378: Repeated Dream Fragments of the Artist

Repeated Dream Fragments of the Artist

She traversed through a world of lavender mist. Fog rolled over her bare feet, but as Yujia ventured forward, it felt as if she was walking through clouds. There was no ground. She was floating. Her limbs felt heavy against her side, each step taking an immense amount of effort to take. Yujia knew these feelings well.  0

In that moment, like sunlight spilling past clouds, she came to the realization that this had to be a dream.

This was a dream that she didn't mind. Compared to her other ones, this one, although vague, comforted her. She would rather be trapped in a floating lavender realm than to be caged in flashbacks of the past. Little did she have dreams of drowning anymore, unlike way back then. Now, her dreams were plagued with crimson death, dripping with the blood of those who had passed during the bandit attack on her trip back to Lingxin. With the recent news of war, her dreams had morphed to assimilate that too—scenes where she clung on the looming city walls as boiling blood spilled over her face and fingertips, suffocating her. 

So, when thinking about all those fragments, Yujia much preferred this. Dreams where she was conscious of the dreaming. Dreams where she would not wake up in a cold sweat.

Of course, nonetheless, those dreamless nights were the most pleasant.

Soon, Yujia was no longer walking through clouds. The tip of her feet dipped into a pool of water, shallow at first, but soon growing deeper. Despite being conscious of this dreaming state, Yujia could not control herself. It was as if puppet strings tugged on her limbs. She floated deeper and deeper into the water, until it reached the level of her knees. The world remained an iridescent, shimmering shade.

But that was when her heart crawled out of her chest. 

With a gasp, her hands lurched forward, catching the falling organ, still red and beating. Strands clung from the empty cavity of her chest to link to the heart, keeping it looped with veins and arteries. As the heart pulsed, blood began to spill from it, oozing out in droplets. These drops of red fell to the water below. In a ripple, they bloomed into red chrysanthemums reflecting back at Yujia.

Yujia could not move, fixated at the heart pulsing in her palms. 

Blood continuing to drip from the organ, it soon began to peel itself. Layer by layer, the heart unraveled. With each new layer, more red droplets descended to the water, changing the image with every new ripple. Now, the reflections in the pond mirrored faces of people Yujia knew. Yu Zixu. Her master. Xie Yufeng. Bo Zhizhong. Ye Yunhe. Yang Xiaoyi. Chef Hong. Wu Lili. Zhou Luowei. Rong Tianyu. Hui'er. 

The faces multiplied in numbers, weaving together in a knitted stitch that dragged the flesh of one to another, hooking together akin to a large, overarching net. They were the faces of so many people, but they were all faces that mattered to her, ones that she cared about, not one of a stranger. In their netted formation, the faces melted together, the nose of one face merging with another, the irises of one eye spilling into the other, blending with the water to create a burning, silver color.

It became her face, Yujia realized. Her own reflection, just like what she would see in a bronze mirror. Yet it wasn't right. There was something eerily off about it, perhaps in the way that the flesh of the face was still melting, the way that cracks and fissures crawled through the skin. 

The silver eyes of the face stared back at her with dark intensity. From the left cheek, the skin bulged, and out erupted a hand, fingers long like a spider. The hand, larger than Yujia's entire body, reached out in her direction. 

"Incorrect," a voice echoed. It was loud enough to ring through the skies, loud enough to make the water curl. But the voice wasn't her own, nor did it come from the face. This voice emerged from somewhere else, another dimension, the layer that rested beneath all the fog. It spoke with such force and magnitude that Yujia nearly fell to her knees, although she was frozen in place. Despite all of this— the volume, the force, the echo— the tone of the voice was gentle, like a parent giving advice. "It is incorrect, what you have learned," the voice went on.

Everything about this dream was eerily familiar. From the fog, to the silver irises, to the voice, to the things the voice said. A cold shiver threaded down Yujia's spine as she realized this was a dream that she had before. Not the same one, but a similar one. One she experienced months and months ago, when she was just a Fourth Miss in the Yang Household. One that she had forgotten until now.

"What do you mean by incorrect?" Yujia asked, her voice trembling.

"A pity," the voice told her, a finger running down her hair as if petting her head in a comforting motion. "If only you learnt. If only it was enough. And now, it is too late. Again."

"I don't understand—" Yujia began.

"You will," said the voice.

And then, the hand drew away. The face burst into a million droplets, crashing down into the water with the force of an ocean's wave. Yujia found herself losing her footing. While she was fixated on the face, the level of the pool around her had been steadily rising up to her waist. Now, she slipped under the waves, hands flinging out to cling to something but grabbing onto nothing. 

She knew she was drowning, conscious of being dragged under the water, but it was nothing like drowning before. The water, though flowing in her lungs, was not harsh nor burning. There was something almost peaceful about it, peaceful enough to make Yujia close her eyes, the last image of the face echoing in her mind.

…

When she opened her eyes again, daylight streamed through the windows. 

Yujia laid there for a moment. Her hand rested on her chest, feeling the heartbeat drumming underneath the skin. Her eyes were fixed on the wooden ceiling hidden beneath the silk canopy.

"That was strange," Yujia whispered to no one in particular.

As she sat up, got out of bed carefully— her dog, Roubao, had sometime in the middle of the night helped himself to sleeping at the foot of her bed, and she didn't want to kick him— and got ready for the day, Yujia tried to recollect exactly what happened in the dream. 

By the time she stepped out of her room, however, Yujia found that whatever dream fragments were left were only blurry images sleeping in her mind, forgettable at a turn of her head.

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