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BONESONG - Ash and Petals
Prologue - A Song in the Dark

Prologue - A Song in the Dark

Emilia knelt before the row of candles in the small shrine. The soft amber light barely illuminated the small space within the stone building, but she found the glow comforting and warm. It always was, even when she lit only one of the several candles that lined this room, but every once in a while, she would bring enough to do this- to light one entire row, right beneath the fresco that covered this entire wall, enough to see the entire image. 

It was one that she had seen countless times- usually with her mother next to her, helping her through the awkward, rhythmic litanies that were expected of them, but she was old enough now, and had been here frequently enough, that she didn’t need her mother’s help to recite the songs of her great-great grandfather. But still, she took a moment to admire the painting. It was of a woman- one with long, dark hair like all of theirs, though it was wavy and thick - like the hair in Emilia’s family. Her face was decorated with paint, to resemble a skull- but not in a scary way- in a way that used petals, gems, and bits of brilliant color to create a kind face that looked out from among the white and black paints. A long red dress trailed down to the floor in the painting, and she bore a massive hat- not like the cone-shaped hats that they all wore in the rice paddies, a strange thing with a flat brim and a small domed section in the middle, but with painted candles lining the entire rim, lining the floor, and the dress. 

Supposedly, she protected their little village. Had for close to a century and a half, according to the stories that her mother passed down to her. 

She knelt before the candles, knees together, feet tucked underneath her bottom, and touched her head to the flagstones of the shrine before the simple altar, before rising, pressing her palms together before her pale forehead in respect. 

“I - I know that usually, I play for you, here, as Mother told me, but, Mother needs the Pipa today- she said she would have guests over."

Emilia shifted, uncomfortably. Chu-hua and Hui-ying had started taking lessons from her mother, but Emilia had heard them making fun of the lessons- making fun of this shrine that their ancestors had built and worshipped at, making fun of the fact that Emilia always had candles in her work-bag, had learned to write both scripts - her great-great-grandfather’s writing - the strange language from which her father had taken her name - and the writing of Yosae, her country, but both girls had started taking music lessons from her mother as well. No one could deny that Jia Yun was the best in the village- better than many from Goka, or Lingshen. At least, that’s what some of the travelers, adventurers, or merchants said whenever they heard her sing, heard her play the Pipa or any of the other dozen instruments that her mother could play as if they were part of her. 

Emilia was only ten. She was still young, and could only play the Pipa, she didn't dare take any of mother’s more expensive instruments that had come from across the seas, not when she could not even play them properly to respect the goddess, to pay respects to La-Catrina. 

“I - I hope you don’t mind. I - I don’t need to tell you why, I guess. Mother says that you watch everything that happens here, in Qúa.” She paused, glancing back up at the fresco, at the woman’s face, so carefully illustrated. 

“I - I hope a song is good enough, for today.”

She stood, slowly, as her mother had taught her, and opened her mouth, beginning the first few notes of the song. It was strange- she didn’t understand the words, although her mother had told her again and again what they meant- but the language was...unusual. More like something from Avistan, although it didn’t match any of those strange languages either. The words and notes still echoed in the small stone room, only about ten feet wide in any direction, reverberating in a way that made them seem almost angelic. Emilia couldn’t help but smile, as her eyes drifted closed, as she let herself get lost in the music. 

The song was not long- but she knew that it was a story- about a man, who loved a woman. A man who loved her too much to leave until she loved him in return. It was his story - her great-great-grandfather’s. And then, it was over, the last note echoing in the small shrine, the candles burned down a little bit lower, but the flames seemingly brighter than ever, as Emilia looked up at the kind face of La-Catrina. 

“I- father is sick. I don’t know, if you do that- Mother says you keep the dead safe, in Jiérì zhī dì, your halls- but… please, I just want you to help him.”

She stepped up to the altar, to blow out the candles, when a wind seemed to whip around her, the decorative cherry blossoms that the people of the village laid on the floor during springtime scattering, whipping about her hair, dancing before her for a moment. She yelped, and froze when she heard it - a whisper, quiet, almost imperceptible, but undeniable just for an instant. 

Do not blow them out

The light is all that keeps you safe, in my hall.

Then she heard it- the screams. 

Her head whipped around, as she rushed up to the clear glass panes of the small windows that lined the Shrine and stared in horror. Her village was burning. She saw people running back and forth, using shovels, pitchforks, anything they could get their hands on, fighting...something. People?

A rotting hand slapped against the window, and Emilia screamed, falling back and knocking over a candelabra, the stand toppling and sending unlit candles rolling across the flagstones. 

A shambling...thing, lifted it’s head to look through the window, face fetid and decomposing, It tried to look through the window, before shrieking, in a grunt, as if something had burned it, or blinded it. 

She could hear more. Shuffling, moaning, more screams and sounds of fighting. She heard a yell- a voice that sounded like Mäng’Lo, the farmer who owned the western rice paddies. He was calling for help.

There was a crunch, and then he wasn't.

She fell down onto the floor of the shrine in a panic, heart pounding, tears pouring down her face as the sounds intensified. More fighting, more screams. More dying. She clamped her hands over her ears, humming the songs once again, eyes squeezed shut against the horrors outside. 

She heard something- like a spark. She opened her eyes to watch one candle flicker to life, next to the row that she had lit. Then another, then another. One by one all the candles still upright in the room flickered to life, blazing with a brilliance that Emilia had never seen before, practically blinding the girl as the light raged inside the small room. Emilia stared in shock, voice faltering in amazement as it gathered, building like a storm on the horizon within the small space, before it seemed to flare- brilliant arcs of light snapping from the windows, striking things outside, sparking out into the air like a sunburst. Emilia was knocked back against the altar, knocking over a few of the candles, as the doors to the shrine suddenly ripped themselves open- and for the briefest of moments, Emilia could have sworn that she saw a shape in the doorway for an instant- the briefest glimpse of a long, floor-length dress, and a femenine form, before the light seemed to rush out into Qúa, like a whirlwind. 

Emilia ran to the window, staring in shock as the brilliant light seemed to sweep over the town - coursing through the cemetery, through the streets. Figures seemed to simply...drop, to stop moving and collapse to the ground in a heap of fetid bones. 

She ran out then, perhaps agaisnt her better judgement, into the rain that was pouring down this night, into the muck, mud, and horror. She stared in shock- Farmer Mäng-Lo lay on the ground just inside the gates to the cemetery, one hand outstretched towards the stone shrine, his face a mask of pain and agony - his entrails scattered about him, as his abdomen had been torn open. A corpse- long dead, from the look of things, lay on the ground next to him, mouth bloodied and agape, lifeless and dead. Emilia gagged, pulling her scarf to cover her mouth as she ran through the streets. Dead and dying littered the space, all sign of the light that had swept the town for that briefest of instances gone, replaced by moans, of pain and mourning both. She saw Nana Loa clutching the dead body of her husband, his face staring blankly to the sky, throat marred by a mass of red, and saw many others weeping- but the worst part were the fires. Smoldering torches now smoked in the muck and the mud, barely embers, clearly having been carried by the shambling corpses that had somehow come into the town. Many buildings burned- the winery, as well as the tavern owned by Chu-Hua’s father. She darted through the middle of the burning street, ignoring the line of people passing buckets from the small river that ran by the village, darting past weeping people, slaughtered corpses, almost running into the blacksmith’s apprentice as he directed the effort to douse the fire, still bearing a dirtied but elegant blade, as if he had participated in the fighting himself, passing instead through the outer gate of the village, out past the fields that they had planted with Aestevanian vegetables, all the way to the small stone wall that separated the village from the rice paddies. 

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She saw the glow of orange, and nearly screamed in panic as she raced up the muddied lane to the wall of dark stone, her pale hands slapping against the rocks as she leaned over, finally getting a clear view of her family’s cottage. 

Flames reached for the sky- the straw roof long gone, the rafters all but falling in on themselves. She screamed, and raced forwards, running around the small home in a panic, trying desperately to find some gap in the stone. The windows were shattered, but Emilia knew in a moment that they were too small for anyone to escape through. 

She screamed for ther mother, calling her name again and again, calling for her father, for Chu-Hua and Hui-ying, but was met with the roaring snaps of burning wood and the raging fire before her. She watched as it tried to light one of the trees, but failed to catch as the rain seemed to intensify for the briefest of moments. 

She fell to her knees, in the mud, and wept, screaming into the burning light before her for hours, watching until the flames finally died away, as the rafters finally collapsed into the home. 

She stood in a daze, in the waning light of the moon. Voices still called from the village itself, and she could hear the wailing of mourning families. None of it mattered though, as she pushed aside what was left of the ironwood door, it falling off of it’s hinges, throwing up ash in the room beyond. 

She stared at the ashes of her life. 

There was where the dining table had once stood- there the plants that she had so carefully coaxed to grow. Ashes. There was what remained of her mother’s sitting chair- recognisable only for a tiny piece of the back that bore her father’s delicate woodcarvings. She lifted the chunk numbly, feeling the ash sear her skin as she shuffled into the second room- her mother’s sitting room. 

She sank to her knees again, met with three skulls, charred and burned. 

She stared, not saying a word, as the rain settled down onto her shoulders, soaking her even as it hissed off of the smoldering remains of her home. 

She didn’t notice the footsteps until they were shuffling through the ash behind her. Emilia wheeled around in a panic, crawling back from the figure against a remaining wall of stone. 

A woman stood there, staring sadly at the three bodies in the ash. She wore black, a floor-length dress disturbing the ashes ever so slightly, a large black hat obscuring her face. 

She crouched, fingers hovering a few inches from the bones with a sadness that seemed deeper than the lake up in the mountains, before she turned to Emilia. 

The girl’s breath caught in her chest as those dark eyes met hers. 

Wavy hair spilled around the woman’s face, falling nearly to her waist, but what caused Emilia’s heart to skip was the white paint that covered the smooth skin, imitating the look of a skull. 

“Emilia Yun - I am so sorry that I could not come sooner.”

Emilia couldn’t speak, as those melodious words seemed to chime into the ruins of her home. 

The woman did not stand, did not move, but opened her mouth again. 

“I could not act- not until Mäng-Lo called for me on that hallowed ground- that ground that your ancestor dedicated to me.”

She looked sadly at the figures on the ground. “Even here, I am still bound by the ancient rules of my kind, I can only act when...when the situation allows.”

Emilia watched as the woman sifted through the ashes, pulling out a charred hunk or rounded wood, a few tattered remnants of the wire strings still noticeable. 

“Beauty, however fleeting, life, however potent, still must pass one day.”

Emilia stood then, taking a step towards the woman. 

“Are- are you-”

The woman raised a finger to her lips. 

“Shhh- Now now, Emilia, you know that I cannot tell you that- or what is the point of faith?”

She looked down at the destroyed remnants of the Pipa in her hands, before smiling softly, a ring of painted flower petals lining the dark eyes seeming to glow for the briefest of moments, before she breathed out a single clear, sharp note into the damp air. 

Emilia watched on in awe, eyes widening as cinders and ashes lifted from the ground, gathering and binding together, attaching to the charred remnants of the instrument. Before her eyes, it seemed to rebuild itself, speck of dust by speck of dust, until it shone a polished black, covered in decorative patterns, like ebony reflecting the light of the moon, the last glows of the embers. 

The petals dimmed, and the woman extended the instrument to Emilia. 

“This, however, I can give you. But, as with everything, there is a cost.”

Emilia hesitated. “A- a cost?”

The woman nodded, turning back to the orange glow of the burning village of Qúa. 

“You will understand the cost, Emilia, in time.  Menawhile, While you live, you will spread word of my protection - of the chance for repentance and change that I offer. Can you do that, Emilia, of the Yun family?”

Emilia’s hands trembled as she stared at the instrument. It was all that she had left, the last scattered shred of her family. Could she really serve this woman? Who she thought this woman to be?

She thought back to the experience in the shrine- the lights that repulsed the shambling, horrific things. The light that killed all of the undead creatures throughout the village. 

Protection. Her mother had told her of this. 

Emilia extended a pale, trembling hand, and gripped the neck of the pipa, running her fingers over the brassy strings, running a trembling finger over the familiar form- even if the color had changed, even if it wasn’t painted with beautiful images of trees in summer, and ivory lining, it was familiar to her. 

“I - I don’t know much, but, I- I will try, Miss Catrina.”

The woman smiled, a mischievous grin breaking through the sadness and sorrow that covered her face. 

“Good. Play. Sing. Comfort the families of this village and bring them solace. My words will come to you from the shadows, on the whispers of the wind, and you will recognise it.”

The woman drove a hand deep into the ashes in the corner and pulled from it a pristine copy of her family’s history - everything that they had ever done, all the accomplishments, all the way back to the great-great-grandfather. There were even the drawings, there- the ones that her mother had dutifully placed on a simple altar once a year, on the day they remembered the dead.

“Can- can you bring them back?” Emilia didn’t dare look at the bodies on the ground.

“Oh, my sweet child…” the woman whispered, even as the ashes seemed to swirl around her, obscuring her form “some things a god cannot do, not without a mortal’s hand to will it…”

The ashes fell back to the floor of her ruined home, and Emilia was surprised to see through a ruined window that the woman was already at the stone wall that surrounded the simple stone cottage, walking with purpose into the trees- into the darkness beyond them.

She hesitantly shouldered the pipa, feeling the sturdy canvas strap, the elegant but simple brass buckles holding everything in place. She fit it over her shoulders, and stumbled her way through the dissipating rain to her family’s storehouse, grabbing a few bits of food, and stuffing them into her work-bag next to her candles. 

She stared at the ruins of her life, as the blossoms of the deihu trees bloomed around her. 

In the dark of the rain, she fell to her knees, and wept. 

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