Echoed Lullabies (Lunar Chronicles x Reader)

Chapter 117

Winter picked up a stick from the ground and tossed it toward the protective fence around the enclosure, but the ghost Ryu just tilted his head to one side.

Sighing, she dropped her hands into her lap.

Her fits still came and went, but she'd been deemed lucid enough that the doctors allowed her to make the decision: Would she rather remain in the med-clinic, where she could be restrained when her outbursts came, or would she rather be outfitted with shock bracelets that could incapacitate her when needed? She had chosen this imaginary freedom, thinking of Ryu and how his own collar would never let him leave the enclosure that must have seemed very escapable at first.

Jacin hated the idea. He had argued that her mind was fragile enough without fearing random shocks. But Winter had needed to get out of the clinic. She had needed to get away from the nightmares that haunted her.

She came to the menagerie often since her release, finding it one of the few serene places in a city that was fluttering with talk of reconstruction and political change. This was all very important, of course. She had always wanted her country to be a place where the people could speak their mind and be treated fairly, where people were given choices over the life they wanted to live. But the talk of it made her head hurt. When the world started to spin out of control she found it best to remove herself to somewhere peaceful and solitary, where she couldn't hurt anyone but herself.

The delusions were no longer constant like they had been in the days following the battle, although her mind still tricked her into seeing her stepmother's shadow in the palace, waiting with a sharpened knife and cruelly kind words. Or the flash of Aimery's eyes following her down the corridors. Too often she smelled the blood dripping down the walls.

The first time she'd come to the menagerie, Ryu's ghost had been waiting for her.

In the uncertainty of the revolution, the gamekeepers had run away, and had yet to be found. The animals had been hungry and restless, and Winter had spent the whole day hunting down the storage rooms where the food was kept, cleaning out the cages, and turning the menagerie back into the sanctuary she'd always known it to be. When Jacin had come looking for her, he conscripted servants to help too.

Staying busy helped. It was not a cure, but it helped. As far as anyone cared, she was the gamekeeper now, though everyone still called her Princess and pretended she didn't smell like manure.

Ryu laid his head in Winter's lap and she stroked him between the ears, this sad ghost who wouldn't play fetch anymore.

"Princess."

Ryu evaporated. Jacin was leaning against the enclosure wall.

"You don't have to call me that, you know," she said, brushing her hair back from her shoulders. "There was a time when you called me Winter."

He leaned his elbows on the enclosure wall. "There was also a time when I could come visit you without feeling like I was supposed to toss bread crumbs to earn your favor."

"Bread crumbs? Do I look like a goose?"

He tilted his head to the side. "You don't look like an arctic wolf, either, but that's what the plaque tells me I'm looking at."

Winter leaned back on her hands. "I will not play fetch," she said, "but I might howl if you ask nicely."

He grinned. "I've heard your howl. It's not very wolf-like, either."

"I've been practicing."

"You won't bite me if I come in there, will you?"

"I make no guarantees."