Chapter Text
Once, she was told that grief would fade over time.
Hers never does. A fool child running off seeking adventure, only to return to find her family dead. Regret touches every memory she has of her parents, of her brother, the words spoken in anger, never to be taken back.
They are the last words her family would hear from her before their deaths. She returned too late.
The Storyteller’s presence is a godsend; they are a friend to her, words gentle and calming the turbulent tides in her heart.
They tell her stories of kinder times, of halcyon days. She allows it in those dark days.
Time blurs for a while until she gathers the strength to rise from her family home, knees stained from the carpet of dust.
(There are no bodies to bury, no ashes to pray to. Forgive your unfilial daughter, your foolish sister.)
Her grief never fades, even after so many years.
It drives her forth, a reminder to never allow another failure.
The Storyteller stands behind her still, deceptively unassuming, a shadow unseen.
They were fighting again, her brother and her. She chased him around with a stick in hand while he shouted insults at her. They ran round and round and round, until her brother pushed her a little too hard. She stumbled over the edge of the dock.
She fell and fell and never hit the ground. The stick clattered uselessly onto the wood of the walkway. She plunged into the ocean.
It hurt. It hurtithurtithurt.
Water rushed into her mouth, her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
It’s not your time yet, little sage.
She was pulled out of the wate. The harbour was busy and falling in was a common occurrence. There was always someone on watch. She coughed and choked, spitting out seawater. Her brother ran to her, eyes wide with fear and guilt.
She is alive.
Stories are the cornerstone of the world.
She knows the being as the Storyteller, though they possess other names. The Weaver of Fate. The Loom of Destiny. The Will of Heaven.
The Storyteller is the one who saved her when she first died, the impact, the cold shock of water too much for her young body.
Her life belongs to them now.
They save her again and again and again.
It’s never yet her time to die.
She doesn’t want to die yet, so this serves her well. All she has to do is play her part in the Storyteller’s tale.
Oftentimes, she is left to do as she wishes. But sometimes, sometimes, she will hear the rustling of leaves, the wind gently guiding her along the road. She has never not followed the directions given to her.
It started as an argument. It was always her starting it. Her poor parents and brother and the strange unfilial daughter.
“---! Why can’t you be obedient for once in your life!?” Someone, her father, most likely. It could be her brother too, always pedantically righteous.
“Will being obedient feed our stomachs?” She snapped back. “I’m leaving! When I come back with more money than ge will ever make, you’ll change your minds!”
Her hands shoved whatever clothes she had, threadbare but enough to keep her warm, into a small pack. She left without bringing anything else with her.
She was only fifteen then.
She stops in her hometown, dismounts from Qianli and hands the bridles over to the stableboy. Qianli is well-behaved, much more than she had ever been.
She walks to the graveyard and stands before the graves she had erected for her family.
She had kept her word – bringing back enough money to buy a mansion. Too little, too late; they were all dead. She spent less than a tenth of that buying a plot of land and the graves.
She stares at the empty graves. They are well-maintained, she had paid the grave keeper to do so for her.
She doesn’t kneel, doesn’t bow, doesn’t kowtow and beg the forgiveness of her family. All that had been done a long time ago. Now, she looks at their graves standing silent as death and wonders.
Footsteps echo behind her back. She pays them no mind, until they come to a halt right behind her.
“You came back.” A familiar voice, low and smooth in cadence. It’s one she remembers always cursing her out, even after breaking and maturing into an adult.
She doesn’t move.
Turn around. A gentle breeze caressing her cheek. Turn around, the Storyteller murmurs.
She turns around.
Her brother, so much older, wrinkles along his skin, grey hairs mingled with black. He looks like a corpse, face sunken and cheeks hollow. He is gaunt in a way that terrifies her. The years have not been kind to him.
She should be screaming at the dead come back to life. She should be crying, reaching out for the last thing left of her family.
She doesn’t do any of those things.
“You look like shit.” She says instead, drawing the ghost of a smile.
The ghost of her brother follows her back to the hut they grew up in.
She had left it mostly untouched, asked the builders to fix what weather and lack of care had done to it and nothing else.
She sits on the straw mat that used to be hers. Even after so long, her parents had never put it away. Not even until their deaths.
(She failed them, the people who loved her despite everything she’s said and done.)
“Why did you die?” She asks and it comes out as an accusation.
“Didn’t have much choice in that.” Her brother says dryly. “Why didn’t you come back?”
“I did. I came back now, didn’t I?” She wants to scream, to cry. The way the conversation is going reminds her of all the fights she had with him. It will become a fight and she will shout at him with cutting words, throw out punches that might actually break his bones with how thin he is now and address none of their regrets and things left unsaid.
The years must have done more for her brother’s temperance than anything she could ever do. He doesn’t follow up with another thinly-veiled accusation. He doesn’t say anything, watching her instead with dead eyes.
The sigh he lets out is long and deep. She didn’t know that the dead even breathed.
“We thought you died.”
“I didn’t.” I did die, something she refuses to say, to acknowledge.
The silence drags on between them while she wrestles with dozens of questions on her tongue. “Did… did our parents at least go peacefully?”
“They didn’t.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that. She can’t recall the last civil conversation she had with her brother. It’s funny, that only when one of them was dead could they spend time in each other’s presence without screaming each other’s throats hoarse.
“Are you… well?” She knows her brother loves her, despite everything. It is still a shock to hear that concern voiced out loud.
“Yeah.” She says after a beat. “Yeah, I’m doing well.” She has more money than her family ever had. She is well-known amongst the literary circles. That’s… more than her brother ever had.
“Husband? Children?” That tone of voice is so aggravatingly familiar.
“None. No plans on either.” She says firmly.
“Our family line will die with you.” Her brother points out.
She scowls. “If I marry, it’ll die with me anyways.” Wives always took their husband’s name, except in exceptional cases.
Her brother doesn’t push any further. Privately, she is glad for it. She will remain alone until the day she dies – she has resigned herself to it a long time ago.
“You took a wife?” She asks instead since her brother appears too invested in her love life.
“We were engaged.” Her brother says after a pause.
“Did she ever see you naked?” She snickers. “I bet that bite mark on your ass was fun to explain.”
“Shut up.” Her brother scowls at her. She recognizes his fluster, but there is no accompanying blush. She remembers abruptly that he is dead.
“Why are you here?” She had never taken her brother to be the sort to become a ghost.
Her brother watches her—for what, she doesn’t know. He doesn’t reply to her question and she doesn’t ask again.