This piece was the last thing I ever wrote for this story! I used a four word prompt where I picked out some words and wrote whatever feelings they evoked from me. The words were longing, regret, soft, and memories. The piece itself is a little haphazard and repetitive in places, but overall I am very proud of it! It takes place the furthest in the storyline, but I can't tell you exactly where. I last edited it in June 2017, so the writing is a little dated. Regardless, I hope you enjoy! This is the last writing piece I'll be uploading to the story. The last things I'll be uploading is the moodboards. I just have to get my hands on them again. Thank you so much for sticking with me this long!! ( ˘ ³˘)♥

Junhong stood around in the melancholia of nothing. The entire world was still and it was sad. Do not raise up what you can’t put down. They were words he lived by, ones he repeated in a mantra before he fell asleep each night. They were instilled in him by someone so close, someone he couldn’t remember. What did the world mourn? What did he mourn?

Who had they lost?

He took a step in the brush, his head hot and spinning. He didn’t understand. What was it he didn’t understand? He didn’t know that one, either. The only thing he did know was that he had a drive to go further, one that would take him away from this heavy place. What he wanted was to leave, but what the world wanted was for him to stay.

Perhaps it was the Goddess, a false figure beckoning him to come closer each time he stepped away. She was the mother, someone had said, but she wasn’t their mother. There was such a suffocating humidity that he could barely move, no matter how much he wanted to. She was in the centre, the centre of this place. The trees towered high and their leaves fell slowly. The plants springing up from the ground beaded with perspiration and touched his ankles, begging him to stay. They were servants to the Mother of the Earth.

On the rock, where She wanted him to be, it was hotter than it was anywhere else. He knew that because he finally gave in and walked to it. Sitting on the rock was an invitation to be hit by wave after wave of strangling heat, to make his head spin so fast he vomited on his shoes. So he did.

He slipped them off with his socks and tried not to become a victim of the scent of heated vomit. He drew his knees to his chest, pads of his feet burning against the hot stone, and forced his head between the space left. It was hot there, too, even hotter than the outside around him, but he didn’t care. The sun that beat down through layers of oversized jungle leaves was shockingly bright, terrifyingly hot. There was a sense of deepness in his stomach. A deepness that had no bottom and was hollow. Something was missing, everything was missing. But he couldn’t figure out what everything was. Someone had put a blanket over his brain and he was struggling to rip it off.

Steps around him, crunching through the carpet of wet sticks and dirt, caused him to peek up over his knees. He looked in front of him, then to either side. Nothing. Finally, he twisted his body and looked behind him. It was only a dog, one of those wild ones that ran rampant in the areas that had yet to be industrialised. It tilted his head, and the brilliant red of its coat shone in the cruel sun’s light.

Junhong should have been afraid, but he’d seemed to have forgotten how to do that, too. Those dogs, red wolves, asiatic wild dogs, whatever else they were called, were known to be viciously feral. They usually travelled together, in hodge podge packs that yipped and bit each other, but this one was alone. It stood a good ten feet away and it stared. Junhong turned around again, to see if there was something it was staring at, but there was nothing. It was looking at him.

He didn’t move first. He refused to. The dog took a step towards him, testing the safety of the situation. When Junhong didn’t so much as blink, it jogged for a short spurt, stopping four feet in front of him. When Junhong turned his body completely, it took a step back before pausing again and walking a few more feet towards him. When Junhong stuck out his hand, his judgement corrupted by the heat, it stepped into his touch.

There was a moment when the silence exploded into the screeching of cicadas and jungle birds and other, less notable animals. Then everything was quiet again.

The dog’s fur was hot and she opened to pant and Junhong remembered dogs couldn’t sweat. He uncurled himself, going from a pathetic little ball to some semblance of a human being. His toes touched the wet substrate on the ground. He rested his knees in the dirt, feeling it plunge downwards beneath his weight. Her legs were wet and dirtied by mud. She sat down, lowering her head so it fit perfectly in his palm. Junhong was hypnotised by her eyes. Bright, orange, a majesty of different shades and shapes. She looked into him. Not as if he was something to eat, or like he was just a source of affection that she so desperately needed, but like he was human. Like he meant something in this whole grand scheme of the world.

The softness of her eyes hit him in the core and sparked the life back into him. He still couldn’t remember his life or who had told him the things that he did remember, but he didn’t feel heavy anymore. The heat causing sweat to run down his forehead in salty drops was just an afterthought. She was the focus, the main thought, the subject of the artwork. Her painfully hot fur didn’t blister beneath his fingers, but ignited a blizzard across his body and spread the pins and needles of a breathless chill.

She felt warm and had this strange familiarity to her that was almost intoxicating. It felt as if Junhong had never spent a day in his life without her and he never wanted to. He was sure he’d never seen this dog before, but his mind could have been fooling him. He still couldn’t remember even a semblance of crucial information regarding his being. He stared at her for some unfathomable amount of time, appreciated her existence, attempted to swallow down his infatuation.

Finally, finally, the entire world erupted and exploded into his ears. He pushed himself back, hitting his back against the rock and covering his ears. His head was pounding. His brain was pouring out of his ears. After that wonderful, brief moment of pure, raw serenity this horrible blast of nature’s fortissimo was excruciating. Junhong forgot everything except for the pain. The only thing he could comprehend was the sharp pain assaulting his head in wave after wave of brutality. He could have screamed, but he may not have. He no longer had control of himself. All that drove him was the animalistic instinct that came with unimaginable pain.

And then the pain was gone, replaced only by a soft throbbing in his arm. When he pried his eyes open, a truly laborious job, he saw her.

Her eyes, so round and so beautiful, looked into him and relief surged through him. Her ears were so big, and he wondered what she could hear and all the things she’s heard. Then suddenly he knew. It wasn’t like he could hear them, but he could feel them. Feel the sounds, the vibrations, everything that bounced around in her ears and back to her brain. He picked his arm up again, cradling the side of her face in his hand, and the sight of blood caught his eye.

It flowed through several holes in his arm. They were arranged in the shape of her teeth. She’d bitten him, but he couldn’t find himself to be afraid of her. She was calm, so he was calm. They were operating as one. Their hearts beat in time, their breathing synced, and their thoughts were shared, yet it wasn’t like they were in each other’s heads. It was more like he could feel what she thought. She could feel his fear, his pain, his every excruciating thought that passed his mind and she shot back with a tranquility that worked better than drugs.

She lifted one of her large paws, placed it on his , before putting it back down and standing. He stood when she did. He knew there was a difference. He knew that he wasn’t alone now, that instead of being two souls operating as individuals, they were one working in harmony with itself. She walked beside him, staying in beat with his steps, and told him where to go. Not verbally, but physically. When they came out to a small village, one so infinitesimal it couldn’t be on any map, he felt the uneasiness engulf her. He felt at home, though. Like being around people was natural to him and he’d been around him throughout the entire life he couldn’t remember. By God’s grace, she felt it, too.

Junhong didn’t know how long he walked with her, both through the forest and through the small houses in the town, but he never felt his strength dwindle. Despite the sweat that made his hair cling to his forehead in awful, stringy pieces or how his clothes rubbed against his body in a way that burned and left him all around uncomfortable, he couldn’t find it in him to be deterred. He was high off of some inane euphoria that told him he was everything. He was all that mattered. She must have felt it, too, because she didn’t so much as pant in the heat.

“Your name is Diana,” he said in the clatter of the town. She didn’t tell him. He knew.

They kept walking. Walked until they reached the edge of sand-covered pavement and then stepped into dry dirt. The heat didn’t hit him again until he laid his bare feet into damp leaves. The sun had set some time ago, and exhaustion was taking it’s toll. Diana stumbled only a bit. She chose to keep going. She wanted to get home.

After his head fogged up with the humidity he’d ignored for hours, his memory went blank. All that became tangible was cool stone beneath his body at some point in the night. It chilled him until he slept, and Diana slept in front of him, facing him.

____

The sound of a pounding heart jarred him into consciousness. It could have been his own, but it could have just as well been Diana’s. He wasn’t used to whatever this was yet. There was the sound of rude discourse, one that inflicted a burning in his hands. He looked up, afraid to know what was happening. As the searing in his hands continued, feeling like he’d melt to the floor, he watched as Diana defended herself against someone. Their vague form didn’t revive any dead memories within him, but the dread that clogged his throat told him that he did know this person.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

It was sinister, causing fear to ripple through his body. He couldn’t figure out who this was, but they felt like an embodiment of everything bad in the world. Junhong couldn’t even choke out a response.

“I didn’t think you’d survive, you know?” They walked closer, tossing Diana to the side with a flick of his wrist. Junhong knew this was magic. Something told him it was.

The person laughed, meniacal, spiteful. They walked closer, and their silhouette filled out as the fire at his fingertips scratched out his features. “It seems like your friends really came through. Too bad they wasted their power on you. You’re as weak as ever. Look at you. Pathetic.”

He sneered, crouching down and sitting on his heels. His face was youthful, but his eyes were wild. Wide with something sinister, alive with a thirst for discord. His smile was sincere, but in a way that showed how drunk he was off of his own power. It was terrifying, but at the same time it was nothing short of disgusting.

“Hey, hey,” he said quietly, whisper gentle. He held Junhong’s face in his fingers, and his fingertips were seething with the residual heat from his extinguished flames. “You’re really cute up close. Maybe I will keep you.” He chewed on his bottom lip, thinking.

“You don’t remember, do you? That’s the sacrifice for a spell like that.” He sighed, looking to the stone floor before looking up again, manic smile back once again. “Let’s do something really fun. How about that? I know just what will jog your memory.”

The man lifted Junhong up by his chin, and Junhong was too paralysed in terror to do anything but follow his touch. His legs shook, but the nagging worry of displeasing whoever this was kept him upright.

“You used to talk a little more. I kind of mis when you’d fight back. Can’t be helped, I suppose.”

As the other turned around, Junhong parted his lips to ask the big question.

“Who am I?”

“Who are you? Good question. Excellent question. Knew you’d ask it when you stopped being afraid of your own shadow.” He laughed, shoulders juggling as the action made his whole body tremble. “Gods, you’re a good one. You’ll remember sooner or later, Junnie. Don’t worry your pretty little head.

“Can’t say I like your new hair, though. Should’ve found a better familiar.”