"'Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch." ~ Judah Halevi

She was running.

The cold rain splattered on her skin, soaking her ragged clothes, broken and torn in places. Her breath came in small spurts, fogging the icy air. She felt a numbing pain shoot up her body with each limp, heart pounding loudly in her ears along with her heavy footsteps that sent splashes of water in the muddy puddles she stepped into. Her hand was cast upon a pouch over her abdomen, unaware of the blood that had already soaked through the fabric of her shirt and had ruined the tiny satchel in her hands, crimson dripping onto the sodden ground. Beads of perspire on her forehead mingled with the droplets of rain that seemed to scar her face with another streak of invisible wounds. The cold air jarred her dry throat and lungs as her breathing became deeper and more arduous.

Still, she walked on.

The dark sky rumbled, as if the heavens were crying mournfully for her. The sudden flash of lightning made the young girl jump, but still, she tightly clutched the satchel in her embrace, not willing to let it go.

Her weary legs betrayed her as she lost her balance, slipping onto the cold, wet floor beneath her, letting out a cry of surprise as she fell. The satchel fell from her grasp, skidding across the muddy ground.

The girl was about to push herself up again, but her body wasn't as persistent as she was.

The pain wasn't instant. It slowly sank in, the torment slowly reaching her senses, and all of a sudden, a shiver went down her spine, the pain throbbing like knives piercing the insides of her abdomen, jabbing her again and again. She writhed about on the cold ground, screaming in anguish, hot tears of pain falling from her sleepless eyes, her breath coming out in rasped gasps, brows furrowed in pain. Dark spots danced in front of her eyes, as the poor girl clutched her inflamed foot in agony, her echoing screams finally coming to a stop, and her tears stopped spilling.

"I have to... find..."

Shouting could be heard from a distance, and that was when she knew she was done for. Darkness edged the corners of her vision, and the torment her ankle was causing her had already faded into a throbbing numbness. The girl could hear nothing but her own heartbeat by now, her own breathing coming in ragged, broken gasps, unable to form words, unable to breathe. The weights on her eyelids seemed to get heavier and heavier. And as the light of her attacker's torches came into her blurred sight, she couldn't hold on any longer.

The girl took a last shaky breath, and her consciousness was swallowed by the icy darkness.

****

"M-Mother?"

She couldn't believe it. She just wouldn't.

It's rather strange; the feeling of seeing someone who had just been smiling with those rosy lips that kissed her every night, being taken away from you.

'I want to find them, Shiyu, I really want to.'

That was it. The only wish she had ever made, the only request, the first and the last request Shiyu's mother would ever make in the whole of her lifetime.

'They're there. I know it, Shiyu. They're there. They have to be. Ever since they've been sent to the construction of the Terracotta Warriors...'

'Yes, Mother, we'll go find Father and Zhuyu.'

That's what she had said.

Shiyu stood still. At that moment, she heard her heart break. It was a small sound, like the sound of the stem of a flower being torn from its roots. She couldn't cry; she just couldn't. How could she? In front of the beautiful face of a woman that lies with a soft smile in that miserable mattress, eyes closed as if in peaceful slumber, the eyes that Shiyu would never see again.

'Thank you, Shiyu.'

The cremation was even more difficult.

Shiyu did not witness the process. She couldn't. When she returned, her mother had already disappeared into what's left of a pile of ashes and skeletal remains. That was it. That was the end of her mother.

No more pretty carnations that her mother loved. No more tender smiles. No more loving embraces.

Gathering what's left into a container in her satchel, the throbbing numbness in her heart had already escalated into screams of agonizing cries. And as Shiyu secured her bag around her shoulders, she left the place she had called home for sixteen years.

"I'll find them, mother. I'll find them."

****

Waking up was no longer as peaceful as Shiyu had remembered.

The moment her consciousness was returned to her, Shiyu felt a strange numbness ache through her body. As her surroundings finally came to her senses, Shiyu realized that she was situated in darkness. The woods always looked different at night. Even though the heavy downpour had already diminished into soft beads of kisses falling on Shiyu's cheek, there's a different slant to what once were the sweet and inviting woods. She drank in the ominous versions of the trees, towering over her body as if indifferent to her loss, her pain.

"Shiyu."

Her nerves jumped, eyes darting to look at the owner of the sudden sound, only to find herself staring into darkness.

She tried to open her mouth to say something, but no words came out.

"Hold on, I'll sit you up."

As the man moved to lift Shiyu from her supine position, a silver of moonlight spilled through the cracks of the menacing branches of the trees, and his face came into view. Shiyu felt her breath hitch.

It couldn't be.

His face was an aged version of herself, and as Shiyu took in his appearances, she felt her heart ache at how the once youthful and jubilant familiar face was now chiseled into a cold, unmoving machine that she barely recognized.

Suddenly, he lifted his head, and their eyes met, identical black orbs meeting each other for the first time in ten years.

In a split second, Shiyu felt her face reduce into one of exhilaration, then horror, and then one of concern. Once again she tried to form words with her lips, but somehow her body was betraying her, and she could only look at him with her wide eyes and gaping mouth.

Maybe he's disappointed in her, maybe he didn't know that she and their mother had been trying to find him and their father for a whole decade worth of time, and even when their mother died she still looked for him, and even when she was attacked by raiders who were trying to infiltrate the base of the terracotta warriors she was still looking. She was looking for him all this time.

When he moved closer to place a gentle touch on the bleeding wounds on her face, she saw that the eyes still contains the vulnerable vibrancy that her once ten year old brother held in those black orbs of his.

At that moment, she realized that all of her impossible dreams were just right before her, inside her, around her; each of those ten years of uncertainty fading, falling, crashing to nothing.

"Can we..." Shiyu seemed to finally find her voice again, and she suddenly realized how little she had changed in these ten years of being separated from her brother. She felt like she was a six-year-old kid again. "Can we go home now?"

Her brother only smiled.

"Our parents are waiting."

When he looks at her with those sad eyes she felt herself snap inside, not the snapping of the stem of a flower in her heart, but the shattering of brittle glass onto stone. The shards tore through her; she felt the blood leave her face as she desperately gripped at her brother's decaying uniform, letting him watch her break right in front of his eyes.

Shiyu never was one to cry with style. As tears flooded her eyes, she was a little kid again, crying because of a frightening storm, burying herself into her brother's arms while her tears made wet tracks on her cheeks, on Zhuyu's clothes. Her breathing hitched, unable to speak, her eyes bloodshot, red and puffy. Relief, sorrow, elation, despair, all emotions seem to swell up in Shiyu's chest, sending tremors up her spine, racking her small body, sending more tears, more cries, more anguish, as she trembled in her brother's embrace for the first time in ten years.

****

When the glistening daylight pushed back the darkened edges of dawn, streams of light fell through the thick wall of leaves, tumbling down on a young girl's unmoving body. The wild carnations danced around her, as if doing a ritual for the dead. Despite being in eternal sleep, she was still beautiful.

For she was finally home. 

...a short by Stephanie Young...