Bad Dreams

On a cold winter night, the air was thick with ocean salt, the city had long since fallen silent, and the Emperor and Empress were sound asleep together in the palace. Other than the guards walking around, protecting the palace from intruders, the only sound being made was of the young prince tossing and turning, draped in luxuriant bedsheets of silk.

Tangled in his many expensive coverings, Shen mumbled and grasped at his bed and his blankets, whilst turning like he was having a tantrum.

"Mama? Baba? Where are you?" Shen called out. 

He was a fickle white peachick sat in the middle of the tower of the sacred flame. His cries for his parent's attention reverberated through the entire structure, bouncing off of every wall and floor. The echoing didn't cease, perhaps even getting louder.

"Mama? Baba?, Mama? Baba?, Mama? Baba?"

All the little prince could hear was his own voice echoing back to him. The echo started to change. The voice was getting more and more desperate. Its loudness started to overwhelm Shen, so he held his head and closed his eyes, his crest shaking in fear.

Shen's spine started to shiver, the voices kept on getting louder and louder, until he opened his eyes and screamed.

He opened his eyes, now he was in a completely black room. He recognized the smell and the feeling of the tiles underneath his talons. It was his dormitory, in the palace grounds. But there wasn't a light, lantern or torch anywhere. There wasn't even moonlight coming in through the windows. It was completely black.

The door opened, a bright white line shone in, and in the door was stood his parents.

But... something wasn't right.

They were staring at him. Not in a loving, parental way. They were giving him the coldest, most reptilian, most dismissive and most borderline threatening stare he had ever received, despite the way people looked at him in the street.

Their heads pivoted as Shen ran towards them, keeping their eyes locked directly onto him. They towered over him, after all he was only young, and only a second before he could grab onto his mother's robes, they turned their heads back towards the door. Their bodies shifted, and they started to walk out. Shen followed them.

"Mama! Baba! Why are you leaving me!? Why are you leaving me!?" The peachick cried in desperation.

The lord and lady gave no response, and continued walking. Shen started walking faster, then he realized that he wasn't any closer. He started sprinting, hoping to get Lian's attention by grabbing and pulling on his tail, but no matter how quickly he ran, the blue peacock kept on getting farther and farther away.

Shen quickly got out of breath, when all of the sudden his throat was full of smoke. He started coughing, as the white void around him faded into some sort of birch forest. His parents were still there, now running through smoke and snow, looking above him. Shen could hear heavy footsteps behind him, and the familiar panting of the wolf guards whilst in pursuit.

He looked either side of him, and he saw the guards, many carrying torches and the rest carrying swords and hammers. He saw the glow of a huge fire, somewhere in the distance, and huge pillars of smoke rising above the birch canopies.

His parents were finally getting closer, but they were still running. They glanced over their shoulders with vibrant, oppressive red light illuminating their faces and reflecting from their fearful eyes. They weren't running from Shen, they were running from someone, or something, behind him.

Shen froze and turned around, to see a huge white peacock, wearing silk robes, brandishing a flame-shaped guandao. His feathers were soaked in ash and blood, and he had a fire in his eyes that only something truly furious and evil could possess.

Young Shen shrieked in horror, and started running again. The snow was getting deeper and thicker, and his legs felt like they were made of lead. He collapsed into the snow, turning on his back to behold the white peacock in his full glory.

The big white peacock charged, his sword held out in front of him, aiming up towards the smoky sky. The peacock jumped into the air, the turbulence from his fanned-out tail caused the fire to curl in unnatural patterns, ash and snow and ember flew through the air current, forming a symbol resembling an eye. The peacock, in mid-air, positioned his sword downwards, and fell towards the sickly peachick.

As he fell, the leucistic peacock let out a terrifying peacock's call, that seemed to clear the air of snow and smoke in a shockwave, and as he descended the tip of his blade got closer and closer to Shen's chest.

Shen was frozen with fear, and didn't have the strength to dodge, so he looked in horror as the massive peacock's blade pierced through his abdomen.

Shen jolted up from his bed. He was okay. He patted his chest, but there was no wound. He smelled his feathers, there wasn't a hint of ash. He stared blankly at a wall for a few seconds, before he started to cry loudly. 

Hearing the peachick sob and scream, the Soothsayer, in the other part of the dormitory got up to see Shen in his bed sat upright, sobbing profusely.

"Shen! Did you hurt yourself? Is everything alright?" She said, alarmed, coming onto the bed and checking the chick's body for wounds.

"Mama and baba don't love me! Mama and baba don't love me!" Shen wept into the soothsayer's shoulder, his nude body shivering from the cold.

 "Shen, my dear, did you have a bad dream?" The soothsayer calmly asked him.

"Yes, yes, mama and baba left me, there were voices, I was in a forest and a peacock was chasing me!" he said through salty tears.

"A peacock was chasing you? Who? Your baba?" Ah Mah looked concerned. She had remembered a vision she saw a fortnight ago, and had always kept a record of Shen's dreams.

"No no, a white peacock, like me." Shen whimpered.

The soothsayer's eyes widened. She had foretold that in fifteen years, a great tragedy would befall China, involving an albino animal. She hadn't seen what animal it was, but it was some sort of bird. She prayed that it wasn't a peacock, but to her dismay that animal was the very animal weeping into her arms. There was only one white peacock in all of China.

"Mama and baba don't love me! They don't want me, nana!" Shen said, tears streaming down his face, the salt sticking his feathers together.

Soothsayer said nothing. She just held him as he cried. If she said that they do want to be with him, she would be lying. If she admitted that they didn't, she would break his already shattered heart.

They did love him, but they viewed him as weak and ready to drop dead at any moment. They didn't want to see their son suffer, as they had heard stories from the Soothsayer that he was constantly ill and he was constantly on the brink of life and death. But what the Soothsayer knew was too heavy to say to them. It wasn't illness, or weakness. It was stress, caused by never seeing them.

Shen just wanted his mama and baba.