The Scenery Wanes

Every night, you peer into a life that is all but yours.

You peer into a life brimming with serenity, clouded by the eloquonce of the now rare glaze lilies in full bloom. You catch winds of such profound scent, wondering what they may mean and where they came from.

It feels like this scenery was a memory of yours and it was a one you held close to your heart.

This enthrallment is one you blindly grow to enamor and so you find yourself moving these feet strapped with leather sandals you don’t recognize to explore this realm unfamiliar to you.

A song haunts you. A song dancing on the strings of a lyre as laughter wanes below the sounds. And suddenly, you’re standing from across an odd scenery. Your feet feels light, like you’re walking on clouds, but the sculpture of the hardened gray says otherwise. A recluse table sits underneath the humble evergreen and from it, autumn leaves fall like pieces into places.

You see figures of familiar oddness talking over minor feasts. Childish arrogance paints the scenery pastel and a humble envoy laughs together with a majestic lad in a white hood. There’s a part of you that knows this rendezvous to be a pleasurable tradition and the remaining portion of you is shattered in dusted, unknowing shards.

The scenery dwindles until you’re only left with a feeling of yearning. It dwindles until there’s only you, this hole in your heart waiting to be filled, and a man you don’t quite recognize yet you’re not willing to call him a stranger either. He looks at you with this regrettable gaze and it’s nowhere near a mocking of sympathy, and it leads you to wonder.

If this was in another life, another lifetime, then would you have recognized this man who stands before you now?

It’s like he has so much to say, so much to express but for whatever its worth, he knows better. Without a word spoken and a gaze that told volumes, kindly, he scatters in petals.

Ningguang wakes up and her blurred vision makes out an outstreched hand that was apparently hers. It’s always like this and regardless of this powerful sensation of want, she forces herself to get up. For years, the Tianquan has been left devoid of answers and today was no different and even so, the imagery she is exposed to are always no less powerful than the last. Perhaps there was a reason or an explanation to this bittersweet torment but as it stands now, that’s merely speculation.

What the people of Liyue doesn’t know was that Ningguang does not know everything and even she is searching for answers. She is seeking and yet she doesn’t know that the answers could easily start on a morning days after.

“Lady Ningguang? The consultant of Wangsheng Funeral Parlor has recently requested an appointment with you.”