup and press it to their worn lips, still simpering. Chrys can only mimic the gesture, swallowing the bitter liquid emptily.

“Why have you come here now, Jú Huā (1)?” they ask, not unkindly. Chrys takes another sip.

“You said there was nothing more you could teach me. I beg to differ,” she says simply. The figure laughs—a low, gutteral thing—and finally, a sliver of their eyes shows itself, reflecting an ocean of softened ember.

“You only say that because you miss my company,” they say, and Chrys can’t disagree. She casts her eyes towards the melting sun and the blinding sky.

“Why do I dream of such a place?” Chrys wonders aloud. The emptiness in her chest only pools with a dull drip and expands. The sky remains as luminous as ever, and she can’t help but to resent it.

“Because you miss it,” they say again, and suddenly, Chrys is gripped with the realization that this is only an illusion. Breath hitching with the transition from dream to reality, she can only watch as her vision flickers and with it, the elderly person.

“Why?” She asks one more time, scrabbling to stay inside the mirage. The figure doesn’t answer, only takes another sip. Their eyes fade, the sun fades, and the sky fades.

Chrys wakes up with a wetness sticking to her eyelid and a bitterness lingering on her tongue.

///

She sometimes wonders the extent of her teammates’ powers. More commonly thoughts about how far Anoushka could reach than how far Aisha could aim though. Nonphysical anomalies were much more interesting than the physical ones, she decided, but maybe not as clear cut.

Today, Chrys wonders if Ellie can taste the tea she drank with the shadow, atop that hill. She stares at the older girl for a straight thirty seconds—it’s a lot longer than it seems—and looks away when Ellie finally notices. She crumples her carton of milk and tosses it into the trash can—bin?—and doesn’t dwell on it any longer. If anything, she’s just curious. How she would react.

Their previous conversation comes to mind, bleakly. Chrys had hated the words she’d said for days afterwards, but she found she didn’t regret it. How could she? If she regretted her past actions, then it would only become meaningless, and a part of her hoped the words exchanged weren’t meaningless.

Rubbing her eyes from beneath her glasses, she shrugs a little at Ellie’s—and Aisha’s—ghost and plugs in her earbuds. The familiar gupin weeps, and she hums along with it, if only to block out the din outside.

///

“What is Chrys short for?” Mia asks one day, eyes wide and inquisitive. Chrys pulls out her achoring ’buds, surrendering herself to the endless noise—and Mia’s questions.

“What?”

“What is Chrys short for?” Mia repeats, unperturbed by her aloofness.

Chrys thinks about the multitude of clever replies she could respond with and settles on: “What do you think it is?”

Mia fidgets a little in deep thought. Much to Chrys’s surprise, nothing happens. No flower, no flame, no drop of water. With satisfaction, she watches as Mia gathers herself and restrains the untamed thrumming of her anomaly.

“Well... I want to hear you say it,” Mia says, albeit a little uncertainly. Once again, there is no outburst of elemental.

Chrys thinks about the figure under the pavilion.

“Jú Huā,” they’d once said. Chrys was young then—without the perception of death so forcefully given by Sunny’s weeping, only with the bright bleariness of the shadows hovering at the edges of her vision.“If you have no name, then your name is Jú Huā.”

“Chrysanthemum,” she says finally. “It stands for Chrysanthemum, but I will feed you to your ghost if you say it out loud.”

Mia smiles then—even though the spirit attached to her was nothing to joke about. Chrys makes them link pinkies before she trusts the other girl enough to let her go with it.

///

Two nights later, she’s back under the pavilion. The elder brews another cup of tea. Chrys brings it up to her nose and smells jasmine. The shadow hums distantly, their eyes cast elsewhere beyond the realm of dreams.

“Do you envy them?” They ask, voice tinged with a faint curl of the consonant. Chrys swallows, but there is no liquid. Her throat burns with the scent of metal, but there is no red.

“I only envy their equal standing,” she says curtly, even though she has no right. The person in front of her possibly knows her best and worst through all her lives.

The shadow twinkles again. “Who is to say you aren’t of equal standing?”

Of course they were. They ate together, they laughed together, they fought together, and none of them ever walked away with more wounds than the other. Yet there was a place where boundaries had to be drawn, and some of them were not in the same places.

“We’re not,” Chrys says softly. The elder simply tilts their cup back and drinks. The grass sings softly, and the brilliant blue sky contends the sky for another cloud. Chrys follows a trail of pollen past the structure, gleening gold even though the field is devoid of any insect life.

Finally, Chrys sighs, “I miss you, Lăoshī (2).”

The dream flickers, and she’s back in her bed, breath balanced precariously between illusion and reality. She inhales and regrets.

She inhales and regrets.

///

The night yawns. It is much too late to be awake—or rather, too early—but there is no returning to sleep after that kind of dream. Chrys can only wake up and hope the aftertaste has dissolved before Ellie sees her in the morning. She rolls out of bed and pads lethargically to the kitchen.

Unsurprisingly, there’s already someone there. Anoushka acknowledges her presence tersely, dipping her chin at the younger girl. Chrys nods back and heads towards the refridgerator, where there’s bound to be some kind of savory food left.

There isn’t. She grabs her usual instead, a cup of vanilla bean Häagen-Dazs—because Jade insists on it, but Sunny would never—and a metal spoon from the drying rack. Her thumb brushes over the flower insignia carved onto the spoon—of course they were rich enough to do that—and Chrys’s mind inevitably wanders again.

Jú Huā. Jú Huā. Jú Huā Jú Huā Jú Huā.

“I miss you, Lăoshī.”

Chrys is well aware that the Dream World was great and vast, but it was still no more than the mind that it occupied. If the mind did not think ‘it’, then ‘it’ would not show itself.

So why now? She went years without even dreaming of that place—without even thinking of that place, so why now?

Chrys could not even remember the face of her beloved Lăoshī anymore. That much was true. Even in those dreams, there was no face. Eyes, mouth, even a wrinkle on the cheek.

But no face.

Chrys chews on her lip. Was that shameful? To have so easily forgotten the person that taught her so much? Was she allowed to? Was she defacing the memory of Lăoshī by failing to remember what they had looked like? What did they look like?

Oh God. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember she couldn’t—

″-hrys. Chrys. Chrys!”

With Anoushka’s shrill shout, Chrys jerks back to the the waking world just before she rams straight into the corner of the kitchen in table. The sharp point digs directly into her thigh, and she lets out a cry of pain before a sharp twinge shoots through her leg. The spoon and ice cream cup crashes to the ground and with it, Chrys.

“Chrys!” Anoushka rushes over, and helps her upright again. Chrys winces and thinks that this is the first time that Anoushka has ever shown concern to her—or anyone else, for that matter. She gives a weak smile.

“I’m alright.” Chrys croaks, trying to stand up again. Too early, pain screams out, and she slams right back into the ground. Anoushka frowns.

“You shouldn’t do that.” She stands up. “I’ll get some bandages.”

“Do you envy them?”

“Who is to say you aren’t of equal standing?”

“There’s no need.” Chrys hurriedly says, gently standing up with a long grimace. “Such a small thing shouldn’t be fussed over.”

Anoushka still looks doubtful, but she can’t really do anything in the face of Chrys’s stubbornness. Reluctantly, she moves away from the medicine cabinet and presumably back to her perch.

“Anoushka.” Said girl turns towards Chrys, a little surprised but mostly curious. Chrys picks up the dropped spoon and ice cream cup and drapes herself back onto the chair, eyes half-lidded and distant. “Have you ever forgotten someone important?”

Anoushka’s eyes narrow. “I’m guessing you have?”

Lips thinning at the statement, Chrys bites off the lid to the cup and digs the metal spoon into the soft dessert.

“Nevermind,” she says. Anoushka scoffs at that but doesn’t dig further.

Chrys almost wishes she does.

The chrysanthemum embossed onto the spoon glimmers in the light.

///

The next day, they’re back at that abandoned building, bringing in another suspect. As per usual, Chrys quickly escapes to the basement level, not willing to see water seeping through the cracks of the door or the loud shouting of Anoushka. Jade, Aisha, and Ellie were doing a mission elsewhere, leaving Chrys by her lonesome.

Said girl strangles an ant under her fingernail, blinking frequently as she traipses through the dark tunnels running through the underground sector of the building. The spirits track her shadow, stalking her bobbing throat. Chrys plugs in her earbuds again, keen on blocking them and their whispers out.

Yeah, “have a chat with the spirits down there, see if they remember any suspicious behavior”. What a joke. She grits her teeth and kicks the ground, scraping the edges of her shoe off on the rough concrete. Like that was going to help anything. Like that counted as being ‘useful’.

Staring into the seemingly endless tunnel, Chrys is suddenly seized with the uncontrollable urge to run. Run from those stupid self-destructive girls. Run from their stupid ghosts—God, did they ever shut up?

Run, run from it all and not look back. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Chrys sinks, curling her knees towards her chin. Her eyes flutter; she’s tired. She’s so so tired but—

Suddenly, a shadow skirts the edges of her vision, and she whirls around on instict, eyes narrowing at whatever spirit was stirring trouble. The ghost zips by again, and this time, she catches a full view of it.

“Lăoshī.”

Eyes widening, Chrys clambers to her feet and scans her surroundings. She was sure, she was so sure that it was them. There had been no mistake.

“Lăoshī!” She yells into the barren concrete. Chrys’s voice echoes off the walls and shudders, and in the distance, she sees it.

“Lăoshi.” Chrys almost slips as she scrambles forward, shoe soles skidding across the smooth ground. The familiar shadow darts again, and this time, she shoots to pursue it, chest heaving up and down as she shouts again, “Lăoshī!”

But they pay her no heed, only heading deeper into the shadow. Desperately, Chrys gives chase, breath wracking out of her throat in loud gasps. “Lăoshī!”

Once, there were two kindly eyes that once spared this world a glance. Their hands, wrinkled but not old, would comb gently through the fabric of reality—weaving, weaving. They weaved the elder in, with due payment of course.

What once did not exist, now existed.

“Why did we meet?” A young girl once asked, inflicted with the curse of knowing. The elder remembers seeing her weave, and for it was the benefactor’s mistake that such a child was created in the first place.

“We’ve met before,” the elder says, mildly amused. “Your previous lifetimes decided it for you.”

Yes, because they’ve had this conversation before. Just like the shadow predicts, the girl knits her eyebrows together.

“How can you be so certain?” The girl wonders. The elder laughs, light and airy.

“How could I not?” She replies, according to the script. Still, the girl looks as if she wants to say more.

“I once read that ‘Fate is what we are given. Destiny is what we make for ourselves (3)’. Tell me, Lăoshī, which one is it?”

The elder blinks, for she hadn’t seen this before. The edges of her lips break into a grin.

It’s been too long.

“Whichever one you want it to be, Jú Huā,” she answers.

“Lăoshī!” Chrys roars into the deep abyss. There is no more. There is nothing more. No, no, no. “Lăoshī, Lăoshī, Lăoshī...” She gasps, digging at her throat. The short nails sink painlessly into the flesh—too painlessly—and Chrys screams one more time:

“Why have you left me?!”

“Wake up!”

Chrys gasps as she’s shaken awake, almost smashing her forehead into that of a very aggravated Sunny—no, it’s Jade now, why is it Jade?—and instead landing herself a very painful stretch to the nape.

“Ow!” She reaches back to rub the rear of her neck, only to have that hand be snatched out of the air. Jade clutches Chrys’s fingers like she hasn’t in years, and her face looks as white as a sheet.

“What are you doing?” She asks, quiver only slightly like she isn’t slightly intimidated by the older girl’s intense stare. Jade exhales shakily and let’s go, dusting herself off as she raises to her feet.

“You fell asleep. It’s time for us to go.”

Chrys blinks and checks her watch. “Oh, you’re right.”

“When am I not?” Jade shoots back, although it lacks the flippancy of previous remarks. Chrys stands up wearily, allowing herself to lean on the older girl to steady herself. Jade doesn’t mind it, threading her own arm over Chrys’s shoulders and squeezing slightly. She almost shrugs it off, but the look on the Jade’s face says that the older girl needs it more than she’s saying.

It’s only on the way back that Chrys realizes how far she’s ventured into the tunnel. She tries to catch the eye of Jade, but the older girl seems resolute on ignoring everything that is important—just like always.

Chrys still remembers the argument they had a few weeks ago, when everything blew up and Jade left with only the echo of a slammed door and a piece of crumpled paper. Back then, she thought it’d leave her some kind of satisfaction, to go retrieve a supposedly ‘dangerous’ elemental girl, but it didn’t. Not anymore at least.

She knows. If she hadn’t gone out of her way to annoy Jade and pick up Mia, things would still be the same.

“Who is to say you aren’t of equal standing?”

She should apologize. They probably both should, to each other.

Chrys glances one last time at Jade’s focused gaze, dropping her eyes as she realizes the other girl is trying to ignore everything.

All they do is ignore everything. And then it will be alright.

Chrys acquiesces. She always does.

///

Chrys hates the team meetings. Not because they’re useless or tedious per se but because they’re exactly not those things for anyone else. Tense maybe? Unenjoyable? Of course! But boring or even downright humiliating? She couldn’t imagine that for any others—but maybe that was the problem.

No wonder no one trusted her with their ghosts. She can’t even understand them enough to be sympathetic for sitting through a team meeting.

“He was too scared to tell me anything. Had to move on—”

″—a gang from the other side of town. What are they doing here—”

“See, this person said ze was from another fricking dimension. Interesting of course, but how could ze—”

And of course, they’re discussing the results of their recent string of investigations again—done within the buildings and by interrogation of course. Chrys sinks further into her beanbag and tries to not fall asleep, although that is proving to be quite a trial indeed.

She can almost see it, taste the tea on her tongue and feel the cool wind against her neck. Just a little further, She implores. Just a little further—

“Chrys, what did you do today?” Mia’s voice rings out, bright and true, and it snaps Chrys out her daze. She jerks upright, only to realize everyone’s eyes are on her. She swallows dryly.

“Uhm, the usual?” Chrys offers lamely, scratching the back of her head.

“What’s the ‘usual’?” Aisha pipes up from the corner, surely bringing in the core theme of their team building exercises: “Everybody is included.”

Of course they could say that, but Chrys only thinks it’s a cruel joke at most. She grinds her teeth together, searching for an appropriate answer.

“Like, usually I just talk to the ghosts and stuff, but uh, today, I slept a little? Sorry,” she apologizes, face burning. She picks harshly at her cuticles, gritting her teeth.

“That’s nothing to apologize for,” Ellie says, casting a sympathetic look her way. Chrys doesn’t catch it.

“Hey, Chrys. Why don’t you retire early? You look like you’re tired,” Jade finally says, looking more than a little concerned.

Chrys’s blood freezes in her veins.

“Ah, that’s what it must be.” She forces herself to smile. “I’ll be going then.”

As she leaves, she catches Anoushka’s gaze. It looks sad.

///

Chrys keeps herself from sleeping even though she desperately wants to.

“Why don’t you retire early?” “Why don’t you retire early?”

“Why don’t you retire early?”

She buries her head into the pillow, knuckles white as she grips the fabric like a lifeline. Her erratic heartbeat reverbs through the damp cloth, drowsy but frenzied with a pathetic rhythm.

Her limbs sink into the bed, weighted and exhausted. Chrys’s breathing thins, and she resists the urge to curl up into the fetal position and sob. No tears, tears never came easy to her, not since all those years ago when Sunny...

The door cracks open, and the wind changes around the room. Chrys falls flat as the person enters, presumably trying to not make any loud noises. She knows those footsteps by heart by now; it’s been too long to not.

The person sits down heavily next to Chrys’s limp body, and she quickly airs out her heartbeat, wondering if the other girl can hear it.

All of the sudden, there are fingers carding through her hair, and Chrys almost does a full body flinch. Slowly though, she relaxes into the gentle touch, breathing out a largely unaudible sigh.

It’s soft. Tender, even. Liquid wells up in her eyes without meaning to, soaking the pillow.

She falls asleep before she realizes it.

///

It’s cold.

Chrys doesn’t shiver, though she definitely should. Instead, she pours tea over her hand and revels in the slivers of warmth it offers. The elder doesn’t question it, merely brewing another kettle. Their fingers are trembling, but Chrys doesn’t notice it.

“Are you happy, Jú Huā?” They say quietly, figure blurring in the harsh wind. Chrys doesn’t meet their eyes, taking to watch the tepid liquid track down her fingers instead.

“I’m as happy as I could be,” she replies, not dishonestly. The elder purses their lips and coughs violently, seemingly dissatisfied with her answer.

“What do you want?” They ask, voice uncharacteristically somber. Chrys tears her eyes away from her hands and focuses on the dimming sun instead, not bothering to shield herself from the lambent light.

“What I want can’t be given. After all, you’re only an illusion?” She directs those words harshly towards the elder, whose eyes are tinged with an unreadable emotion.

“I’m as close to reality as I can be right now,” they answer honestly. Chrys snorts a little at that, something she never would’ve done in the face of the ‘real’ Lăoshī.

“As if that means anything. Tell me, why was I born?”

Such a ludicrous question and segue would’ve been scoffed at by anyone else, but the elder simply fixes Chrys an oddly sorrowful glance. “We simply are.”

“That’s a lie,” Chrys snaps. “People with anomalies are always born for a reason.”

At that, the elder falls silent.

“Why am I here? What was my purpose? What are these questions for?” Red crescents color Chrys’s palms, a result of her obsessive scratching. “Is it only because I’m pathetic that I dare to question my existence like this?”

″‘Fate is what we are given. Destiny is what we make for ourselves’,” The shadow recites sadly.

“What?”

“That is what you said to me, all those years ago. Did you forget?” They say softly, the wind almost blowing them away. Chrys blinks incredulously and finally realizes how frail the elder looks after all this time.

“You remembered?” She wonders, not without a sliver of concern in her voice.

“Of course. After all, it was something I had never heard before.” The elder smiles, soft and true. They slowly slip a could hand over Chrys’s warmer ones, squeezing lightly.

It is a dream. There shouldn’t be anything but a faint murmur or the light pressure of the sky. Still, Chrys finds herself leaning into the feeble touch.

“I really am pathetic, aren’t I?” She whispers, unable to muster the courage to even look at her Lăoshī. “I wish I could stay here forever with you.”

“Why would you want that? They care about you,” The elder says gently. Chrys clenches her fist.

“Does that mean they should? Does that mean I need them to tell me I’m ‘enough’ and that I have a place with them? If they told me that, I’d only be humiliated,” she says bitterly, laying her spite clean onto the table. The elder looks and sighs.

“Can you do that yourself though? Can you tell yourself that?” They say quietly. “It is by being loved that one is indispensable, not by being indispensable that one is loved.”

Chrys wilts.

“And I am neither,” she says unhappily. “Lăoshī, can’t I stay here for longer? Can’t I have the choice to leave them behind without the guilt of seeing them again?”

“Do you think that’s selfish?” The elder questions plaintively. Chrys exhales deeply.

“Of course I do. But this place in and of itself is already a product of my selfishness, so I can’t do anything about it.”

They remain silent for a few moments before saying, “It’s too early for you.”

“Too early for what?”

The elder tilts their head towards the opposite direction, and Chrys turns around to see a lone girl, standing in the middle of the tall grass. She’s shouting, cupping her hands over her mouth:

“Chrys, Chrys! You have to get out!!”

The wind batters the figure back, but she’s unrelenting, screaming into the unknown.

It’s Ellie.

“You have to go now. There’s not much time left.” The shadow says softly. Chrys whirls around, eyes blown wide as she desperately latches onto their darkened robes.

“I don’t want to,” she says obstinately, arms quivering. “I can’t, I don’t want to live in that kind of place.”

“They need you,” they say firmly but not unkindly. “They will need you.”

But Chrys only shakes her head. “They’ll need me... for what? Please, Lăoshī. Just tell me why I can’t stay with you! The only person that can understand is you, so why?!”

“I understand more of you than you’ll ever know, and I wish I didn’t.” Grabbing a startled Chrys’s shoulders, the elder forces her to stare her right into her eyes, staring seriously. “Remember everything that I’ve told you. Don’t block, intercept. Pay attention to what’s above you. They’re going to—” Suddenly, a burst of blood spurts from their mouth, and Chrys quickly grasps onto their collapsing form frantically.

“Lăoshī, Lăoshī, what are you saying?! I’ll see you again right, tomorrow night? I remember it all, but why are you saying this?! Lăoshī!”

The elder coughs up another mouthful of crimson liquid. “And remember, if all else fails, go to London, alright? Go to London!”

“L-L-Lăoshī! What are you saying?! Why are you bleeding?! I need to, I need to—” Chrys feels tears gather at the edges of her eyes as her mentor practically bleeds out in her arms. Suddenly, Lăoshī engulfs her into a tight hug, burying their nose into the young girl’s shoulder and clutching her body to their own. 

“They need you,” they croak out. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” 

Never in a million years had Chrys imagined that her Lăoshī would ever say those words to her, but as the elder pulls their face from her frame and gingerly caresses her cheek with their shaking hands, she wished she had never heard them. 

“What do you mean?” She chokes out. Lăoshī only gives her only last smile before placing both their hands down onto Chrys’s chest. 

For a second, it’s warm. Chrys can feel her heartbeat through the elder’s frail but ever soothing touch. Even the world seems to stop for them in that fleeting moment. 

“If you have no name, then your name is Jú Huā.” 

“We’ve met before. Your previous lifetimes decided it for you.” 

Chrys breathes in the elder’s familiar scents and revels in the fragrance of home. Of someone who keenly understood her, the only person that could. She relaxes in their embrace. 

Then, Lăoshī uses the last of their energy and shoves Chrys down the hill. 

The girl falls in slow motion, seemingly paralyzed by the sudden turn of events. Her voice freezes midair, and it’s only left for Ellie to catch her limp body in her arms. Chrys immediately struggles in the older girl’s grasp, desperately fighting Ellie’s attempts at placating her. 

“We have to get out of here!” Ellie says hurriedly, but Chrys can’t hear her, kicking and yelling. 

“Let me go, let me go! Lăoshī’s still up there! I can’t leave them. I can’t leave!” She howls, tears streaming down her face. In the distance, she can still see that shadow, leaning heavily against the collapsing pavilion. The madder paint alews into the stormy sky, its wails echoing through the air. 

The elder turns back once, and for the first time in years, Chrys can finally see their full face. The figure’s lips curl up one last time before they simply fall over, disappearing from view as mundanely as a simple breeze. 

“Lăoshī!” Chrys lets out a bloodcurdling scream as Ellie finally manages to wrangle her back into her arms and whisk them away back into the world of waking. 

///

Chrys wakes up gasping for air. She immediately shoves Ellie as hard as she can from her bedside, the girl crashing into the floor with a grunt of pain. As quickly as an arrow, Aisha shoots out and restrains Chrys’s wrists against the bed frame with a barely concealed snarl, letting Ellie establish herself into the waking world before they proceed. 

As her chest wracks up and down, anguished breaths squeezing themselves from her lungs, Chrys realizes that everyone’s in the room. Jade’s standing the closest, hovering with static worry buzzing around them. It’s raining outside. Mia stands not far behind her, trying to contain her panicked exhales and the fire on her stray hairs. Anoushka leans against the bedroom door frame, further away but still clearly anxious about the situation. 

Chrys averts her eyes from all of them, digging red lines into her arms. Ellie climbs back up unsteadily, and Aisha quickly releases Chrys’s wrists to support her friend. 

“You were almost swallowed by the Dream World,” Ellie explains breathlessly, still not having full control of the situation. “You were almost transparent, disappearing.” 

Their gazes stab Chrys like knives and press down like weights upon her chest. Grinding her teeth together, she shoots them all a positively venomously glare, and Jade recoils the hand that was previously reaching out to pet her hair. 

Don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look at how pathetic I am—

“Get the hell out,” she snarls, harsher than she should have. Mia looks like she’s close to bursting into tears—heck, even Jade is. 

“Hey, you don’t get to speak like that—” Anoushka starts, but Ellie stops her with a hand. 

“You’re unstable,” she says as gently as she can. “We can’t leave you alone just yet.” 

Chrys pinches herself again and gathers her scattered senses as much as she can. 

“Please,” she croaks out, “For just a moment, I need to be alone.” 

Ellie swallows dryly, looking reluctant. Much to their surprise though, it’s Jade that pulls away first, expression stormy as she tugs a barely holding it together Mia away. 

“Give her some space,” the older girl murmurs, pushing Anoushka out with her. Aisha quickly follows, lugging Ellie behind her. The Dream Crosser glances at Chrys one last time before leaving. The door slams shut and floods the room with darkness, leaving Chrys alone again. 

Letting her body go limp, she sinks into the mattress, chest finally released from her tense withdrawal of breath. Finally allowing herself to let go, Chrys crosses her forearms across her bloodshot eyes and sobs. 

There are no tears; there isn’t even an audible whimper. Still, it was to be expected. Chrys had scanned the room. In one look, she had torn through every nook and cranny, every crack where one of them could’ve hidden. 

But there was none. 

Just like all those years ago, when she’d lost them the first time, there was no spirit or spector. It should’ve filled her heart with hope, but there was none. She already knew. 

In the shadows of a dead dream, Chrys weeps silently, for a ghost that does not exist. 

///

In the Dream World, a thin figure tears off their bloodied rags. Abundant locks of long black hair fall down her shoulders, and her sharp blue-black eyes refocus. Closing them, she kneels in front of a small headstone, head bowed in respect but still careful as to not get any blood on the name carved. 

“Hey, Lăoshī,” she murmurs—damn, she’s losing consciousness, “I think get what you were trying to say back then.” She coughs up another wad of blood, the metallic liquid licking through her cracked lips. “And I guess I ended up repeating them.” 

She thinks for a little while longer before suddenly breaking up into a painful chuckle. ”‘Fate is what we are given. Destiny is what we make for ourselves’ huh? That clever brat. You would’ve liked her. She was always—” cough—“smarter than I was.” 

Suddenly, figure gasps, her body involuntarily slumping against the tombstone. Much to her chagrin, a bit of blood gets on the smooth rock. Throwing away all formalities, she reaches up one last time to embrace the cold stone, arms tightening around it. 

“I missed you, Lăoshī.” Casting one last look at the grey sky, she smiles bitterly. 

“What a fool I was, for not saying ‘I’m sorry’ back then.” 

The woman shudders and curls closer to the grave. She breathes her legacy into the weeping buds and the one flower she had left behind. 

Hugging the resting place of her beloved Lăoshī, Jú Huā takes her last breath. 

______

(1): Jú Huā (菊花)—Ju with the second tone and Hua (flower) with the first tone—means ‘chrysanthemum’ in Chinese. 

(2): Lăoshī (老师)—Lao with the third tone and Shi with the first tone—means ‘teacher’ in Chinese. 

(3): ‘Fate is what we are given. Destiny is what we make for ourselves’ is a quote from Upon Our Silver Bridge by TheWanderingHeart, a piece of fanfiction available on Archive of Our Own. This fanfiction is also one of the main motivators for writing this userfic and inspired some of the themes and the ‘mood’ presented. 

*is apart of an ongoing series but like most of the other pieces in it, can be read as a standalone with no prior knowledge.

and if everything was bruised and torn and the sky sank its spoiled teeth into the earth and ripped like a dog, depraved and frothing, and if we were standing there, if we were standing there in the middle of it all, could you doubt for a second that it was beautiful? even when the earth is being crushed between a giant's fingers like blackberries, dark juice running in rivulets down swollen fingers. even when my ribs have been splintered and my lungs are heaving in the clogged gray air. even if we find ourselves at a house party at seven in the evening, rummaging through the medicine cabinets of people we barely know for anything to relieve a headache, and the next room over someone's yelling at their kids, and the stench of beer and someone's perfume steeps in the air, and you can't remember quite how you got there or how many days you've been telling yourself you'll find a way to get out- even then.

because somehow you are standing here. and somehow you are running through the parking lot at the end of your first concert, trying not to get hit by a car but mostly thinking about the euphoric numbness in your ears and the taste of cotton candy still simmering in your throat, and then you’re on the train and it’s past midnight and you have school tomorrow but there’ll never be this moment again. and somehow you’re sitting on a bench downtown, splitting ice cream with your crush, and she offers her earbud to you, and the sun is spilling through the trees like honey with the smell of almonds and jasmine wafting through the air. it's a fairly mundane way to spend your friday afternoon, but there's something a touch ethereal about it in the moment. 

once you read an article about the failings of modern art. the primary flaw, in the author's words, was that modern art sought to ask the question "what is art?", but of course there can never be a satisfactory answer to a question so broad and somewhat useless. you've been to the MOMA. you've seen the shapes and colors wrestling on prints, the wall-to-wall paintings that look like someone attacked the canvas with a knife, angry gouges of red and blue oozing out of the pale backdrop. there are sculptures of airplane chairs and solid slabs of color, and you don't want to think about what it must've cost the museum to display them.

but the article was wrong. modern art does not seek to ask "what is art?", it seeks to answer it, and the answer is "everything." every color bleeding from a blurry windshield on the rainy city streets, every half-ripe fruit that falls from the trees in your neighbor's yard, every tired face on the shuttle from the airport in a city that you don't recognize at 2:00 AM. every time you wade barefoot through the dewy summer grass; every time you see the morning glories braided through the fence in spring; every time you stand freezing on the pier and watch the sea calmly slapping against the wooden barrier, sending a spray of saltwater up through the air just as the clouds part and the droplets catch in the sun, and you think "oh" like you've had an epiphany, but it's not something that can be put into words. and yes, even the earth turned inside-out, bruised and torn and falling to pieces.  

a while ago, i buried a butterfly,

kowtowed in front of a temple, and 

pretended like i knew how to pray.

finger joints aching from the cold,

crescent moons branded into my knuckles,

i begged guanyin for a new life and

sacrificed the ashes of my family photos to her

wailing candles.  

using her bitter saké as a disinfectant,  

i drank bottoms-up to cleanse my throat of broken glass and

dead nymphalidae—

sat on my knees and

waited for the

reset. 

i killed my past lives by felling them with 

paperweights and violin strings.

strange, how

those butterfly bodies had my face.

i want to bury them and

bleed the stardust from their wings so they

don’t look pretty anymore.

like a broken proboscis wound into sickly

vocal cords, crushed thoraxes

screaming with a voice that sounds like

my own, i drop the butterfly as it

stings my palm,

disgusting.

so i pray, again.

kami-sama,

how do i do i forget my own face? how do i stop these

repulsive pieridae from cursing my tomorrow?

i tried to suture the infested splits in my throat, but they only close with 

concrete tears and self love, no worries

i just have to reinvent myself until

i'm worthy of such things.

i coughed out a million fluttering ghosts yesterday.

damn those naive little things; i shot them down one by one until they

pooled by my ankles.

please, can someone lay me down in front of that church

and exorcise these butterflies from my body,

so that i can forget who i was yesterday?

stupid, there are chrysalides hanging in the cracks of my psyche.

if they were maggots instead, then

i wouldn’t grieve—

i wouldn’t grieve for a dead childhood.

my throat is closed up with butterflies and

i’m sorry, mom, dad;

i can’t remember why you love me.

i pour baijiu over my wounds again and

light an incense stick.

o’ bohdisattva, 

save me from my own demons;

it seems that my body is in dire need of a 

revision. 

gods don’t listen to those who don’t believe.

i guess you aren’t supposed to ask them to love you when

you can’t do it yourself.

a butterfly scalds my fingertip and just like that

their bodies stack in my bedroom, looking like torn up

mourning clothes. it

hurts to look at them and it hurts to

think back to what could’ve been and it hurts to imagine that

i could've been better.

so for the last time, i close my eyes and

clasp my hands together.

o’ beautiful future

why do you keep killing butterflies? and how do i become

something you won’t regret? 

of course, there was no answer, so my body wrote their own instructions.

so maybe i could finally breathe without dying the walls of my house

red.

these butterflies,

one day i’ll send them fluttering away. 

o’ future self

don’t hold your breath;

i want to pick you apart until

i’m satisfied.

hold open your mouth and

let the butterflies fly out.

then, i promise that i'll

grow you into something i can finally be

proud of.

last saturday, i poured faucet droplets into a pond so i could watch the ripples and

this week, it caused a tsunami and i swear i’m sorry sorry sorry

there’s a chrysalis of hourglass sand staring right at me and i dare not

try to heat it up and turn it into glass because i know what the shards will do but

there’s a tree in the backyard that i fell from and broke my wrist and i wonder

if the person who planted its seed would give me a splint of apologies

silver caterpillar on the kitchen counter: would you tell me what it means?

when a tornado breaks your heart, does the cocoon help you breathe?

i jumped into converse sneakers, ran out the door with a backpack, and

i sprinted to the eye of the hurricane just so i could use it to see

the wings of a butterfly are paper thin, yet their gentle flutter commands the wind

the past is the past, but if you don’t rinse your sins, at the end of the day, the clock still spins

i slipped and snuffed out the dining-room candle, and next saturday, a wildfire came

and all the pretty little blue delicate butterflies mocked me as they brought the rain

i looked into a crystal ball and saw a kaleidoscope of milkweed fields

pupae rested on every leaf and warned me: little girl, don’t you tamper with the future just yet

so i shut my eyes and ran to the garden and waited for the butterfly effect butterfly effect 

butterfly effect