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Only silence and the slow rhythm of the carriage’s wheels accompany the waves of your thoughts. It is a long way back from Yunping, and you don’t sleep, not even a second; your eyes lazily look at the world outside without seeing it. Heart and breath stay still, mind almost floating, swirling around the emptiness that is left now that the dust has settled over the ruins of your hate.
But it still burns.
Deep inside, it burns and burns and it can’t be suffocated, not even now, but there is nothing left to burn and flames still rage, still rage, there is only the poor remains of your soul left to consume.
When you cross the gates of the Unclean Realm, you are still deep in your trance. There are bows, there are words, you probably even answer, your tongue is well-trained enough to react on impulse, without the need to involve your brain. You move on instinct as you reach your rooms.
A loud, melodic chirping welcomes you, and finally your eyes really focus on something. The oriole you put in a cage way too small for his size hops around his prison, wings uselessly flapping, without the chance to ever fly away. And yet, he still sings.
It sets your anger off and your fury is not your brother’s rage. The trigger is the same: a too sweet melody, but this isn’t blind righteousness administered with the edge of a blade, this is petty revenge, nothing compared to what you have already done. Petty and useless, because if that didn’t stop the ever-growing emptiness in your heart, your captive oriole certainly won’t.
But his bright yellow feathers and his sweet song make you see red.
And you know it’s cruel, you know it’s no use, you know it’s over and from now on you’ll have to face an adulthood you discarded to play with the strings of the world. You’ll have to face the loneliness head-on.
And so you open the cage. The little bird chirps again, but he has nowhere to fly. He cannot escape from you, he made the mistake to trust you long ago, and now his fate is up to you and you alone.
You trap his wings against his small body, thumb pressed firmly between his breast and his throat as the poor creature faces you, his clawed feet trying to scratch your hand, skin ever so pale and pristine, not tainted by the weight of a weapon.
Your lips curl upwards in a joyless smile. You had hoped to find joy, satisfaction, closure in the blood you spilled in that godless temple, you didn’t. Just a vague sense of accomplishment. As a weight had been lifted from your shoulders just for them to be crushed with another kind of pain just a second later, your own ribcage collapsing on your heart.
-Poor thing- you whisper, catlike eyes, thumb stroking the soft feathers. What did you turn yourself into? You weren’t like this.
Maybe it’s your family’s curse. If not the blade, it will be your own hate to make you lose yourself to another, maybe even worse, kind of rage, completely human, no spirits to interfere as you set fire to your own insides now that your objective doesn’t exist anymore, now that your life suddenly lacks a purpose.
The bird is warm. You feel his little heart beat fast under the pad of your thumb. It’s so alive. He doesn’t sing anymore. His feet stopped trying to scratch you. His head is still, he is looking at you. You feel him breathe. You feel his pulse.
You feel life in your hand. You feel powerful. You feel disgusted and inebriated at the same time. A pale, twisted, idealized mockery of what you felt when blood tainted golden robes.
The poor bird is completely frozen as your thumb shifts a little.
You know it won’t help. You know it won’t solve anything. You don’t care.
It
,
no, he
doesn’t make nor a sound nor a move as you suddenly press
hard.
His frail neck snaps. You feel the bones breaking and a terrible sense of nausea chokes you.
He didn’t move as you killed him.
He didn’t.
At least, you are sure that the bird hated you as much as you hated him.
But are you?
You don’t feel his breathing anymore. But you feel the heart. It still beats. It’s terrifying, the way that small muscle tries to pump life into an even smaller dead body. If it doesn’t stop now you will vomit.
Seconds stretch for too long, you can’t let go of the dead animal. Then it stills.
Suddenly, hate rips through nausea and your eyes are hard and hollow again as you watch the dead bird in your hand, now open, the animal on your palm.
You’ll drop it somewhere. It doesn’t matter where. Let the dogs rip him apart, feast on a small corpse that cannot fly away anymore, not even enough flesh to satiate their hunger, but does it matter now?
He’s dead.
Let rabid animals rip him apart until not even bones are left, it doesn’t matter, let them come back to the body, let them bite and chew again on meatless, broken bones if they like.
It is what he deserved anyway.
But it doesn’t change anything.
Lightning through the hate, an arrow through your heart, your mouth falls open, choking on your own emptiness.
You still hold the oriole in your hands, even smaller in death as you fall to your knees.
And tears start to fall.