Devouring the Heavens (ATG)

A garden so beautiful, it would be impossible to exist in the mortal world.

A crystal clear pond disturbed only by the long swaying branches of a crooked Chinese willow and the playful splashes of several colourful Koi as they frolicked just beneath the surface.

The barely audible sound of a young girl's weeping…

Three words, a question spoken, "Who are you?"

The first time it happened, Shane was five. He was rushed into hospital after collapsing on the first day of school and a couple of hours later his diagnosis was back... Leukaemia, not the incurable type but one that was likely to come back one day and finish what it started. Shane, however, understood very little at that time and once his parents had spoken to the professionals he underwent immediate treatment.

Then the dreams started.

The first night, Shane had no idea what to think. Soft green grass underfoot and surrounded on all sides by perpetual white fog, he wandered alone for what felt like hours before awakening in his hospital bed.

Days passed in a blur as the treatments intensified and his body weakened; You see, the problem with Leukaemia is that the cancer itself is in the bone marrow and so to heal it you must first break it down at its source, naturally weakening the body to dangerous levels in the process.

During this time Shane regularly closed his eyes in his hospital room only to reopen them again within the pure white fog and the grassland of his dreamscape. He wandered without care, for there he never felt tired. After several days or maybe nights of directionless wandering, the fog began to thin and shadows of plants and trees started to form within the surroundings. A welcome change, still distant and untouchable as if hidden behind a veil but they were there nonetheless.

The days turned into weeks as Shane's condition worsened before finally beginning to stabilise. The treatment was taking effect, but the toll on his young body was great and he spent long periods sleeping each day, escaping to his world of grass, fog and shadows where pain and fatigue no longer stuck to him.

Stepping towards a particularly clear and possibly tree-shaped shadow in the distance, he marvelled at the almost immediate change in his surroundings. Step by step he wandered into this new world, colourful flowers the likes of which he had never seen, bloomed into life along a path made of smooth stone slabs and on either side, a perfectly kempt lawn of a beautiful vibrant green.

At the end of the path, a single crooked Chinese willow drifted lazily in the breeze. It swooned over a picturesque pond of crystal clear water dotted with lotus flowers as the wind between its leaves made a slight rustling sound.

Sound. That was new. A small smile tugged at his lips before a barely audible whimper drew his attention to the side of the willow. There she stood...

That first time he noticed her, he was so shocked to see another person within this place he believed his own, he immediately awoke within his hospital bed. As fatigued as he was, he soon fell asleep and once again found himself in that wonderful garden. With steps free of worry and full of the innocence that could only belong to a child, he approached the pond. When he looked upon... his? Reflection in the crystal clear water, he saw a face that was his yet was also not.

"Who are you?"

Broken from his confusion he turned to see the girl not older than four years of age now staring at him with eyes like a pair of crystal clear gemstones. Long silky black hair, slightly chubby cheeks, a cute little nose and puffy red rings around her eyes.

"My name is Shane, what's yours?"

"Qingyue sniff sniff, Xia Qingyue."

That was how two children; one dealing with his illness and the other with sadness over losing her mother, met for the first time.

For the next few nights, both Qingyue and Shane spent time by the pond talking or playing as they both slowly opened up to each other and as children often do they became fast friends. Whenever they were both in the dreamscape, they were inseparable from each other and Shane would sometimes spend hours standing idly beside the pond waiting for her to join him. The days turned into weeks and finally, just as Qingyue seemed to be able to smile naturally again, Shane started to recover…

The more healthy he became and the faster he recovered, the less he was able to connect to the garden and the girl. Although he of course was happy to be getting well, he as a child still felt saddened that he could not spend time in his dreams with his friend as much as before.

Eventually, Shane left the hospital and the dreams stopped altogether and one day he who had stayed positive throughout his illness cried for the first time. His family, naturally concerned, asked what was wrong and he tried to explain to them about the girl and the dream; try being the main word here.

Whenever he would try to tell his parents or his family about it, the memories seemed to become very vague and fuzzy and he would have trouble forming words.

Shane went about his life after those confusing months of dreams, treatment and recovery and once he recovered he was finally free to live life like a normal kid. He was normal in most aspects apart from his higher than average intelligence and borderline fanatical love for reading and so he went to school, he learnt and he made friends.

Slowly, the years passed and the memories of that time started to fade into nothing until once again at the age of thirteen, Shane found himself back in a white world of perpetual fog and green grass underneath his feet. Intelligent and mature as he was, Shane understood that something was wrong and as a thirteen-year-old child, still began to panic. That was until his mind was suddenly awash with a calming feeling of familiarity

'I've been here before... But when?' Shane began to wander and as he did so, the fog began to recede and shadows of plants and trees became visible in the distance. For every step he took, the sense of familiarity grew from a spark into a wildfire in the back of his mind until it became an audible buzz within his ears and finally with a *Peng* sound like that of breaking glass he found himself on a now remembered stone pathway.

His eyes darted around in their sockets, taking in the view of the crystal clear water of the pond, the old crooked Chinese willow. Both of these sites were picturesque but not what he was searching for so his gaze never lingered.

He looked past the willow and there at the edge of the pond, with her back to him and while facing the water, she stood once again. It had been eight years but now the memories of this place flooded his consciousness as if it were only yesterday, how had he forgotten her!? He took a breath and shudderingly exhaled.

"....Qingyue?" The word felt foreign to him and strange on his tongue as it came forth from his throat in a language he was sure he could not speak.

"Who!?" She whirled around on him, palm raised and anger clear upon her childish, fairy-like face. Anger slowly turned to confusion which then gave way to recognition, recognition to excitement and within just a single millisecond became a pout with added teary eyes that could shatter a stone statue.

Shane stepped forward and before he could form any questions such as why she only looked around ten years old or how come she was wearing an ancient yet expensive looking... white robe? Qingyue in the form of a white and black missile launched towards him at a speed far faster than a small girl should have been able to and embedded herself into his chest. In the last second before he found himself on his back on the lawn beneath him he saw his reflection in the pond out of the corner of his eye. 'Why do I look so young?'

"Shane… Why did you leave? ...I've been waiting in this dream every night since we last played together" She asked between muffled sobs and in a tiny voice barely louder than a whisper.

'Ahh yes, it's a dream, this isn't real. It's probably a hallucination caused by my illness again' Although Shane told himself these words, he couldn't bring himself to upset Qingyue any further so he just held her close and whispered an apology while brushing through her long silky hair with his fingers. Whether he himself truly believed those words is also another thing.

After their tearful reunion, Shane and Qingyue sat beside each other at the edge of the pond and talked about many things. Shane talked about school and his favourite books whereas Qingyue told him of her father's merchant business and her wish to learn martial arts or as she called it "cultivation" 'strange word, but why does it sound so familiar to me hmm...'

By this point, Shane had entirely convinced himself that this was a dream created by his own mind to escape whatever his body was experiencing back in the real world. Everything was just too fantastical to be real. The nail in the coffin was the fact that his reflection in the water, although not completely foreign, quite clearly showed someone different than he remembered.

In this dreamscape, his age seemed to be around the same as Qingyue, although he was a few inches taller than her. His body looked lean and felt… powerful for some reason and his features were for lack of better words, more Asian. He had a mass of untamed brown hair with obsidian streaks, bronzed skin and reddish eyes. He was barefooted and only wore some strange shorts and a tunic? Altogether he looked rather wild, as if he was used to living outside.

'Well that settles it, this is definitely a dream. I may as well enjoy it while I'm here.' Over the following days and weeks, Shane and Qingyue naturally grew very close as they played together in the garden and talked about all manner of things in their lives. For some reason whenever Shane tried to broach the topic of his illness or the fact that this was his own dream, he felt a huge sinking feeling within his stomach as if he would lose something incredibly important should he utter those words.

Unknown to him, a certain young girl was having the same feeling whenever she tried to talk to him about cultivation or how her mother flew away and left her, leaving her only able to say her mother was gone…

The same as the time before, Shane started to recover and once again found it harder and harder to enter the dreamscape and even when he did, he was able to spend less time there than before. He was already devastated enough but as his visits became less frequent, Qingyue became more distant and closed off from him until one day he finally couldn't take it anymore and asked her why and as if a faucet was turned on, so too were the little girl's waterworks.

"I-i d-don't want to spend more time with you only for you to leave me alone again… I-i-i don't have anyone else I can talk to *sniff sniff* and ever since my mother told us she had to leave for the Realm of the Gods and flew away that day, I have always been lonely!"

-Now when he heard those words, Shane was struck with a sudden buzzing within his ears and a painful headache but pushed it aside in favour of listening to her finish what she had to say-

"I-i am so lonely here, my father is always so busy working so that he can keep his mind off of her and I-i-i o-only ever felt happy when I spent time with you here in my dreams!!" The usually quiet little girl poured her heart out in between sobs, sniffles and heart-wrenching wails and before Shane knew what was happening, he was embracing her into his chest and stroking her hair.

Ignoring the now deafening buzzing in his ears and the almost unbearable headache, Shane opened his mouth with assurance only for the sound to disappear as if it were never there and spoke. "Qingyue, I don't know for sure if I will be able to come back here soon but I promise you we will meet again" and with those final words, he faded away.

Once back in the real world, Shane looked back on Qingyue's last outburst and noticed several strange things. 'First of all, was the way in which she described the parting with her mother and the God something, she also mentioned… Gah!' the headache and buzzing returned in full force and the last thing he thought of before his vision blacked out was that she referred to their meeting as HER dream.