A/N: backstory time! It's Jing's. :) I've been planning this for a very long time, and I decided to finish it a couple of days ago instead of a new chapter because it's always nice to have a break before we get into serious shit going down in the school :x Enjoy!

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There once lived a girl who had a family.

"妈、早," she greeted her mother with a yawn, pulling up a plastic chair—slightly chipped at the edge of the seat—at the breakfast table.

"现在都几点了," the lady shook her head with a sigh, a rag in her hands as she wiped the surface of the table for the second time. Soon, she would have to wash the corn and prepare the soup for lunch. The girl laughed with little heed, spooning porridge into her mouth before noticing that the bowl was almost empty.

She asked for seconds, and was pleased to hear that there was more in the kitchen. There, she wondered if there was time to write a letter to her father in the mines. The mines were far, far away. She almost had no idea where they were, and when she asked her father before he went—he, too, had declined to answer. Perhaps there was no mine after all.

For all she knew, it did not exist but to her father, it very well did.

"井！"

There once lived a girl who had a friend.

She turned at the call of her name and her friend laughed at the remains of her breakfast adorning the side of her lips. He stood outside, by the window he had peered into, complaining about the cold. The girl was made aware of her habit; the habit of sleeping in. It wasn't all that bad, really. Not when the rules here mattered less, and being late had little consequences, and phrases like 'time is money' had little to no meaning in the snowy village.

The boy declared that he had been waiting for a long time, out in the cold, to which his friend laughed.

"It's your fault!"

He admitted that it was partly due to his own stubbornness, smiling regardless as he helped her with her coat and they set off—barefoot—to play in the snow with cheeks flushed from the cold.

Perhaps twelve was not yet the age for minding the chill. Her mother made her come back, tying her old scarf around her neck before searching for her shoes when—again, they had run off.

*

It wasn't the first time he had tried to convince her to say.

They were sitting beneath a barren tree on top of a hill covered in snow. There was no purpose for shade; the tree was cold and void of leaves, doing little to shield the pair from the sun that cast its rays upon the snow, blinding eyes that blinked in its light, dark spots appearing.

Each possessed a stick, in which they would wield like a wand, drawing and writing characters in the snow. The purpose of the game was to connect one's word with another, forming a story that was—to them—never-ending and eternal.

"How about today?"

Forty-six. They were at forty-six characters; continuing the story that they built together. A different one everyday. She turned to him with a shake of her head. "Not yet."

"Why not?"

It was getting very hard to see on top of a hill covered in snow—just when everything was white and blindingly so. The sun raged above but neither she nor the boy could feel its wrath. It seemed particularly muted in the presence of each other, tamed to a warmth that spread to their bare fingers and feet.

"I want to know," he poked her leg with the branch in his hand. "Why you never come out to play at night."

She didn't answer; merely stared at the last character scrawled in the snow as though that itself was a response. "I feel like I shouldn't. Ma said before, didn't I tell you?"

The boy mumbled something barely audible, scratching the next character into the snow with a begrudging expression. He felt as though she didn't trust him enough to break her rule, something he'd wished she would do and knew she could. The girl was curious, and there was a certain light within her that he could see but others could not.

He saw it ever since he arrived at the village a year ago. Then eleven, the boy from the city had been new and alone—lost in something so foreign. He met her one day, and drew from within a warmth that he'd never thought he could possess.

"Because I might be going back."

She looked up. "Back? Back, where?" There was a sudden fear that seized the creature in her cage, replacing the gentle flame that she bore whenever they were together. "When?"

"The city. Um," the boy paused, startled by the look in her eyes. "Tomorrow."

He could tell that she was waiting for him to jump up and laugh, to mock her for being so gullible and believing every word he said. He learned that guilt was a long, persistent ache that teared through many other emotions.

"Before dawn. I'm going—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" The girl stood up, her tone filled with anger and disbelief. "Everything was fine this morning, this entire week! Yet you choose to say it now, a...a day before?" She left her branch on the snow, breathing thinly.

And as the reality of it all began to sink deeper and deeper into the depths of her heart, the girl could feel a rising storm from within; one that threatened to break the bars of her cage and start its rage.

"It was hard for me too, okay?" He abandoned his stick and stood as well, unable to contain the words that had begun to flow on their own. The boy had been finding it harder and harder to leave and now, his emotions at at its peak, he found it the hardest. "I don't want to go."

"Then don't!"

She was being childish and she was well-aware. Her mother often told her that she was. The kind of girl who would let her joy; anger; grief and sorrow overwhelm and consume the fragile mind she had. There was no control over the harm that she could do—even to herself.

"I can't stay here alone," he attempted to close the distance between them with a step but the girl did not give him the luxury of doing so. She stepped back, and away.

"Then stay with me! Don't just—" Her vision blurred. "Make decisions on your own."

They weren't his own. He was about to explain and retrieve what was left of their connection when she ended it completely in a flurry of madness; a heart that was overwhelmed and drowning in the fury that it had conjured.

The girl struggled to remove the bracelet clasped on her wrist, something he'd given her as a mark of the special thing they had. They didn't know what it was—only that it was special.

"You can leave," she snapped, cold as ice. "Take this too, if you're going to do it."

She hurled it at his feet, embedding the bracelet within the snow as though marking this place—under a barren tree—the grave of their connection. It seemed to her, then, a dead end without a turn.

______________________

She was running.

Back to her house she ran, feet growing numb and blistered in the cold. Bleeding. It was, however, not this pain that she felt the most but the one within—as though she had been cut open and left to die. The luxurious instance of death was not one she could enjoy; the eventual death of the human within.

She burst into the kitchen.

"妈，阳他—"

Her mother stood over a pot of chicken soup over the fire, a ladle in hand. A single glance at her told the girl that she had been the only one left in the dark. She bolted, locking herself in her room and hiding under the covers. It was the world in which she wished to disappear.

Scattered fears gathered under the warm darkness of her blanket, collecting in deadly parts of her mind and forming ideas that were never there in the light. She shivered, afraid.

Barely a year had passed since they had come together, Taiyang and her. Yet, just before their story had begun she could already see the end and it was—for all intents and purposes—a tragedy. The kind of story that held a special place at the core of her hatred, a generous and passionate loathing for endings that lacked a wholesome happiness.

The End

'The End' without happiness! Their story was never going to have the end she so desperately wished for. Happiness, joy and laughter; what better way to end a tale than emotions like these? The mind of a child could fathom these merely, and the girl was no different from the majority. Only that she was fragile and nonetheless, as fleeting as a snow crystal.

There was a knock on her door and her mother entered with a stack of folded clothes, opening the top-most drawer and placing them neatly inside. " 午餐快煮好了，还睡什么觉？"

She had wished to correct her and (at the very least) politely decline to eat for the rest of the day when the girl felt her a dent in her mattress, and knew that her mother was here to stay. She shifted under her covers, uncomfortable with the silence for it was only a matter of time before her tears—hard and warm, in waves—began to flow.

It was just that sort of power that most mothers seemed to have.

"女儿、有的事情。。。是必须放下的。"

The girl heard her words but chose to remain silent. Her mother placed a hand on her head through her covers, humming a song as though lulling her to sleep.

It was bright outside. Sunlight filtered though the window that pictured a blinding sky and the snow-covered roofs of log houses littered across the village. It was a beautiful, snowy village.

*

Evening came; and so did the urgency of guilt.

She had felt it rise and boil over all afternoon, and to force it down was the hardest thing she could do. Scattered fears now collected in a pile, she had take the rest of the noon to sort them out—one by one. Each carried their own significance and consequence of bearing, and to have extracted so much darkness from the depths of her heart was not, in any way, a good sign for the girl.

At last, she narrowed down her thoughtful fears and hesitant doubts to a single one that instilled most terror and despair.

She loved him.

The desire to see her friend prowled within her cage, seeking the heart and its weakness. There was regret and there was grief. She wanted to apologize. The girl knew that she would not have to experience such sorrow and guilt had she not said and done the things she did that very morning, and it made her see how she was, truly, reaping what she'd sown.

Everything boiled down to her weakness. Her Love.

What sort of love it was, the girl did not know but was that not the entire purpose of it all? That it was Love, surely, it was all she needed to know? How was she to differentiate each and every type, if, at all? Were they not equally important?

Her weakness; emotion. Her instance of impulse that resulted in a lashing so harsh, she could never take back. The damage was done and the least she could do now was to mediate and save whatever that was left.

The girl was not one to let her dream end a nightmare and her story crumble in tragedy. If anyone was going to write her end, it was her.

She left the house.

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Darkness.

It fell upon her the moment she was outside, slipping out from the backdoor; the very first gust of night breeze that she'd ever felt on her skin—cold. It crawled over the bars of her cage and for a moment, felt like a snake coiling around her neck. She felt herself being watched.

Racing through shadowed streets, the girl sought the home she'd so often visit in the day, her second place of comfort. It was quite a distance, from her house to his. She would have to cut through two alleys down, pass the fields before mill before arriving at a lonely street by the small, abandoned temple. There, she would be able to see his window. The warm light that shone through even during the day.

As she slipped past the first alley of darkness, slightly frightened by the shadows that seemed to chase and the moon that seemed to watch, she felt a shiver in her blood as though she had swallowed a shard of ice.

Her dream—the dragon's curse that had laid itself bare for the world to see; at first light, he would return to the form of a dragon and leave the island in search for the impurities of the world. There, he was punished to destroy what he found—destroy them with a single breath of his flames. Seeking and removing sin, thought to cleanse what the skies deemed as corrupt and impure.

Was he here?

She choked, collapsing sideways. There was something around her neck but as she reached up to pull it apart, the girl found only air. The darkness consumed, and though that was what her very dreams had warned her against and told her to fear, there was something else—something far greater than the darkness—that blossomed in her cage and it bloomed brighter than any flame.

Flame?

Flames.

They were everywhere at first she thought it was a mere illusion, a figment of her imagination that had all of a sudden, run wild and projected her anger and grief on the world before her eyes but the smell of an entire forest on fire and a heat that rivaled that of the sun's hit her in the face so hard, she felt her eyes sting and burn.

Fire.

She crawled to her feet, struggling with the ache in her chest when the house beside her collapsed, caving in all of a sudden and crashing onto the ground with a loud and frightening groan—dead. Was there anyone inside? Anyone at all? There was no one running.

"这到底。。。" Her dress caught a stray spark in the wind and began to singe. The girl screamed, stepping back as she extinguished the flame with her bare hands. It had been mere instinct; to rid of something that she was afraid of but the key was the it did not hurt.

It did not hurt.

That was the very moment she began to understand a terrifying possibility. The possibility of her being the cause of it all. Of destruction and of flames; of ruins and darkness. There was a body at the door of her house, and there was faint scent of burning meat. No screams. Dead.

It woke the girl from her dream, which she soon found to be the same as reality and started first towards her home. Back. She had to get back, fast but she was lost before she knew it.

Her house was nowhere in sight, only because everything was in flames and there was nothing left for her to recognize and tell the houses apart.

Everything was on fire.

It seemed to her, then, that the village had lost its identity within a night; not a single soul within sight. Quite as though the land had come to accept its fate, sleeping through the darkness without resistance. A calm, quiet death.

"有人在吗？？"

"着火了呀！"

"着火啦！！"

The girl was alone and no one could hear her screams for no one was running and no one was out of their houses; no one awake, and no one—was alive.

The world

was in ruins.

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The mill had been the only thing she could recognize in a fiery abyss, so hot she felt as though the sun had somehow forced herself into the night and decided to claim the village as its own. The girl limped across the street lit by flames, uncharacteristically bright. She called out his name which returned only as an empty echo amongst the loud crackle of fire. She called out again. And again.

The ache in her chest grew to its greatest height, seizing the bars of her cage and frightening the creature within. She was already frightened. There was not a single thought that did not include fear—it seemed almost fundamental to her current being.

Every part of her drowned in its darkness, and as she clutched her thigh that was for some reason bleeding, her eyes were drawn to a figure in the shadows of a fire.

A bracelet.

It looked like her own—

on a hand.

And in the hand,

was the one she'd thrown away.

There had been two

She limped towards the corpse—it's face burnt beyond recognition and it's body sooted black, a hint of bone at the ankle and what the girl assumed had once been a neck. Only the hand. Only the hand remained untouched and it was both the greatest joy and tragedy all at once. A sort of ending that one dared not read no matter how brave.

"Why didn't you run?"

She knelt by his side.

"You should have left."

"You shouldn't have stayed."

"You should have run."

"You should have left."

"You should have run!"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU RUN?"

Was it the night?

Was it her?

She shouldn't have left the house.

She shouldn't have said those things to him.

She shouldn't have been his friend.

She shouldn't have met him.

She shouldn't have had anything.

She shouldn't have been born.

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When she woke again, the entire village was covered in snow.

The girl could tell because there was light coming from the sky, and it was a dull, cloudy blue. She sat up. Her dress was covered in soot, her feet numb from the cold. She had collapsed outside, somewhere between the houses and it was snowing.

It cloaked the barren land with a gentle hush, one that told the girl that she was

Once again

Alone.

The dream had been correct. Her village, now padded and cloaked in fresh snow—pure and white—seemed as though it had been cleansed of the dark soot and filthy ash from the night before, washing away the sins of the world and creating the impression of something anew. After all, what else but a phoenix would rise from the ashes?

It was her. It was all for her and the skies deemed it necessary.

She looked around. There was nothing but white. Following the path, the girl walked very slowly. Eyes red. Vision slightly impaired by the snow and it's purity. She limped blindly, feet barely holding her weight—leading her to the first destination of her every morning. It was like a routine, for her and her friend. The hill was.

She crossed the snow.

There was thunder in the distance. Someone was crying in pain and she looked around only to see that there was no one else but her. The voice was crying out a name she so adored but lost within a night. A single day.

"阳、

"太阳。"

She came upon it.

The empty hill covered in snow and the dead tree that stood at its very top. It was the place she declared the grave of their story; one that she thought would carry on for eternity, of a snowy village in a barren land. It crossed her mind—the story did—and she came to realize that everything in the world would have to meet its end, one way or another. That itself, was perhaps the most beautiful ending.

If anyone should write her end, it was to be her and no one else.

The girl stood at the very top of the hill, and its silence lulled the terrors of the mind and the weakness of the heart. "妈、"

"妈，我放不下⸺"

She screamed and cried. "我真的放不下呀！！"

Despair and exhaustion were the only emotions left and the cage within no longer housed a creature for it was empty. What once destroyed everything in her way was now gone. It, too, had abandoned her in the very end and there was nothing like more pain and sorrow.

There once lived a girl who had a family.

She waited.

And there once lived a girl who had a friend.

In the darkness; that very silence that raised a single conclusion,

The girl waited for the world to come to an end.

_____________________

She was burning. Now, it was the tree that was on fire.

How she had set herself in flames, she had not the mind to know or the heart to understand. All she wanted was to cease her existence, her pain and her everything. It was all too much to bear and death;

Death.

She had thought it befitting for someone like her, alone and in despair.

______________________

This must be hell, or so the girl had thought in her unconscious—the mind that could not grasp. The ground beneath her feet was heated like the ash of a volcano, its molten core bubbling bright below the surface as she heard a sizzle every now and then. She stared ahead, muted enough to take her first step forward for there was no longer fear or exhaustion. Only nothingness.

Hell was a mixture of black, red, yellow and orange and it looked just like she imagined it to be. A pleasant coincidence, she had to admit. Unless this was her mind itself and her unconscious was somehow taking a tour in it. The fiery abyss that it was.

She soon realized that she was staring at something. A shape. A bird so huge, it towered over the black pillars of hell and looked down upon her with an unreadable expression. She corrected herself. It was not a bird.

Who are you?

It had wings. That, she knew for sure. Everything else was a vague figment of her imagination— almost part of a dream; the kind that she would have in her deepest sleep.

I am the sun.

There is a sun in hell? She blinked.

The creature began to form a distinct shape.

What makes you think we're in hell? It lowered its head and gazed at the girl.

This is your cage.

Your heart.

It made sense to her. So much so that she did not bother to question the creature's statement, for if her heart was hell, she would have easily agreed. The truth did not bother her very much any more. She left it as it is.

The Lord, has cleansed your world and yet you live.

You must be chosen.

The girl did not feel confusion. She merely sat cross-legged on the piping rocks.

Can I choose death?

The skies have spared your life and now you wish to return it?

The creature laughed.

I'm afraid that is not a human's choice.

No. NO, she was not going to live again, no—

The sun carries the world on its back. The weight is unbearable, but it is your duty to live and to serve as that symbol of hope that I am.

A phoenix.

The creature in her cage stared at her, it's shape finally coming to light.

That is what you are.

You are the sun.

The girl could not, in any manner, see that that was what she was. As far as she knew, she was dead; lost in a fire; drowned in the seas and crushed under her world that was in ruins. If this was her punishment, being alive, then perhaps she'd have to live forever. Now, when everything was gone and there was nothing left that she could hold on to; nothing to confirm her existence in something so vast, yet empty. And in the future, when she would have nothing as well.

She was, for all intents and purposes—the barren land in a snowy village,

and that was what the girl thought she would have to be for the rest of her life.

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A/N: This is the story of how Falrir found Jing, and how she was brought to the island only because she survived his 'cleansing'. 

This has to be one of (if not the most) beautiful piece I had written. Her story had come to me last year, when I was studying for my finals in the library and I of course had a very short attention span. When the idea first came to me, I was stunned, thinking: how could I impose such a tragedy on someone, even if they were a fictional character? But once it came to my head, it would not remove itself and I was stuck in the snowy village in a barren land, crying and sniffing aloud. Thankfully, no one was with me at the time, if not they'd probably pity the girl with a pile of notes stacked in a corner of the table and texts all around.

Analysis time? Here I go.

On true tragedy, and the pain of existence.

What is true tragedy?

We live in a time where there are all kinds of tragedy, whether it be the massive deaths of humans, serial killings, indiscriminate or with purpose, or as media likes to portray, the tragedy of love. I suppose the last one is something that all sorts of mediums (books, movies, tv series) like to deal with, because you know, drama is always key to attract attention. And we humans somehow gravitate towards that sort of thing.

I tend to dislike Shakespearean tragedy. I don't think it's tragic at all, really. His tragedies feature (characteristically) the death of two lovers (RnJ) or the death of his entire cast (Hamlet).

I think true tragedy is something the goes beyond the wall between the book and the reader, the play and the audience. The tragedy of existence is one that we will, no matter who we are; where we are; what we do, will experience. It is, for all intents and purposes, inevitable.

The sort of tragedy here that lives within Jing is a burden so huge and devastating, it is so painful and beautiful to write. A twelve-year-old girl loves her family and her friend. She kills them, along with her entire village—is then entrusted the rest of the world on her shoulders and forced to live. With the pain of having killed so many people.

Key: she has tried to kill herself.

Irony: Sol does not allow her to kill herself.

Irony: Sol is her.

Irony: Therefore she does not allow herself to be killed.

Ultimate irony: Taiyang, her friend's name, means 'sun'.

Jing's tragedy is that the very person she killed (and loves) wants her to live, and by doing so, does not allow her to be with him in death no matter how much she wants to die. Moreover, she is to carry out the duties of the Sun Phoenix, in which only serves to constantly remind her of the entire village she killed and Taiyang because she is now supposed to be 'Taiyang'/the sun.

Jing's very existence is therefore her tragedy, and this is the core of her depression.

Now, why is this relatable? Why is this the essence of all tragedies and therefore, the true tragedy?

The terrifying fact is that we all—whether we like it or not—exist. We cannot choose whether tomorrow will be sad or happy, whether we will continue to have the strength to smile or persevere through dark times with a light.

It is in uncertainty and the fear of the unknown that we continue to be. To exist.

Why am I alive?

Why do I have to endure pain and sadness and everything else that makes living so hard?

Our struggle with our own existence is real and pervasive. It will never end and is never-ending; and it is during times like this that a false sense of maturity will say:

Let go.

Why we think of letting go, and why we shouldn't

Enough about that Disney movie in which every child is obsessed about and has taught some things that I do not agree with. 'Let it Go' is the worst thing you can teach a child, and not because it is downright wrong, but because we are merely teaching them that ignorance is bliss. That there are things we can, as we like, 'not bother about'.

We think of letting go because it is, in essence: easier. Have some pain? Let it go! Have some sadness? Let that go! Have some bad past, sad memories, thoughts that made you negative and pessimistic? Let that shit go! Easy.

Easy way out.

And our mass media perpetuates, even encourages this illusion of ease and living life 'free of pain', living life 'as we like'. Can we, should we even, live life without caring? Simply because it's easier, does that mean it is therefore right? Yes, it is easy to move on without pain and carry on with our lives without sadness or grief but should we be letting these emotions 'go'?

In our current times, the paradigm of 'let it go' is pervasive and seemingly here to stay.

Hey, it's just a word 'fat'. Nothing wrong with that. Let it go.

By saying this, one would be encouraging the person addressed to mute their sadness, or feel less grief than they should feel, or are feeling. The truth is that many of us are fragile and sensitive. Mere words can hurt as so much, and because we aren't used to feeling such pain and emotion (because our society doesn't encourage us to), we see people who commit suicide having heard all these comments as 'too emotional', 'too weak'.

Our society paints a picture far too idealistic. If we expect everyone to must our feelings and discard the very thing that makes us human, we are by doing so becoming more and more monstrous—less and less human. This is what we're becoming.

At the very last second before Jing kills herself (attempts to), she says "wo fang bu xia", and by doing so is responding to her mother from earlier, who told her that "there are some things in life that we need to let go of", referring very specifically to Taiyang.

Jing realizes that she is unable to let go.

No matter how hard she tries, she cannot—and this is the core of us as human beings.

Here, Jing is openly rejecting social convention. Society's call for her to 'let go' and forget about her friend does not resound with her. After all, should we be forgetting the things that hurt us and therefore achieving ignorant bliss, a false sense of happiness? Or should we be carrying our burden of sadness on our backs and remembering, learning from every bit of it, understanding the raw emotions and thereby becoming stronger from within?

It's not about letting go. It is about remembering every bit of the pain and hardship and storing it inside, carrying it on our backs as we move forward, despite it all. Despite the pain of living. 

The moral of Jing's story is 'don't forget'.

Don't let go.

Don't fucking let it go.

-Cuppiecurses.