The Ghosts and their Graves

As soon as the sun sank below the horizon, Lee watched the village in front of his shift and morph into something new.

The wood of the buildings twisted and melded themselves into stone, shining a dull, cobalt blue with the slightest swirls of green in their edges and the gaps between each and every brick.

The stills of the buildings still remained wood though, the bamboo supports jutting out at their upwards angles, creating diamonds and triangles and ladders against the sides of the lake.

The grass shone bright white from their tips, the small, firefly spores calmly floating upwards up towards the black starry sky above him.

Lee turned his head high up to the sky to gaze up at the warm, fuzzy white stretched splotch of the Milky Way galaxy. The small, balls of light looked as if they were rising to become stars up there.

Lee stepped out into the village and looked around him.

He felt a sudden hard pat on his back and whipped his head up to see the God of Strength standing at his back.

Lee's face scrunched up as he struggled to find something to say after what had happened in the morning. He turned away, looking down briefly, before looking out to the lake.

His eyes widened as he saw the mirror like surface began shift and swirl, the water deepening and hollowing out in the centre.

Lee stepped forward, towards the coast, to get closer and to see if there was anything more to the patterns that appeared and made themselves known. They carried the lines of light the stars and the grasses made. White and silver was stretched out into thin, twisting lines, crisscrossing and intertwining into ethereal embraces that radiated calmness and serenity.

A harsh grip on his shoulders reminded him of where he was and brought him back down into reality.

Lee forced his legs to retrace his steps and bring him back to the space in front of the God of Strength, as if he were on a leash.

"It's not safe to move around yet. I'll tell you when it is," he whispered into Lee's ears, keeping his voice down and hushed along with the rest of the town.

A stream of light began to pour out from the centre of the water, shining up like a silvery beam from the moon upwards in a singular beam upwards and outwards.

The hollow pit of light expanded, pushing the water out and away, higher and higher, up onto the shore and through the cracks and crevices of the earth, flooding the village and obscuring all the grasses.

Lee watched the rapids and currents slip through the gaps of where all the stilts stood, holding their buildings and structures high up from the wetness and preserving the strength of the small compartments that they really were.

Those buildings that were not placed on stilts had their stone walls stained and marred by the water, corresponding to the exact markings engraved into the wood during the day and the time of the sun.

The water pooled around Lee's legs, soaking through his trousers and the bottom of his robes, pouring into his boots and freezing his feet.

The water was ice cold and Lee found his body shaking with effort to even keep standing. His strength was being sapped out of his being into that glowing, blue water.

Lee gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, trying to focus on the remaining heat in his body and to redirect it into his increasingly immobile lower limbs and appendages.

Lee had no idea for how long he was stood there, steadied only by the hands of the God of Strength keeping him upright, siphoning the warmth off from him in an attempt to almost stay alive.

But when he opened his eyes, he was met with the vision of his dream.

There were all sorts of people who walked the streets up and down through the village. There were mothers manning the entrances of buildings doing their tasks with children and pets bounding through the empty buildings and rooms.

There were animals climbing up and down the ladders between the buildings, birds perched on rooves, chirping out their songs, and squirrels with fat cheeks, jumping from the head of one child to another in a humorous dance.

Lee watched all the figures of life, the blue light that shone from the sides of their faces, the green tendrils that ran through the strands of their hair, the feathers of the pheasants and song birds not immune to the effect.

"Can- Can they h- hear us and..." Lee stuttered out, his limbs still shaking from the temperature shock and the seemingly magical water of the lake.

"Yes. We can hear you, young lad, and I saw you eat your lunch in my storage room!" one old lady lashed out and grumbled at Lee, bringing her face close to his own, close enough to feel the cold and snow radiating off from her skin.

Lee automatically flinched backwards at her mean expression and he staggered back a few steps into the God of Strength's chest.

The hard surface that he hit began shaking up and down.

Lee twisted his body round, slightly annoyed at being parted from the new heat source that he had plastered himself against.

The God of Strength's face was twisted upwards, his eyes shining bright, lips upturned and wide.

Lee glared at him, making his feelings very clear about the situation.

The people here were ghosts and they had seen what had been going on during the day. The God of Strength knew.

And he didn't tell Lee.

The bastard, the little shit, let Lee go on through his embarrassing day where he stole a bunch of paper and writing equipment.

He had walked all the way through the manor. He had kicked up the straw in the shed. He had trounced around naked in the morning.

Lee needed to go and apologise, especially to Zhang Yuan.