My phone buzzed at 3:42 am, jolting me awake. The police. They had found Mel’s lifeless body splayed across the pavement; limbs contorted against the unforgiving concrete. I was the last person she called. My ears rang, and my pulse thrummed against my skull. I should have known something was wrong. She never called this late at night otherwise.
For many life cycles, I watched the world progress without me, lives passed in the blink of an eye, only to be reincarnated in the next life. I told myself that death was inevitable like the cycles of the moon and the ebb and flow of the tide. Death. An inconsequential word to me, until I met her. It was one of those friendships that just happened when two people sat next to each other by chance and struck up a conversation. Melanie sat across the table in the library, with her head buried in a biology textbook. Curious about how the human body differed from a Celestial’s, I tapped her on the shoulder, only to glimpse a shadow of sadness in her eyes.
I couldn’t tell her my identity, but her eyes lit up when she told me about hers. I grew to know little details about her, from the way she tossed her black hair to the side when she laughed, to the way she pursed her lips when disappointed. Her parents were both firstgeneration Chinese immigrants. Her mom survived breast cancer. She wore mismatched clothes.
She was practical and knew she had to study hard to make it, so she could support her parents.
She had nightmares about failing exams and woke up in a cold sweat.
***
I walked into Mel’s empty room to be close to her. Pages of study notes and countless textbooks spread across her desk. A human anatomy textbook was left open to a page with an infographic of a human body, sliced open to reveal all the organs. I wondered if all her organs were still intact after she had fallen. She left a note:
“In the next life, I’ll still be your friend. ~ Mel”
Tears brimmed up my eyes for the first time. Mel didn’t believe in reincarnation. She claimed that it wasn’t scientifically plausible, as if trying to explain why the stars didn’t align or that fate was a human construct. I enjoyed listening to her explain how humans interpret their reality, ignorant of the Celestial’s wheel of fortune that shapes them. Maybe I had changed her mind after all.
***
“Don’t interfere with human affairs,” the Celestial Majesty, my father, had told me. It was the only condition he gave to allow me to travel to the human realm.
“Their lives are fleeting and born to suffer. Once they come to the end of it, they’d bear regrets,” he had said. I didn’t want to believe him that their lives were meaningless stars floating in the universe to be born and die in the same breath. Melanie didn’t want to believe her father’s views either that humans were brought into the world only to fight for survival.
I wanted to make a difference, rather than stand by to do nothing, and to leave a mark on the world as Melanie had left her living memory with me. Like me, she didn’t choose this life, but she taught me what it meant for someone to sacrifice themselves for another, and for one to hold a loved one just because it felt comforting.
***
Her body lay still on the morgue’s cold metal slab and her limbs positioned back in place as if in a peaceful slumber. Her closed eyes betrayed no hint of the turmoil she must have felt while alive. Stitched seams crisscrossed her body, weak attempts to mend the chasms of her fractured being. A sadness tugged at my heart when I touched her body. My fingers recoiled from its coolness.
I delved into the recesses of her mind and navigated through the network of neurons branching off from one memory to the next, transporting me to a snapshot of her existence suspended in time.
I can’t study anymore. It’s too much. It’s all meaningless.
I’m drowning.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
Don’t mix career with passion. Her dad’s voice.
Mel curled up in the bed crying herself to sleep. Mel waking up from another nightmare.
I pushed back further to maybe when she was seven to eight years old. Books and a few handmade toys littered her dimly lit childhood bedroom. Two yellowed paper lanterns hung from the ceiling as the sole decoration. I spotted an abandoned jianzi on the floor next to the bookshelf; its faded feathers collected years of dust. I wondered when she stopped playing. Tucked away on the bookshelf were several pages of her drawings, a vivid splash of colour brought life to fantastical beings.
“Follow your passion. ~ Mom,” I wrote, copying her mother’s handwriting. I placed it on her bedside table, where her mother placed the book she read for Mel before she went to sleep.
I snapped back to the present, my nerves tingled from time travel. Father warned against its unnecessary use. I may have to spend an eon using my Celestial blood to weave back the fabric of time when I return to the Celestial Realm, not to mention facing Father’s wrath, but she was worth it.
***
Back in her dorm room, I gathered the pieces of her soul and waited. I felt the pieces of her soul come together like magnets pulling towards each other and little particles of light blossomed like sparks of electricity. The textbooks and notes disappeared from the room, replaced by scattered artwork and paint strewn on the floor. The note that I had penned was now pinned on her wall. A smile played on my lips knowing that she had returned.
Wanying Zhang is a Chinese-Canadian writer of speculative fiction based in Montreal. Since she was young, she has dabbled in mixing potions and writing stories fusing elements of Asian and European fairy tales, folklore, and science fantasy. She is a recent flash fiction winner for the 61st issue of Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter, titled “Feathers of Eternity.” She has also published with Every Day fiction and DeeBee Publishing. Currently a college professor with too many degrees, she sprinkles the magic of chemistry for future generations.
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