The room was a complete, utter mess.

Not only that; there was an eerie feeling hovering in the quiet air. There were silk robes strewn along the floor like ghosts’ clothes, a few ink diagrams of star charts spread about like someone had scattered them in a fury, and there were velvet pillows lying haphazardly on dark wooden floor tiles as if they had been chucked across the room in a panic. The canopy hanging over the large bed, whose legs were carved elaborately, hung thickly, a smothering dark scarlet color.

It was all very suffocating. So alive, and yet dead — like the room of a ghost.

The only noise in was a quiet, desperate clicking.

It came from the window, where a young woman sat with her shoulder pressed violently against the window panes, fiddling with a heavy lock on the window base. She grinded her teeth as she poked a long, thin piece of metal — a sharp golden hairpin — into the lock and jiggled it around fiercelythe way she’d done a thousand times. A drop of sweat slipped down her forehead, tracing along the back of her long, pale neck and disappearing into the collar of her night robes. Another drop crept behind her ear, running over a small character tattooed there. Her breaths were heavy, each inhale a panicked wheeze, and each exhale short and harsh.

At last, with a pop, the lock snapped open. Finally. This lock seemed to be getting more stubborn every day.

The young woman’s shaking hand stretched out to shove the window open. A gust of cool night air swept in like a soft puff of breath. The ghostly silk robes on the ground fluttered, as did the woman’s long, dark hair.

Beyond the window stretched out a lush botanical grounds, a verdant blanket of life from a bird’s eye view: pine trees of all sorts with thick-needled elliptical crowns rose up from underbrush blooming with jewel-like colors from scarlet to jade; glass pools of water reflected the pearly moonlight, pink dashes of flowers on enormous lilies floating through them. It looked like an immortal paradise far below.

The lush garden extended for some distance, then abruptly stopped. They were cut off by a stone looming wall even taller than the girl’s window. The wall cast a black shadow over half of the garden, obscuring it from moonlight. Nothing could be seen past it.

Fucking stupid wall, the woman cursed to herself. She muttered more curses as she fastened a sheet to the knob of a drawer beneath the window sill, tying it once, twice, three times in a quick, efficient knot. She gathered up the string of sheets she had tied together and, leaning precariously out the window, dumped them into the air. They fluttered into the lush greenery below.

Swiftly, she reached up to tie her hair up with a piece of leather. Her hair shone, dark as soil. Strands she missed fell to hang down near her dark angular eyes, which darted over the botanical paradise, somewhere between anxious and furious. Another silver bead of sweat swept over her eyebrow, splashing silently onto the windowsill, where it left a damp print.

In one smooth motion, the girl hopped over the windowsill and slid down the rope of sheets, all the way down into the lush paradise.

As she walked among the trees, her breathing began to slow. She matched her breaths to the soft swaying of their branches in the breeze, the whisperings of flower petals as she followed stone pathways. In, and out, in, and out. By the time she reached the lotus pond, her breathing was almost at a normal rate, each breath deeper and fuller than the last.

She lodged herself in the split trunk of a greeting pine right by the water’s edge, tightly enough that her shoulders squashed beneath her ears and she felt safe. The tree held her tightly.

For some time, she stayed like this. The pond’s glassy surface stretched out from her bare feet and to the opposite bank, perfectly still. Atop it floated pink-white lotuses on lilies, which drifted across the glass surface, not creating a single ripple. The flowers were in full nighttime bloom now, glowing gently, like divine water lanterns. A luminous firefly danced between lilies.

When the girl blinked out of her lotus-watching trance hours later, the wall’s confining shadow had stretched much closer, obscuring the trees across the pond. The girl’s face contorted, and she glared at the pond fiercely, pent-up hatred coursing through her veins.

“I hate this house,” she spat, hurling a pebble into the pond. It splashed and echoed in rippling rings of water, sending the lotus lilies swimming away. “I hate this, and them. As soon as I find a way, I’m out of here. I’m not lying! It’s a promise!”

She spat into the pond, creating a ripple that spread outward, disrupting the peaceful lotus lilies. As she stood to leave, she scowled towards the bobbing lotuses:

“You stupid lotus flowers! D’you have to glow like that, like you enjoy it here or something? You know what my geezer literary tutor said?” She scoffed, violently kicking a stone and watching it fly away like a comet. “He said that the magnolia represents purity and stability or whatever, while the lotus represents strength and resilience. I just had to be born in the Year of the Magnolia, and end up in the most stable, suffocating fate out there! You lotuses are just gloating at me because I wasn’t born in the Year of the Lotus — don’t fucking rub it in!”

With that, she kicked a stone into the pond furiously, whirled around, and left.

The pond was quiet in her absence. The firefly was nowhere to be seen. The lotus lilies stopped their shifting; their buds began to close, having no more energy to remain open in the sunless night. Up on the second floor of the mansion, the sheets were pulled angrily back up to the window. The window closed silently, and that stubborn lock clicked back into place.

The paradise lay half-consumed by shadow, looking more like a shadowy prison maze than an immortal paradise.

----------------------------------------

By the time the sun rose, the young woman had already been awake an hour. She hadn’t had a restful night of sleep in weeks — years, it felt like. Waking early was the unfortunate norm for her. Lately, at least.

She sat for the hour before sunrise by the windowsill, laboring over a tiny chest she had extracted from its hiding place beneath a loose wooden floor tile. In the chest were stuffed many strange things: dried leaves, shriveled petals, matches and tiny candles, pieces of glass.

Stolen novel; please report.

She toiled over her palms, which were smeared with dried blood.

“Come on, Abrial,” she snapped to herself. “You know this always happens when you slide down too fast. If you just hold on a little tighter and climb down with more strength, you wouldn’t get stinging palms.”

She crushed dried scarlet petals on a small, flat stone with a little pestle. A sweet smell filled the room. She sprinkled the ground petal on one palm, and then the other, careful not to spill.

For a while, she sat like this: staring out over the silent paradise with gloomy, stormy eyes and her hands in her lap. Only her eyes blinked, long lashes flashing. Her chest rose and fell shallowly, as though she was almost forgetting to breathe.

Then, at sunrise, a golden halo peeked over the top edge of the fence. It brightened and lifted, turning the sky scarlet and violet and pink and sapphire in a wondrous, smeared painting. The glassiness in Abrial’s eyes faded to be replaced with a reflection of the marvelous painting of the sky, shifting and brightening and beautiful.

As the sun’s light finally strained over the fence and into her window, she raised her palms to bathe them in light.

A fascinating thing happened then. When the golden light touched the crushed petals on her palms, the petals seemed to shrivel into nothing, burning away like crisps of leaves in a fire. A small amount of scarlet smoke rose from her palms — only a few wisps, which dissipated immediately.

When she lowered her hands back to her lap, the blood and wounds had disappeared.

She packed up her chest and clamped the bamboo lock shut.

After hiding the chest away again, she stood in the elevated window nook, squinting into the sunlight that beamed brilliantly into the room. She stretched her arms, her hips, rolling her neck to crack out air bubbles. She moved her body in a practiced, skillful manner, flowing between stretches and motions. Each of her breaths was slow and deliberate.

It was not long, however, until she grew incredibly bored of meditative stretching.

“I don’t care if mental tutors say it calms the mind,” she muttered to herself acidly as she dropped her pose. “It’s so boring I’d rather do arithmetic.”

In her room, several strangely placed ropes lined the walls and ceiling. For the next hour or so, she ran at the walls, climbing like a monkey. She scaled up to the ceiling at the speed of light, and swung across the walls from handhold to handhold, legs swinging about wildly.

She liked this much better; the sweat pouring down her forehead and neck, the burn in her shoulders and core made her forget how much she hated this place. She could imagine, as she swung about, that she was grasping the tips of mountains and vaulting herself between them through the clouds, instead of hopping around in a suffocating room, in a suffocating house enclosed by suffocating walls..

At last, when her muscles were shaking too much to reach for another section of rope, she dropped to the floor and lay there, gasping and grinning with satisfaction.

It was some time later — Abrial never had a good sense of time — that a gentle fist tapped on the door. A soft voice followed:

“Abrial? Are you awake?”

Abrial yawned, still plastered to the ground. “No.”

“I see. Happy birthday, Abrial.”

Abrial sat up in a flash. Or rather, she tried to sit up, but her back muscles shrieked and sent her swearing and sprawling back onto the ground.

“I forgot about it was my birthday. Shit. Now my day is ruined.”

There was a pause from the other side of the door. “May I enter?”

“Yeah, come in.”

The door opened soundlessly, and a slender, delicate-looking young woman entered, carrying a tray. Her hair was a pleasant honey color and plaited neatly into two braids. Upon seeing Abrial limp on the ground, her hazel eyes widened and her lips pursed. .

“...You’ve been climbing again. And have you injured yourself?”

Abrial grinned crookedly as the girl strode to her side and placed the tray down.

“Not really. It’s no big deal. I just exercised a bit. Can I have water?”

The young woman firmly propped Abrial up against the bed in a way she’d done hundreds of times. Then she handed Abrial a bamboo cup of water and swiftly and took Abrial’s other hand, turning it over to examine the palm. Abrial recoiled, pulling her hand away. She lifted the cup to her lips and swallowed the water in one big gulp. It was cool, soothing her raw throat.

Right away, the young woman seized Abrial’s hand again, holding it more firmly this time so that she couldn’t pull away.

“Abrial. If you were not injured, why is there blood on your palms?” The young woman frowned sternly, removing the cup from Abrial’s other hand and examined that palm as well. There was leftover dried blood there, too. She stood abruptly. “I am going to fetch healing herbs. Do not go anywhere.”

Abrial made a sour expression, crossing her arms.

“Where am I gonna go? I’m stuck in this house either way.”

She could almost hear Finley’s stern frown in return.

A moment later, Finley strode briskly back into the room with a small mortar and pestle and a bottle of dark herb in hand. She locked the door behind herself, listened at it a moment for footsteps, then swept back to Abrial’s side. As she uncorked the bottle to pour out herbs on the stone, Abrial grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t pour too much. I’ve already healed my palms with safflower today. You said you have to limit how many times you use it a day, right?”

Finley’s eyes sharpened, searching Abrial’s face. “...You have already healed yourself with safflower. So, you slid down into the gardens before climbing.”

Abrial shrugged, then winced. “So? I needed fresh air.”

Finley tapped the bottle once on the stone, spilling out a carefully miniscule amount. She began to crush it with a pestle from a pocket in her pale robes. “Did you experience another attack of panic last night?”

“...No. Of course not. I just wasn’t feeling well. Everyone needs fresh air sometimes.”

Finley remained silent, but her eyebrows twitched into a momentary frown, and her hazel eyes darkened. As she smearing crushed herb onto Abrial’s palms, Abrial’s skin tingled. “Have you considered trying less dangerous activities when you feel unwell? Perhaps that would result in less injury, and preserve both your physical and mental health.”

Abrial stuck out her tongue sourly. “What’s the fun in that? Should I meditate more, and lie down outside, smell flowers and drink a lot of tea? Pah! I like it better this way.”

“Your favorite activities are quite detrimental to your health.”

“Eh. Who cares? Staying in the same house for sixteen years hasn’t been helpful to my health either, but my mother and father keep telling me it’s best for me. I’ll just do what I want, since health seems like a lie.”

“It is seventeen years now, Lady Abrial. Today is your birthday.”

“Oh — right. Blech. I forgot about that.”

Finley lifted Abrial’s wrists so that her palms soaked in sunlight. The remains of herb shriveled away into wisps of smoke, leaving her palms clear and clean, any sign of rope wounds wiped away.

“Thanks, Finley.”

Finley nodded slightly in acknowledgement, packing up the healing materials. “I have prepared the robes for your morning bath in the garden spring.”

Abrial cursed beneath her breath. “I’d better take a bath now, or my mother will smell the sweat, won’t she? I reek.”

“Yes, that would be best. And I…think you smell pleasant.”