Poem for the Ink Lotus // 墨荷的诗

C2 - Sea of Dreams | 夢海

- Sea of Dreams | 夢海 -

The grass gave a soft crunch beneath his feet as he made his way to the river just outside the town he resides in. Across the river was a forest that not many people would venture into. Not because it was dark, and looks like it has ghosts or spirits, but because in this area, the people are very religious towards natural things.

They say that gods and heavenly spirits that would descend from heaven into the mortal realm to cultivate. Sometimes, they come down and live in forests or rivers to communicate with the animals and trees. Most of the time, they descend to protect the humans from harmful spirits and demons.

Dan Xi believes in half of what the people say. He has been surrounded by historical books written by historical figures, and in all the books he had read, none of them never mentioned about heaven or hell, gods or demons. It was safe to assume that Dan Xi was a rather logical person.

Though with logic, sometimes there are things that just doesn't make sense. When he was five, he had the chance to accompany his father into the imperial city to greet a well known martial artist. And in front of his very eyes, the martial artist made a flower bloom, healed the small wound on a servant's palm and kissed a tree back to life. No book every spoke of this, no poem ever describe the beauty of "magic".

Because of that, he started to be confused, started to doubt everything that he knew. Even until now, he still can't seem to understand it at all.

Dan Xi walked further from where the townspeople usually go to, and he prays that no one would tell his parents about this. Sometimes, older boys would play in the river near their town, and Dan Xi would like to avoid them as best as possible. He wasn't the most skilled when it came to combat, and there aren't any martial artists in his town so he can learn.

Once he was out of the sight of anyone he might know, he crouched down by the river bank and undressed. Then, grabbing the extra clothes he had, he put them on as quick as possible and prayed that no one is around to see the entire scene unfold. Rolling the white and black sleeves on his arms, he dropped the dirty clothes into the river.

「All right, time to work.」

He scrubbed the fabric back and forth at the spot where the cloth was stained and slowly, black ink started oozing off of his clothes.

It all started after the lady and young girl left. He started to daydream and didn't look at where he was going. He ended up knocking over the bottles of ink his family kept and it fell all over his clothes.

His father is not going to be happy about this.

He had been warned countless of times to be aware of his surroundings and not think of anything else when on the job. But his mind wonders all over the place, and this leaves to many unfortunate situations, which is why his parents are never happy with leaving him all alone despite him being seventeen.

Dan Xi had closed up the store, grabbed an extra pair of clothes along with books and brushes to give an excuse if he were caught. But the main purpose of the books were to cover the ink on his clothes from the crowds.

I should have been more careful! Dan Xi thought as he scrubbed on the fabric.

After a couple minutes, the water around him turned black. It didn't occur to him that there were fish and plants living in the river until he caught a glimpse of a lotus on the river surface. The lotus was white, but slightly pink. It doesn't look like the regular fully pink lotus he usually sees in the town, so he could only assume the soil around here wasn't nutritious enough.