It was cold. The initially clear and clement day was suddenly raging chaotically. Fierce gales of wind howled.
The fierce wind accompanied the icicled pine trees in wild dances as thunder clapped.
Flashes of lilac-tinted lightning tore through dark, rain-bearing clouds like white fire, briefly lighting up the mountain range.
In this dreadful weather, a slender figure dressed in a white nightdress was trudging through the thick blanket of snow. Wisps of her long, silver hair were whipped by the wind and flew behind her back.
Her face was cold and pale like the haggard features of despair. One would mistake her for a corpse if not for her fascinating blue eyes.
The beautiful young woman huffed, puffs of white vapor rising in front of her pink lips as the warm air in her chest condensed. "Hah... What's with this weather?" she uttered gloomily with pursed lips. Her reddish hands continued to claw through the thick snow such that she could continue her journey.
Xin had never anticipated that she would one day find herself digging through the snow with her bare hands in such a remote area. Nonetheless, she forced a bitter smile and continued moving her hands and feet, determined to survive. Her body, albeit immune to the cold, still shuddered as a frosty breeze swept against her nightdress, now wet from the snow that melted on her attire.
Her slender figure quivered with a chill fast racing up her spine. Suddenly, she heard many deep voices echoing above the fierce howl of the wind.
"Have you found her?"
"It has only been thirty minutes! With this weather, she must be nearby!"
"Find her quickly!"
The voices quickly disappeared.
Her chest heaved. She gripped the sides of her abdomen and, as though to betray her, her stomach growled in hunger. Her lips twitched, unamused. Her pursuers seemed to have very good hearing. No sooner had her belly finished proclaiming its torment than a male voice echoed in the distance,
"Did you hear that?!"
Xin did not await the next words. Famished and anxious, she pushed forward with greater strength, her body weakening with the extreme conditions. But even as she cleared more snow, more gathered above the remnants.
"That sounded like a bear's growl!"
Xin paused, dumbfounded. A bear? Surely, they did not mean her stomach.
She heard a man curse loudly before commanding, "Retreat! If it's a bear, then there's no way we can handle it!"
The voices disappeared again. She knew that they had likely retreated if all their shouts were not a ruse. Xin sighed but did not allow her stiff muscles to relax. She marched forward forcefully, her seemingly fragile body showcasing remarkable strength.
Xin trudged through the hell of snow for days and nights, not knowing what awaited her at the end of this hellish journey. With no food or water, an ordinary human would have perished countless times. Xin, however, was no ordinary human. She was a witch and one of the strongest of them all.
Witches lived a life of endless persecution and Xin was not exempt. With their unlimited lifespan and immunity to extremities, humans had grown to worship them. Gradually, that reverence morphed into fear along the way. Then, envy. Her kind, slaughtered and marginalized, faced extinction as it reached the edge of the clifftop. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, the envy and fear had come to what she is now. One of the last standing witches.
One night, the young lady arrived at a forest. She made a campfire and sat beside it, quickly warming herself in fear that the smoke would alert the pursuers of her location. After a while, she extinguished the fire with some earth and wet leaves and sat on the earth beside the damp ash, staring dazedly into the air. A grey horned owl hooted in the distance and an unknown animal screeched tragically beneath the full white moon.
Her vision faltered and she yawned, curling her body in search of solace. Beneath her fair skin, under her ear, she heard the voice of the ants and insects squabbling within the dirt. For the first time, Xin fell asleep amidst the foreign noises of the dark forest. It was a quiet slumber. Xin dreamt of many things; of the past, the present, and the near future.
She recollected her parents, her five younger sisters, and three elder brothers. She wondered where they were, who was sitting beside them, and their conditions. Were they still alive even? Her heart ached and tears quietly welled up in her eyes. She wept quietly in the foreign place, wishing for a hope she had never seen.
A long time passed. Snow gathered over her comatose body, lumps and heaps growing. Months and weeks morphed into years, she closing her mind from reality...
[Many decades later.]
One spring day.
Xin suddenly felt warm, as though she was enshrouded by a warm and gentle embrace. It was a strange, cloudy feeling and she liked it. Her rosy lips curled into a faint smile. Xin snuggled closer to the source of heat. Suddenly, the warmth disappeared. Her brows furrowed in dissatisfaction, her charming blue eyes opening with a start. To her surprise, however, she was no longer in the forest. Xin opened her eyes to a nice and snug room.
The walls were wooden, the floor likewise, but encased in a primrose yellow woolen carpet. Xin rubbed her eyes sluggishly in puzzlement and disbelief. Her misty eyesight cleared up shortly and her stiff brows loosened.
She shifted her gaze to the window. Thin droplets of errant raindrops were gliding down the windowpane like small kids racing each other to determine who was swiftest. The pitter-patter of the downpour outside was vague from inside where it was warm and comfortable.
Perplexed, she suddenly heard a voice from the other side of the door in her room. She immediately became alert and her nerves tensed.
The wooden door creaked open gradually and a figure taller than her strode in, not bothering to close the door behind them.
It was a man, her mind registered. The man was tall and well-built. He was adorned simply in a pair of black trousers and a black shirt that was left unbuttoned at the top, revealing his jade-like, flawless skin. His charming face was framed by his disheveled, glossy black hair and a black stud glinted from his earlobe like a black diamond.
"You're awake," his low voice rang hoarsely, as though he had just woken up.
His hand brushed the side of his muscular abdomen as he approached the side of the bed and sat on the wooden chair there, his dark eyes on her. "Is there something wrong?" he inquired, looking at Xin curiously with his left brow arched slightly.
"Um..." Xin stammered in a daze, not knowing where to begin. Who was he? Where was she?
Suddenly, it hit her like a sledgehammer that she had been staring at him with her mouth wide open. It had been years since she last saw a living, breathing human after all.
She turned her head away slightly, her face flushing from embarrassment before clearing her throat and glancing at him, wary, "Are you the one who brought me here, sir?"
The man nodded slightly and began to explain, "You remember the forest you were in? This house is close to there and as I was hunting, I happened to come across you"—he paused, appearing to deliberate his next words—"I thought you were lost and brought you here."
Xin nodded, her brows drooping. At least she had not been found by her enemies. She lifted her head and looked at the man solemnly, pondering how to phrase her next question.
However, before she could properly come to ask, the man stood up from his seat and said, looking down at her, "For now, please do take your time to arrange your thoughts. I have given you a new set of clothes and dinner will be ready shortly. If you ever need anything, I'll be nearby."
His eyes lowered slightly as he spoke while looking at the young lady in white pajamas whose long, silver eyelashes cast a shadow over her eyes.
Her waist-length, platinum blonde hair was scattered on the bed. Her small fingers, peeking from the oversized PJs, clutched tightly to the edges of the grey blanket. She resembled a little girl who was stuck in many, foreign thoughts.
The man turned his head away and strode to the door. He noticed her gaze following him as he walked away. He gripped the doorknob, his hands tighter than usual, and tilted his head to make eye contact with her limpid, oceanic blue eyes that appeared to read his thoughts. He swallowed and commented, "My name is Clyde. Just Clyde."
She smiled, and that would be the first time he saw her smile. His fingertips on the doorknob that was cold from little use, shuddered. "My name is Xin. Just Xin," she said, her liquid voice soft. Her voice was pleasant like a rain shower falling over a sunny field.
Clyde stared at her silently for a moment, his musings only known to him, before he turned his head away and responded, his voice lower than usual, "Xin"—he tested saying the name himself, before muttering casually—"That's a beautiful name."
Then, leaving her and the cursory remark behind him, he walked out briskly and closed the door behind him.
The room fell silent once more, exempting the vague pitter-patter of the rain and Xin leaned back into the bed. Closing her eyes, she wondered how many years...no, decades, she had been asleep for. And how long this man had waited for her.
—
—
—
—
It rained for a long while. But at some point, the downpour waned and Xin discovered that night had long fallen. She found herself plodding in the hell of endless snow once again. There was no one there but her. The howling of the wind had disappeared but a creature was growling in the mountains as though to defy the skies and the heavens.
The blanket of snow was gradually melting as she strode through the bleached land. Suddenly, a loud noise resembling the sound of trees falling and branches being torn apart rang and echoed. It was a sound more terrifying than the claps of thunder in the night and she was familiar with it.
Her dark blue pupils quivered as though her soul had been touched by the devil. Bare, cold feet trembling, she turned her head slowly.
There, sprawled over a helpless, bloody deer was an enormous white-chested bear. Its sharp, bloodstained teeth dug into the deer's flesh, biting off a chunk of meat. The sound that Xin had heard was the tearing of the deer's delicate brown flesh.
Xin froze and her heart leaped to her throat.
Her feet seemed to have grown roots, not budging from their spot. She stood there, gazing at the deer with widening eyes.
The deer was looking at her. Its dark brown eyes were glowing with a small but bright light. It appeared pitiful with the black, white-chested bear biting into its chuck.
Xin struggled with a myriad of emotions.
She was just about to take a step forward when the bear paused eating.
Its lumbering body straightened to its full height as it faced her dauntingly.
Its pair of black eyes shone as it gazed at her for a moment before it went down on all fours and paced away.
Xin, aghast with amazement, hastened towards the deer. She held out her palms flat over the creature's wound. Her lips moved to whisper the incantation that all witches knew by heart.
Soon, the deer's wound had closed up. Its lost blood had been purified and returned to circulate through its body.
In the process of healing it, she gave the deer a name and a blessing. She blessed its two hind legs, making them swifter than an arrow and stronger than any grizzly bear.
Then she named it—
Xin paused.
'Huh? What did she name the deer?'
Perplexed, she attempted to remember but the name had somehow faded away. She could only recollect healing the deer and blessing it. That was it. However, she was certain she had named it.
When a witch named a creature, the named would never escape memory.
However, her mind was overcast with clouds. The memory was clouded with the thick snow from that day. She saw the deer's black eyes looking at her once more, no longer pitiful but obliged.