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The morning was bare and quiet. Fog draped itself in thick swells over the docks and the sky shuddered with the shaking of trees and springing of birds into the sky. Somewhere, a clock sang into the pale light and whispery breaths of air that snuck beneath bedroom doors and warm blankets, and people arose from their beds to greet family, to pull on work boots, to open up shops. Perhaps it could be seen as an ordinary morning for most, for those fishermen who were already unraveling knots of ropes and throwing nets over their shoulders were already beginning to set out. For the little boy and his mother who sold honey cakes glazed over with sugar at the bakery at the corner for a cousin afflicted by sickness and for the father who would soon be hanging up freshly scrubbed laundry to dry in the soon-to-rise sun.
Qiqi awoke to cold blankets and breathlessness, the urge to claw at her door, her ceiling, her walls to let her out vibrated in her bones. Amber crumbling in her fists, eyes of gentle brown and the chilling laugh and gasps of people as they shoveled dirt over her head and she struggled to rise from the ground.
The sky was still bluish-gray. Heaps of molten gray-black filled the edge of the horizon, framed by curtains she quickly drew open as far as they could go. Light. More light.
Not enough.
Just as always when this happened, she padded down the hallway, the pathway luckily ingrained in her memory from doing it before, and searched for the door with the flowers. Baba’s door was still closed, and darkness drifted from underneath. He was never very early to rise.
She crept past the next one, the door was thrown wide open, displaying the whirlwind of papers drawn over the desk and floors, pinned down by pens empty of their ink and the random objects, stones and brooches that Baba had collected over time.
But two rooms down, she gave three, small-fisted raps on the walnut door carefully engraved with glazed lilies. As expected, there was a shifting of sheets inside, a quiet, “Come in,” that hummed through the wooden floors and resonated with the walls of the house.
She turned the handle to the left and let it click shut behind her, already scurrying across the cold floor to where she knew he sat on his bed, waiting for her. Dark circles and smudged makeup, golden eyes hazy with a lack of sleep. Familiarity. He squinted at his phone before sighing in the way that she knew meant that he was worried, and dropped his phone on the nightstand beside him carelessly, tiredly. He patted the blanket tucked over his waist, waiting for her to crawl onto the mattress beside him.
“It happened again?” She hummed in lieu of a response. “Would you like me to keep the door open?” Arms invited her into his hold, feathery blue and sea-colored locks dipping into her vision as he awkwardly patted her head, always patient with her. He tucked the blanket over her the way he did every few nights, when jie-jie and Baba were busy, and leaned back into the pillows slightly.
A smattering of pale pink, the color of silk flower buds nipped at the sky. Soon, there would be a bustling cacophony of noises in the kitchen, and maybe jie-jie would stumble through the door to join them for breakfast, prompting a scolding from their parents and brother. The tofu would make its way from the fridge onto the table, and she would replace the qingxin in the glass in the middle of the table. Then she would be dressed and visit friends in Mondstadt. But for now, it was silent, and the chin atop her head and arms cradling her own were more than enough.
“Qiqi’s okay. But stay?”
“Yeah.”