AnYi 安亦

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Your character’s skeleton is trying to escape his or her body. Describe what happens.

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1.

It was dusk when Minru finally arrived at the top of the mountain, the setting sun casting a warm golden light upon her swaying figure. A tall woman was standing on the edge of the cliff with her back to Minru, as still as the rocks around her.

‘You have come, after all.’ The woman sounded old and tired, but not surprised.

‘I have come to save my father.’ Minru stopped some metres away from the tall woman. ‘The the children are saved. The flooding was stopped. We uprooted the cult organisation in the entire Yangtse River Delta. I’ve done everything you asked.’ She paused, as the woman turned around.

She was smiling – a sad, knowing smile that had foreseen too many secrets, too many hidden desires. She took a step closer to Minru, whose face was still blood-stained. Minru took a deep breath.

‘We had a deal.’

‘We did, indeed.’ said the tall woman, as she put a hand on the top of Minru’s head. ‘Minru, are you sure about this? There is no chance for you to regret once we have started.’

Minru’s lip twitched. She gave out an unnoticeable smirk. ‘Would I have gone through all this trouble if I wasn’t? I’m ready. I’ll take whatever consequences that come out of this.’

The tall woman sighed. ‘I’m afraid, my child, if there are consequences, it will not fall upon you to take them.’ She gently guides Minru to kneel down on the grass; with a flick of her sleeve, a ball of light gathered around her fingertips, as if directly taken from the setting sun behind her.

‘I’m sure your dragon will miss you. Is there anything you want to tell them?’

Minru bit her lips, remaining silent. The tall woman sighed again and started chanting an ancient, inexplicable text. With a jump, Minru started shaking violently, but the ball of light gently wrapped itself around her and kept her to the ground. She was soon lost in a cloud of blinding light that seemed to have absorbed all the remaining daylight; muffled noise came from within the light cloud, almost like weeping.

The chanting went on.

It was hauntingly dark when the process ended. A skeleton lay still on the mossy rocks, shining eerily in the moonlight.

‘Where’s Minru?’ asks the little dragon from inside the woman’s robes.

‘Metempsychosis.’

2.

‘Is there a way of bringing my father back to life?’

‘I understand you mortals have a thing for bringing their loved ones back alive, however, you know, high prices must be paid.’

‘What do I need to do?’

‘Well, you’ll need to give your bones. The goddess will need to use your skeleton to build the corporeal existence for the dead person, and it’s actually quite ideal that you’re his kin, but you’ll basically also die, and your dad won’t really remember about you, or anything else in his previous life.’

‘That’s the dream, isn’t it? – to vanish entirely.’

3.

Having children is a mistake in many ways.