26 Disconnecting Puzzle Pieces

Xiao Ying, lying down on the floor of a room that he intimately recognised, after staring at it for hours in a chair, after crafting it and basing it off the most generic Xianxia setting room that had conglomerated and fused into a bland, pizza dough mish mash in his mind.

He immediately jumped up, jerking his entire body up into standing position as fast as he could, watching the world swirl around him violently, forcing him back down on his knees, hand downs on the ground supporting his body.

Feeling as if he was fighting for each and every breath he was taking, Xiao Ying closed his eyes and hoped to ride out the sickness that he was facing, trying his hardest to resist dry heaving onto the floor.

He brought one hand up to his mouth, keeping it flat over where he felt saliva pooling up, running his fingers through the liquid as he despaired over the strange, almost non existent texture and ghostly feel of what was there.

His fingers glided through as if the transparent liquid wasn't even there, despite the clear feelings of his jaw and mouth, and the sharp, wet sensation of the very liquid itself.

Xiao Ying brought his fingers back into his line of sight, and watched the semi transparent liquid settle and almost evaporate, in front of his very eyes, gulping as he saw the whole process happen in only a few seconds.

Closing his eyes, Xiao Ying forced himself to breathe heavily, listening and becoming aware of his racing heart beat, the loudness of the sound almost deafening him as the organ beat as loudly as the booming drums that his school sometimes brought out on festival days.

As soon as he was sure that the very motions of forcing his legs to support all his weight wouldn't cause him to pass out, Xiao Ying let himself slowly stand up, stepping back only once to steady himself as he rose up to his full height.

The first thing that he noticed was that he had a view of where he was, not nearly from the exact height that he was used to, the floor looking closer to him than it normally did.

With the second thing being that Ming Cheng really was there, sat on the bed in front of him, still in Lan Chang's arms and completely frozen solid.

Xiao Ying blinked, feeling himself startle and flinch, his arms and legs locking up and almost sending himself falling back to the floor.

He stumbled back a few more paces, tripping over something silky as he did so, into the door frame of the room, settling his back against the wood to try and support himself, gripping the door handle as hard as he could to try and keep himself from sinking to the floor.

It was then that Xiao Ying realised that he was no longer dressed in the comfortable jeans and T shirt that he had spent the last few days in.

He looked down at his body and immediately noticed the prominent protrusion which prevented him from viewing his upper torso, and realising that the fancy robes that he was wearing, a shimmering turquoise colour that rippled and shone with every movement he made, was decorated with the sprawling image of phoenixes.

The wings of one great giant one were wrapped around his chest, reaching out and sprawling over his shoulders and down his sleeves, a great plume of feathers being draped downwards to the hems of the robes at the bottom, the inner body curled around in the centre of the robe with the head of the phoenix resting squarely just above the centre of the robes where the stomach would be.

Several smaller phoenixes curled around where the sleeves began and climbed their way upwards over Xiao Ying's arms, with the slight hints and indications of another, mirror phoenix on Xiao Ying's back, only with its body flipped to be flying upwards, rather than downwards instead.

As Xiao Ying trembled with each and every realisation he made, he felt the shifting and flow of the many robes that he wore underneath this blue outer set that he was currently wearing, and his head, beginning to feel heavier and heavier, under the weight that it was now suddenly carrying, began to succumb to the urge to bow down in submission of the crown that it carried.

Without a second thought, Xiao Ying tugged his hands upwards, letting his sleeves fall down to his elbows without the grace of a lady who, in the station expected to don the clothes that he was currently wearing, would not ever show.

Each and every stupid, painful hairpin that was required to keep up the ridiculously heavy and cumbersome, elaborate hairstyle was pulled out quickly and summarily, without any preamble, Xiao Ying only hissing when he unintentionally snagged some hair that he hadn't meant to, ripping out several strands from his scalp accidently within the process.

The crown that he bared was pulled off easily, no real force needed to relinquish its grip from Xiao Ying's new head, and he felt all the better for it, all his newly acquired long tresses falling to the floor like a waterfall down a cliff.

Looking down at the shining, twisted gold, Xiao Ying gave a sigh and looked directly at Ming Cheng, not even particularly surprised that the small boy had decided to close his eyes and curl back into Lan Chang's rocking body.

She sang him the same song that Xiao Ying had been sung when he was a small child: the song of the pink birds in the happy trees of their jungle, a small, made up jingle created by his mother to put him to sleep when it was a baby.

Xiao Ying felt his eyes narrow though, as he tried to remember Lan Chang giving Ming Cheng this much comfort in the original story that he wrote.

He remembered giving them one heart to heart, that happened and finished quickly, and was never spoken of again, due to Lan Chang's increasing obsolescence in the story as Ming Cheng became more and more self reliant and alone.

He could certainly never remember her singing any sort of song to Ming Cheng, no less the one that she was singing now.