Lingyang Wuthering Waves

Not even the disappearance of a shadow could cover its existence by the sound of the crop fields made as they bent in the direction of the onlooker. One that you finally caught sight of, and no longer was it a trick of the wind when two eyes stared right back at your startled ones, making you freeze in both fear and intrigue.

The shape was what overrode that initial fear, as they didn’t take the shape of any particular predatory animal that you could remember ever encountering -foxes, wolves, and hogs that would run through the field to either eat what's there or to reach the chickens and sheeps of your far-away neighbors. Their color, too, was a wonder in itself; like lilacs, but holding an intelligence unlike anything else.

But the pest you thought was here for your corn was a person, and running away shortly after your eyes had met. The first time you met the beast of the neighboring uninhabited forest.

After some debate, you put a plate of food just outside the porch. It goes untouched for the following days, but after putting it further away from the house, the food and the plate are gone.

Your smile is wide despite the stolen cutlery and the cycle begins.

Everyday without fail, the food would disappear and the plate gone from its placement - after the second time it happened you switched to paper ones so the expense wouldn’t be as extravagant - with only bits of smaller food scattered across the ground. Vegetables weren't something the beast would eat unless they were cooked, and peas would often litter the ground to be squashed or eaten away from smaller critters and the occasional chicken that would wander into the yard.

You’d gotten a little braver each week that passed, moving the plate that much closer to the house until it would reach the first steps of your porch in hopes of catching more than a fleeting glimpse. This proved fruitful during a rain that continued well into the night, and left dew on the crops and leaves of the surrounding wildlife.

Walking into the kitchen to look through the window, the sun had not yet shown its rays as the sky only lightened in color, but the flick of a shadow at the corner made your head turn in curiosity, hoping to see if a wayward squirrel made itself known.

A long slender tail was what greeted you instead, white in color before bleeding into a black tuft of hair at the end.

You blinked, wondering if it was some kind of snake that was dangling from one of the wooden posts before it appeared again, accompanied by… noises. Confused and most likely sleep deprived, you lean further against the counter to look through the corner of the window to see something crouching at your porch. Following the line of the tail, you were led to a mass of furr, off white with brown ends as it fluffed and moved with the body, and before you could even begin to guess what kind of animal it was, it stopped before abruptly turning it’s head until a face was looking right at you.

It really was a beast that looked back at you, those same lilac colored eyes wide in alertness as hair swept over it’s shoulders and back. Its mouth was covered in the seasoned juices of yesterday's dinner, and the round ears above its head were upturned. Moments pass in complete stillness as you stare at the white haired boy-beast from the window, but at the next blink you give, it turns tail and runs off your porch in a mess of hair as it disappears back into the crops to run out of sight.

You continue to look where the strange being once was, heart at your throat, but it doesn't come back in the days that follow.

A huff escapes you as you wipe the sweat from your brow, the straw hat doing nothing but blocking the sun from your face instead of providing the cooling shade you hoped it would give. Your fingers have turned a deep shade of blue and purple from picking the wild blackberries just on the outskirts of the farm, maybe a hundred yards from the ripening cornfield, but the promise of a delicious pie and some jam didn’t deter you from the task as you continued along the bush.

In seeing lots of red, unripe berries as you moved further along, however, you could already make a guess that someone else has already been here and made their pickings.

“They’re all gone…” You mutter as you see another clutch of red with missing stems. Looking down at the basket, you see it’s half full contents and can’t help the little disappointed sigh that escaped your lips.

“Been out here twice as long as last year and can barely fill a bucket.” at this rate, I won’t have enough to make for the neighborhood… The trade of a blackberry pie for a batch of squash was looking slim.

But not impossible, if you just picked the ones that were deeper inside the bush. A few scratches from its spikes was warranted, but it would be well worth the rewards. With that in mind, you slowly made your way through the foliage, the spines of the branches catching onto your clothes and exposing skin to scratch and tickle at, but you only needed to be a foot inside to reach the untouched berries.

Trying to override the pain that spikes with every press of a spindly spine into your skin with the overeagerness of a good day's pickings, you take another half a step inside and tripping minutely into softer dirt before regaining balance to continue.

Another layer of fruits fills the basket before you hear a hissing sound, and just as you pause to see where it was coming from, something hard and quick wraps around your leg before piercing pain shoots through your entire body.

Screaming, you stumble out of the bush and onto the grass floor to see a snake coiled around your leg with its jaws pried wide open as it bit into the meat of your calf. Another, more startled and fear-riddled yell rips through your chest as your hands scramble to scratch at the creature, grabbing it by the neck and wrestling its hold around you. The teeth embedded into your skin are torn out, catching flesh as it tears before the rest of its body follows, and right before it could coil around your arm, you twist and throw it whatever direction your hand allows it to go as your hold on the snake is released.

When it’s airborne, you scramble away from the nest before looking down at your bleeding wound. Fear rips through your bleary vision as it swims, and tears are running down your cheeks at the paralyzing fear that the snake could have been venomous, holding poison that had just been injected into your body and leaving you no choice but to die.

“ Doctor .” You pant, looking around, “I n-need to get to the doctor-” Rushing to stand to take off to a sprint, your plans are halted as you catapult yourself onto the floor with a pained yelp when your leg gives out at the rippling pain any amount of pressure puts it through. Slapping a hand over the bleeding wound, the ripped flesh gives out into your palm in an almost nauseating way, and you bite back the need to hurdle your breakfast to put the need of seeing a pharmacist first.

Yet, you make no movement to get up from the floor as you take in as many deep breaths as you can to at least calm yourself so that whatever poison was inside, wouldn’t reach your heart immediately to kill you.

But the world around you becomes too blurred until all of the colors around you mesh into nothing but the ones behind the lids of your eyes