Episode 8 - Promise Under the Moonlight
769 Words
She did not feel afraid of it.
'Can I talk to it?' she whispered.
'If you are sure.'
'I am.'
She opened her eyes. She stepped forward, slowly, until she was close to the well. Gu Yan did not stop her. But she could feel his light nearby, just behind her shoulder, steady as a star.
'Hello,' Lin Yue said softly to the well. She felt very young, saying it, and also strangely old. 'I heard you calling. I came.'
The air trembled.
'I know you are tired,' she said. 'I do not know your name. I do not know your story. But you do not have to carry it alone tonight. We will remember for you, if you want. And then you can rest.'
She placed her hand, very gently, on the stone.
Light rose from the well. Not a harsh light. A soft, slow, silver-blue light, the color of memory. Images drifted through it briefly, and Lin Yue did not try to hold on to them. A girl. A plum tree. A promise that had been made a very long time ago, in a courtyard just like this one, under a moon just like this one.
'I remember,' Lin Yue said. Her voice was calm. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she did not mind them. 'It is all right. Thank you for waiting.'
The light softened. The whisper eased. The stones cooled. Somewhere, far down inside the well, something very old laid itself gently back down to sleep.
When it was over, Lin Yue's knees nearly gave out. Gu Yan caught her before she could fall. His arm was strong around her shoulders.
'Easy,' he murmured. 'Easy. You did well.'
'Did I?'
'You did better than I have ever done. You spoke to it. I only ever got it to sleep.'
She laughed, shaky. 'Maybe it just needed to be talked to.'
'Maybe,' he said. 'Maybe most old things do.'
They sat down side by side on the stone bench near the oldest plum tree. The tree had started, quietly, to bloom again, even though it was winter. Petals drifted down around them in a slow pink snow.
Lin Yue looked down at the mark on her wrist. It was warmer now, almost alive, glowing faintly in the moonlight. On his wrist, Gu Yan's mark glowed in the same rhythm, as if the two of them were breathing with one breath.
'Gu Yan,' she said.
'Mm.'
'You said the mark does not decide what we are. We do.'
'Yes.'
She turned to look at him. His dark eyes were soft in the silver light. His hair was dusted with fallen petals. He looked, in that moment, very much like an ordinary boy on an ordinary night, except for all the ways that he was not.
'I would like to decide,' she said quietly, 'that we are on the same side. Not because of the mark. Because of us.'
For a very long moment he did not speak. Then he reached out and, with careful fingers, brushed a petal out of her hair.
'Lin Yue,' he said. 'I have been on your side since the first morning you walked through that gate in the rain. The mark only agreed with me.'
She laughed, and then she cried a little, and then she laughed again, and he sat with her through all of it without letting go of her hand.
After a while, when her breathing had steadied, he said, 'Can I promise you something now?'
'You can promise me anything.'
'I promise,' he said, 'that whatever else wakes up in this school, and whatever else comes looking for you, you will never have to face it alone. Not while I am breathing. Not while this moon is rising. Not ever.'
The plum tree above them stirred, as if it had heard. A single blossom drifted down and landed between their joined hands, as if sealing the words.
Lin Yue closed her fingers around his.
'And I promise,' she said, 'that I will not run from whatever I am supposed to remember. As long as you are there when I do.'
'I will be,' he said.
The Silver Moon watched them in silence, and for the first time in a very long time, the old courtyard of Mingyuan High School felt not haunted, but at peace.
High above them, one more blossom fell.
This one, Lin Yue reached out and caught.
And though she could not have explained why, she knew, with the quiet certainty of someone who had just come home, that this was only the beginning.
- Writer
