Red Sun

When this man was thrown to them, they thought: one more. One of so many that they had stopped counting even before the heavens above them were stained with blood; one of those whose name would be forgotten, if ever spoken; one of the people they could betray or wanted dead — they saw that the man in white and red had given it to them. And, at first, this man in black and red was no different from the many others they devoured. They poured out to him all their pain, all their hatred, all their sorrow, all their injustice — it was what drove almost everyone who was not ready to be tortured mad. If that didn’t work, they broke the body: tearing, biting, exhausting, chewing. If that wasn’t enough, they perverted the mind, filling it with everything they saw; everything they remembered; tens of thousands of souls fused together, one ugly substance, unsightly and black. This man listened to them, saw all they gave him, could not resist what they did to his body with all the broken and bent limbs that his close encounter with their lands awarded him as they drank his blood; this man was to be one of many whom they did not remember; this man was to be laid to rest beside them, in a mass grave, full of their desires for vengeance and rage, like all of them. “Oh…” utters this man haggardly and hoarsely, barely seeing anything in front of him with dry eyes, in one wrong breath from death when they did to him all that no living soul could withstand; this man raises his twisted hand to them, to the creature from the darkness that he can see, being almost dead; this man smiles at them, “…you must have suffered so…” This man sympathizes with them. After chewing him up, destroying more than when he was discounted to them, filling his mind with vile images, elevating his hopelessness of his situation to an absolute — he smiles at them. At that moment, the place known more as Burial Mounds welcomed a man known in the future as Yiling Laozu. Because Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian, Wei Ying, their man showed them kindness. When no one had done it for thousands of years. He looked at their hideous creature as they nearly ate his soul alive, and he empathized with them. The Burial Mounds raised him; gave him strength, sewing his flesh and bones together, not always right, but strong; taught him how to control their essence; fed him, protected him, listened to him — and he sang to them. Beautifully and peacefully, where there had been no life for too long for anyone to worry about their land. Their man sang lullabies to them to ease their pain, and they actually fell in love. (If their man had only wanted to, they would have drowned the lands from sea to ocean in blood and soot; they would have risen up and taken everything that life had hidden from them; they would have gone anywhere, as long as their man played tunes for them and smiled at them.) But their man wanted out. He smiled, softly and gently, as their cold dismembered him and their barren lands made him starve, but he laughed sweetly and fondly as he carved a flute from their black bamboo. “There are people who have to pay for what they’ve done”, and the rusty knife slides smoothly in his hand, evenly distributing his strength to carve patterns that look like water flowers, “I would stay if I could”, and it’s true, because their man does not lie to them, unlike so many others. Their man’s eyes begin to redden the longer he breathes their air. “Later,” he whispers to them, in the nights or days, it does not matter, it is always dark in their lands, “when my shijie and shidi are happy, the war won, and the Jiang clan avenged, I will return”, and it is a promise because they know that their man’s body is irrevocably broken. What is two or three decades for a creature as old as they are? (This is a promise because his soul, like his mind, belongs to them.) But their man returns sooner than they expected. With him are other people who are afraid, who suffocate just standing on their borders, who are weak and barely alive, who could not survive in their lands. Their man smiles as he holds a human child in his arms and says: hello, — as if he is really glad to see them; glad to return to what someone would call purgatory. And they let in the people that man brought them: a cascade of the living and a string of the dead. And they listen to his songs, and they give people a chance by clearing the air, and they watch life blossom in the grave: in the laughter of a young child, in the steady optimism of their man, in the plants they try to cultivate in their lands, in the corpse that their man has returned the chance to speak and to think. (For one eager moment they think: can their person connect their consciousness to any of the thousands of bodies so that they can talk to it, protect it, be with it?) Then other men come to their lands, either in purple and with evil words, or in white and with a sad soul: none of them speaks to their man the language of truth. They lie. To their man, to themselves, to everyone around them. And they want to throw such people off their land or let those people know where they are, who they are hurting, what they, their whole pathetic mortal world, owe their man, otherwise— “Enough”, the man asks them as the shadows thicken and the man in purple doesn’t even know what’s going on, and the man in white only thinks their man is crazy, talking to the air. Different times, a recurring scene. “Don’t…” their man looks at the people in front of him, they change, but the words are the same: “go away”. And then those people leave. Alive. Intact. And their man sings them songs to appease their anger as the pool of blood swells from their indignation, from their unbridledness, from their savagery. Only the people he brought understand who their man is talking to when he is alone. These same people leave one plate for them, half full of food, which is not enough as it is. Then the dead man with a mind listens to them, and relates this food to their man, their master, because their man is too close to his death. They wait for him, but they do not want him to come in pain, as they all do — their man is better than anyone they have ever met. And there is a ghost, a lonely one, in the same white and red as everyone here, like the man who threw them their man, into the arms of the mist, and this ghost is only allowed to remain because he understands how great their man is, how incredible and beautiful. (They reaped all who clung to their man’s hemlines, to his and without others' interference, to his blood and his suffering; the wretched creatures their man sent to the other side of their poor life story; their man laid to rest all whom he called, and if any remained out of hatred for their man… Burial Mounds have never been known for their friendliness.) However, this man’s ghost was different; he was as weak as a shard of more, as cracked in their dead lands as the disbelief they feel every time they look at their man. This ghost seeks peaceful repose, and it follows their man without wishing anything evil, so they allow it. This ghost watches, and they learn from its thoughts to identify emotions and subtleties that they have forgotten too many centuries ago. This ghost is powerless, as are all dead men, when the fall begins. One day their man returns broken where they cannot sew him back together. One day their man can only whisper, laugh, plead with the unknowable, not even them, but himself or the gods, whom they might have killed and sealed in their cursed depths. One day their man smiles, and that smile doesn’t look right. The smile is thin, gentle, loving, full of tears that never fall. The smile is too much like them. They knew they just had to keep their man’s people from leaving. They knew they had to keep the old men, led by the woman white and red and one of them — from leaving their homes, their red heavens, where they could not look after them. They knew they had to do something. And they begged. For the first time in a time beyond counting, they begged to be heard — but their man was so deep in himself that even the darkness was lost in the shadows. His soul is not yet a part of theirs, so they cannot command him. Outside, a storm opens up when there is only their man, their man’s child that has almost become part of them, and the ghost of a man in red and white, looking as if he is watching the disaster and accepting it because there is nothing he can do against it. They think they should have killed them all. All who set foot on their lands, for their man, for their only kindness that they have received. These men come in spite of the storm, when they cannot take their eyes off their man, after a couple of moons that cowardly hid in a dishonorable night like this one. Their man smiles at his child who will stay with them in a step or two, their man kisses the child’s forehead and hides, their man sings a lullaby: the most beautiful, the quietest, the last. Their man stands up tall, stripped, dirty, skinny, with bare feet in wounds and eyes like his blood, with their flute in one hand and only a fraction of their strength in the other — he goes out as the fire rages on the houses that he built, as the sky rumbles louder than usual, when he has no plans to win. There is no arrogance there, but there is the majesty of king whose crown was followed by war and greed. Their man is monumental in rich black and bright red, with nothing extra but pale skin, towering above all who have come for his head; even if his laughter is not like himself, drenched in pain. If they had had a heart, right at that moment it would have broken. Their man, their kindness, their salvation — smiles. That last smile. For those undeserving people who were lost among the others; for those whom their man knew; for those whom he left behind; for those whom he lost; for them. “Tear me apart”, whispers their man, as if it were nothing. No. They can’t stop it, they gave some of that strength independently of themselves, just for him. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They have existed so long, so long ago, that there are hardly any among the gods who would know how old they really are; among their feelings were so many, but the truest, the most forgotten, the most unchangeable, as it were, came back to fall upon them — despair.

No.

There’s that ghost, the man in white and red who looks so much like them, who is so close to their man right now, who knows everything he needs to know about their man at this point, who is born out of injustice and greed, just like all of them. Protect him, — it rumbles with a thunderclap as they allow this ghost to take so many souls, so much power, that he could become a Calamity and conquer all worlds, overthrowing the gods with a movement of his hand. Instead, this man breaks time, as he should have. Instead of all the power of the world, this man saves their man in the momentum they needed, and they send them as far away as they can. Their man is gone. Their man is gone forever. Their man is safe. And they turn on those who will never leave their land.