Feixiao x Jiaoqiu

In the early hours of the morning, when cold dew, met by the artificial sun, slipped down from the supple white petals of flowering peonies and fell, Jiaoqiu would often stand at the door of his clinic and look down at it through his harrowed eyes. It’s only natural that the dew would fall; and, yes, it always does. It happens when nobody’s looking. It happens invisibly. But in a moment of stillness one morning, he saw through his harrowed eyes a dewdrop clinging to the petal. In this moment, the water cannot nurture the flower. And so why does it keep clinging? If it falls – when it falls – will it evaporate, and go back up, far into the sky yet again? Will this drop ever nurture the peony? Jiaoqiu’s face hardened. What does it mean to nurture when the entities are seemingly so indifferent? As he scowled, wanting to rip at himself, he looked up at the artificial sky dome, where starskiffs dotted that welkin, slowly drifting, all together, like frail white dandelion seeds. He traced them back, blowing out of his nose, to the Jade Gate’s steely black portal into space. He hated it. 

The only thing out there, on the other side of the “door,” was never-ending, ghastly war. Jiaoqiu imagined a set of two Foxian eyes, pretty, with a precious inlaid soul and hundreds of years of life, seared by red fire into mere smoldering residue. He looked at the starskiffs. Now they are returning from war. Now they are battered. How many of these pilots even have their eyes open right now? And yet they would go back, in time – back to war.

When water reaches its lowest point, what force draws it back up to the sky again, far away where it cannot nurture or be nurtured? It’s no wonder the water doesn’t try to think. Whether it nurtures or does not nurture hardly matters, because that force will inevitably draw it back up into the sky. The only constant is never-ending, ghastly, sorrowful, lonely war.

Jiaoqiu stepped into his clinic where a Foxian girl from another world lay in a gurney with her eyes closed. It’s one thing to see blood, and yet it’s another thing entirely to see her bleed. When other physicians passed by, overwhelmed by the myriad victims of this war, only Feixiao had grinned as her blood-reddened hospital garb soaked through and dripped onto the floor. When he closed her wounds and bandaged her, the mirth in Feixiao’s face shocked Jiaoqiu. Her pointed teeth decorated a smile with blood that dripped down her chin, painting her snow-white complexion with smears. And her cheeks, lifted with so much mirth, smiled with her. What was she smiling at?

“Jiaoqiu.”

He blinked. “How can I help you?”

“You’re always helping me.”

Jiaoqiu stepped back when he noticed her tongue stroking the back of her teeth.

“This is my clinic and you’re my patient. It’s only natural.”

“It’s only natural that you’re always helping me.” Feixiao continued smiling with her mouth open and stroking the back of her teeth with her tongue.

Just when Jiaoqiu was thinking she must be delirious, a cut reopened on the left side of her face, beneath the bandages where more than half of her porcelain features were gashed. A red spot soaked in. Her eyelids fluttered and closed, but she didn’t wince, and her mouth stayed open as Jiaoqiu stepped closer. She seemed to be taking in the feeling of her body’s reaction to the cut reopening. Alarmed, Jiaoqiu gingerly removed those wet bandages from her and opened his eyes a slight bit. This wasn’t the first time it happened. She had overexerted her facial muscles to this extent, despite such brutal and painful disfigurement by what appear to be animal claws. He thought to himself privately while wiping the wound with a cloth: she can’t move her arms or legs yet, but she’s bafflingly hyperactive even in the gurney. 

Jiaoqiu measured and cut fresh bandages at his workstation and quickly applied them to the affected area. Then he noticed Feixiao was looking at him. She closed her mouth.

“Jiaoqiu.”

He was intent on answering. “Yes? How can I help you?”

Feixiao breathed in and, without realizing it herself, she looked past him, out the window, where everything in the early morning sameness had become a blazing crimson moon. The clouds darkened into blotted shadows that shook her subconscious and the moon was there, encroaching, like a huge yet flickering monster, too monstrous to remain the focal point but too huge and red to look away from, spilling into the room, beating like a heart that with every pump invaded her mind and tore out who she was.

Jiaoqiu looked on as Feixiao continued smiling. He touched the underside of her chin. In a daze, without even meaning to check her pulse, he felt it. Hot air steamed out of Feixiao’s mouth. She quietly babbled under her breath. Jiaoqiu’s pupils shrank a little, though you wouldn’t see it by his cool demeanor. Still, he was shocked by her agitated behavior, so he leaned closer to hear.

Feixiao saw a blazing crimson moon. She couldn’t move. She was afraid. Then she saw the black silhouette of a Foxian. In her mind, she reached out to it.

“I’m hungry.”

The black silhouette vanished. In her mind she reached out to it, and when her eyes rotated in their sockets, looking down, she saw the tips of her fingers. She saw a flickering afterimage of flaring claws. They were her claws. Her vision smeared with speckles of vivid color as the claws, held out at arm’s length, sparked like flint with the blazing moon as their backdrop. She took air into her lungs. Elated, she smiled again, and the claws were cutting, and she felt so hungry, and she felt satiated by that hunger like it could be the foundation of who she was. She blinked and opened her eyes and the moon grew twice, dilating more and more, making her sink yet feel content. She felt like being hungry was a sweet milk pouring down her throat. Tears came out of her eyes. She swallowed nothing. Tears came out of her eyes again and her lips parted. And then she saw the silhouette of a Foxian intersect with the moon, and she was so hungry and it felt so good and her claws felt so good.

Jiaoqiu staggered back. Feixiao sent the gurney tumbling onto its side with a sudden clatter and leapt onto him. Her hands buried into his chest and she knocked him down onto his back. Thud! Her mouth slobbered. Straddling him she brayed like an animal and lunged into his chest.

Feixiao chased the shadow. It was right in front of her. She was so hungry. The Foxian made her so hungry! Hungry! It feels like my guts are dancing! Yes! Being hungry feels so, so good! My claws feel very good! She opened her mouth, huffed, and saw sparkling afterimages and red floaters bend the space in front of her, twisting the clinic apart like prey. She turned her neck and bit into the hole she had pulled apart.

Jiaoqiu went limp and allowed Feixiao to bite into the bowl of porridge on his chest, too scared to touch her and reopen another wound. Her nose and mouth crashed into the bowl, and he felt her teeth, tongue, and nose rubbing against the bottom of the bowl through his shirt. His heart beat harder and he felt his face go pale. The bowl tipped to the side, still on his chest, and Feixiao craned her neck to burrow into it, scraping at Jiaoqiu with her fingernails. The bowl went rolling up the side of his shoulder and Feixiao pounced. Jiaoqiu reflexively stuck his arm out and felt her supple body under the clinic gown but hesitated to push her away.

Feixiao’s eyes smiled as her cheeks filled up with meat. The red moon pulsed like it was singing. The clinic broke apart like glass, leaving only a thin beady red trailing wire.There, it won’t stop skittering! I’ll get it! Awoo!! Awoo!! 

The bowl of splattered porridge rolled on its side and lay beside Jiaoqiu’s neck. Before he could stand or even pull away, Feixiao captured him, grasping his head with all ten fingers. One of her fingers penetrated his ear and made him shudder. Feixiao’s tongue lolled out as she snapped at the bowl, licking up porridge. Then she burrowed into it and, sensing the thin wire outside her mouth like it was inside her mouth, she kept biting, clanging her sharp teeth against the bottom of the bowl. It’s pulsing! It’s pulsing! I’ll pop it open!

Jiaoqiu felt every desperate lunge toward him, and Feixiao’s lips and tongue beat against the bottom of the bowl, reverberating and pinching the vein in the side of his neck. Through  Feixiao’s blood-wetted finger plugging his ear, he heard rushing blood like the sea and a woman’s lonely wailing.

And then it subsided. Feixiao pulled up her neck. Above her the crimson moon had vanished like it was never there. She looked down and saw the Foxian, no longer a silhouette but now, without a doubt, it’s a disheveled, breathless Jiaoqiu. But she didn’t let go of him.

Jiaoqiu spoke: “Are you feeling calmer?” He felt Feixao’s hands shiver.

Feixiao put her tongue back into her mouth: “I wasn’t myself, was I?”

“Yes, you were yourself.”

“But–”

“You were yourself.”

Outside the clinic, the dewdrop fell.

Feixao let her tongue peek out of her mouth again. She had thought this man was on her side. But she never realized that he knew. She traced her fingers down his head, lightly, until they rested at the base of his jaw, so she could feel it more when he spoke to her.