Chances

The scroll remained still on that small grassy patch, laid in the centre of a beam of sunlight, those glowing rays the prison bars of the creature's pitiful prison cell.

Lee watched aghast from his place within the light, feeling the pricking heat against his cold skin, and lowering the goosebumps which covered his arms. He sat, transfixed, within the sunlight, feeling its warmth and energy.

That same warmth had the power to burn and maim. To melt the limbs of life, spark fires, and kill.

Yet it still nourished his crops.

Lee hated it.

Lee felt dirty and disgusting.

An all consuming guilt threatened to swallow him whole and leave him with nothing left. It wrapped around his legs like chains, locking him into a position where he could not hope to leave. It moved to bind his arms together, rendering them useless, other than to lie limp by his sides. It reared its ugly head in its chest. Lee remembered all the horrible things he had said and thought about the being, and cried tears in repentance.

The monster that had been chasing him was a fallen God.

His guilt and offerings of sadness would not be accepted. The heavens and karma demanded that evil be destroyed, yet here he was, mourning his hateful thoughts against a demon. What he was doing was heretical and demanded punishment.

What was he supposed to do here?

Lee shut his eyes, and waited for the world around him to stop swirling. He panted out harshly, breathing in and choking on the smell of the grass.

Lee decided that he wouldn't care what the heavens thought. He had already broken the laws of filial piety to save one of the unfortunate village girls from his mother's rage and insults, as well as a lifetime of having to deal with a man who could not love her. The laws of the heavens and of Karma did not matter to him.

He would do what he liked and he would apologise for his actions. He would mourn this being.

The creature had been cursed into this form and had these desires thrust upon him. It wasn't his fault. All he wanted to do was live, and this was the only way possible with the wrath of heaven against him.

If one opposed heaven, they would become something less than human, the most dull and mediocre species on the planet. What would happen if the Jade Emperor was ever wrong? What would happen if heaven's judgement was wrong? How did heaven arrive at the decisions they made? What made them so sure that they were always right and just?

The twin who had left was abundantly clear that he believed in the judgement of heaven, damning his brother to this wretched fate for questioning him.

Were the Gods really infallible, or was it all an elaborate ruse?

Were the Gods just like the Luo family, individuals who happened to be richer and could use that resource to exert their power and dominance, for their own gain?

It didn't matter.

Lee was wrong to have been so cruel.

He covered his mouth in shock and cried silent tears as the monster continued to writhe under the blanket, trying desperately to pull the whole length of the cloth over itself, continuously failing when the blanket pulled upwards, the being too large to fully place himself under that small protection.

Lee's heart tore when he heard it make small, chirping sounds, as if the being were a small, wounded bird, crying for help away from predators, endlessly thrashing, desperate to move to somewhere safe. It was essentially a baby though, existing only in this world for a few scant minutes, and already burned and in pain.

Lee's heart went out to the creature, and he crawled over to the scroll, dragging his body by his elbows to that particularly well lit patch of grass.

He dropped the peanuts that he held down onto the floor, thankful for the hard shells that hadn't completely collapsed and grinded into dust, in his hands. He reach out to the fine paper, wrapped around the wooden rod, and watched numbly as his hand passed through it, like he didn't exist.

It looked exactly like the scroll he had found under the floorboards of his mother's room, and he was at a loss, thinking about he had managed to come in possession of it.

He placed his hand through it once more, and then repeated the action again, just in case. Lee looked around himself and saw that he didn't have a shadow. He fell to the ground once more and curled up, keeping his eyes on the scroll and the creature in the hut.

It had plastered itself onto one of the walls, and had draped the blanket over itself, the top of it's eyes peeking out from underneath, where the darkest shadows were, its vision locked on the scroll and keeping a vigil.

Lee felt almost as if we was being mocked. He had first squandered the opportunity to read the scroll, maddened by his lack of privacy at home and no free time, most of it spent in the fields. Then, when he had escaped the ever judging eyes of the villagers and his mother, he had been so preoccupied with escaping, that he had neglected to unfurl the scroll and read it then.

He thought back to his mother.

She would have thrown a full blown tantrum, throwing belongings over the house, breaking things. She would have screamed so loudly that everyone in the village probably would have heard. She probably would have ripped all his remaining belongings into shreds and then burned them.

At some point, she would turn to Little Mei, forced to watch all of this and bear it, and ask if she was a bad mother. If there was anything she could have done to improve herself. What did she do to be given such an ungrateful son? Should she cast herself into the fire to atone for her mistakes, her son's mistakes? You wouldn't leave me right, A-Lian. You wouldn't leave your poor mother Wei MeiLian? She's just been abandoned by both her husband and her son. You wouldn't leave me, right? If you do, I'll just kill myself.

Lee remembered the night when his father passed. He remembered how his mother had reacted to the news.

She cursed him for being a useless son. She screamed at him for not stopping his father from deciding to drink with the rest of the men, ignoring how his father never once even looked at him properly. She slapped his face until his cheeks leaked blood, where her nails tore open his skin. She punched and kicked at his chest and legs, shrieking into his ear how he was the one who should have died, being the more useless one. She tried to choke him, whispering how it wasn't fair.

That the world was falling apart all around her. She whispered how he needed to listen to her, and do everything she said now, no more asking useless questions. He was now the breadwinner of the household. He was her son. She had carried him for nine months and then gave birth to him. She had power over his life. She could destroy him.

Lee remembered how his sister later reported how he had failed to adequately clean the cuts on his face, and his mother then screamed at him for it.

He remembered filing the day as a stand out day, now thinking about it. A day made especially shocking later, how his mother crawled into his bed at night, and demanded, over his prone body, pretending to sleep," You wouldn't leave me."

"Don't leave me alone, please,"

A little girl's sobbing echoed through the glade.

Lee opened his eyes and looked upon her curled up beside a tree. She wore a dull brown robe, and her had been messily braided upwards into two buns atop her head. She was crying into her arms, her knees bent into her chest and the faint calls of "A-Li, where are you?" were carried towards Lee on the wind.

The girl just pressed herself further into the three and muffled her voice. Lee watched her sleeves soak her tears and lamented further at his uselessness.

After some time, the girl's crying hiccupped to a stop, and she wiped her eyes. She stood up, and finally looked around where she was. She briefly froze and her eyes went wide, as her head darted from side to side, and she spun her body around, several times over, her skirts fanning out as she did so.

Her eyes focussed on the glade, and she walked into it, looking upwards at the sun, her hand covering just over her eyes.

She looked down and saw the scroll. Leaning over, she picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It accidently completely unrolled, and Lee sat up, looking over the paper and deciding to read it.