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The loud crash tore her from a deep slumber. Stelle sat bolt upright, heart hammering loudly in her ears, and stared wide eyed into the darkness of her room. The eerie silence that permeated her room seemed louder than the noise had been. She swung her legs over the side of her bed and quickly got to her feet. She wore modest but loose sleepwear and considered throwing her jacket over it, but urgency seized her. She padded across the room and pulled open her door. She stepped out, glancing down the hallway toward the Archives where the crash had come from. Unsurprisingly, she was greeted with the sight of March 7th doing the same.
March turned her head and met her gaze with wide eyes. “So, I didn’t dream that after all?”
Stelle shook her head. She shut her door and hurried over. March left her room too and they both met outside the Archives’ door. Stelle had no idea what time it was. It was impossible to know without a clock considering the constant darkness of space. She got the sense it was quite late though.
March rapped her knuckles against the door. “Hey! Dan Heng, are you okay in there?”
There was no reply. Stelle and March glanced at each other. It wasn’t the first time Stelle heard a noise like that coming from the Archives. At the time, however, it had miraculously not woken up anyone else but her. She’d gotten no response back then either when she’d knocked. Later Dan Heng had admitted to kicking a shelf over.
In a way Stelle couldn’t quite explain, this had sounded much different.
March knocked again but there was still no answer. She threw her hands up with a huff. “I don’t know what I expected.”
“Let me try,” Stelle insisted.
March stepped away, shuffling back from the door, and Stelle stepped forward to take her place. Instead of knocking she reached for the door handle. It clicked open. She paused, surprised. The door wasn’t usually locked during the day but she assumed at night when he was asleep it would be. Yet when she slowly pushed it open she realized it wasn’t that it was unlocked. It was broken. The handle on the other side hung down loosely.
Stelle glanced at March who was watching her nervously. She gestured silently for her to back up and March obeyed. Carefully opening the door, Stelle stepped into the room. Her foot instantly collided with a downed shelf, and she froze. What was usually an empty space was littered with not one but many downed shelves. The contents were scattered across the floor in complete disarray. She’d certainly never seen it in such a state before. It almost looked like something had torn apart the room—like a microburst of wind. But how does wind tear entire shelves out of the wall?
Anxiety rose within her. “Dan Heng?” she called urgently.
She stepped around one of the shelves to enter. The room was never dark so she spotted him easily on his futon. He was sitting upright but hunched forward, a hand pressed hard to his face. Long hair fell over his shoulders, and she could make out pointed ears and bright horns. Her lips parted slightly in surprise. While acquainted with his true appearance after their adventures on the Loufu he almost never appeared in it. More alarming than that was the heavy, almost frantic way he was breathing. He looked like he was in pain.
Stelle stepped further in, panic starting to set in. What happened here?
“Dan He—”
Something flashed across the length of the room and instinctively she jerked back. She flinched to the side as it whizzed past her face, materializing as it flew. A heavy thunk of metal sinking into the wall behind her sounded in her ears. A sharp sting prickled her skin and she felt warmth run down her cheek. Her body went ridged, eyes widening. She heard March yell something.
He was looking at her through his fingers, but his eyes were unlike anything she’d ever seen. Sharp and piercing, glowing as they did in his Vidyadhara form, but burning with fear and anger and a kind of deep hatred that rattled her very core. He looked like a caged beast. He was unrecognizable.
She realized that in turn his eyes showed no recognition of her.
Her mouth opened without sound. Then the next thought that rose in her mind came tumbling out.
“Who are you?”
A rough hand grabbed her shoulder and suddenly she was being pulled out of the Archives. The door shut in front of her.
“Are you hurt?”
Welt’s voice broke through her shock. Stelle blinked and craned her head up to look at him. Even as she met his worried eyes all she could think about was the way Dan Heng had looked at her.
March flittered around her suddenly. “Oh no! Your face!”
“It’ll be all right,” Welt reassured her. Calmly he took March’s shoulder with his other hand and guided her aside. “It isn’t a deep wound.”
Stelle blinked again. Her mind was hazy, and her heart was pounding. She lifted her hand and her fingers smeared something warm and wet across her cheek. A stinging pain made her wince. The razor edge of Cloud Piercer’s tip was deadly indeed. She felt Welt gently take her hand away from her face and replace it with a cloth. He pressed it firmly against the cut.
“Stelle?” he asked worriedly and finally her mind emerged from the fog enough to reply.
“I’m fine,” she blurted out instinctively. She was physically, anyway, barring the minor cut under her eye that Welt was tending to. She wasn’t sure about the rest of her. Dan Heng’s gaze resurfaced in her memory and she felt a bolt of fear.
“All right,” Welt replied. “Let’s go back to the parlor, you two. It’s very late but I think it’s important to clear this up.”
“By that you mean tell us what the heck just happened, right?” March demanded.
Welt sighed. “It really isn’t my place, but… I think there isn’t a way around it. This way. Stelle, keep holding this to the injury.”
Stelle obeyed silently and shuffled after him. March still hovered worriedly at her side, but she could barely register it. March hadn’t seen him. She wished she hadn’t either.
Dan Heng did not wish to remember. With gentle voices the others on the Express would insist he get proper sleep, but they had no way of knowing the dread that filled his heart at their words. Sleep was a prison sentence. It trapped him within a life that didn’t belong to him. Memories and feelings flooded his senses, confused his present with his past, and he woke up panicked and confused. He woke up uncertain who he was. He woke up frightened.
One day you might wake up as someone else, a voice in his head told him and a tightness in his chest seized him.
From the pieces he could remember, the man he once was scared him. There was always blood. There was always fighting. There was always a burning hatred that seared into his very soul. When he woke he could feel that boiling rage and every time it would threaten to escape—threaten to make him lash out.
When it finally had, it had been worse than he feared.
The uncharacteristic look of fright displayed so plainly on Stelle’s face had snapped his mind back to the present. He’d realized what he’d done the moment he saw blood running down her face and Cloud Piercer stuck in the wall behind her. Dread shot through him, indescribable.
“Who are you?”
Dread, followed by a pain so great it had blindsided him. A dagger through the heart would have hurt less. Her normally quiet and calm voice had been thick with upset. The tone stung his ears. The words echoed in his head and would not let him forget. Somehow worse was that she’d still managed to sound concerned too. Even though he had hurt her.
He barely remembered what happened after that. Welt had pulled her out of the Archives and he had been left alone. His head spun. The dream hadn’t fully lifted from his mind and it made sorting out what had happened impossible. He knew her and yet couldn’t remember her. His very soul had shattered when he’d hurt her but failing to kill her was a disappointment. His life was threatened. He was safe. Overcome with too many conflicting thoughts at once, he’d lost consciousness.
Or so Dan Heng assumed. He woke with a start sometime later, so it was probably a safe assumption that he had passed out. Vague recollection of the horrible events of last night surfaced in his mind instantly and he ran a hand over his tired face. He was somewhat aware he wasn’t maintaining his proper disguise but the thought of trying to exhausted him further.
His phone chimed softly with an unread message. He really did not want to face this. Dan Heng sat up reluctantly, searching the thin sheets for his phone. He noted the absolute mess he’d made of the Archives as he did. Putting this back together would take ages. He hoped nothing was broken. He finally located the device and swiped it awake. The message was from Welt sent at nearly 4 AM.
Welt: I went ahead and explained everything to March 7th and Stelle. I’m sorry for the breach of privacy but I think it was for the best.
Welt: They were more worried about you than upset. I hope that eases your mind.
Welt: You should talk to them when you feel up for it. It will help.
Dan Heng placed his phone face down on the ground beside him and sighed. He should’ve figured Welt was already aware of it. Once his companions had come to know he was Vidyadhara and that of his title Imbibitor Lunae, it was only a matter of time. Maybe he should be more honest with them about all of this now that it was out in the open but that thought scared him the most.
He dragged himself to his feet and stubbornly pushed these thoughts away. He busied himself with cleaning. It helped keep his mind occupied. With each shelf he picked up and replaced into its slot in the wall, he had to re-sort over a dozen databank entries. In these moments he didn’t have to think about how Stelle’s face had looked or hear her cold words in his head. There was only himself in the Archives, quietly re-reading entries and listening to the soft hum of the electronics.
He lost track of the hours like he typically did when he spent the day here. Familiarity with the databank meant the mess was cleaned up faster than he initially thought. With everything looking back to normal Dan Heng felt a strange listlessness settle over him. He was more tired than he realized. He was also hungry and while the risk of running into someone was high, he decided to cautiously venture out. He made it as far as the hallway outside the Archives before March 7th popped out of nowhere.
“You are alive!” she proclaimed triumphantly.
“Obviously.”
Dan Heng wondered if there was a law in the universe that guaranteed March tracking him down whenever she sensed he didn’t want her to. She was now blocking his only path forward to the kitchen. He contemplated just going back into the Archives.
She lifted her hands to her hips and gave him a hard look. He stared back at her with a perplexed expression. He couldn’t figure out why she was staring at him so hard until he realized he was still in his Vidyadhara form. Suddenly self-conscious, Dan Heng glanced away. He couldn’t clearly remember but he was pretty sure March hadn’t been in the room with Stelle when he’d attacked her. That, at least, was a small mercy.
“You’re okay, right?” March asked softly. The sudden shift from her usual cheerfulness made him look back up. “Be honest.”
“I’m fine.”
She squinted at him. He knew she could tell he wasn’t being honest.
“Okay,” she finally sighed. “I don’t believe you, but I know how these conversations go. Make sure you talk to Stelle when she gets back. I think… you really freaked her out.”
He felt a tightness in his chest again. Simply hearing her name made the weight on his mind feel that much heavier and guilt threatened to overwhelm him. “Where did she go?”
March shrugged. “Who knows. She’s always coming and going when we’re stopped at a place like this. Just promise you’ll talk to her. I know she’s worried about you too.”
He averted his gaze and brushed past her. March whirled around. “Hey! Dan Heng!”
He ignored her and passed through the door into the parlor. He half expected her to follow and when she didn’t, he released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Dan Heng knew what it meant to be so battered and bruised in a fight that every movement was agony. He knew and yet nothing could compare to this intangible wound. The thought Stelle was forever frightened of him for his actions, that he’d irreversibly damaged any semblance of a bond that had grown between them, tore him to shreds.
“Who are you?”
Dan Heng forced himself to the kitchen but once inside he realized he’d lost his appetite.
Stelle had been laying on her bed for several hours now, but sleep refused to claim her. It was late and she was tired, but her mind was wound up with too many thoughts. Folding her arms across her stomach, Stelle closed her eyes and tried for what felt like the hundredth time to fall asleep.
“It can be a… painful process.” Welt’s voice was somber. “More psychologically than physically. Imagine a dream as real to you as this moment is but instead of yourself, you’re, say… Himeko. Or Pom-Pom. It is a complete loss of self in the moment only to wake up and be forced to recontextualize everything all over again. Your very reality, your own name, your body… and especially your memories. I know it’s difficult to understand but, I hope you won’t be too hard on him.”
March let out the loudest sigh and leaned against Stelle’s shoulder. Stelle subconsciously leaned against her in return and took solace in the gentle contact.
“You know, eighty percent of Dan Heng’s problems wouldn’t be so bad if he just talked to us about them before they exploded in our faces,” she grumbled.
Welt chuckled. “Well, you know how he is. More than that, I think he doesn’t know how to broach this subject. I imagine it must frighten him as much as this incident frightened the two of you.”
Stelle groped in the darkness for her extra pillow. Her fingers curled around the fabric. When she gave it a soft tug something heavy slid off it and collided with her hand. She blinked her eyes open and turned her head. The screen of the small tablet flickered to life in response to being jostled. It displayed a specific databank entry. She could see some of the text, but she’d already read it in full earlier. She felt unease tightening in her chest again.
Once successful completion of the rite is achieved, the Imbibitor Lunae will begin to experience memories of their previous lives via dreams. The range, intensity and events they remember vary and the records are inconsistent due to the disjointed nature of dreams. Some will remember their dragon ancestors’ lives. These are recorded in the most detail to allow the followers of the Permeance to continue to revere Long. It is more common, however, for memories of the previous incarnation to take hold. In most cases, the dreams are simply what they are: dreams.
In other cases, the memories are too vivid and the Imbibitor Lunae forgets their current self. Caught thus between multiple lives they can never fully remember, death is a mercy.
Stelle pushed the tablet away and pulled the pillow to her. She wrapped her arms around it and buried her face in it. He’d looked at her without any recognition. Earlier while she was out, March had texted her that she’d run into Dan Heng. She had been reassuring that he was the same as ever. It had eased Stelle’s mind at the time but the little knot of anxiety in her stomach wasn’t so easily untangled. Now when she thought about how he’d looked at her with the context of the databank entry fresh in her mind the reassurance taken from March’s text all but vanished.
That won’t happen to him, right?
Stelle became aware of a small weight in her pocket.
Bailu’s expression was complicated and Stelle suddenly got a feeling she’d asked something more personal than she’d meant to.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I just thought—”
Bailu lifted her hand up, raising a stubby finger. “Quiet,” she snapped. “The healer lady is thinking.”
Stelle snapped her jaw shut. The melancholy she’d seen on Bailu’s face was gone and she watched the small Vidyadhara furrow her brow in thought.
“…Okay. There is something made specifically for this, but you should know getting rid of them or stopping them is impossible.”
Stelle nodded silently. Bailu gave her a hard look, contemplating, and then nodded back. She turned on her heel and scurried over to the high counter. Hopping up on the tall stool so she could reach its surface, she began to make quick work of the various substances laid out on it. Most of it just looked like various colored powders.
She listened to the sounds of the pestle grinding into the mortar and Bailu’s occasional humming as she worked. She listened and she worried.
Stelle sighed and sat up. She blinked blearily into the dark room. The knot in her stomach was not going to go away until she talked to him. The thought was daunting, but she couldn’t just sit here with this anymore.
It was time to just be honest.
Dan Heng picked up his phone to absently check the time. It was late. He’d been sitting on his futon reading for a long time, but he was beginning to feel tired. Tight anxiety coiled in his stomach when he thought about trying to go to sleep. He hadn’t managed to force himself to eat so all he’d brought back with him from the kitchen was a glass of water. Even that was sitting mostly untouched.
He dropped his head forward and closed his eyes, pushing his fingers through long strands of hair. This is ridiculous.
He couldn’t keep sleep at bay forever. He also couldn’t avoid talking to Stelle forever. Ultimately, she was at the root of these emotions that were eating him alive, and he knew he needed to put it to rest by confronting her. It wasn’t that hard. He just had to apologize. It was all he could do. Her response and how she felt about him now wasn’t something he could control. Telling himself this repeatedly, however, hadn’t helped at all.
Suddenly he heard the door handle click. Dan Heng glanced up sharply, alarmed. He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard anyone coming. He realized in that moment he’d forgotten to fix the broken handle but regardless, it was late. No one should be looking to enter the Archives.
The door opened to reveal Stelle. She glanced around, probably noting how it was clean again, before her gaze settled on him. His eyes widen at the sight of her. He tried to meet her eyes but immediately noted the red cut across her cheek. He looked away quickly and guilt flooded through him. He heard her step inside and close the door.
“Sorry, I know it’s late,” she said quietly. “I hadn’t seen you so I thought you were probably still in here.”
Dan Heng stared determinedly at the floor. Well, here was his chance to apologize, yet he found it was difficult to speak. He heard her soft footfalls cross the room and then climb the step that led to the raised floor his futon rested on. Her eyes were on him the whole time, likely taking in his more draconic appearance, but he irrationally worried that she’d see the torrent raging inside his heart.
“Are you feeling okay?”
He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at her. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
His tone had come off colder than he’d meant it to and he winced inwardly. It was better that way, though. It was how it had to be. Everyone was safer at arm’s length.
There was always fresh blood. Allies stood with him but perished. Enemies stood against him but perished. Innocents stood before him and perished. A single choice, a single sin—made in desperation to, just this once, keep what he loved. To not forget. He failed. It unraveled what was left and everything burned.
“Imbibitor Lunae. You, who committed the most grievous sin against the Xianzhou Alliance, shall be imprisoned for the rest of your centuries. Furthermore, we hereby revoke the rule of Absolved Rebirth. We condemn your next life and the next and still the next. You, who committed the most grievous sin against the Xianzhou Alliance, shall never know release.”
Centuries left festering. Centuries left in darkness. Centuries of hate. Centuries was such a long, long time.
“Dan Heng?”
Her voice was right in his ear. His eyes snapped open and he jerked his head up, coming nose to nose with her. At some point she’d knelt beside his bed and leaned forward to peer at him. The closeness was immediately too much—he could feel her warm breath against his face and noticed the way she smelled—and he flinched away. His elbow smashed into the nearby shelf. The glass on top of it tittered dangerously, splashed water down on his head, but thankfully didn’t tip over entirely. He winced. He felt his face burning.
Stelle sat back on her knees and lifted her fingers to her lips to hide an amused smile. “Ah… sorry. You were so still. I thought you might’ve fallen asleep.”
He watched her incredulously. How can you even stand to be around me now? It was partially a relief that she was, but Dan Heng felt mostly perplexed by it. Stelle was nothing if not an enigma—somehow both impossible and yet easy to read all at once. That dichotomy had drawn him to her without his ever realizing it.
She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her gaze to stare at them. For some reason he noted that she wasn’t wearing her coat. The rest of her clothes were familiar, but that part was missing.
“I know you said you were fine, but I still feel worried about you. Mr. Yang explained to me what happened. He even gave me a databank entry to read about… Imbibitor Lunae.”
He felt a small twinge of irritation. A databank entry that Welt had undoubtedly modified behind his back to include more detail than Dan Heng would have ever been willing to provide. He made a mental note to delete it and re-write it later.
“I see.”
All day his thoughts had tormented him, poured over the events and how he could possibly fix them, and now when faced with the chance that was all he could think of to say. When she didn’t say anything further, he sighed. He shifted to sit more comfortably in front of her and tried to release the tension in his muscles that seemed to occur when she got too close.
“What did it say?” he asked. Judging by her admitting she was still worried, he could hazard a guess.
Stelle squeezed her hands together. “It said… a lot of things. It was actually a lot to take in. I don’t think I even understood half of it, but… it did explain that you dream about your past lives. Apparently, it’s normal for you to.”
“Yes, it is.”
She lifted her gaze and frowned. Her expression was more intense than he expected. She looked so concerned, so upset. He felt tense again. “It said… that sometimes the memories can be so overwhelming as to… rewrite your current ones. That you just forget who you are.”
He let out a sharp breath through his nose. As he expected but it didn’t make it any easier. Why Welt would let her know this part of it, he had no idea. It seemed cruel and he had half a mind to have a stern word with him. He had to remain calm about this. Even as his own anxiety on this topic bubbled to the surface, he absolutely could not let that show.
“That… can happen sometimes, yes, but it is very rare. Usually, there’s already an abnormality in—"
“I was scared,” she interrupted, and her tone was frantic. It was such a sad sound that it stung him. A desperate need to say something so that she never had to sound like that again seized his entire mind.
That tightness in his chest grew tenfold. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out and instantly regretted it. The words hung in the air awkwardly. She blinked at him and he admired their golden hue longer than he should have. Hastily he forced himself to add, “For hurting you.” Because what else would have scared her but that? The angry red mark on her cheek attested to it.
She shook her head. “That did startle me, but that’s not what scared me.”
The way she’d casually brushed aside the incident of him attacking her was jarring. It bothered him but he wasn’t brave enough to press the subject further. Instead, Dan Heng stared at her nonplussed.
“You looked like you didn’t recognize me. When I remembered that and then read the entry, I… got so worried.”
This wasn’t what he had been expecting. The dream had twisted the moment so much that he couldn’t remember clearly what he’d been thinking. The only thing left in his memory was her frightened face and her question. If that’s what had happened, then it made sense why she had asked that. However, he couldn’t even properly recall not recognizing her. The thought suddenly scared him too.
“Sometimes, I…” she started but trailed off.
He shook himself from his own thoughts to listen. Her expression looked more sorrowful than he could ever recall seeing on her before. He couldn’t explain why it made his heart ache.
She sucked in a breath as if she was trying to force herself to continue. “I think about… how I don’t really know what I am. I can’t be normal. What kind of normal person can carry a Stellaron inside them?” She lifted her hand and pressed her palm against her chest. Her eyes slipped closed and she grimaced. “All of what I am was made because of, or maybe for, the Stellaron to exist. This body, this person that I am… it’s all artificial, I think. I don’t have any memories because this is all there is of me.” Her fingers curled into her shirt. “But being here on the Express, it means everything to me. When I’m with you and March, I don’t really think about it. All I get to know is the present—that moment we’re in together. So then, the thought of you forgetting me and losing all that makes you you… it becomes unbearable.”
Dan Heng shifted forward without thinking and grabbed her shoulder. He watched her eyes flutter open and she met his gaze sadly. The melancholy lingering in her eyes split his heart in two.
“That won’t happen.”
He was surprised by how confident he sounded. He spent endless nights worrying over this exact same thing while sitting alone in the Archives afraid to fall asleep. Yet to reassure her, to chase away that painful sadness from her voice, he felt a fierce determination to stand against that fear. Suddenly nothing was frightening compared to the prospect that he might make her sad.
Stelle blinked at him and tears pooled in the corner of her eyes. Aeons, was she crying? Because of him? For him?
Without thinking Dan Heng wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a tight embrace. She was warm. It was the kind of warmth that could lull him into a peaceful sleep. She was soft, too… and small, somehow. She was always such an imposing force on the battlefield that he’d never noticed.
“It won’t,” he said again, voice muffled against her shoulder, and suddenly he wasn’t sure who he was trying to reassure.
Crimson stained white, dripped from the sharp tip of his spear, but he could never find it. He sought revenge but took no joy in it. He sought love but felt none in return. He sought enemies but they fell too quickly. There’s nothing for someone like him who will forget the next time he opens his eyes.
He didn’t know how long he held her like this. He wasn’t even aware he still was until he felt her squirm slightly in his embrace. Embarrassment flashed through him and he released her, averting his eyes. The thought of looking at her was suddenly mortifying.
“Sorry,” she sniffled, and he thought she was apologizing too much. “I didn’t mean to make a scene.”
When he finally felt he could look up she was rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand. “It’s okay.”
He didn’t want her to feel bad. Something in him had reached a pinnacle from all of this. Whatever past he had he knew someday he would have to confront it. The dreams would continue, and Dan Heng would likely piece together enough from them to know the full story. In those moments when they were strongest, when he dreamed so vividly his own reality warped, he felt the person he was disappear. Yet each time he fought to reclaim himself—clawed desperately back through his muddled mind to find the strongest familiar memory. Each time, those were memories of his life on the Express. Of March’s cheerful laugh, of Himeko’s kindness, of Welt’s advice… and of her. Her brilliant eyes and warm voice always found him, no matter how hard the dream pulled him away. Who he was now meant more to him. What he had in this life, in this exact moment, was everything.
It was the life in which he had met her.
As he studied her face and noticed the cut on her cheek again, a realization floated to the surface.
He lifted his hand and dipped his fingers into the now half empty waterglass. He leaned closer and gripped her chin with his other hand. He forced her head up slightly, raised his hand and brushed his fingertips feather light over her skin. He tried not to concentrate on how soft she was. She stared at him with bright, curious eyes still a little watery but did not shy away. He kept his own gaze fully on his own fingers, afraid of what she might find out if she could read his expression. He ran his moist index finger over the length of the cut and at once a faint blue glow danced over the wound. The water seeped into the cut, and it mended in seconds. His hand lingered as it happened, observing with a well-practiced gaze. It wasn’t until the glow had fully faded that he let his hands fall away.
Stelle lifted her hand immediately and ran her fingers over her cheek. She searched for where the injury had been and he watched her eyes widen when she couldn’t find it. He averted his gaze quickly.
He used water to rejuvenate and rehabilitate his allies. With that same water he crafted it into a spear, sharp and unyielding. The water ran red in his wake. He could no longer use it to heal and so many paid for it with their lives.
He waited for her to ask. Stelle was intensely curious by nature. It was a trait that worried him somewhat. Someday she would ask questions he didn’t want to answer and he would inevitably push her away. Even if he didn’t want to. The silence stretched on, however, and Dan Heng begun to worry he might have offended her.
For a change his own curiosity got the better of him and he lifted his head to look at her. When he did she smiled and his breath caught in his throat. It was dazzling and warm. She looked at him with only kindness. There was a fondness too, unguarded, but he dared not recognize it.
Scowls and dark gazes wherever he went. Eyes always angry and full of hatred. He did not know what compassion looked like. When he tried to picture it with his mind’s eye based on a book’s description, he could only see their anger. Sitting in darkness within that tiny room, kindness was impossible to understand.
“Thank you, Dan Heng.”
Her voice too was warm and kind. He felt an unbidden heat creep up his neck and sear the tips of his pointed ears. He looked away again and hoped his long hair curtained his face enough to hide it.
“Oh, right. I did come here for one other reason. I have something for you.”
He allowed his eyes to slide her way again but he kept his head down. He watched her hand rummage around in the pocket of her skirt. From it she produced a small package. It was barely the size of her palm. The paper was folded neatly and tied with white string. She held it out for him.
“I asked Bailu if she knew how to help your nightmares. I thought she might know, being a doctor… and a Vidyadhara, I guess.”
She would know a lot more than Stelle probably realized. Dan Heng took the proffered item and stared at it.
“It’s medicine,” Stelle explained. “Bailu said it was made specifically to help suppress the dreams of past lives that you’re experiencing. Temporarily, at least.”
He closed his fingers around it. He wasn’t so sure such a thing was possible, but the gesture made something warm rise in his chest.
“I see,” he murmured. “Thank you, but you didn’t need to trouble yourself.”
“It isn’t any trouble if it’s for you.”
He felt himself grow flustered again and yearned for the ground to swallow him whole. How does she say things like that with a straight face? In truth, Dan Heng was fond of how blunt Stelle could be. It made things easier in some ways and much harder in others. He placed the small package on top of a book that rested at the edge of his futon.
Stelle stood up, dusting the back of her skirt off and then stretched her arms over her head. He was sure his face was still red but he lifted his head to look at her anyway. She peered sleepily back at him.
“I’ll let you get some rest. Make sure to take that so you can sleep, okay?”
He nodded wordlessly. She smiled again before turning on her heel and heading for the door. “Goodnight, Dan Heng.”
The door swung open and she stepped out.
“…Goodnight, Stelle,” he replied softly.
The door clicked shut and he listened to her footfalls grow distant. He didn’t think she heard him, but he hadn’t meant for her to. His eyes slipped closed. He recalled how nice she felt to hold.
Dan Heng leaned back against his futon and drowsiness swept over him. He thought of her. No dreams came to him that night.