A Silent Melody Dissolved in Wind and Snow
She dreamed again.
She dreamed that she was standing beneath the boundless dome of the far north. The world’s sky had originally been woven from countless pure and gentle dreams. Yet as long as souls could still be wounded, sorrow would always exist. The regrets long accumulated in the old world, the pain that had not been understood, and the despair deep within living hearts that could not be dissolved finally gathered into an extremely dark shadow. When the weight of that sorrow exceeded the limit that all “thought rings” and “dream-weaving arts” could hold up, the blue sky that had been sustained with desperate wishes could no longer bear such ultimate heaviness, and it gave out a sorrowful cry of shattering like fragile glass.
When deep violet ether poured down along the broken sky like cold seawater, she did not open those sharp and bright crystal barriers. In this world formed from thoughts, she understood more clearly than anyone: hard crystal can refract light, but it cannot dissolve sorrow.
The wind carried the exhausted crying from the depths of the world and swept across her thin shoulders. She buried her chin deeply into that thick, soft, mist-blue scarf, just as IGCrystal did when she was timid and obedient, trying to find the last trace of warmth in this boundless loneliness. Her hands drew slightly inward, carefully holding a small bundle of pure white flowers. That was the little bit of pure prayer she had preserved for this world in the wasteland.
Facing the heavy emotion that was enough to swallow everything, she made her choice.
She did not choose to fight. She chose acceptance and softness. She gave up the rational judgment she usually relied on and gave up the hard boundary of being the “divine crystal.”
At that moment, she let a silent classical lyric poem rise between heaven and earth. Huge, translucent staves appeared faintly in the gray-blue wind and snow, flowing quietly beside her. Scattered cross-shaped starlight and fine snowflakes drew slow and gentle rhythms through the air.
Her skirt of pure white and pale blue shed its cold sharpness, and its edges began to glow with a pastel-like softness and hazy grain. Her form became lighter and softer in the snow. She did not struggle. She only lowered her eyes quietly, and a trace of release passed through her sky-blue pupils.
“If crystal is too hard, then let me become a snowfall, and use tenderness to embrace all unhappiness.”
Along with the final note of that silent melody, the white petals in her hands and her fingertips together became frost flowers flying all through the sky. She completely dispersed her indestructible inner self, and without reserve, melted the softest and most inward wish within her into this crying world.
With a soundless dissolution, she diluted the most violent destructive force in the deep violet ether and dragged all sorrow into a long and gentle sleep. The granular faint light from the moment she dispersed also laid down the purest ground color for the later skyfuls of “Nianyu” feathers.
