Regroup, Part 1 (Sad Route)

Irade

May 11, 12:22 pm BT – 10:22 am UT, Somewhere In The Tian Shan Mountain Range, China

Irade didn't expect the mountain to be so hot.

Then again, she didn't really expect it to be so green either. Irade was getting sick of the soft, squelching feeling of her foot sinking into the ground beneath her as she stepped up the mountain. She was getting tired of all the trees blocking her way, and how she needed to weave through them while going up.

She had asked Black Wind why they couldn't just fly to where they needed to go, to which Black Wind simply answered that she was more than welcome to do so. When she didn't Black Wind had snorted.

"So you already know the benefits of conserving your magic," he had said. "How wise...for a human."

Irade was also getting sick of how Black Wind always looked down on humans.

"Did humans kill your family or something?" she asked at one point.

Black Wind had stared at her blankly.

"What do you mean?"

"For you to hate humans so much," Irade clarified, stepping past another tree. "Did humans like, kill your family or something?"

"I don't have a family," said Black Wind indifferently. "And I don't hate humans."

Irade gave Black Wind a look. For the first time, she felt like he was not being honest. it didn't seem like he was doing it out of maliciousness. But still.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," she said dryly, approaching another tree. She tried to swing around it, grabbing the trunk with her arms to propel herself upwards, only to remember she didn't have a left arm anymore. She stumbled and fell on her back, somehow managing to twist around at the last second before impact.

"Focus," Black Wind growled, approaching her.

Irade grumbled as she got up, dusting herself off. She was doing a lot better than before, but every now and then, she forgot that she didn't have an arm anymore, which lead to situations like this.

Every time she was reminded that she lost an arm, it was like a punch to the gut. Being reminded made her feel incomplete, like she was less than what she was before. Not that she had a good idea of who she was even then.

"Are you sure you know where we are going?" asked Black Wind, snapping Irade out of her thoughts. Secretly grateful to be pulled out of her spiral, Irade answered:

"Kind of."

"...what sort of nonsense human answer is that?" Black Wind growled. Irade looked back at him, and raised an eyebrow.

"It means I know the general direction, but I don't know the exact place," Irade replied, and turned back forwards. She needed to focus.

Her goal was that one, white-topped mountain. She had re-oriented herself yesterday, and was certain that this was the right direction to get there.

But Irade was suddenly struck with a realization. She stopped dead in her tracks, reeling.

Once they did arrive there though, where would she go?

She didn't have the map anymore; it was left back at the gorge. How was she supposed to find Kashgar without a map?

Black Wind bumped into Irade, startling her. He looked up at her, clearly annoyed.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I...may be..." Irade hesitated to tell him. She felt ashamed that she had been leading him for a whole day towards a destination that wouldn't even help them in the end. She didn't want to admit her mistake. She knew that Black Wind would chew her out for leading him on such a pointless journey.

So she didn't tell him.

"Nothing," she said. "I just...remembered to ask. What is your name?"

Black Wind stared up at her and tilted his head, confused.

"Name?" he asked.

"What do other people call you?" she explained. "For example, my name is Irade."

"Irade?" Black Wind seemed very confused. "That is what other...humans call you?"

"Yes."

"What does it mean?"

Irade was stunned for a moment. She looked away, towards the direction they had been heading.

"I don't know," she said after a while.

"You don't know what you are called?" asked Black Wind. But instead of condescending, he sounded confused.

Irade sighed, and crossed her arms. Or she tried to, before remembering once more.

"It's...complicated," she said. Then after a moment:

"It was the name my parents gave me, but I got separated from them when I was young."

Black Wind nodded slowly.

"A promise unfulfilled then," he said understandingly. "Is that why you're so far from your...cities, you call them? In order to find your parents and have them teach you what they meant to teach you?"

Irade blinked in surprise. She hadn't expected Black Wind to catch on so quickly.

"Well...not exactly," she said. She started walking towards the mountain once more. It wasn't like she knew anywhere else to go.

"I'm just...I'm just trying to find out who...or what...I am, I guess," said Irade.

For a long time, the two of them walked in silence.

"I don't understand humans," Black Wind said suddenly. "How can you not know what you are?"

"I know what I am," said Irade. "I want to know who I am."

"What's the difference?"

Irade had to think about that for a while.

"What's the difference between you and any other wolf?" she ended up asking.

"My eyes," Black Wind answered immediately. "My fur. My voice. My thoughts. My very being."

"Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to find," said Irade.

Black Wind shook his head.

"How can you lose your voice, or your thoughts?" he mocked lightly. "They're with you right now."

"Yeah, well, I can't really tell which ones are my thoughts, and which ones are the thoughts that other people have told me that I have internalized," Irade muttered.

It took a while before Irade realized that Black Wind wasn't following her anymore. She looked back to find him sitting up, looking at her with an expression she was very familiar with.

Pity.

"What?" she said, annoyed. She hated that look.

"...Nothing," said Black Wind shaking his head. "It's noth-"

"No, tell me," Irade interrupted. "What?"

"It'll only make you mad."

"Then let me get mad!"

Black Wind sighed.

"I think, for the first time, I understand humans a little," he said. "You spend so much time with each other you forget how to be yourself."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she snapped.

"It means you're so afraid of being alone that you'll fill any gaps in yourself with other people," sighed Black Wind. "Even if those thoughts don't fit you or who you are."

Irade thought about that for a moment, then nodded.

"You're right," she said. "I am mad."

If Black Wind had eyebrows, Irade was sure he would have raised them. He watched her balled fist shake in anger.

"I did tell you," he said nonchalantly.

"You...shut up!" Irade huffed and stormed off. Moments later, Black Wind followed her, annoying her even more.

"I'm looking for water, go away," she snapped, not looking behind her.

"I can smell a river," said Black Wind. "But it's towards the right-"

"I'll find a different one!"

Irade decisively turned left, and started heading in that direction. After a few minutes of storming off, she looked behind to find that Black Wind had disappeared.

For some reason, this annoyed her even more. On top of that, the fact that she was annoyed at Black Wind for doing what she asked annoyed her even more.

Irade wanted to punch something bad, but held it back. She remembered what happened at the gorge; who knew what kind of disaster knocking over a tree up the mountains could lead to?

But then again, it wasn't like anyone else was up here. It wasn't like it would actually affect another human being.

And Irade's rage was reaching a boiling point. The more she thought about how annoyed she was, the more it seemed to fuel the rage. Why was she so annoyed? Why was she getting mad at Black Wind, when he told her that she would? She had asked for it. She had no right to get so annoyed.

All of this just because he gave her a look?

God, why was she like this?

Why was she so annoyed all the damn time?

Was she the problem?

Was she the reason everything was terrible?

Irade grit her teeth.

No, no, no, she knew where this lead, she knew that if she let her anger fade and the thoughts take over, she would just end up sad and stuck and thinking and wanting to kill herself and she didn't want to feel that sickly sad feeling, no she didn't want this she didn't want none of this just stop just stop just sto-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

The next thing Irade knew, she was on the floor, panting, eyes welling up with tears. Her fist stung, but only barely. She looked to her side, and found the tree she hand punched fallen over.

Irade had turned around and swung at the closest tree there had been, then had promptly lost her balance. Once again, the lack of her arm had left her too unsteady to stay upright. She was getting sick of falling over because of not being able to balance right. She was getting sick of the feeling of soft, mushy mud under the grass on her head in these mountains. Who gave them the right to be so weirdly squishy?

But that was besides the point. She was fourteen, almost fifteen. She was supposed to know how to stand upright. She was supposed to know how to throw a punch. She was supposed to know how to eat food without making a mess.

She was supposed to be in school, making friends. She was supposed to play video games at the internet cafe, beating sweaty try-hards and making them mad. She was supposed to be stressing about exams, thinking about boys, hating her teachers for being mean, sharing stories about crushes with other girls and learning how to do that wing-thing with eyeliner.

She was supposed to just be a normal girl.

She was supposed to have two arms.

...

But she wasn't. And now, because of her own, stupid choices, she didn't.

Irade stared up at the blurry sky, biting back her sob. Despite the tears already rolling down her face, she didn't want to cry. Crying meant that she lost. It meant that she was weak. It meant that she cared about these stupid things that she was thinking about.

...

But she did care, didn't she?

Despite everything she had been through, despite everything that had happened to her, all Irade wanted was to go back to Beijing and make friends. To go to school and be a normal girl. Despite knowing that she was on the run from the literal government. Despite knowing that the everyone there hated her. Despite knowing that no matter what she did, how she presented herself, or how hard she licked the boots of the people standing over her, they would never accept her.

How pathetic. How hopeless.

"Uuu...nnngggaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"

Irade couldn't hold it in. For the first time in her life, Irade allowed herself to cry. Unlike back at the hotel, where she had been too tired to make any decision, this was a conscious choice.

Irade cried and cried, her voice carrying through the mountain. She cried for what felt like hours, before finally setting down into small sobs.

Sniffling, she wiped her face with her one arm. She stared up at the sky blocked by tree trunks and leaves, the light filtering down. She felt a lot better than before; crying that hard had been weirdly cathartic, allowing all her anger and resentment to flow out of her. She felt oddly lighter, emotionally, but also kind of drained.

Maybe she needed a good cry every now and then, she wondered, slowly getting up. Her throat was a little dry; she had cried quite a lot.

She got up, only to see a handsome boy, staring at her from a few meters away, looking up at her as if she were a ghost.